Author Archives: Frank Norman

About Frank Norman

I am a retired librarian. I spent 40 years working in biomedical research libraries.

Customer relations

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Frank Norman

Journal publishers are more interested in librarians than they ever used to be. The move to e-journals and big deals has changed the balance between individual and institutional  subscriptions, making libraries more important to publishers than, say, fifteen years ago. … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing, Libraries and librarians | Comments Off on Customer relations

Library Camp UK 2012

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Frank Norman

The creative energy unleashed by an unconference is a wonderful thing. I attended LibCamp2012 recently and was surprised that a disparate bunch of people can self-assemble such a varied and interesting programme, all in one day. I went to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Libraries and librarians | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The joys of a Wikipedia edit-a-thon

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Frank Norman

Last week the Royal Society held a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to try and help redress the gender imbalance in Wikipedia’s coverage of biographies of scientists. Twenty volunteers gathered in the library of the Royal Society for a few hours to learn … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Writing | Tagged | 4 Comments

Authorship

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Frank Norman

From time to time I have to go into our store to hunt through old (pre-war) reprints of medical research articles and I am always struck by the prevalence of single authorship in articles of that period. Single authorship in … Continue reading →

Posted in Authorship | 7 Comments

In defence of reviews

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Frank Norman

Doug Kell, chief executive of the BBSRC, published an enormous review article in 2009 on iron chelation and disease. The review had 2,469 references. (D. B. Kell BMC Med. Genom. 2, 2; 2009). I’m not sure what the record for a single article is, … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | Tagged | 4 Comments

Not quite a book prize

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Frank Norman

It is the season for scientific prizes – this month already we have had the K. J. Zülch Prize, the Perkin medal, the Keio medical science prize, the Balzan prizes, the Golden Goose awards and the Lasker prizes. Science writing … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Another way to measure your research impact

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Frank Norman

The h-index attempts to reduce a researcher’s output to a single number: your h-index is the number of papers you’ve published, N, that have been cited at least N times. It seems like a broader measure than pure citation counts but is … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliometrics etc | 4 Comments

Running, motivation and toys

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Frank Norman

Mo Farah, double gold medal-winning distance runner, showed us this summer how important strategy is to winning a race. He runs the race from the back of the pack and then over the last 500m or so accelerates to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

A look back at the future

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Frank Norman

I am indebted to Dr R.A.C. for bringing to my attention a spoof exam paper drawn up by J.B.S. Haldane. Originally published in the journal Brighter Biochemistry (“the illustrated journal of the Biochemical Laboratory, Cambridge”), the paper was republished in Trends in … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

A snapshot of our collection – history

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Frank Norman

Earlier this month I hosted a meeting of CHILL. It is a group of independent health libraries which meets three times a year in the premises of one or other of the members. The meetings are an opportunity to share … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Libraries and librarians | 2 Comments