June 24-27 2007 – American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Engineering Libraries Division 114th Annual Conference & Exhibition, Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, Hawaii.

The 2007 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition was held in Honolulu, Hawaii, June 24-27th. Despite distance and cost, many members turned out for the meeting. There was a total attendance of 3,401, with a total booking of 10,311 hotel room-nights. A record number of papers were submitted (1,739) and published (1,626).[1]

Due to the hard work and creativity of several members of the Engineering Librarian’s Division (ELD), this year’s division events were exceptional. This was the first conference I’ve attended where all of the sessions were interesting, engaging, and relevant to my work – at most conferences there are at least one or two (usually more) sessions relegated to “nap time” – but not this one. I was able to attend all of the ELD technical sessions, plus a pre-conference workshop and a plenary by a lecturer from a different division. I also attended the ELD “get acquainted” session and the business meeting. And, there were plenty of social and recreational events to keep me busy after the day’s sessions ended. The following is a report of what I found to be highlights of this year’s conference. Although I would have liked to report on all of the sessions, I’m only including reports on those that I found most beneficial both personally and professionally, in order to keep this report at a moderate length. Most papers and presentations from the ELD sessions can be found on the ELD website: http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/conf/conf07.php.

Pre Conference workshops

There were two ELD sponsored pre-conference workshops. I did not attend the first, Measuring the lifelong learning outcome in terms of information literacy components.It required a registration fee that I couldn’t afford; plus, given the title, I probably would have had trouble staying awake for the four-hour, early morning event.

I did attend the second workshop: Open Source Digital Library Systems: Streetprint & Greenstone. This workshop was held at the University of Hawaii, Manoa campus (a short bicycle ride from the Waikiki hotel district). Martha Chantiny, Librarian and Head of Desktop Network Services at the UMH Library facilitated the workshop. In the workshop, Chanity compared the two open-source digital library systems Streetprint and Greenstonse, and showed examples of each in use. Some features of Greenstone are that it can export data to institutional repository systems such as Dspace, and it supports a wide range of metadata schema. On the other hand Streetprint only supports Dublin Core and as yet has no export capabilities but it is OAI compliant. Streetprint is easily modifiable and completely PHP and CSS driven. Essentially, Greenstone is a robust full-featured system but requires a learning curve for installation, configuration and administration, while Streetprint is designed for usability, allowing easy installation, customization and administration, but somewhat lacking in features. Streetprint also lacks the user community and support that Greenstone has and sometimes questions will go unanswered in their forums. Neither system should be viewed as being better than the other; in fact the UMH digital library staff carefully consider each system’s strengths and weaknesses before selecting one or the other for a particular project and they currently have a variety of digital library projects developed on each (See links, below).

Prior to this workshop, lunch was provided for attendees and fellow ELD member Robert Schwarzwalder, Assistant University Librarian for Information Technology at the UHM Library, gave a tour of flood damage from the devastating October 30, 2004 flash flood. Schwarzwalder also presented a paper for the Disaster Preparedness technical session at the conference the following Monday.

Technical Sessions

Disaster Preparedness in Engineering Libraries

Even though the title of this session is Disaster Preparedness in Engineering Libraries, all librarians in libraries of all types should heed the practical wisdom presented. This session, moderated by Alice Trussell, began with presentations on two specific incidents, one by Robert Schwarzwalder about recovery from a flash flood and steps the UHM Library is taking to prepare for possible future flooding; and the other by Bruce Neville and his experiences with cleanup after pipes burst and flooded the stacks at the University of New Mexico Centennial Library. James Van Fleet followed these with a presentation on disaster preparedness and recovery from the perspective of preserving library resources and collections.

There were many important lessons to be learned from these three presentations but I’ll mention only a couple here. I encourage all librarians to take a look at the Power(ful)Point slides linked below to get the full impact. Believe me, you do not want to find yourself in these situations.

First, libraries should have a contractor on retainer that has experience with disaster cleanup in libraries. General cleanup contractors do not understand the level of organization and preservation that libraries require, nor do they appreciate the value of our collections. They tend to make matters worse.

Second, make sure your library has a member on your campus’s emergency management board, and make sure board members understand that while there are several organizations on campus with the responsibilities of saving lives, evacuating buildings, administering first aid, and providing security, the library is not one of them. The library’s roll is to save their collections – in some cases, the most valuable material asset on campus.

