wmu libraries science information

CrossSearch searches multiple indexes simultaneously

2006-07-21T15:55:00.000-04:00

Back at my desk. So much for the travel log - seems I escaped the Internet ;-).

Web of Knowledge (which includes Web of Science) has responded to the Scopus innovations with similar features of its own.
One of these is CrossSearch. If you select it (in the green bar in Web of Science or Web of Knowledge) it simultaneously searches all the indexes shown below. This would provide some good coverage of certain engineering and biology fields.

Web of Science; Inspec; AIAA Meeting Papers American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Agricola; arXiv Computer Science; arXiv Mathematics; All arXiv ePrint Archives; arXiv Nonlinear Sciences; arXiv Physics; arXiv Quantitative Biology; Civil Engineering Database; The Educator's Reference Desk ERIC Database; NTIS Library Documents published since 1990; NASA Astrophysics Data System; Popline Reproductive Health Literature; PubMed.

You could find and search most of these databases independently on the Internet but it's quite nice to be able to do them all together in one search, plus the links to full text via WMU subscriptions are enabled.

International News

2006-07-01T09:47:00.000-04:00

Written from England, Saturday July 1: The whole of England is poised on the edge of the quarter-final world cup football (soccer in US-speak) match against Portugal at 4pm local time today.

Pubs, shops, cars, houses bedecked in the England (red cross on white) flag and the news media full of it all.

To get a taste of it do a Google search but for informed commentary click on the By Type or Format link on the library home page, select news and current events and link to international news in a databases such as LexisNexis Academic.

I'd send you the links and even a picture if I had a better computer link up but hope you'll check it out anyway.

Scopus - interdisciplinary science and citation index

2006-06-22T13:08:00.000-04:00

For those in science and technology, Scopus offers similar information as the more familiar Web of Science (what used to be Science Citation Index and is now part of Web of Knowledge).

Scopus claims it is 'the largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources.' Where Web of Science restricts inclusion in its database to the most cited journals, Scopus is more inclusive and only demands that journals are peer-reviewed. Scopus claims to provide better coverage of publications from all geographic regions, including non-English titles as long as English abstracts are included.

Scopus also provides a citation tracker that allows you easily to find and check citations Click here for a demonstration.

For more about Scopus check out their FAQs.

Journal Citation Reports & BioMed Central

2006-06-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

The 2005 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) data are now available. So if you looked at Journal Citation Reports when I made the previous post look again now for the most recent data.

Among the journals that will be tracked for JCR are several open access journals. In a press release, Monday June 12, BioMed Central* announced that in the last six months eleven (11) open access journals published by BioMed Central have been accepted for citation tracking and inclusion in Web of Science.

These are:
BMC Biology
BMC Developmental Biology
BMC Immunology
BMC Neurology
BMC Plant Biology
BMC Structural Biology
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes
Microbial Cell Factories
Molecular Cancer
Nutrition and Metabolism
Retrovirology

37 journals in BioMed Central's portfolio now have an official Impact Factor, or will receive one within the next three years.
For more about these titles and the process of gaining an official impact factor score see http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/faq?name=impactfactor

*BioMed Central is an independent online publishing house committed to providing open access to peer-reviewed research.

Journal Citation Reports

2006-06-13T12:54:00.000-04:00

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that the library now has a subscription to Journal Citation Reports.

This database allows you to evaluate which journals in your field are the most influential and also the most appropriate for the type of information you want to publish. It provides these comparative data by research field and journal title:

impact factor - how heavily articles are cited
immediacy - length of time it takes for articles to become cited, and
cited half-life - length of time articles continue to be cited ( Yes, that is half-life as in exponential decay).

Take a look. There's even short explanatory online training clips.
It's interesting and useful and it sure beats the microfiche reports that we've persevered with up to now.

RefWorks citation management software

2006-06-08T16:15:00.000-04:00

Do you hate formatting bibliographies? Do you have to sift through masses of notes and files to find elusive references? Did you never really take to EndNote?

