Issue 82 (Winter 2007)

APLIC-International Communicator Winter 2007, Issue #82

The APLIC-International Communicator is published three times yearly by the Association for Population and Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers, International. Editor: Nykia M. Perez, University of Pennsylvania, Population Studies Center, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, Pa, 19104-6298. Phone 215-898-5375; Fax: 215-898-2124; E-mail: nmperez@pop.upenn.edu

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President’s Message

By Tara Murray, Pennsylvania State University

This spring, APLIC-I will hold its 40th annual conference in New York City. We will celebrate that milestone—with a reception at the Population Council and a session on APLIC-I’s history—but we will also look forward to our future. The conference theme is “The Big APLIC: The Network that Works,” and APLIC-I does indeed work. In the 5 years that I have been a member of APLIC-I, I have experienced the generosity of our members and the sense of community. Members are quick to help each other by sending a journal article, recommending a resource, even shipping their duplicate materials to developing countries. At the conference, new members are quickly embraced. The conference’s small size makes it easy for everyone to participate and to get to know each other. At larger conferences, “networking” can sometimes mean wandering around a crowded reception clutching a glass of wine and looking for someone to talk to. At an APLIC-I conference, networking really means sharing ideas with your colleagues. Despite its successes, though, APLIC-I needs our help to ensure another 40 years. Libraries everywhere face obstacles, as budgets and staff are cut, and some libraries even close. Those that remain open often have limited funds for travel and professional development. Funding for work in reproductive health can be subject to political shifts. Population research has expanded and diversified. These and other factors have contributed to a downward trend in APLIC-I’s membership and conference attendance in recent years. The APLIC-I Board of Directors has discussed these issues, but we need to hear from all of you, our current members, about what APLIC-I has done for you and what else it could be doing. Like any volunteer organization, we also need volunteers to take on the many tasks that keep APLIC-I running smoothly. Take a look at the call for submissions and volunteers in this issue of the Communicator and let us know how you’d like to contribute. I hope to see you in New York to enjoy the anniversary celebrations and start planning for the next 40 years of APLIC: The Network that Works. Conference planner Kay Willson is busy assembling the program, which includes opportunities to learn about bibliographic management software, knowledge management, digital archiving, and more. We’ll open Tuesday morning with a keynote by Kate Wittenberg, Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC). Our closing speaker on Wednesday afternoon will be cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library. table of contents

2007 Annual Conference Announcement

By Kay Willson, Constella Futures The 2007 conference will be held in New York City during March 26-28. It will be APLIC’s 40th Annual Conference and the conference theme will be “The Big APLIC: The Network that Works.” A reception at The Population Council will honor our past-presidents and founders. See the conference program information can be located online at: http://www.aplici.org/conferences/40th-annual-conference-march-2007/. table of contents

APLIC-I Fall 2006 Board of Directors Report

By Kay Willson, Constella Futures

Kay Willson hosted the APLIC-I Fall 2006 Board of Directors meeting at the Constella Futures, Glastonbury CT offices on October 12-13.

In attendance were librarians and information specialists: Tara Murray (Penn State), Nykia Perez (University of Pennsylvania), Julia Cleaver (Ipas), Lori Delaney (Carolina Population Center), Joann Donatiello (Princeton), and Claire Twose (Johns Hopkins).

The Fall board meeting is one of two annual meetings to conduct association business and is the primary meeting to plan for the upcoming annual conference held in conjunction with the Population Association of America.

Our Fall 2006 meeting was very productive and in addition to planning the conference, we also developed several ideas for the Communicator. The attendees were grateful for the hospitality of Constella in providing a meeting site and refreshments.

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Members News

By Tara Murray, Pennsylvania State University Elana Broch Helps Librarians Overcome Fear of Statistics APLIC-I member Elana Broch draws from her former career as a teacher of statistics to help librarians understand statistical concepts. At the 2005 SLA conference in Toronto, she taught a workshop called “Taking the Sting out of Statistics: Basic Concepts.” The workshop was so successful that she presented it again at the 2006 SLA conference in Baltimore, along with a more advanced workshop, “Does She or Doesn’t She? Only Her Statistician Knows for Sure.” Materials from Elana’s 2005 workshop are available on the SLA Social Science Division Web site at: http://units.sla.org/division/dsoc/conf_arch/2005programs.html Kiet Bang Promoted Kiet Bang, APLIC-I’s Membership Secretary, was promoted from Library Assistant II to Data Archivist at Penn State’s Population Research Institute (PRI). In his new role, Kiet maintains a large electronic data archive, assists users in identifying and accessing data, and manages contracts for restricted data use. table of contents