Bruce Neville, Library Disaster Recovery: Opportunities Seized and Lessons Learned

Robert Schwarzwalder, Preparing for the Next Disaster: Learning the Lessons from the 2004 Manoa Flood

James Van Fleet, Disaster Planning and Preparedness: Defining a Library “Disaster”

Business & Entrepreneurial Information for Engineers

This was a very helpful session for me. Being an engineering librarian, a patent & trademark librarian and liaison to the University of Maine’s Innovation Engineering Program, I get a lot of business related reference questions. Most of the time I end up referring the patrons to our business librarian, although I am slowly catching on. A variety of information needs that commonly come up are for competitive intelligence, business plan writing, industry and company profiles, and funding sources. The three presentations during this session provided invaluable tips and resources for fulfilling these information needs. See the links below for presentation slides and a more detailed report by Lee Pedersen, Scholarly Resources Librarian at Brown University.

Christine Drew, Encouraging Use of Entrepreneurship Information Resources: Faculty/Library Collaboration

Danianne Mizzy, Tom Cassel, and Cynthia Cronin- Kardon, Information Skills for Entrepreneurial Innovation: Essential competencies

Angela Locknar and Stephanie Hartman, Supporting the Business Information Needs of Engineering Students: An MIT Perspective

Making connections: Reaching users through student groups, professional organizations and collections projects

This session, moderated by Darcy Duke, explored creative ways of reaching out to users, through involvement with student groups and professional organizations, and a collections project involving conference proceedings.

With more resources becoming available online and few patrons seeking the aid of librarians, we need to find innovative ways to reach out to library users to insure that they receive adequate information literacy skills and understand the library resources at their disposal. Kristen Fitzpatrick discussed IEEE University Partnership Programs at Drexel and Virginia Tech. The partnership program teams librarians with student leaders and faculty to develop programs of benefit to the entire campus engineering community. Such programs have taken the form of guest lecturers and symposia focusing on hot topics and emerging trends.

Randy Wallace presented the results of his efforts to connect with students through student organizations. We all know how difficult it is to connect with students through our bibliographic instruction sessions that are scheduled during class time. Many students don’t pay attention or maybe even skip class. Randy has discovered that working directly with the student organizations at the University of North Texas has been more lucrative than traditional BI sessions. He finds that when you work directly with student groups, you are in fact working with the student leaders in their fields and often they will refer other students to visit the library. Additionally, it has become common for students within these groups to visit the library, use library resources, and even use the library’s high-tech instruction room to practice for class presentations. Randy had to do a lot of extra work to build these relationships, including attending group meetings on nights and weekends.

Last in this session was Tracy Gabridge who discussed how protecting access to conference proceedings at MIT connected her with her faculty. Upon learning that long-term access to some important conference proceedings series would no longer be made available electronically, Tracy ventured to find out exactly which conferences were most important to her faculty so that she could make sure to have print available. This became not only a collections project but also a form of marketing and outreach, and exemplified how librarians can go out of their daily routine to serve their users. Finally, one outcome of this project was that Tracy became much more aware of which conferences her faculty were reading and publishing in, giving her a much clearer picture of her liaison areas.

Kristen Fitzpatrick , Getting to Know You: How Partnering With Professional Societies Can Enhance Librarians' Profile and Impact

Randy Wallace, Mentoring Students Through Engineering Student Group Organizations

Tracy Gabridge, How Vulnerable are Conference Proceedings? A Data Collection and Outreach Project at the MIT Libraries

ELD Business

ELD Special Interest Group Meeting

Hang Loose: IOPP/Aloha Awardees (left to right) Mark Sauter, IOP (award sponsor), Randy Wallace, University of North Texas, Martin Wallace, University of Maine, Julie Mitchell, University of Minnesota, and Lori Gluckman, SUNY Maritime; photo by Amy Van Epps

The ELD Special Interest Group Meeting, organized by Bruce Neville, provided ELD members the opportunity to catch up and get acquainted with new colleagues. The Aloha Award recipients[2] were also recognized. Participants then broke into small round-table groups to discuss important issues in librarianship. Some of the topics were scholarly communication, Library 2.0, and collection development, among several others (I can’t remember them all). I would like to thank Mark Sauter and IOP Publishing for their sponsorship of the boxed lunches during this session and the Aloha travel award, without which I would have not been able to attend the conference.