You should check out RefWorks.

RefWorks is a web-based, user-friendly citation management system that WMU makes available free to you. If you want to be able to build, manage, annotate, search and cite from your own set of personal references it's great.

Build a personal searchable database of useful references
Import citations directly from your preferred indexes
Add your own searchable notes and keywords
Input citations into documents while you write
Format references to the writing style you need
Reformat manuscripts easily
Use your personal RefWorks database from any computer with Internet access

RefWorks is available via the A-Z list on the library Home page. There's a tutorial available in RefWorks under Help plus useful searchable help pages. For additional assistance please e-mail me.

SciFinder Scholar (Chemistry) desktop online training

2006-06-06T16:05:00.000-04:00

To register input SFSHK72 for SciFinder ID

SciFinder®: Exploring a Wealth of Diverse Content from CAS

Thursday, June 8, 2006 at 9pm-10pm EDT

Tuesday, June 20 at 9-10 am EDT or
Wednesday, June 28 at 9.00-10am EDT

Learn about:

CAS indexing for journal and patent documents
Broad indexing categories like “Preparation” that allow you to focus a search
How chemistry information is integrated within SciFinder so that it’s easy to find
Case studies
SciFinder's coverage of other scientific disciplines

Have you remembered to sign up for the Web of Science & Biosis Web-based Training in June?

You could win an iPod! - I'm hoping to.

Interlibrary loan - slight change in interface operation

2006-06-01T12:22:00.000-04:00

If you routinely request articles from interlibrary loan (ILL) via the button in library databases don't be thrown off by a slight change in how it operates.
When you click on the 'request an item via interlibrary loan' link in the pop up window instead of seeing the request form with the citation details filled out you'll be sent to the ILL logon page.
Do not despair.
Enter your ILL username and password to log into the ILL system. Once logged in then you'll get the usual helpful ILL request form with the citation information already completed for you. You can add any additional info. and submit to ILL.

This change should actually increase the accuracy and efficiency of information transfer to interlibrary loan. So its a good thing.

Recent news items

2006-05-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

A recent opinion piece in Inside Higher Ed suggests that perhaps its time to stop viewing the student use of iPods, cellphones and PocketPC's during tests as cheating. The author argues that such use reflects the reality of the modern world and the way people interact with information in 'real life.' Various interesting comments have been posted by readers at the end of the article, including several that point to the necessity for students and others in 'real life' to evaluate the quality of the information that they get from Google or indeed any source.

An article in May 25 New York Times argues that we need a populace that is better educated about science but suggests that as many as half the college students that enter science are turned off by 'unimaginative teaching' http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/opinion/25thu4.html
Maybe addressing the 'real life' issue is part of the puzzle.

Open access information

2006-05-18T15:57:00.000-04:00

The open access movement is one of the big things happening in information. The whole publishing model is in a state of flux, especially the field of scholarly scientific publishing. How can publishers charge so much for access to work that people like you have performed, written, reviewed and edited, especially where there are no print or paper costs involved?

On May 2, Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act [FRPAA] that would require every federal agency with an annual research budget of more than 100 million US dollars to implement a public access policy. Some of the implications of this are presented on the SPARC website together with a lot of other interesting information about open access.

A recent study in PLoS Biology (one of the open access journals that WMU Libraries helps support) found that articles in open access journals were twice as likely as other papers to be cited 4-10 months after publication. This increased to three times as likely 10-16 months after publication. Articles published as open-access from the start had a higher impact than articles published as non-open-access that were subsequently posted on the Web.

Interesting.

WMU libraries is a big supporter of open access. When you think about it, it's what libraries are all about. We have been SPARC members since 1998 and we actively support new, innovative ways to provide ready access to information.

Web of Science & Biosis Web-based Training

2006-05-11T15:09:00.000-04:00

Get the most out of Web of Science or Biosis Previews. Sign up for a live Web-based training class

They're free, available at a variety of convenient times, and are fully interactive.
These 30- to 60-minute online conferences include slides, demonstrations and allow you to interact with the class instructor and other attendees.

