Darwinmania!

New York Times blog post (June 17, 2008) from Olivia Judson on the upcoming 200th anniverary of Charles Darwin's birth Feb 12, 2009; also, "July 1 [2008] is the 150th anniversary of the first announcement of his discovery of natural selection, the main driving force of evolution." This was at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London (see yesterday's blog post on the Linnean Society collections) where both Alfred Russel Wallace and Darwin read papers on natural selection. Judson outlines the prior claimants to the concept of evolution and natural selection, and then asks the question, why do we celebrate Darwin over any of these others? it was for On the Origin of Species, published on November 24, 1859.

The reason the “Origin” was so powerful, compelling and persuasive, the reason Darwin succeeded while his predecessors failed, is that in it he does not just describe how evolution by natural selection works. He presents an enormous body of evidence culled from every field of biology then known. He discusses subjects as diverse as pigeon breeding in Ancient Egypt, the rudimentary eyes of cave fish, the nest-building instincts of honeybees, the evolving size of gooseberries (they’ve been getting bigger), wingless beetles on the island of Madeira and algae in New Zealand. One moment, he’s considering fossil animals like brachiopods (which had hinged shells like clams, but with a different axis of symmetry); the next, he’s discussing the accessibility of nectar in clover flowers to different species of bee.

At the same time, he uses every form of evidence at his disposal: he observes, argues, compares, infers and describes the results of experiments he has read about, or in many cases, personally conducted. For example, one of Darwin’s observations is that the inhabitants of islands resemble — but differ subtly from — those of the nearest continents. So: birds and bushes on islands off the coast of South America resemble South American birds and bushes; islands near Africa are populated by recognizably African forms.

He argues that the reason for this is that new islands become colonized by beings from the nearest continents, and that the new inhabitants then begin evolving independently. He then asks: can animals and plants from the continents get to new islands, especially those that are far out at sea? To investigate this, he conducts experiments to see how long seeds from different plants can remain immersed in saltwater and still begin to grow. In short, he tests his reasoning over and over again.

Let's celebrate Darwin's birth this coming February! And then the publication of Origin in November!

Science Blogs

As you all know, the blogosphere is burgeoning - people have things to say, and the Web makes it possible for folks to find an audience easily. The thing to do is find the right name!

I was reading a blog I found through the environmentalresearchweb newswire written by a woman named Liz Kalaugher doing Arctic research onboard the icebreaker/research vessel Amundsen, and started wondering if someone was collecting all the science blogs.

So I Googled "science blogs" - and found someone has taken that name. Seed Media Group has a site called "Science Blogs" - a group of about 70+ bloggers that this company has selected. So no, I haven't found a collection of all science blogs yet, but there's some pretty interesting stuff on this site - not just people propounding their own point of view, but discussion from readers. In my opinion, that's where the real action is.

For instance, I sampled a blog called Drug Monkey which is written by DrugMonkey, an NIH-funded biomedical researcher, and PhysioProf, an NIH-funded basic science faculty member at a private medical school. PhysioProf was ranting about (1) the way up-and-coming scientists - grad students, post-docs - are not exposed to the possibilities of 'alternative' career paths other than 'academic science' (in the private sector); and (2) don't expect him to change the system - he's only one person. This piece was posted yesterday, and there are 40 responses from thoughtful (mostly) people as of this writing. Forty responses tells me the blog has a lot of people who follow it, not only reading but writing in. It's a little community.

If anyone finds a big list of science blogs from different sources, please let me know - I'd like to start collecting them, if not reading them!

Linnean Collections online

The Linnean Society of London (U.K.) is creating a digital image collection of the plants and insects in their possession. They have completed the 14,000 plants, and the moths and butterflies segment of the insect collection. The images show both top and bottom views of the butterflies/moths, and the labels. The photographs are beautiful.

From various pages on their website:

The Linnean Society of London holds some 9,000 specimens, including 3,200 Linnaean ones, of which many are important types. After acquiring the collections from the widow of Linnaeus in 1784, Sir James Edward Smith, the founder and first President of the Linnean Society, added his own specimens to the collection, almost trebling its size. Because of difficulties in recognising all the material interpolated by Smith it has been maintained as a single historic collection. Besides insects as we understand them today, the collection also includes such things as spiders, scorpions, millipedes and crabs – all ‘insects’ as Linnaeus understood them.

