News
Computer Science News
Jim Leonard
Over 40 librarians and approximately 10 publishing people gathered on Wednesday afternoon for a free form open discussion of the literature of Computer Science.
Book Selection
Sarah Stevens-Rayburn asked in a note before the session for guidelines in selecting computer science books for a non-computer science library. She runs an astronomy related library, whose users especially need books for learning programming languages. Her comment: "There are so many out there..." The group seemed to suggest staying with established publishers in the field, and it was pointed out that major societies such as IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) produce graded tutorial texts. At least one participant felt that the "...for Dummies" series is helpful for people new to an area.
Java Applets
Representatives from the company Inter Dimensions were present to field questions on Java resulting from the presentations they gave at the PAM-Wide Roundtable on Sunday afternoon. It was asked whether there was concern about license agreements for downloading and using of Java applets. They said that it is a concern and that there are tools available now for decompiling Java applets back to their original code.
Disks in Books
The publishers were interested in reaction to books containing disks and CD-ROMs. Concerns were expressed about lost disks, separately loaning them, making backup copies, unauthorized copying, and picking up viruses. Solutions included avoiding buying books with disks, attaching warning labels regarding copying, separately circulating disks, storing backup copies, "losing" the disks, and just circulating the books with disks as is with no backup disk copies. Several participants found it difficult to obtain replacement disks from the publishers. Most librarians seemed to have CD-ROM equipped PC's in their libraries.
Web Site Access
One alternative to disks in books is access to the material on a Web site. Publishers asked about the desirability of such arrangements. It was agreed that this could work very well. One thing was made very clear, however, access should be based on site address rather than supplied passwords, which users lose within "picoseconds". Pricing is an issue: some publishers have set very high prices for site licenses.
ACM Depository Collection
We were reminded that the University of Washington Engineering Library continues to maintain a depository collection of publications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Covered are journals but not separately published conference proceedings. The material does not circulate, but copies will be made for a fee.
Conference Proceedings -- Acquisition
Concern was expressed about the coverage of ACM conferences in the ACM standing order program. Many of the proceedings appear as issues of Special Interest Group (SIG) journals and don't always come as part of the standing order. The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Engineering Library maintains two subscriptions to ACM SIG journals in order to supply the book collection with needed conference proceedings while at the same time having a complete set of journal holdings. Representatives of the ACM agreed to follow-up on this concern. IEEE, ACM and other organizations do list their conferences on their web sites. The IEEE representatives expect to act on Rebecca Lasher's suggestion that they show which conference proceedings are included in their standing order plans.
Conference Proceedings -- Cataloging
Many conferences are referred to in journal articles by initials. The need was expressed for more proceedings to include these initials in the title of the work, to give users access though library catalogs. Another problem is that conference titles can change from year to year, leading to proceedings for different years of a conference ending up with different call numbers.
Conference Proceedings -- On the Web
The IEEE Computer Society (IEEECS) and others are experimenting with putting conference proceeding content on Web sites, and the ACM does have several complete conferences on their site, including CHI '96 (Computer Human Interaction). It was pointed out that society members want paper versions continued for archival purposes. There was encouragement for publishers to get conference proceedings quickly onto Web sites, perhaps for conference attendees ahead of time and the rest soon after.
Library Advisory Committees for Publishers
Strong concern was expressed for library needs to be taken into account by publishers. Some publishers are doing this, but not to the satisfaction of all the librarians present. This is a dialog that will continue, and it was suggested that publishers set up Web sites with threaded discussion groups to enable interaction.
Thanks
There was not time for all questions to be brought up. For librarians needing computer science technical reports, Rebecca Lasher, Stanford University Mathematics Computer Science Librarian, suggests trying http://www.ncstrl.org. This is the cooperative effort of over 50 institutions and is still expanding.
Our thanks go to all who attended and the people who represented the publishers in this discussion: Academic Press, ACM, IEEE, IEEECS, ISI (Institute for Scientific Information), Springer Verlag, Wiley, as well as Inter Dimensions software and others. Also, thanks go to Anne Tattersall for contributing her notes on the discussion. We look forward to seeing you all again next year.