Volume 46, Number 3 - May/June 2022
EDITORIALFrontLines Page 4 Should Russian researchers be punished because of the actions of their government? Should they be cut off from accessing scientific research papers? It's a difficult call. By Marydee Ojala DEPARTMENTSPage 8 Search Engine Update Page 27 Conference Corral NISO Plus FEATURESPage 10 AI-Enabled Boosters for Your Communication Skills Writing the perfectly crafted, error-free, grammatically correct document is easier if you use an AI-based software tool. Barbie Keiser reviews three—Grammarly, Wordtune, and ProWritingAid—that she thinks are worth considering. Since each has different capabilities and degrees of complexity, assessing what works best for an individual's writing needs is important. By Barbie E. Keiser Page 16 Analyzing Your Analytics To make data-driven decisions, analyzing usage data of library resources is necessary to justify the cost of those resources. Janet Hartmann draws on her experience in a corporate information environment to understand the basics of web analytics, the component pieces, the intricacies of metrics, and what might be missing. Effectively presenting the data rounds out the assessment activity. By Janet Hartmann Page 22 Noticing more job ads for news librarians spurred Robert Berkman to ask if that part of the information profession was making a comeback. In addition to speculating about the future, he interviews two veteran news librarians for their accounts of the job and how it has changed. By Robert Berkman COLUMNSInternet Express Page 30 Carly Lamphere addresses the growing threat of e-waste: electrical and electronic equipment that has been discarded for numerous reasons. She looks at options that are more environmentally friendly, including rethinking the need to have the latest version of phones, laptops, and other devices. Lamphere notes that, not surprisingly, libraries are leading the effort to stem the e-waste tide. By Carly Lamphere InfoLit Land Page 33 As a longtime information literacy advocate, it's tough for columnist William Badke to consider abandoning infolit instruction. He cites lack of respect, resources, and interest. Yet, he concludes, it is central to avoiding information chaos and is foundational to education, so he's not giving up. By William Badke The Dollar Sign Page 36 Business By the Numbers: Finding and Interpreting Statistical Data Business runs on numbers, but finding that one important statistic, that crucial datapoint, can be challenging. Added to that is the necessity of putting the number in context, making certain that it is from a reliable source, and possibly finding a substitute metric if the exact statistic does not exist. By Marydee Ojala Technology and Power Page 39 Creating New Connections Through Flexibility Guest columnist Margaret Heller explores the nature of being experimental in libraries. Shifting services has always been central to user-centered organizations such as libraries, but the pandemic accelerated the process. By Margaret Heller Metrics Mashup Page 42 Credit Where Credit Is Due? A New Indicator From Clarivate The new Collaborative Category Normalized Citation Impact, or Collab-CNCI, represents a way to count two qualities of the research landscape that have escaped impact factors in the past: publications with multiple authors and authors from multiple countries. By Elaine M. Lasda Hard Copy Page 45 Recommended Reading on Information History, Human Information Behavior, Virtual Reality, and Wikipedia in Libraries By Jennifer A. Bartlett Online Spotlight Page 48 The Five Stages of Online Research From her long experience in dealing with research projects, Mary Ellen Bates can now identify the five stages of online research and, having done so, can avoid being thrown offtrack by them. By Mary Ellen Bates |