The prime scientific importance of the Linnaean part of the collection is as type* specimens for the species which he described. Smith's material (which can often be distinguished from Linnaeus' by the type of pins used to secure specimens) is a valuable source of information on insects from around the globe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but so far has been little exploited.
[*A type specimen is one which is permanently associated with a given scientific name, and acts as a permanent reference point to confirm the identity of the species to which the name must apply.]

For more information see "The 'Linnaean' insect collection" by Mike Fitton and Kim Harman in The Linnean Special Issue No. 7, 2007, 'The Linnaean Collections'.

...

The Linnaean Collections comprise the specimens of plants (14,000), fish (158), shells (1,564) and insects (3,198) acquired from the widow of Carl Linnaeus in 1784 by Sir James Edward Smith, founder and first President of the Linnean Society. They also include the library of Linnaeus (of some 1,600 volumes) and his letters (c. 3,000 items of correspondence and manuscripts). All are housed in a temperature and humidity controlled strongroom in the Linnean Society.

It is the Linnean Society's aim to make available its primary research material in digital formats to support taxonomic and conservation efforts worldwide as well as providing public pleasure and enjoyment.

Browse the Collections
Search the Collections by categories: Herbarium or Insects.

The Herbarium archive contains all 14,000 Linnaean plant specimens. This first phase of the Insects archive contains the Linnaean and Smithian butterflies and moths only. All the remaining insects from the collection will be made available early in 2009.

Apparently, the Fish and Shell Collections will also be digitized, eventually.

Database Trial - Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical and Life Sciences Collection

The library currently has a trial subscription to the Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical and Life Sciences Collection database. View more than 700 online animated seminar style talks by leading scientists on biomedical and life sciences topics.

The trial ends June 30, 2008.

Send comments to cpmullen@library.umass.edu

Yes, We Will Have No Bananas

New York Times Op-Ed from Dan Koeppel, the author of “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World,” suggests that distance, the practice of monoculture, and a virus will cause bananas to become much more expensive, and be regarded as what they are, "an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach."

New 'super-paper' is stronger than cast iron

Article on the New Scientist Tech site - perhaps of interest to our wood technology folks, as well as the nano folks, and anyone interested in new materials.

First three paragraphs:

Punching your way out of a paper bag could become a lot harder, thanks to the development of a new kind of paper that is stronger than cast iron.

The new paper could be used to reinforce conventional paper, produce extra-strong sticky tape or help create tough synthetic replacements for biological tissues, says Lars Berglund from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Despite its great strength, Berglund's "nanopaper" is produced from a biological material found in conventional paper: cellulose. This long sugar molecule is a principal component of plant cell walls and is the most common organic compound on Earth.

Another blog

I really enjoy Olivia Judson's blog posts for the New York Times. She's an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, and she's witty, imaginative and seems really smart. Today's post discusses the bacteria discovered in rocks deep below the seafloor, and the possibility that they may contribute to weathering of the crust. She has blogged about ichnofossils, rain-seeding bacteria, and what the world would be like if all genetic mutation stopped. She is given to flights of fancy, like this one on dinosaur mating habits:

"Which brings me to my tyrannical fantasy. I want to take a journey 68 million years back in time to see a Tyrannosaurus rex couple mating. What was it like? Did they trumpet and bellow and stamp their feet? Did they thrash their enormous tails? Did he bite her neck in rapture and exude a musky scent? Somehow, I imagine that when two T. rex got it on, the earth shook for miles around."

Or this one on things that live among pineapple leaves:

"The other day, I went to the supermarket to buy a pineapple. I didn’t select the one that smelled the ripest, but the one with the most impressive leaves: tall, bushy and uncrushed by the journey from Costa Rica. When I got it home, I put it in the kitchen sink, turned on the tap, and watched how the water gathered and formed pools in the spaces between the leaves. And I began to imagine that I was not a human in an apartment in London, but a small frog in a tropical forest, climbing up the leaves of a plant like a pineapple, looking for a pool where I could deposit the tadpole I’m carrying on my back."