Find out how to maximize citation searches before next year's tenure and promotion review!

Help Select the Science / Engineering Librarian You Want

2006-05-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

Over the next two weeks we will be bringing in candidates for a Science / Engineering Librarian position here at WMU. Each candidate will be giving a 20-25 minute presentation:

Keeping the Academic Library Relevant to Scientists and Engineers

There will be time for questions.

All affiliated with WMU are welcome to attend, to join the discussion and to complete evaluations.

The presentations are all at 10:30-11:15 am in Waldo Library. They are scheduled Tuesday May 9 (classroom A) ; Friday May 12 (Clock Tower) and Tuesday May 16 (Clock Tower).
Please join us.

Engineering Research Online Training

2006-05-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

Become an expert in engineering information research.
Engineering Village, which includes Ei Compendex, is offering online 45-minute training sessions direct to your own computer. Simply register and then click in at the appointed time.
I've found them pretty useful - its one way we librarians keep up.

May 2nd 9:30 AM EDT and 2:00 PM EDT
Introduction to Engineering Village2
Course Description

May 16th 9:30 AM EDT and 2:00 PM EDT
Creating effective Competitive and Technical intelligence reports
Course Description

WestCat - Now with TOC's, Reviews and Book Jackets

2006-04-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

If you are one of those folks who wish our library catalog, WestCat, were more like Amazon then take another look.

Do a keyword search for whatever you want (rain forest, electronics - you know what you're interested in). When the titles come up, chances are you'll see how much more interesting the catalog has become. See a book jacket or 2? If not, try another topic - its worth it.

When you pull up the record (click on one of the hypertext-linked elements) you'll see the book jacket again and if you click on that there are links to TOC's, author information and reviews, if these are available.

Its fun and those TOC's are searchable so its actually providing better searching too.

Keyword searches default to giving you the latest publications first. The library has some excellent up to date science and engineering books that you might enjoy reading!

Earthscape for Environmental Issues

2006-04-21T09:47:00.000-04:00

Columbia Earthscape is currently featuring publications on climate change in the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland -More great pictures too.

Earthscape is an integrated, interdisciplinary resource that connects earth and environmental science research with social, political, and economic dimensions. It includes research and educational materials, animations, videos and images, regional studies, international documents and more..... To help you locate what you need Earthscape is subdivided into research, teaching, learning and policy modules.

One thing though - to access Earthscape from off campus you must first set up a username and password from the Login page while on campus.

Other databases and indexes that are useful environmental sources are listed on WMU Libraries' Environmental Studies subject guide.

Happy Earth Day :-)

Renew Online - Avoid a Fine

2006-04-18T13:29:00.000-04:00

Whether the end of the semester signals you're 'done' with your library materials or alternatively that you can finally begin to give them some attention, this is the time that books become due. If you're done with them put them in any of the library drop boxes.
If you want to keep books after the end of the semester then renew online. It's painless, efficient and saves everyone time and aggravation. If you get a message saying you can't renew an item online you've probably exceeded the number of times you can renew it that way. Just bring it in to the library circulation desk and they should be able to check it back out to you manually, then and there.

Alerts - Keep Current & Save Time

2006-04-14T15:34:00.000-04:00

Did you know that you can set up alerts in many of the science and engineering indexes such as Web of Science, Scopus, Engineering Village, Biosis etc?
You have to sign up - look for alerts on the top nav. bar in the index - and specify the term(s) you want searched. You will receive regular e-mails with links to new articles that match the terms you have specified. That's got to be good news as a time saver. If you aren't sure how to set this up or if a particular index supports it then e-mail me and I'll get back to you.

I know some of you already do this for particular full-text online journals. However if you do it in an article index it searches across many journals. Any of those articles that are available to you online will be hypertext linked in your alert e-mail.