Intersession @ ISEL

It's mighty quiet here at ISEL this week--a good time to come by & get some research done without battling the hordes! Here are our hours for the rest of 2005 and for January Term:

Tues. Dec 27 - Fri. Dec. 30: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sat. Dec 31-Mon. Jan 2: CLOSED

During January Term (Jan. 3 - Jan. 29), we'll be open M-F, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm and closed on weekends.

Full hours are always available on the library website.

Happy New Year!

Journal Citation Reports now available to UMass community

The library is now able to make access to ISI's powerful Journal Citation Reports available to all current UMass faculty, staff, and students. To access JCR, just visit the library's homepage, choose Databases, navigate to J, and click Journal Citation Reports.

JCR provides crucial information about journal titles indexed by ISI: impact factor (the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year); immediacy index (the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published); cited half-life (the median age of the articles that were cited in the JCR year), and more.

It's also possible to generate lists of the journals in a particular discipline that have the highest impact factors, immediacy indexes, etc. (In fact, I'm spending my evening at the ref. desk reviewing the library's holdings for the highest-impact journals in each of my liaison departments. So far, we're doing pretty well!)

If you have any questions at all about using JCR or any other library resource, feel free to contact me.

Recommended journals for freshman science majors?

There's an interesting discussion going on on CHMINF-L about science periodicals that are appropriate to recommend to freshmen/lower division undergraduates as a means of keeping current and becoming familiar with their fields. The importance of critically evaluating information and distinguishing between popular and news sources vs. scholarly, peer-reviewed sources has come up more than once, as well.

Here are the titles that have been brought up so far.

• American Scientist


• Astronomy


• BioScience


• Chemical &Engineering News


• Environment


• JAMA


• Natural History


• Nature


• New England Journal of Medicine


• New Scientist


• Physics Today


• Science


• Science News


• Scientific American


• Sky and Telescope

Have anything to add? Reactions to any titles on the list? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Incidentally, more and more science magazines and journals are offering a weekly podcast, or audio recording, summarizing highlights of the current week's issue. Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, and New Scientist are just a few of these. Maybe something our iPod generation would be quick to latch onto?

Nature blogs! and science in the Web age

Nature Publishing Group has launched three new blogs:

Action Potential

Action Potential is a blog by the editors of Nature Neuroscience - and a forum for our readers, authors and the entire neuroscience community. We'll discuss what's new and exciting in neuroscience, be it in our journal or elsewhere. We hope for spirited conversation!

Free Association

Welcome to Free Association, the Nature Genetics blog. Check here regularly for links and editorial comment on research and news in genetics, as well as reader feedback.

Nascent

Nature Publishing Group's blog on web technology and science.

Nascent points to an editorial and series of articles from this week's Nature that discuss issues involved with doing science and sharing data in the Web age. (UMass users can access the full text of Nature by going through the library catalog.)

Putting science to song in the classroom

Wired Magazine recently ran an article on Greg Crowther, a lecturer at the University of Washington who has set some of the concepts he teaches to music and sings them to his students (to mixed appreciation). Songs include takes on the Archies ("Glucose / ah, sugar sugar / You are my favorite fuel / from the bloodborne substrate pool"), Talking Heads ("Take Me to the Liver," about cholesterol metabolism), and Andrew Lloyd Webber ("The Phantom of the Copper Coil").

Many more song titles, with lyrics, can be viewed at Crowther's personal homepage. Crowther also makes MP3 downloads and sheet music available for some titles. And, if those don't satiate your appetite for science songs, Crowther also maintains an online database of over 2000 science-related songs called MASSIVE.

Thomson ISI Web Citation Index

In an exciting development for the open access and repository movement, Thomson Scientific has announced that it is teaming with NEC and several other agencies to create a Web Citation Index, which will become part of the Web of Knowledege platform.

The Web Citation index will do for open access documents, including pre-prints and items in institutional repositories, what Thomson's other citation indexes currently do for peer-reviewed journal literature. Researchers will be able to follow citations to open-access documents backwards and forwards, and citation frequency and trends will be recorded.

More coverage is available from Information World Review and Open Access News.


(via KnowledgeSpeak Newsletter)

Updates to Web of Science @ UMass Libraries

The content in the UMass Libraries' subscription to Science Citation Index via Web of Science now reaches back through the year 1900, thanks to our purchase of a backfile.

Also, UMass now has access to the MEDLINE database through the Web of Science platform through this academic year, at least. (Our current method of access to MEDLINE has been through the free PubMed database.)

[Microbiology] New e-journal @ UMass Libraries

Microbiologists may be pleased to learn that the UMass libraries now offer the full text of Acta microbiologica et immunologica Hungarica from 1999 to the present. The science library also has this journal in print back to 1994. Enjoy!