Her curiosity as an evolutionary biologist leads her to think about a range of environments, from clouds to the "deep subsurface biosphere." As a geologist, I find lots to think about in her articles. Take a look at a couple yourself. They make for provocative reading, but they're somehow relaxing.

Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research

Article by Jeffrey R. Young in the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2008 on doctored images in scientific journals, their prevalence, detection, and consequences.

"Kristin Roovers was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania with a bright career ahead of her—a trusted member of a research laboratory at the medical school studying the role of cell growth in diabetes.

"But when an editor of The Journal of Clinical Investigation did a spot-check of one of her images for an article in 2005, Roovers's research proved a little too perfect."

Putting science into people's lives

A thoughtful op-ed article from the New York Times, June 1:

Put a Little Science in Your Life

By BRIAN GREENE
Published: June 1, 2008
Science is a language of hope and inspiration, providing discoveries that fire the imagination and instill a sense of connection to our lives and our world.

'... in teaching our students, we continually fail to activate rich opportunities for revealing the breathtaking vistas opened up by science, and instead focus on the need to gain competency with science’s underlying technical details.

'In fact, many students I’ve spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?”'

Brian Greene, a professor of physics at Columbia, is the author of “The Elegant Universe” and “The Fabric of the Cosmos.”

New Art Exhibit at ISEL

“Images: Neotropical Birds”

An exhibit of photographs by Jeff Podos at the Integrated Sciences & Engineering Library

Associate Professor of Biology Jeff Podos’ exhibit of Neotropical birds is on display from May 5 to August 29, 2008 in the Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library, Graduate Research Center Lowrise at UMass Amherst.

The exhibit includes twelve 16" x 20" color photos or photo montages of birds from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest and the Galápagos Islands. The birds were photographed in their natural environments.

Jeff Podos has been affiliated with UMass Amherst since 2000 and is currently an Associate Professor of Biology. With the help of his students and collaborators, he studies the behavior and evolution of birds, with particular emphasis on the evolution, function, and development of vocal signals.

According to Professor Podos, “the Neotropical region supports a remarkable diversity of bird species, including many species that are found only in specific regions such as the Brazilian Atlantic Rain Forest. Brazil by itself contains about 1700 described species, with new species being described each year. All of North America, by contrast, supports about 700 bird species. Much about the lives of Neotropical birds -- their behavior, distribution, mating patterns, and so on -- remains relatively unknown.”

For more information contact Paulina Borrego at pborrego@library.umass.edu or 545-7891.

What Have You Done With Your Cognitive Surplus Lately?

Clay Shirky explains how 1 trillion hours of worldwide television consumption per year could translate into 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year. If only we could kick Desperate Housewives.

It's National Library Week-- Do you know where your librarian is?

Since 1958, the nation has designated a week in April as National Library Week. Since we're in the midst of it now, I thought I'd talk about one relatively new aspect of the UMass Libraries-- the Peripatetic Librarian.

As more library resources become available electronically, some people think they don't need librarians to get the information they need. Of course, that's not true. Nevertheless, some people avoid coming to the library for help. Librarians being who they are, then, ride out to the rescue.

At UMass, I'm aware of four outside-the-library places where you might find us waiting for your questions, or maybe just reminding you by our presence that you have a question.

• Mike Davis, Library Liaison to the Isenberg School of Management, holds office hours there in Room 212 every Tuesday from 10:30am to 12:30pm.

• Barbara Morgan, Liaison to Legal Studies, Political Science, STPEc, and Steve McGinty, Liaison to the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, as well as Sociology, SDPPS, TEC, Economics, Educational Policy, and Research & Administration (whew!) can be found just outside the Thompson Cafe each Wednesday and Thursday from 11:30am to 12:30pm.

• Maxine Schmidt (that'd be me), Liaison to Biology, Environmental Sciences, Geosciences, and Resource Economics-- in the Blue Wall every Wednesday from 10am to noon.

