Author Archives: Frank Norman

About Frank Norman

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

Not diving but skimming – a new source for articles

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Frank Norman

When I buy eggs in the supermarket I always open the box to check the eggs are not cracked before I put them in my basket. When I buy a pair of shoes, I try them on first to see … Continue reading →

Posted in Document delivery | 13 Comments

Everything you wanted to know about journals

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Frank Norman

The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers has published, The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing, a follow-up to their 2006 report, Scientific publishing in transition: an overview of current developments. I’m not the … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 6 Comments

Social networks – are they useful or pointless?

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Frank Norman

This is perhaps an impolite question question to ask in a blog hosted on Nature Network, but I ask in a spirit of enquiry rather than provocation. I am inspired by an interesting blog post on the Scholarly Kitchen blog … Continue reading →

Posted in Social networking | 36 Comments

Amsterdam’s elephants

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Frank Norman

Well, if Joanna can post gratuitous pictures of furry animals then so can I. Though mine are funny animals rather than furry animals. Last year I showed some of Liverpool’s superlambananas ; this year I show you a parade of … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Froth | 9 Comments

Digital tools enhance scientists’ reading?

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Frank Norman

There was an interesting article in Science recently: Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing by Allen H. Renear and Carole L. Palmer, two professors of library science. It reviews some of the literature on scholarly communication in … Continue reading →

Posted in Information skills, Scientific literature | 2 Comments

Ebooks and ebook readers

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Frank Norman

For more than ten years I’ve been reading predictions about how ebooks were going to replace printed books, but we’re still not at that point. There are various ebook reader devices on sale and there are plenty of books in … Continue reading →

Posted in E-books | 18 Comments

Another new chemical journal

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Frank Norman

Competition is a wonderful thing. 18 months ago who ever would have thought that there was room for a general chemical journal? Then back in April along came Nature Chemistry and won some applause (sometimes mainly for its colour ). … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 2 Comments

Time for a subscription review

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Frank Norman

As summer draws to a close and the new autumn season looms, it’s that time when librarians start to think about subscriptions for the next calendar year. (Actually we now think about them all year round – I just had … Continue reading →

Posted in Collections, Journal publishing | 14 Comments

Research unpacked

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Frank Norman

I have spent most of the week fiddling about with details of publications and grant codes in Excel, in an effort to make us look good present an accurate picture of my Institute’s publications and matching them up with our … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographic management, Bibliometrics etc, Research management | Comments Off on Research unpacked

Through gritted teeth

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Frank Norman

I usually quite enjoy filling out surveys. If the topic of the survey is something that I am concerned about, answering some questions and (especially) filling in the free-text bits can be a good way to vent my feelings. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Future of Libraries, Libraries and librarians | 7 Comments