Annual Business Meeting and Division Awards

Kate Thomes, ELD Chair, led the meeting and John Teleha presented the division awards. For a full report, see the ELD meeting minutes website at http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/minutes/minutes.php and for a listing of this year’s award recipients, see the ELD awards website at http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/awards.php. Thanks to Morgan & Claypool Publishers for the breakfast, which included delicious taro pancakes with crushed macadamia nuts.

Food and Social Events

To kickoff the conference, CUEBALLS (Completely Unofficial Early-Birds And Leftovers Line-up Squad) arranged for drinks and dinner at the Brew Moon, a brewpub with great ih-house beers and delicious food. Mark Sauter from IOP had originally offered to buy the first round of drinks and appetizers. At first there were only about seven of us there. Since it was such a small turnout, Mark offered to go ahead and pay for the whole dinner. Bad Idea. By the end of the evening, there were at least 20 of us. On behalf of all of us CUEBALLS, Thank You Mark!

The following Sunday, the opening night of the conference, was the 2007 ASEE Society-wide Picnic: Welcome to Paradise Luau at the picturesque seaside venue of the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The conference materials boasted, “Gentle ocean breezes, brilliant stars and exotic flora and wildlife combine to create a paradisiacal environment for this traditional island luau. The spectacular pinnacle of the evening features Polynesian entertainment, with music, song and dance from Hawaii, Tahiti and New Zealand and the exciting Samoan fireknife dance!”

Unfortunately I did not pre-register for this event, and by the time I arrived the tickets had been sold. I overheard later that there was not enough seating because they overbooked the venue, and that the food was not very good. I can vouch for the exotic wildlife though, because when I was at the Hawaiin Village the night before for the CUEBALLS meeting, I noticed the live flamingos and a variety of other strange looking birds.

On Monday night was the ELD welcome reception at the Royal Hawaiian Luau, sponsored by IEEE and organized by Carol Brach, University of Notre Dame. The luau was staged on the “ocean lawn” of the historic Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki. The Royal Hawaiian is the oldest beach resort on the island and it stands out from everything else because it is bright pink and does not conform to the modernist style that almost every other building in Waikiki looks like. The food was a traditional Polynesian buffet suckling pig and lots of fruit among other things. There was also a Royal Polynesian Extravaganza that featured songs and dances – including a fire dance – that portray the unique culture of Hawaii. This event was probably the best for me, because I had a chance to meet many ELD members and chat about opportunities within the organization. I was most appreciative of Stephanie Hartman and Jay Bhat taking the time to talk to me and introduce me others, making me feel very welcome and comfortable. The only downside to this luau was that the only beer they served was Bud Light. A big ‘thanks’ to Carol and to IEEE for this fun-filled experience!

The final big, official ELD reception was the annual banquet and service awards reception the following Tuesday at the Halekulani Hotel. This was sponsored by Engineering Information/Elsevier, and organized by Mike White, Queens University (and one of my predecessors here at the University of Maine). In my opinion, the food was better at this banquet than the previous night’s luau – because I’m vegetarian and there far more non-meat choices, and there were plenty of different beers to choose from including the local Kona Brewing Company beers. The down side was that by this point I was completely exhausted and with this mingling with my beer buzz, I was longing for a good night’s sleep. Joe Claypool from Morgan & Claypool Publishers kept me awake with his wisecracks and hilarity for as long as he could, but I ended up leaving early. Many thanks to Mike White and Engineering Information/Elsevier for the fantastic food and atmosphere at this banquet. Next time I’ll come energized and stick around a little longer.

To wrap up, CUEBALLS hosted another event at another brewpub on the following Wednesday. I unfortunately was on my way home at this time and was unable to attend.

I want to thank Jay Bhat and the entire organizing committee for making this a wonderful first-timer’s experience. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire conference, met some great people, and learned so much. I look forward to seeing you all again next year!

[1] Statisitcs from ASEE July e-Newsletter

[2] For those wondering, even though Randy and I share a last name, we are not related; but we did work together for several years at the University of North Texas before I took my current job at the University of Maine.

For more information, contact:
Martin Wallace
Science and Engineering Center
Patent and Trademark Depository
Raymond H. Fogler Library
Orono, Maine 04469-5729
Phone: 207-581-1678