• Madeleine Charney, Liaison to the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and Landscape Architecture, is currently on maternity leave, but normally holds hours in Hills.

So stop by one of these outposts and say hi sometime, and look for more of us in more places outside the library. Of course, you're always welcome in the Good Ole Library too!

New Subject Guides

The UMass Library subject guides are getting a makeover! We are using an application called LibGuides that gives us a lot more flexibility with content and style. We can include rss feeds from blogs and news sources, embed videos and even a chat widget, so you can "chat" with us live when we're online. You can also comment on the guides and their contents. The guides we have up so far look really good, and we'd love your feedback. Check them out at http://umass.libguides.com
There are four ISEL-related ones at present. You can also find some at the appropriate pages on the new Research Database Locator

New Journal Ranking Source

BioMed Central's blog has a piece on "SCImago – a new source of journal metrics offering a wealth of free data on open access journals." The importance of a specific journal is of interest to anyone publishing their research - obviously, one would prefer to publish in a journal with the greatest impact. Thomson Scientific, as the first to create this metric using Citation Indexing with their Journal Citation Ranking (JCR), has long had the dominant role, but many have criticized their methodology, and been frustrated by their slowness to include new journals. Also, this service is costly.

A few companies have challenged Thomson Scientific's monopoly (Scopus and Google Scholar, for example) and now SCImago has joined the fray. It uses data from Scopus, and gives weights to the citations based on their sources - a citation from a lesser-read journal will have lower impact on the rating than one from Nature or Science.

Thanks, to Jim Craig for bringing this to our attention.

Two-sided printing available at ISEL

In response to numerous requests from our patrons, printing on both sides of the sheet is available from public workstations.

Two points:

Send the print job through as a two-sided print request - you cannot choose it after sending it the printer. This means you shouldn't just click on the printing icons that send the print job directly to the printer without bringing up a dialog box. In the printing dialog box, select Properties; this usually brings up Printing Shortcuts, where you can chose Two-Sided Printing.

The cost is the same as whether you use one or two sheets of paper to print two sides. The only benefit to you is that it uses less paper.

Any questions, please ask the library staff.

Wireless access vastly improved at ISEL

Recently, new nodes for wireless network access were installed and activated by OIT. We now have much better signal strength on all four floors, though perhaps the best signal is on the first, second, and third floors. There are no actual nodes in the basement, but you can get signal there from the 1st floor nodes.

Come and check it out!

RefWorks using science databases

Learn how to use RefWorks focusing on science databases such as Agricola, PubMed and Web of Science.

Using RefWorks with Science Databases - Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 11:15 am-12:15 pm
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 4:00-5:00 pm

The workshops will cover the basics: how to access RefWorks, search catalogs, import references from library databases, retrieve and manage citations, and create bibliographies according to various citation styles (e.g. MLA or APA). They will also cover more in-depth applications: how to manipulate your database, use Write-N-Cite to add parenthetical references to your work, use RefShare to share folders with other researchers, and other questions you may have.

To register email refworks@library.umass.edu

DIGITAL QUADRANGLE SERIES COLLOQUIUM

A press release from the UMass Amherst Libraries:

DIGITAL QUADRANGLE SERIES COLLOQUIUM

“Engaging the Web for Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Publication”


Amherst, MA – UMass Amherst will host “Engaging the Web for Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Publication” on March 28, 2008, from 9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. in Campus Center Room 163C at UMass Amherst. Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, will give the keynote talk “The Googlization of Everything.” The program will also include a faculty panel presentation of Scholarworks implementations, remarks on the Carnegie Classification on Community Engagement, and a facilitated luncheon that will result in action plans for keeping author rights and publishing in an online environment, addressing concerns about Intellectual Property (IP), and adopting ScholarWorks. Dr. Vaidhyanthan’s talk and faculty presentations are open to the public. The roundtable lunch portion of the program is open to UMass Amherst faculty and staff only.