Memberships: Past, Present, and Future

By Kiet Bang , Pennsylvania State University

2007 marks the 40th anniversary of APLIC-I. In four decades, APLIC-Is’ membership has grown from an initial membership of fifteen population and reproductive health information specialists and librarians, to eighty-one members from around the world. As members retire or move on, and new members join, it is important that we keep a record of every member that has been a part of APLIC-I. A members database not only allows us to keep track of our current members it also helps us to remember those that formed APLIC-I and those that have contributed to making APLIC-I the invaluable resource it is today and in the future. In this endeavor, I have created a simple members database using Microsoft Access. To populate this database, I used the membership and conference registration forms collected from the past two years and the HTML source code for the online members list. Using the forms and source code I was able to include the name, contact information of current and former members. I was also able to include the conferences attended in the past two years of each current member. I have also included the date members joined and left. Regrettably, unless the member joined in the past two years, there was no record of when members joined prior to 2004. If you joined APLIC-I before 2004, please contact me at bang@pop.psu.edu with the year you joined APLIC-I.

2007 also marks several changes in the membership policies and dues. Memberships are effective from January to December of the current calendar year. Members who join after August 1st of the current year will be effective immediately through December of the following year. The conference date is the last date a membership renewal will be accepted. With the conference only a month away, members should send in their renewal forms and dues as soon as possible to prevent a lapse in membership. Membership dues have also changed. The new dues can be found on the 2007 membership application/ renewal form. The forms can be found online in both HTML and PDF formats at APLIC-Is’ members website at: http://www.aplici.org/membership/. Please contact me if you have any questions.

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Managing Popline References with EndNote

By Tara Murray, Pennsylvania State University

When I teach my annual literature searching workshop, I always point out how easy it is to import records into bibliographic management software (in this case, EndNote), where they can be sorted, searched, annotated, and even inserted directly into papers written in Microsoft Word. I hit a stumbling block with Popline, one of my favorite databases because of its unique content and free access.

There is no automatic way to import Popline records into EndNote. The Popline Web site provides instructions for creating a filter to import records, but this is really only a partial solution as all of the records must be imported as “generic records,” presumably leaving the user to manually enter the reference type for each record. This process was frustrating for me, and I knew it was for my students as well, so I created my own Popline filter.

My filter is still not a completely automatic process because each type of reference (journal article, book chapter, book, report) must be saved into a separate text file, but it does significantly cut down on the amount of manual work involved. Before importing each text file, simply edit the filter in EndNote to change the default reference type to match the references in the file.

Complete instructions for creating and using the filter are available for download from the Penn State Population Research Institute Library’s EndNote Tips Web page: http://www.pop.psu.edu/info-core/library/endnote.htm (“Creating a Custom Import Filter in EndNote: Example Using Popline”). A pre-made Popline import filter file is also available for download from that page. Simply save the file to your EndNote import filters folder and follow the instructions in “Creating a Custom Import Filter.”

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Web-based Tutorial on Searching POPLINE Now Available

By Lori Delaney, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The POPLINE website now provides a link to a web-based tutorial entitled “POPLINE Search Tutorial.” The tutorial will help users learn how to search the database, and provides descriptions about some of the recently added features to POPLINE. The tutorial has three sections: Search Tips, Performing a BASIC Search by Using Keywords, and Performing an Advanced Search by Limiting Results. Here is a page from the tutorial:

The tutorial is linked from the POPLINE website at http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/. Use Internet Explorer for best results, and select the text “To watch the POPLINE Search Tutorial click here” which is located above the Subject search field in the center of the website.

The tutorial was developed at the Carolina Population Center by a former CPC Library Assistant, Jillian Robinson. Robinson, who is a Master’s Degree candidate in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used the software program Adobe Captivate to develop the tutorial. She collaborated with staff at The INFO Project at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to ensure that the content of the tutorial was relevant and useful to POPLINE users, including those with dial-up access and slower connectivity to the internet.

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APLIC-I Listservs

By Nykia M. Perez, University of Pennsylvania

This is a friendly reminder about the use of our listservs. APLIC-I has two listservs that aim to serve different functions. First we have the APLIC-I listserv, aplic-i@mailman.ssc.upenn.edu, which is a general listserv to allow APLIC-I members to communicate with one another about various topics of interest to the APLIC-I community of information professionals. This listserv should be used by APLIC-I members as a forum for sharing professional interests, experience, expertise, and knowledge related to the field of population studies and reproductive health. One of the goals of the APLIC-I listserv is to provide population and reproductive health communication, information, and resource professionals with a worldwide network and community of professionals with a venue for the exchange of ideas, information, and resources. The list can be used to transmit information on opportunities for professional development and continuing education. The APLIC-I listserv is a resource where members can go for guidance on technical questions and issues.