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Posted by Emily Alling to Microbiology at 11/22/2005 09:26:00 AM

[Chemistry] Chmoogle and ChemDB: free chemical information

This week saw the announcement of a new free chemistry information database: Chmoogle, by eMolecules Inc.

From their mission statement:

Chmoogle® is the leading open-access chemistry search engine. Chmoogle's mission is to discover, curate and index all of the public chemical information in the world, and make it available to the public for free. Chmoogle distinguishes itself by extremely fast searches, an appealing presentation of results, high-quality chemical drawings, and powerful advanced search capabilities like persistent hitlists and hitlist logic operations.

My librarian warning light went off a little at this item from their FAQ:

What are Chmoogle's sources?

Chmoogle discovers sources of chemical data by searching the internet, and receives submissions from data providers such as chemical suppliers and academic researchers.

A little more specificity would be nice ("the internet" is a tad bit broad).

In comparison, ChemDB, a new public database of small molecules based at UC Irvine, provides the following about their sources:

Chemical Vendors: All of the vendors who have supplied their chemical information catalogs that comprise the core data beneath ChemDB. The source information table includes a complete listing.

You can read more about the creation of ChemDB in this article, which has been accepted for publication in Bioinformatics.

Both of these new tools are certainly interesting in light of the recent discussions about open access to chemical data (cf. ACS, PubChem, etc.). I'd be interested to hear any chemists' reviews of Chmoogle and/or ChemDB...feel free to leave a comment below.

ISEL Thanksgiving Week Hours

In addition to the normal Thanksgiving Week hours changes, there's been an additional change. ISEL will now be closed on Friday, November 25 due to an electrical upgrade in the Lederle Graduate Research Center. So, our hours changes for the week are:

• Wednesday, November 23: 8 am - 5 pm


• Thursday, November 24: CLOSED


• Friday, November 25: CLOSED


• Saturday, November 26: CLOSED

Normal hours resume on Sunday, November 27.

Have a wonderful break!

SciFinder Scholar for Mac OS X now available!

Mac users who have been pining away for a native OS X version of SciFinder Scholar, your day has come! The download is available from the UMass Amherst Libraries' SciFinder page; just scroll down to "SciFinder Scholar for Mac OS X (10.2, 10.3 and 10.4)."

Please note that our license will only permit this software to be downloaded or used by on a computer with a UMass IP address. This means that you must be on campus or connected through a dial-up OIT connection in order to download or use SciFinder Scholar.

Enjoy!

Learning Commons 24/5 starts 11/27/05

Stay up late at the (other) library! The Learning Commons at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library will start its 24/5 schedule on Sunday, November 27. The library will open at 11 am on Sundays and remain open 24 hours per day until 9 pm on Fridays. The library will open from 9 am to 9 pm on Saturdays.

The Procrasination Station (library cafe) will also feature expanded hours.

Be sure to check the libraries' Hours page for exceptions to normal operating hours, including the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

Reasons *not* to reshelve....

You may have noticed signs in the library asking people not to reshelve books and journals after using them, but rather to leave them on a cart, or by the copier. Lots of people assume this is because we don't trust you to put things back in the proper order. While the Library of Congress call number system can indeed be a deep mystery to the uninitiated, there is actually a second and more crucial reason why we ask that you leave materials for us to reshelve.

Before we reshelve library materials left for us by our users, the library scans each item to indicate that it has been used. This usage data helps inform us when making decisions about whether to renew or cancel materials, or buy more items in a given subject area. (See, for example, the library's current review of journal titles costing more than $1000 per year.) So, *not* reshelving your favorite book or journal is actually a way of letting us know that it's important to you.

We pick up, scan, and reshelve materials at ISEL several times per day. If you ever have trouble locating an item in the library, please come see us at the Circulation or Reference Desks. We are often able to locate materials that seem hopelessly lost (another one of those great library mysteries).

Anyone have the Feb. '05 Scientific American?

ISEL never received our February 2005 issue of Scientific American, and we aren't able to get it from the publisher at this point. If anyone out there with a personal subscription to SciAm still has the February issue and wouldn't mind donating it to the Science Library, we'd be forever in your debt. Please contact John Caranci--caranci@library.umass.edu--if you can help.

[Biochemistry] Clinical Biochemist Reviews now available via PubMed Central

Clinical Biochemist Reviews has been added to the PubMed Central archive from v. 26 no. 1 (2005) to the present.

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Posted by Emily Alling to Biochemistry at 11/08/2005 10:49:00 AM

IEEE downtime, 11/15/05

From a recent email to the UMass libraries from IEEE:

On Tuesday, 15 November, IEEE will implement a maintenance release to the IEEE Xplore digital library.