A cultural historian and media scholar, Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001); and The Anarchist in the Library: How Peer-to-Peer Networks are Transforming Politics, Culture, and Information (Basic Books, 2003). He is co-editor of Rewiring the “Nation”: The Place of Technology in American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). After five years as a professional journalist, Vaidhyanathan earned a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has taught at the University of Texas, Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and New York University. He is currently associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia and writing his next book, The Googlization of Everything, a critical examination of Google's disruptive effect on culture, commerce, and community, on a public website produced by the Institute.

Scholarworks@UMassAmherst (http://www.scholarworks.umass.edu) is one way the campus supports the open communication of the scholarship at UMass Amherst. Over the past several years, UMass Amherst has made a significant investment in ScholarWorks to enable the shift to a digital culture. Using this digital technology and the web has its benefits but its use also raises many questions including, "Have I been losing the rights to my own work?" "How can I keep my author rights?" and, "If my work isn't online, is it invisible?"

ScholarWorks provides the infrastructure and support for creating access and dissemination vehicles and providing the long-term preservation of research and scholarly products. Critical for this transformation are faculty awareness of author and IP rights, alternative digital publishing platforms, and knowledge of how to use ScholarWorks. The final portion of this program, a facilitated roundtable discussion for UMass Amherst faculty and staff, will be devoted to this awareness. Participants will leave with actionable plans for their use of ScholarWorks.

This third annual Digital Quadrangle Series Colloquium is sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries, Office for Research, Center for Teaching, the Graduate School, and new this year, the Office of Outreach.

For more information, contact Marilyn Billings, 545-6891, mbillings@library.umass.edu, or Marla Michel, 577-0092, marla@research.umass.edu, or visit http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dq/. Faculty RSVP is requested to Marilyn Billings by Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

Indigenous maps safeguard territories - an article from an environmental research newswire.

Indigenous people know their own territory best, and if they can create a map which includes all the places that are important to them, it is a powerful tool when working with corporations.

This article comes from a useful environmental newswire, Environmental Research Web.

Near Arctic, Seed Vault Is a Fort Knox of Food

An article from the New York Times this Leap Year day, discussing the establishment of a formal network of seed banks.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

A vault buried under the permafrost in Norway has begun to receive millions of seeds, an effort to save the genetic legacy of vanishing plants.

Ten Worst Jobs in Science 2007 - from Popular Science magazine

Popular Science's annual bottom-10 list, in which they salute the men and women who do what no salary can adequately reward.

National Science Debate

A group of scientists, educators, government officials, business leaders and other prominent people in the US have called for Science Debate 2008. The goal is to get the presidential candidates to talk about their views on science and technology policy, environmental issues, and medicine and health issues. You can read about the beginnings of the effort here. There are lists of supporters, both individual and institutional, on the website, and you can add your name to the list as well.

Spring Semester RefWorks Workshops

If you don't use a citation manager, you're working waaay too hard. It's a very easy and convenient way to store and format all of your references-- books, journal articles, websites, etc. The Library has made RefWorks is available to everyone at UMass, for the entire time you're here. It's a web-based citation manager, so you can access your bibliographies from your room or your office, or Baltimore or Barcelona. Formatting options for the most commonly used styles in academia are included. There's even a Write-n-Cite feature, which allows you to insert a placeholder for a reference into your paper as you're writing, and formats the in-text references as well as your bibliography.

Here's the schedule for this semester:

Tues 2/12, 9:30-10:30
Tues 3/11, 11:30-12:30
Thurs 3/27, 2:30-3:30
Wed 4/9, 2:30-3:30
All workshops will be held in the Calipari Room on the Main Floor of Du Bois Library. You can get more info here.

If none of these times work for you, you can also register for the RefWorks webinars (taught by the RefWorks folks, not UMass librarians). Go to the RefWorks website and, down on the bottom right, choose the topic that suits you.

Journal Science Returns to JSTOR

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and JSTOR have reached an agreement reinstating the journal Science in the online journal archive. The journal’s decision to withdraw its affiliation last summer was met with much criticism by librarians and others in the field.

New Public Access Law

For the first time the U.S. government has mandated public access to research funded by a major agency. This week President Bush signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764) which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research.

Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed articles into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full text articles will be publicly available and searchable in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal.

It is hoped that open access will make scientific results more readily available and ultimately facilitate the advancement of scientific knowledge. "This policy will directly improve the sharing of scientific findings, the pace of medical advances, and the rate of return on benefits to the taxpayer,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).

More information can be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/

Questioning the validity of journal impact factors

In a recent editorial in the Journal of Cell Biology the executive editors of The Journal of Cell Biology and The Journal of Experimental Medicine joined with the executive director of the Rockefeller University Press to test the validity of data associated with journal impact factors. For those unfamiliar with the calculation it is a measure of the number of cites to recent articles compared to the number of recent articles for a given period. In other words, the impact factor for a given year measures the average number of times a paper published in the previous two years was cited during the year in question.

For example, the journal impact factor for the journal Nature is reported to be 26.681 calculated from the following data:

Cites in 2006 to articles published in:
2005 = 25820
2004 = 26022
Sum = 51842

Number of articles published in:
2005 = 1065
2004 = 878
Sum = 1943

Calculation = Cites to recent articles / Number of recent articles = 51842 / 1943 = 26.681

The authors of the editorial tried to replicate the journal impact factors from data supported by Thomson Scientific (owners of the Web of Science) and were unable to report the same results. This puts into question the data supplied by Thomson Scientific and the overall validity of journal impact factors. One wonders if journal impact factors should be given the importance that they are within the scientific community given the fact that they might be calculated from suspect data.

Short and Snappy Author Rights Colloquy

For Science Faculty and Graduate Students who are publishing or preparing to publish their research, an important upcoming event:

Short and Snappy Author Rights Colloquy
Thursday, November 29
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Gunness Student Center Conference Room, Marcus Hall

Learn why keeping the copyright to your published work can give you more freedom to use and expose your own research.

Lunch will be provided!

To register, email rreznikz@library.umass.edu

SPIE Digital Library just added to the UMass Amherst collection

SPIE, for those who may not know, is an international society advancing an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light. The name originated from the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, but like many groups these days, the society changed its name and it's focus has evolved and grown, but the acronym remains.

Their Digital Library is now available to UMass Amherst patrons through the library's website - through the catalog or the databases.

From SPIE's website:

The SPIE Digital Library is the most extensive resource available on optics and photonics, providing unprecedented access to more than 230,000 technical papers from SPIE Journals and Conference Proceedings from 1990 to the present. More than 17,000 new research papers are added annually.

Contents of the SPIE Digital Library

Proceedings of SPIE: Starting at Volume 1200 (1990)*

Optical Engineering: Starting at Volume 29 (1990)

Journal of Electronic Imaging: Starting at Volume 1 (1992)

Journal of Biomedical Optics: Starting at Volume 1 (1996)

Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS: Starting at Volume 1 (2002)

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing: Starting at Volume 1 (2007)

Journal of Nanophotonics: Starting at Volume 1 (2007)

* Some Proceedings volumes are not available in the SPIE Digital Library as SPIE does not have electronic rights to this material. Click here for a listing of those volumes.

Aerial photos in the Library's Map Collection

The Library has acquired an extensive collection of aerial photographs-- approximately 24,000 in all-- of the Massachusetts landscape, used for almost 50 years to map land use and land use change in the Commonwealth. Initiated by Forestry Professor Emeritus William P. "Mac" MacConnell ’43, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to be completely mapped in this fashion. The project became the foundation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wetlands Inventory. The collection can be used in the Library's Map Collection on the 2nd floor of Du Bois.
For a couple of years while I was in grad school at UMass, I worked with the MacConnell maps, digitizing land use change. I was fascinated with the process and the photos. My supervisors then, Kate Jones (now at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments GIS) and David Goodwin (now at the Massachusetts Dept. of Conservation and Recreation's Forestry Management Program), told me about their long histories analyzing the photos with stereoscopes (also on display in the Map Collection). They related the history of The Raccoon Wars, which began with a prank that involved painting the black eyepieces of the stereoscopes with black ink, so that the user would finish her or his work with dark rings around the eyes. Ever since, I've been waiting to use that tactic.

