PAMS reference development

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Back to PAMS reference.

This page is used to track the development of the PAMS reference wiki.

This space is under development. I'm working towards having a full-fledged reference and research assistance tool for the physical and mathematical sciences research using the North Carolina State University Libraries. It will never really be done. It is meant to complement the browse subjects environment on the library website.

• PAMS reference style guide - A very short guide for anyone interesting in contributing to this wiki.
• Get the SLA 2008 poster presentation handout (MS Word doc).

Timeline

• 9/4/08. Continuing to work on mathematics updates. Added an FAQ section for some increased guidance and created a literature searching guide. Going to use these as models for the other subjects, particularly those outside chemistry where I'm trying to develop more content.

• 5/13/08. Reformatting the home page today to make it into a table. This way, the most relevant links should appear on the screen without scrolling.

• 2/20/08. Working now on filling in all database pages with tips and screenshots. Some other points of emphasis in the near term:
  • Research groups pages. Haven't been able to get back to this yet but it's a priority.
  • Fill in guides and pages for subjects other than chemistry. Because I get significantly more chemistry questions than anything else, this part of the wiki has filled itself in much more quickly, and at this point dwarfs other sections.

• 1/3/08. The principle advance for the wiki during fall semester was an external one: key pages are now indexed and searchable via library web site search. Rather than index all pages of the wiki (which would end up indexing numerous WolfWiki pages not related to the Libraries), we've indexed only pages with "PAMS_" in the title somewhere. This incorporates all category pages, and since all pages belong to some category, this means any topic addressed by the wiki should be findable via web site search. A search for phase diagrams is a good example of something that brings a wiki page to the top of the list of results. Some things I want to focus on this semester:
  • Continue to add guides (brief or not) for all PAMS databases
  • Add pages for PAMS research groups on campus

• 8/17/07. Completed the MathSciNet page today. There was pretty much nothing on this page before, now I think it is a useful guide to the database. I'm working on adding specific database guides like this now. Web of Science is a priority but I'm holding off on that until their new interface goes live (should be soon) rather than use all my screenshots which will be outdated immediately. It's giving me a refresher on the ins-and-outs of each database as I go, too.

• 8/1/07. The wiki is now ready to replace the old subject guides. I'm adding links to all appropriate subject pages, removing links to the previous guides. I won't delete the guides, but I consider them archival at this point. Re-organizing the home page a bit so it seems less under development. Although, of course, it will *always* be under development. I'll post a notice about in on PES News and start making it a point to direct people to the wiki starting now! Some important tasks to be completed:
  • Fill in more resources for all subjects. This will be an ongoing challenge
  • Can the wiki be made searchable from the library page? There may be technical reasons why not. What would be a solution if indeed, the answer is no?
  • Can we make the wiki more accessible from the subject pages? Right now the link isn't very prominent

• 7/20/07. Completed a lot of work on the chemistry section this week. Added the types of chemistry information in as categories so all resources with similar information can be seen on one page. I'm pretty close to deeming the chemistry section ready for public consumption, although I would like to organize the CH223L page a bit more. I have an unofficial deadline of August 1 to have the wiki ready for other eyes. I'll probably meet that deadline, or close. Definitely by fall semester.

• 5/23/07. Haven't had much time to work on the wiki with end-of-semester reference work and miscellaneous tasks needing completion, but summer is here and it's time to get to work. I continue to add pages whenever it's useful to have one to answer a reference question. I also decided to change the main "articles" category of pages to "guides." This is a little more descriptive, and also gets away from duplicating the term "articles," which is used in other contexts in wikis (any page that fits a category is listed as an "article"). I've also given myself an unofficial deadline of August 1 to launch this wiki into general use: publicity on PAMS subject pages on the library website, and making it a point of reference for all questions. I need to fill in a lot before then!

• 3/9/07. Getting into the habit of creating a wiki page whenever it's useful to answer a question. I often reply to library users via e-mail, providing a (hopefully not too) lengthy explanation to their questions. A better approach than repeating the same general instructions over and over is to pass them a wiki page with these instructions, writing the page first if necessary. Then I don't have to worry so much about addressing related questions in the original e-mail, since people are then in the wiki environment and may be able to follow links there to get help rather than wait for yet another reply from me. If nothing else, it gives me some motivation to work on pieces of the wiki when they're needed.

• 2/8/07. Transferred the SciFinder Scholar handout to wiki-format. I'll upload the original MS word version if I can reduce the file size enough, but that may not be necessary. I'll add a lot more to that page, as it's pretty important for a lot of reasons. Point is, I'm starting to take the lesson that there's a lot of good text to pirate from the Libraries' site already, I don't need to re-write all of this. Getting it into the wiki makes it easier to edit and link up, especially in the future. But there's no reason to throw away the old material.

• 1/29/07. Spent a lot of time on the CH223L page. I'd like this to be up ASAP, though it's not going to be soon enough to use for this semester. (Might temporarily abandon it for CH 441, another course I'm helping with this term, soon.) Copied in many of the resources from the established course page as a framework for some important resources to get into the wiki. Ideally, all resources added to the wiki will have three parts:

1. What the resource contains, very generally, and where it is located in the Libraries and/or online.
2. How to use the resource.
3. WHY you want to use the resource and any special quirks about it, especially compared to other available resources.

The third bit means injecting a little opinion into the wiki. I'm not sure at this point if that's feasible, useful, or appropriate, although I believe it is all three. I considered adding a statement to the effect of "this wiki is largely written by NCSU librarians and is meant to be a helpful tool rather than the factual basis for your research." This would cover the little bits of "use this resource for this, this resources is bad for that" bits, but I don't think it's necessary. It's essentially a giant fancy subject guide, of course it contains librarian opinion. That counts for something, so far as I know, or must necessarily believe!

• 1/23/07. Created development page and wrote unoffical mission! I feel like the wiki is starting to take shape and become organized in such a way that I can perhaps begin to add resources wholesale. Many more need to be included before it's really ready to "go public" per se (even though, as a wiki, it's public right now). Today I've added subject categories and re-organized the front page, breaking it into sections and adding some links. It's starting to look like a wiki.

• 12/1/06 - 1/5/07 (retroactive). Wiki created and basic categories established. A few example pages created and organizational and conceptual ideas are developed. I have no concrete idea where this is going, but wikis are easy enough to edit that it really doesn't matter.

What's going on here?

This wiki was created December 1, 2006, and I've been chipping away at it since as I've had the opportunity. This might be a good time to explain my mission.

While I like the organization of the Libaries' subject pages, the pages occasionally lack the flexibility needed to address frequent questions in the physical sciences. Organized lists of resources are just that: lists. But how does a researcher determine which of the resources to use? What benefit is each individual resource? Answering these questions has traditionally been the role of a subject guide (simply, a supplementary piece of material that elucidates the purpose of each resource). However, in the sciences, students traditionally learn about important resources in the context of their research, or never learn about them. Subject guides are unfortunately just more information to process. This wiki is an attempt to provide a highly usable interface for finding science information, with the extended ability to provide in-context help and instruction, as well as enable user feedback and commentary.

To contribute, please edit the wiki or contact Josh Wilson.