As a result, users will experience approximately two hours of downtime on that date, between 10AM and 12Noon EST.

This update includes the following features:

* RSS feeds for newly published journal tables of contents.

* Non-indexed materials, such as editorials and book reviews, will now be available, free, to all users.

Journal review @ UMass libraries

The UMass Amherst libraries are undertaking a review of journal subscriptions that cost $1000 or more per year yet receive very little use. We are hoping to redirect the money spent on these journals toward resources that would be more useful to our patrons, such as journal titles that are frequently requested via Interlibrary Loan or other journals and databases that have been requested by our users.

Letters have been sent to the heads of all departments on campus to let them know about this review process, which has been endorsed by the Research Library Council.

It is important to note that this is not a journal cancellation project per se--money saved by cancelling little-used journals will be reallocated to other resources.

See the libraries' recent press release for much more information. Included is the list of journals being considered for cancellation--that is, those titles costing $1000 or more which have received 3 or fewer uses in the past year.

The sciences are quite heavily represented in this list. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please contact me anytime.

Science News Podcasts

There's a thread going on on Slashdot about science news podcasts....If you're looking to fill up your iPod or other MP3-playing device, you may wish to check it out. Some highlights: Nature is podcasting, and New Scientist is about to start.

More about podcasting (from Wikipedia).

[Chemistry] RSS Feeds to ACS Publications

You can now get tables of contents from several ACS journals delivered via RSS. Here are links to the feeds for participating journals:

Analytical Chemistry A
Environmental Science & Technology A Page Magazine
Environmental Science & Technology Online News
Journal of Proteome Research
Chemical & Engineering News Online

But wait--what am I seeing when I click on these links? Confused? These aren't links to actual content from the journal--rather, they are links you can use to subscribe to journal updates using your RSS reader of choice. You need to copy and paste these links into your RSS reader to subscribe. Popular RSS feed readers include Bloglines and MyYahoo.

Still confused? Let me know--in addition to being a science reference librarian, I'm increasingly becoming an RSS evangelist, and would be happy to help you get set up with an account.

via ACS Livewire

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Posted by era to Chemistry at 11/02/2005 06:49:00 AM

Academic integrity in the news

Academic integrity is in the headlines these days, both on campus and in the world beyond. MIT associate professor of biology Luk Van Parijs was fired last week after admitting to falsifying data on several occasions. Ripple effects from this announcement have included an announcement from Cell Press, publishers of the journal Immunity, that they are in the process of re-examining the accuracy of three of Van Parijs' articles published in 1998-1999.

Closer to home, the Faculty Senate has taken up the issue of plagiarism on campus and is considering creating an ad hoc committee to deal with student plagiarism. One option being explored on campus is the use of plagiarism detection software. Since last spring, the library has been sponsoring a trial of TurnItIn.com, a Web-based service that allows professors to check student work against a database of documents including the public Web, content from several proprietary full-text article databases, and a huge compliation of student paper submissions. The issue of plagiarism and TurnItIn has received some media attention, including a 10/24/05 appearance on WFCR by Library Associate Director for User Services Anne C. Moore and coverage in the Daily Collegian.

The use of TurnItIn on college campuses has not been without controversy. In one high-profile lawsuit, a McGill University student successfully challenged the practice of compelling students to submit their papers to TurnItIn, arguing that the company was profiting by building a database in part from students' [copyrighted] original work. Others have objected that the use of tools like TurnItIn creates a negative climate by implicitly assuming students are guilty of plagiarism until proven innocent. It should be noted that both false negatives *and* false positives are possible with any automated plagiarism detection device.

Some of these concerns were addressed by Anne C. Moore at the faculty senate meeting on October 20. At UMass, the use of TurnItIn would be voluntary for both faculty and students. Moore also emphasized the potential to use TurnItIn not as a punitive tool, but as an educational opportunity to let students know where their work fails to meet academic integrity standards. Many students remain unaware of the gravity of plagiarism and other academic dishonesty; other times, plagiarism results from an unintentional failure to insert a citation; and some students come from cultures where using the exact words of others is considered honorific rather than dishonest. TurnItIn was hailed as one piece of a campus-wide solution to the plagiarism problem, along with [continued] faculty efforts to educate students about academic honesty AND strategies such as designing "plagiarism-proof" assignments.

If you have questions or comments about TurnItIn, please feel free to contact me personally or the library in general. You can also leave a comment on this blog if you have thoughts about academic integrity on campus or beyond.

Biology/genetics dashboard widgets for Mac OS X

Any biologists out there using Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) might be interested in these dashboard widgets from AbOrygen.