UMass Amherst - $9.2 million in NSF grants

As blogged on the www.masslive.com site (click on the title to go to the article).

Some of you will have personal knowledge about this, but as an onlooker, I was impressed with the range of these projects that got funded by the NSF. It is, I know, a competitive process.

Congratulations to those individuals and groups who have collectively shown that UMass Amherst is an institution doing interesting work (and we beat MIT - woohoo!). Here is the list of awardees as published in the Springfield Republican blog:

RESEARCH AWARDS
The following are the grants awarded by the National Science Foundation, and the person directing each of the funded projects.

Awarded to the University of Massachusetts:

$200,000 - A data collection project, Prashant Shenoy
$300,067 - A project in nanotechnology, Sigfrid Yngvesson
$316,365 - Research involving emulsified products (two or more liquids blended together, such as ice cream or mayonnaise), Michael Henson
$350,001 - A project in wireless networks, Donald Towsley
$404,132 - A project relating to the search of vast archives of data or information, W. Bruce Croft
$442,000 - Research in Internet running on light, Tilman Wolf
$513,600 - Biofuels research, George Huber
$597,503 - A project involving the teaching of science, Morton Sternheim
$600,000 - Research into the transfer of data on the Internet, Arunkumar Venkataramani
$979,098 - Research into the teaching of science, John Clement
$1.5 million - Renewable energy research, Sankaran Thayumanavan
$3 million - A project in cellular engineering training, Susan C. Roberts
To Smith College:
$125,240 - Computer science research, Ruth Haas
$315,760 - Research in biogeochemistry, Elizabeth Jamieson

Cells lead astray

The New York Times has an article in today's Science section about lead, and its historical uses. It's not hard to see why people were so enthusiastic about lead in ancient times-- it's easy to find and recover, it has a low melting point, and it's malleable. Lead also gets cozy with sulfur, which is why there are so many health problems associated with it. Some of these problems were known by Hippocrates in 400 BC, but lead was so useful that people weren't ready to do without it. The most significant problems are experienced by young children, whose brain development is affected by lead molecules which disrupt some proteins by seeking out sulfur. Other animals are also affected by ingesting lead.
In my previous career in public health, I became a Certified Lead Inspector for housing. In New England, with its older housing stock, lead paint is a persistent issue. While Europe banned the residential use of lead paint in the 1920s, the US didn't until the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a regulation in 1978 prohibiting its use in residential settings. At first, I thought that flaking lead paint was the big problem, since kids often eat the flakes (Apparently, lead lends a sweet taste to substances, which is why the Romans used it to treat wine.), but it is also present in house dust as a result of friction on window sashes and door jambs. Lead from gasoline contributed to the environmental load as well.
Here are some UMass Library databases you can search for more information on lead in the environment and it's effects on humans and other animals. Remember that you may have to use your OIT login information if you want to connect from off-campus.
CAB Abstracts
Engineering Village
Environment Index
Food Science and Technology Abstracts
Kirk Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology
LexisNexis Environmental
PubMed: UMass Amherst subscription
Web of Science
Zoological Record
If you're interested in the biochemistry of lead, try Beilstein.

Journal Science to leave JSTOR

After nearly a ten year relationship with JSTOR, the Mellon-founded online journal archive, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has decided to end its association pulling the journal Science from the journal archive, effective 31 December 2007. This is the first time that a member publisher has left the over 900 title journal archive since its beginning in 1994.

In a statement, a Science spokesperson said that: “AAAS shares the belief that it is now time to assume full responsibility for maintaining a complete electronic archive of its flagship publication.”

Science magazine (6 July 2007) special issue on Undergraduate Science Education

From the Special Issue introduction, "Many Voices, One Message" by Jeffrey Mervis:

... The hegemony of English is just one of many forces shaping undergraduate STEM education. This special issue looks at the topic by focusing on the lives of [12] faculty members in a dozen countries on six continents. The group is meant to be representative of scientists teaching large numbers of undergraduates around the world. The list is skewed toward the most industrialized countries but also includes those in which the scientific infrastructure is developing rapidly. An accompanying map presents some basic information about higher education in each country.
...
For an additional perspective, Science invited three distinguished educators to explore the issues facing undergraduate STEM education. Excerpts of their comments appear in this issue; the complete discussion is available at www.sciencemag.org/sciext/undergrad_education07. This issue also marks the debut of the Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment Journal Club, as well as three Teaching Resources.