The second of APLIC-I’s lists is the Duplicate Materials Exchange Program Listserv, aplic-i_duplicates@mailman.ssc.upenn.edu. The APLIC-I_duplicates listserv was originally established in 1978 to redistribute underutilized and/or duplicate materials among members. Today the listserv is a continuation of this effort and is still used to carry out the initial intent of the program as well as to act as a place for folks to place requests for specific items needed (e.g. InterLibrary Loan requests). Appropriate postings to this list include requests for articles, books and other materials from other libraries, (e.g. ILL requests), thank you responses once items are actually received, as well as the posting of lists of duplicate materials being offered for free or for postage to other member libraries.

Items contained on duplicate material lists are intended to benefit institutional, library, or resource center collections, and are not intended for individual use. Materials distributed through the Duplicates Program are usually donated by APLIC-I members, although donations are accepted from outside sources. If you know of someone who wants to give away relevant reserach material to the APLIC-I community you can post a list for that person or organization. Requests for duplicate materials are reviewed and processed by the donating agency, with special consideration given to colleagues in developing nations.

Only APLIC-I members or founders are subscribed to APLIC-I listservs and only those members subscribed to these lists can post to the lists. All current members were automatically subscribed to these lists when they were created and will remain members until they are no longer a dues paying member or choose to unsubscribe. New members are automatically subscribed. Please see the Listservs page for details at: http://www.aplici.org/listservs/listservs.htm. If you have any problems with your subscription, would like to be addded to a list or have questions about the lists please contact me at: Nykia M. Perez, nmperez@pop.upenn.edu. I am currently the listserv manager for these lists, but I suspect that this will change at the Annaul Meeting in NYC. table of contents

Happenings: Calendar of Events

By Nykia M. Perez, University of Pennsylvania

March 26-28, 2007 APLIC-I’s 40th Annual Conference: “The Big APLIC: The Network that Works,” Marriott Marquis New York, NY
March 29-31, 2007 Population Association of America (PAA) 2007 Annual Conference, Marriott Marquis New York, NY
March 29 – April 1, 2007 ACRL 13th National Conference, “Sailing into the Future – Charting Our Destiny,” Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, Maryland
April 16-18, 2007 Computers In Libraries 2007, 22nd Annual Conference, Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, VA
May 16-18, 2007 (IASSIST) 2007 Annual Conference, “Building Global Knowledge Communities with Open Data,” McGill University, Montreal, Canada
May 18–23, 2007 Medical Library Association (MLA) 2007 Annual Meeting and Exhibition, “Information Revolution: Change Is in the Air,” Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Philadelphia, PA
June 3-6, 2007 Special Libraries Associations (SLA) 2007 Annual Conference, Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO
June 21-27, 2007 2007 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC
July 18-20, 2007 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Institute on Scholarly Communication, Washington, DC *** Apply online by March 14, 2007 at: http://db.arl.org/iscjuly07
August 11-14, 2007 American Sociological Association (ASA) 102nd Annual Meeting, “Is Another World Possible? Sociological Perspectives on Contemporary Politics,” Hilton New York and Sheraton New York, New York, NY
August 19-23, 2007 World Library and Information Congress (WLIC): 73rd IFLA General Conference and Council, International Convention Centre (ICC), Durban, South Africa
October 8-9, 2007 Internet Librarian International 2007, “New Realities, Roles and Resources,”Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK
October 23-26, 2007 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2007, “Information Futures: Aligning Our Missions,” Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle, Washington

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APLIC-I Call for Submissions & Volunteers

The APLIC-I Communicator Needs You

Open Positions

Two APLIC-I Communicator Coeditors needed
Two volunteers are needed to begin working as soon as possible on the post-conference newsletter, Issue # 83. Please contact me to volunteer and/or to find out more about the duties of a coeditor: Nykia M. Perez (nmperez@pop.upenn.edu).

Conference & Workshop Reporters needed
If you are interested in contributing to the Communicator reports on any conferences or workshops that our members have attended that would be of interest to other members are welcome. Please send brief or in-depth reports to the editor(s) of the Communicator. E-mail the APLIC-I Communicator editor your report: Nykia M. Perez (nmperez@pop.upenn.edu).
“Spotlight On Our Members” profiles a different member of APLIC-I in most issues of the APLIC-I Communicator. The member is selected from the membership list and is then interviewed by one of the Editor(s) or members can volunteer to participate. The goal is to foster a broader appreciation of the diverse membership of the association. Do you have a story you would like to tell? Talk to us.
“Spotlight On Our Libraries” will profile a different type of information organization in most issues of the APLIC-I Communicator. A member library is selected from the membership list and is then asked to contribute a short description of their organizations library or information service. Members can also volunteer to participate. The goal is to foster a broader appreciation of the diversity in our member’s organizations and to share the different types of work that APLIC-I members do. Do you want to know how another library does “it”? or Do you want to share how you do “it”? This is the section of the newsletter where we will try to provide you with some answers and examples. Volunteer to put the spotlight on your library today! Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you, Nykia M. Perez, nmperez@pop.upenn.edu.

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