# The Amino Acid Table widget displays general information on amino acids (name, 3-letter code, 1-letter code, triplet and standard color code) conformed with the IUPAC-IUB recommendations.

# The Genetic Code widget displays the standard genetic code in a simple table showing the 64 codons and the amino acids each codon codes for.

# The Nucleic Acid Nomenclature widget displays general information on nucleic acids (symbol, meaning, complement and origin of designation) conformed with the IUPAC-IUB recommendations.

# The Rebase widget provides a quick access to the Restriction Enzyme Database.

Thanks to Science Library Pad.

[Biochemistry] Cytotechnology online

The library now offers access to the current year of Cytotechnology online. Paper copies are also available at the Science Library.

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Posted by era to Biochemistry at 10/26/2005 08:12:00 AM

[Chemistry] Acta Crystallographica A-F online

The following Acta Crystallographica content is now available online through the UMass Amherst libraries:

Acta crystallographica A: 2000-
Acta crystallographica B: 2000-
Acta crystallographica C: 2000-
Acta crystallographica D: 2000-
Acta crystallographica E: 2001-
Acta crystallographica F: 2005-

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Posted by era to Chemistry at 10/26/2005 08:04:00 AM

[Biochemistry] Annual Review of Biochemistry online

The entire run of the Annual Review of Biochemistry, all the way back to 1932, is now available online to UMass Amherst library users.

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Posted by era to Biochemistry at 10/26/2005 07:58:00 AM

[Physics] New e-journal content @ UMass Libraries

The journal Advances in theoretical and mathematical physics (2003-) is now available online through the UMass Amherst libraries. Enjoy!

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Posted by era to Physics at 10/26/2005 07:53:00 AM

[Mathematics] New e-journal content @ UMass Libraries

The following new e-journal content is now available through the UMass Libraries. Titles can be accessed through the catalog or through our e-journal locator.

Asian journal of mathematics: 2004-
Communications in mathematical sciences: 2003-
Homology, homotropy, and applications: 2003 (only). More to come.
Internet mathematics: 2003-
Journal of symplectic geometry: 2001-
Methods and applications of analysis: 2002-
Real analysis exchange: 2004/2005-
Review of modern logic: 1998-

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Posted by era to Mathematics at 10/26/2005 07:39:00 AM

Visions of Science Photographic Awards

Check out the Visions of Science Photographic Award-winning images for 2005.

[Veterinary & Animal Science] Congratulations to John Clark

Congratulations to John M. Clark, Veterinary and Animal Sciences, on his grant from the MA Dept of Agricultural Resources to study Pesticide Analytical Services. [from UMass Amherst Research ACCESS Newsletter]

View titles on pesticide analysis at the UMass Libraries. Think we should own a title not listed here? Let us know.

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Posted by era to Veterinary & Animal Science at 10/14/2005 12:13:00 PM

Chronicle of Higher Ed. on ISI impact factors

A free article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the uses and mis-uses of the ISI Journal Impact Factor.

From the article:

Impact ranking may now be a tool that controls scientists, rather than the other way around. Pressure to publish in the highest-impact science journals — Nature, Science, and Cell — has led researchers to compete more and more for the limited number of slots in those broader journals, thus diminishing the specialty titles that have traditionally served as the main publications of each discipline. Academe used to be a "publish or perish" world, but now the halls of science have turned into a "publish in a high-impact journal or perish" environment, says [University of] Massachusetts [Worcester]'s Mr. [Yu-Li] Wang.

Incidentally, the UMass Libraries can help you locate the impact factor for a given journal. The most recent data we have is for 2004. Contact us for more info.

[Physics] ICTP Open Access Archive for e-Prints

Physicists working in developing countries have a new outlet for sharing their research. The ICTP Open Access Archive has just been launched by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

From the KnowledgeSpeak Newsletter:

Very often, scientists in developing countries are not aware of the nature and extent of scientific experiments being pursued in their regions owing to working in isolation. Moreover the scientists find it difficult to publicize their work quickly.
In order to assist in such matters, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) has organized an Open Access Archive. Here, scientists from various countries can post their scientific work without incurring any charge. Pre-prints, reprints, seminar papers, pre-publication book chapters and Curriculum Vitae of the authors can also be uploaded. The copyright agreement of the previously published work must be reviewed with the publishers before archiving.

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Posted by era to Physics at 10/14/2005 10:38:00 AM

[Physics] Nature Physics: free access to first issue

Nature Publishing Group has launched a new physics journal, Nature Physics. From the About the journal page:

Nature Physics publishes papers of the highest quality and significance in all areas of physics, pure and applied. The journal content reflects core physics disciplines, but is also open to a broad range of topics whose central theme falls within the bounds of physics. Theoretical physics, particularly where it is pertinent to experiment, also features.

