Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Meeting
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050610713655 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Pages | 5-6 |
| Author | Julia Gelfand |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) of the
American Society for Engineering Education
(ASEE) Annual Meeting
Julia Gelfand
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 8 2006, pp. 5-6, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050610713655 5
The 2006 Annual ASEE Conference
held in Chicago, June 18-21, 2006 had
as its general theme, ``Advancing
scholarship in engineering education.''
An increasingly popular meeting with
growing registration each year, this
conference was no exception to that
trend. This conference reporter spent
most of her time attending the ELD
sessions and not as much time at other
divisional meetings, which according to
the program looked equally inviting but
one can only be at one session at a time!
The familiar saga of conference
attendance lore. However, some
generalizations can still be shared:
.The concept of ``Best practices'' is
well documented at ASEE and
nearly every division promotes its
themes in that context and has
several sessions that explore that in
some way.
.Information literacy may be de-
fined differently by other profes-
sionals than librarians but that had
a clear resonance at this meeting
overall.
.Entrepreneurship is a huge and
growing area of engineering edu-
cation and is reflected by many
programs and new resources that
merge the technical literature with
business, management and innova-
tion content and themes.
.Engineering has a stronger pre-
sence at the smaller undergraduate
institution than remembered in the
past and speakers from the liberal
arts institutions were well profiled
on the program.
.Students as well as faculty have a
strong presence at ASEE with the
former mostly engaged in promot-
ing their research successes in
many poster sessions.
.The exhibition hall was among the
largest I can remember.
One segment of ASEE I really look
forward to is the distinguished lectures
and the plenary sessions. The Main
Plenary session this year had a different
format with eight speakers addressing
the conference theme. There was
successful dialogue between them and
the discussion reflected a global
emphasis and also included a graduate
student as well as senior and well
known faculty. Two of the most
inspiring speakers in this program were
Professor Sheri Sheppard at Stanford
and Professor Jim Pellegrino from the
University of Illinois, Chicago. The
adopted definition for scholarship was
that coined by Ernest Boyer, ``extend
scholarship beyond research to include
discovery, teaching, learning,
integration.'' I found this rather
refreshing.
Additional distinguished lecturers
included Professor Henry Petroski from
Duke University who addressed
``Engineering and history,'' and
Professor Lewis Duncan, president of
Rollins College, who spoke about ``The
uleashed human mind: liberating
education for the twenty-first century.''
The ELD programs were of a wide
range and covered many important
aspects of the life of a contemporary
science and engineering librarian. A
session on scholarly communication
issues provoked much discussion. The
speakers included Charles Steele who
described how the editorial board of a
well established but very expensive
journal,
The International Journal of Solids
and Structures, issued by Elsevier with
a subscription fee of $7,000 per year
resigned and created a new start-up,
Journal of Mechanics of Materials and
Structures for a fraction of the price at
$500 per year and published by a non-
profit, Mathematical Sciences
Publications with 200 plus submissions
since 2005. The second speaker was
James Kirby, Professor of Mathematics
at the University of California,
Berkeley responded with many ideas
about how one can broaden the range of
private publishing with different cost
models. He introduced in his talk about
how he converted to writing in LaTeX,
which is the preferred language of
mathematicians.
Well received and responsive
described the tenor of the session and
librarians shared additional experiences
at their institutions about the support for
these new start-up journal ventures.
This was really ``Taking back what is
ours!'' It was interesting to note in the
discussion that most faculty have no
sense of what their most heavily read
journals cost or that there is a
distinction between personal and
institutional subscription costs.
Three experienced engineering
librarians, Anita Colby (UCLA), Bob
Schwarzwalder (University of Hawaii,
Manoa), Deborah Kegel (UCSD)
explored their careers and the changes
in their work today by reflecting on the
last couple of decades and the specific
environments they are in. Interesting,
but not inspiring and there was not
enough diversity in the panel to have
much variance or generate new
information. Themes that came out
included mentorship, communication
skills, teamwork, networking,
marketing, grants administration,
facilitation skills, a love of teaching,
openness to change and coping skills
for ambiguity. The emphasis on
technology as a mainstream in all
librarians' work was reflected in their
familiarity with blogging, skyping,
creating wikis, using flash, interests in
creating and utilizing new online
communities. The consensus was that
one is happiest when one is in an
innovative environment, such as when
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