Nature is offering free access to the inaugural issue of this new title: Nature Physics, Volume 1, Issue 1. Included is an editorial that describes the rationale for and purpose of the new journal.
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Posted by era to Physics at 10/11/2005 02:33:59 PM

[Microbiology] Lovley awarded $21.8m grant for microbial study

Congratulations to Derek Lovley, Distinguished University Professor (Microbiology), on being awarded a grant to study Geobacteraceae:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $21.8 million over five years to microbiologist Derek Lovley for investigations of the Geobacteraceae, the microbial family with energy-harvesting powers that scientists hope to harness.

(from In the Loop; read more)

Check out the Geobacter Project homepage for much more information.

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Posted by era to Microbiology at 10/07/2005 07:48:00 AM

[Physics] 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobelprize.org has details of the 2005 award for Physics, presented to Roy J. Glauber "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence" and John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique."

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Posted by era to Physics at 10/05/2005 06:45:00 AM

[Chemistry] 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Nobelprize.org has details on the 2005 Chemistry award, presented to Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs, and Richard R. Schrock "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis."

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Posted by era to Chemistry at 10/05/2005 06:38:00 AM

[Physics] Encyclopedia of Condensed Matter Physics

The impressive new six-volume Encyclopedia of Condensed Matter Physics (catalog record; book description) has just arrived at ISEL and is now shelved in our reference collection (Science Ref QC 173.454 .E53 2005).

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Posted by era to Physics at 10/03/2005 10:21:00 AM

[Microbiology] Nature Reviews Microbiology now available online

The UMass Amherst Libraries have begun an online subscription to Nature Reviews--Microbiology. The full text of all issues, from volume 1 issue 1 (October 2003) to the present, is available. Enjoy!

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Posted by era to Microbiology at 10/03/2005 10:14:00 AM

[Mathematics] International Statistical Review (1972-1999) now available online

UMass users can now access the electronic full text of issues of the International Statistical Review from 1972-1999 via JSTOR.

The Integrated Sciences & Engineering Library also receives this title in paper--check the catalog for our holdings.

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Posted by era to Mathematics at 10/03/2005 08:55:00 AM

A new way to search BioOne journals

BioOne is a collection of 65 high-impact, full-text bioscience research journals that the UMass libraries subscribe to. Up until now, the only way to search this collection has been through BioOne's own interface, which is somewhat rough and doesn't offer the full variety of search options (thesaurus, limiters, etc.) that make librarians (and advanced researchers) swoon.

All that has changed with the arrival of BioOne Abstracts & Indexes, now featured in the UMass libraries' Database Locator. A new way to locate and access the same great BioOne content, BioOne Abstracts & Indexes uses the CSA search platform, which allows you to perform more advanced, complex, and effective searches than the native BioOne interface. Features include:

• Thesaurus searching
• Separate quick and advanced search options
• Easy-to-set search limits
• Links to full text, document delivery, and Interlibrary Loan
• Saved search histories
• Search alerts
• Multi-lingual interfaces

If you use BioOne Abstracts & Indexes to search BioOne, just use the familiar UMLinks button to connect to the full text in BioOne.

New Hot Papers from ISI

A great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what's hot in scientific research is to check out New Hot Papers, a service of ISI Essential Science Indicators. From the website:

Hot papers are selected by virtue of being cited among the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) in a current bimonthly period. Papers are selected in each of 22 fields of science and must be published within the last two years.

An additional bonus is that for many of the Hot Papers, you can read "Comments/Mini-Interviews" with the authors, who attempt to summarize their research in layman's terms and discuss the background and context of their papers.

Check out September's hot papers--and if you want to get the full text of any of them, be sure to check the UMass library catalog and our E-journal list; if they aren't available from UMass, you can request them via Interlibrary Loan.

Red Sox Nation in the Science pages

Two news items today from the nexus of baseball and science:

From Scientific American:
Scientific American: Watching World Series Causes Drop In Hospital Visits

and from the Boston Globe:
Can "Weird Science" Save the Sox?

NPG announces new social bookmarking tool for scientists

Nature Publishing Group has launched a free social bookmarking tool called Connotea. (read more about Connotea)

For those unfamiliar with social bookmarking tools: these are Web-based services that allow you to create an account, then store favorite websites, aka bookmarks, in that account, which is accessible to you from any computer on the Internet. Two of the more famous social bookmarking services are Del.icio.us and Furl. In effect, you're putting your Favorites online, rather than keeping them tied to one workstation.

The "social" part of social bookmarking refers to the fact that you can (but don't have to) make your collection of links public--that is, other users can see what you've chosen to store. An extra-added feature is that you can assign keywords, or tags, to the sites that you store. You choose the tags yourself, and you can assign more than one tag to any given website. Tagging is a more dynamic and flexible form of information categorization than, say, folders.

How is Connotea different from sites like del.icio.us? Since it is targeted at a scholarly community, there is support built in for various tools (such as OpenURL standards, DOIs, and standard reference formats) associated with online journal literature. (See the FAQ for more details.) This makes it possible to bookmark scholarly journal articles from a variety of sources in addition to plain old websites.

The social aspects of Connotea could make for an interesting new form of scientific communication. (What articles and websites are other people in your research group bookmarking? What about colleagues at other institutions?)

The UMass Libraries offer a similar service for managing and storing citations (as well as websites, if you wish) called RefWorks. RefWorks is an even more powerful tool that is an online equivalent to tools like EndNote or ProCite. In addition to storing and organizing citations (and it is possible to export citations from many library databases *directly* into RefWorks), you can automatically format references in any one of dozens of bibliographic or journal citation styles. Unlike EndNote, RefWorks is Web-based, so--like Connotea or del.icio.us--you can access it from any computer on the Internet.

I think of Connotea as combining the scholarly focus of RefWorks with the social capabilities of del.icio.us and Furl. Each service has different strengths, and it's up to each researcher to decide which, if any, is the most suitable.

[Chemistry] New chemistry reference works @ ISEL

We've received a couple of important new chemistry reference titles at ISEL:

Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations II (Science Ref QD 262 .C534 2005, 7 vols.)
From the publisher description:

Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations II (COFGT-II) will provide the first point of entry to the literature for all scientists interested in chemical transformations. Presenting the vast subject of organic synthesis in terms of the introduction and interconversion of all known functional groups, COFGT-II will provide a unique information source documenting all methods of efficiently performing a particular transformation.

Encyclopedia of Biological Chemistry (Science Ref QD 415.A25 E53 2004, 4 vols.)
A four-volume work including over 500 articles covering "virtually every aspect of biology for which we have 'mechanistic' information." Articles contain references to further reading. Intended for generalists with some background in chemistry and biology.

[Physics] Encyclopedia of Modern Optics now at ISEL

The newest physics addition to ISEL's reference shelves is the five-volume Encyclopedia of Modern Optics (Science Ref QC 351.2 .E53 2005). From the preface: "The purpose of this Encyclopedia is to provide a resource for introducing optical fundamentals and technologies to the general technical audience for whom optics is a key capability in exploring their field of interest."

[Physics] Living Reviews

Two open-access journals that have been around for a while, but which I just learned about, are Living Reviews in Relativity and Living Reviews in Solar Physics.

A description of the Living Reviews concept, from their website:

Articles are solicited from leading authorities and are intended for physicists at or above the graduate-student level. The Articles in Living Reviews provide up-to-date critical reviews of the state of research in the fields they cover. Articles also offer annotated insights (and where possible, active links) into the key literature and describe online resources available in these fields. Living Reviews is unique in maintaining a suite of high-quality reviews; its articles are subjected to strict peer-review and are kept up-to-date by the authors. This is the meaning of the word "Living" in the journal's title.

[Microbiology] Best Sellers in Microbiology, 2005

According to YBP Library Services, here are the top 20 best sellers in microbiology for 2005. I've linked to the catalog for books that the UMass libraries own. See a title you think we should buy? Just let me know.

1) Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio
Kluger, Jeffrey. Putnam, 2005.

2) Living with Germs: In Sickness and In Health
Playfair, John. Oxford U. Press, 2004.

3) Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture
Thacker, Eugene. MIT Press, 2005.

4) Viruses and the Evolution of Life
Villarreal, Luis P. American Society for Microbiology, 2004.

5) Food Microbiology: An Introduction
Montiville, Thomas J., et al. American Society for Microbiology, 2005.

6) Microbial Ecology of Soil and Plant Growth
Davet, Pierre. Science Publishers, Inc., 2004.

7) Microbial Ecology of the Soil and Plant Growth
Davet, Pierre. Science Publishers, Inc., 2004.

8) Petroleum Microbiology
Ed. by Bernard Ollivier. American Society for Microbiology, 2005.

9) Nanofuture: What's Next for Nanotechnology
Hall, J. Storrs. Prometheus, 2005.

10) Freshwater Microbiology: Biodiversity and Dynamic Interactions of
Microorganisms in the Aquatic Environment
Sigee, David C. John Wiley, 2005.

11) Microbial Phylogeny and Evolution: Concepts and Controversies
Ed. by Jan Sapp. Oxford U. Press, 2005.

12) Life in Ancient Ice
Ed. By John D. Castello. Princeton U. Press, 2005.

13) Nanotechnology: Global Strategies, Industry Trends and
Applications
Ed. by Jurgen Schulte. John Wiley, 2005.

14) Nano-Micro Interface: Bridging the Micro and Nano Worlds
Ed. by Hans-Jorg Fecht. Wiley-Vch, 2004.

15) Lab-On-Chips for Cellomics: Micro and Nanotechnologies for Life
Science
Ed. by Helene Andersson. Kluwer Academic, 2004.

16) Nanoscale Technology in Biological Systems
Ed. by Ralph S. Greco. CRC Press, 2005.

17) Infectious Processes: Knowledge, Discourse and the Politics of
Prions
Ed. by Eve Seguin. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

18) Organic and Inorganic Nanostructures
Nabok, Alexei. Artech House, 2005.

19) Microbial Diversity: Form and Function in Prokaryotes
Ogunseitan, Oladele. Blackwell Science, 2005.

20) Bioremediation: Applied Microbial Solutions for Real-World
Environmental Cleanup
Ed. by Ronald M. Atlas. American Society for Microbiology, 2005.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Microbiology at 9/16/2005 05:15:00 AM

[Biochemistry] New e-journals @ UMass Libraries

Attention, biochemists & molecular biologists: The following new electronic journals, now available to the UMass community via the library catalog and/or e-journal locator, may interest you:

Biomagnetic research and technology, 2003-
Cell biology education, 2002-
Cell communication and signaling, 2003-
Cytojournal, 2004-
Genetic vaccines and therapy, 2003-
Genome research, 1997-
Journal of biomedicine and biotechnology, 2001-
Journal of nanobiotechnology, 2003-
Molecular pain, 2005-
Nuclear receptor, 2003-
Proteome science, 2003-

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Biochemistry at 9/14/2005 05:16:00 AM

[Microbiology] New e-journals @ UMass Libraries

Attention, microbiologists: The following new electronic journals, now available to the UMass community via the library catalog and/or e-journal locator, may interest you:

Retrovirology, 2004-
Virology journal, 2004-

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Microbiology at 9/13/2005 05:29:00 PM

[Veterinary & Animal Science] New e-journals @ UMass Libraries

Attention, Veterinary and Animal Science types: The following new electronic journals, now available to the UMass community via the library catalog and/or e-journal locator, may interest you:

BMC veterinary research, 2005-
Canadian journal of veterinary research, 2002-
Canadian veterinary journal, 2002-
Frontiers in zoology, 2004-
Reproductive biology and endocrinology, 2003-

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Veterinary & Animal Science at 9/13/2005 05:20:00 PM

[Chemistry] RSC journals offering RSS feeds

The Royal Society of Chemistry is now offering RSS feeds for its journals.

From the RSC announcement:

RSS feeds are available for journal Advance Articles. Advance Articles are the first web publication of each article, giving you access to new research as soon as published. Most RSC journals publish new Advance Articles daily and the feed contains the graphical abstract and text from the journals contents pages.

View a list of RSS feeds for RSC journals.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Chemistry at 9/12/2005 11:19:00 AM

[Mathematics] SIAM and Katrina

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has announced several services for math scholars (and libraries!) who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Full announcement here.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Mathematics & Statistics at 9/09/2005 06:01:00 AM

[Biochemistry] UMass professor wins ACS prize

Congratulations to Lila Gierasch, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, for being awarded the 2006 Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society!

Full story here.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Biochemistry at 9/08/2005 12:54:00 PM

[Veterinary & Animal Science] New open-access veterinary journal

A new open-access journal, BMC Veterinary Research, has been announced by BioMed Central. From their June 1 press release:

BioMed Central today announces the launch of BMC Veterinary Research, the first international Open Access journal to cover all areas of veterinary science and medicine. BMC Veterinary Research will provide unrestricted access to this multi-disciplinary field where readership is currently restricted by the high subscription prices of specialist journals. The journal is now accepting submissions at http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcvetres.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Veterinary & Animal Science at 9/08/2005 10:16:00 AM

[Biochemistry] Biochemical Journal now available in PubMed Central

From PubMed Central News:

The following journal has been added to the PubMed Central archive:

Journal: Biochemical Journal
ISSN: 0264-6021 (Print), 1470-8728 (Electronic)
URL: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=74
Archive includes: Scanned data from 1951-1953, 1958-1959, and 1967-1995,
as well as full-text for July 2004 - March 2005.

The back issues of this journal are currently being digitized. While
this is in progress you may find gaps in the range of available
issues/volumes below. Once the archive is complete, a notice will be
sent to pmc-news. The journal includes a 6 month publication delay in
PMC.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Biochemistry at 9/08/2005 05:12:00 AM

[Microbiology] Free access to Nature Reviews--Microbiology

Nature Reviews Microbiology is offering free access to its content for one month. From the announcement:

"Nature Reviews Microbiology is a journal committed to the entire
microbiology community, providing complete coverage of the disciplines
of microbiology, biotechnology and infectious diseases, with its
clinical, industrial and environmental applications."

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Microbiology at 9/07/2005 08:49:00 AM

[Veterinary & Animal Science] 95% of thoroughbreds linked to one superstud

New Scientist Breaking News - 95% of thoroughbreds linked to one superstud: "Virtually all 500,000 of the world’s thoroughbred racehorses are descended from 28 ancestors, born in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to a new genetic study. And up to 95% of male thoroughbreds can be traced back to just one stallion."

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Veterinary & Animal Science at 9/07/2005 08:47:00 AM

[Biochemistry] PRoteomics IDEntifications Database (PRIDE) goes live

PRIDE - Home page

From the European Bioinformatics Institute and Ghent University in Belgium comes PRIDE, an open access database of proteomics information. From the PRIDE website:

"The PRIDE PRoteomics IDEntifications database is a centralized, standards compliant, public data repository for proteomics data. It has been developed to provide the proteomics community with a public repository for protein and peptide identifications together with the evidence supporting these identifications."

PRIDE can be searched many ways, including by tissue, disease, sub-cellular component, species/taxonomy, or protein accession number.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Biochemistry at 9/01/2005 05:40:00 AM

New database: nanotechnology/environmental health and safety

The International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) has launched a new research database containing "citation information and summaries of peer-reviewed papers on environmental health and safety research on incidental and engineered nanoparticles."

UMass users: don't pay for access to articles you find through this database! If you find a citation you'd like to track down, first check the UMass library catalog to see if we own the journal. If we don't, we can get the article for you via Interlibrary Loan.

[Chemistry] SciFinder Scholar 2006 now available

CAS has announced the launch of SciFinder Scholar 2006 for Windows.

Announcement from CAS (includes description of new features)

Download SciFinder Scholar 2006 for Windows (UMass users only)

Good news for Mac users: CAS is planning to release an OS X compatible version of SciFinder before the end of 2005. Watch this space!

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Chemistry at 8/29/2005 05:39:00 AM

[Chemistry] New open-access chemistry journal

The Beilstein-Institut and BioMed Central have announced the launch of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, a new open-access chemistry journal.

From the BioMed Central homepage: "The launch of this open access journal marks two important developments for BioMed Central: close publishing collaboration with an important scientific institution, and the broadening of our publishing activity to include chemistry."

Like most BioMed Central journals, this one offers an RSS feed which provides abstracts of new articles.

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Chemistry at 8/28/2005 05:36:00 AM

[Chemistry] Wired News: Drier Laundry Through Chemistry

Yet another instantiation of "better living through chemistry":

Wired News: Drier Laundry Through Chemistry: "A 'chemical wringer' developed by researchers in Florida leaves clothes 20 percent drier than a normal wash, and could save consumers millions in electricity bills.

A novel mix of common detergent ingredients that lowers the surface tension in liquids could force extra water from clothes during the final spin cycle, the researchers found."

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Chemistry at 8/26/2005 10:26:00 AM

[Biochemistry] Scientist at UMass Amherst Receives $150,000 From Hood Foundation To Study Fabry Disease

Congratulations to Scott Garman:

UMass Amherst Office of News & Information : News Releases
"University of Massachusetts Amherst scientist Scott Garman, biochemistry and molecular biology, has received $150,000 from the Charles H. Hood Foundation to study Fabry Disease."

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Biochemistry at 8/26/2005 11:25:00 AM

raison d'etre

Watch this space for news and discussion concerning science information sources and services, particularly targeted at the UMass Amherst community.

[Physics] Blogging arXiv

Any physicists or researchers in related fields who are using RSS will no doubt be interested in the following:

Crooked Timber >> >> Blogging arXiv:
"Non-physicists may not be familiar with arXiv....it’s effectively replaced journal publication as the primary means for physicists to communicate with each other. Journal publication is still important – but as an imprimatur, a proof of quality, rather than a way to disseminate findings to a wider audience. arXiv has now introduced trackbacks – people visiting the abstract of a paper on arXiv can see what blogs have commented on the paper, and read what they have had to say. Furthermore, arXiv has rss feeds of recent papers, classified by subject matter, making it much easier to keep up with new publications in a subfield."

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Posted by era to Science Library Update-Physics at 8/26/2005 11:28:00 AM