We hope that you'll find the entire package compelling enough to alter your own worldview of undergraduate education. If it does, please let us know at www.sciencemag.org/sciext/eletters."

WorldWideScience.org

WorldWideScience.org opens public access to more than 200 million pages of international research information. This international search portal was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the British Library and eight countries ranging from Australia to Japan. It uses federated search technology much like that of Google and Yahoo, searching an variety of databases then aggregating the results and ranking them, returning a variety of results for a single query.

Ooooohhh!!! Aaaaaahhhh!!

I love fireworks, and in the past, I've taken extreme measures to see two shows in one night. So I was delighted to find this site, courtesy of Librarians' Index to the Internet. It explains the chemistry and basic physics behind the displays, and includes a table showing the compounds that produce specific colors, as well as a little bit of history. A friend of mine worries that knowing too much about things like fireworks will make them less wonderful and enjoyable, but this stuff fascinates me.
Chemical of the Week is one of my favorite sites. I always learn something here, and it often appeals to a family affinity with explosives (stories for another time). It's geared to enlightened non-specialists, so anyone can enjoy it.

New search tool for science!!

I just tried out Scitopia, which describes itself as a "...free federated search portal to the digital libraries of leading science and technology societies." Currently, it simultaneously searches the publications of 15 scientific societies (including AGU), as well as "patents and government data" (I haven't figured out how well the last part works yet). It's in beta now, so give it a try and let them know how to develop it.

The Junk Drawer

National Geographic has an article on Linnaeus (with some wonderful photographs) on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his birth. The title of the article is "A Passion for Order," which describes a characteristic of most scientists, but also a significant trait of librarians (though you wouldn't know it to look at *my* desk). One of my courses in library school was titled "Organization of Knowledge." I was surprised to see that there were only two texts, and seriously apprehensive about having to learn how the world's knowledge is systematized in one semester. To my relief, the class concerned the varieties of classification used in libraries, with some emphasis on the LC scheme used in most academic libraries. We also discussed some new systems made possible by advances in database management and expanding internet access.

It seems lately that the organization of stuff, especially information, is a hot topic. Last year, it was Peter Morville's Ambient Findability. David Weinberger gave a 57- minute talk on the Google campus on May 10 on the topic of his new book, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder . The talk is great (I haven't read the book yet-- it's on my desk now.), but I had an issue with some of his comments in the Google talk about librarians, whom he says he admires, and I believe him. He said that librarians (and scientists, shop owners, publishers, everyone) try to order information, a task he sees as futile. He's right, it is futile, and the digital disorder in his subtitle has shown us that. My argument with him is that librarians have figured that out already. We use keywords, hyperlinking, folksonomies, tagging, social networks-- all that stuff. There is still a use for the LC classification and other schemes for print material and non-digital native objects (so we can find their physical selves), but librarians bring at least a representation of them into the disordered digital world via their metadata.

I'm really excited to be a librarian right now. The whole notion of what the library is changes constantly, and it's a lot of work to keep up with students' use of technology and their consequent expectations. Libraries are learning to be more nimble and adapt quickly. At the same time, we realize that most of our users employ only basic strategies with their new electronic tools-- usually just enough to perform a single task. That's where we can help, but more on that later...

What Kind of User Are You?

The PEW Internet & American Life Project has come up with a typology of Information and Communication Technology Users based on a survey of "assets, actions, and attitudes" of the American public. Are you an omnivore? A lackluster veteran? Or an inexperienced experimenter? Find out.

IEEE Standards Association creates Nanoelectronics Standards Roadmap

On April 14th, the IEEE Standards Association released a Nanoelectronics Standards Roadmap, version 1.0. This draft is available for public comment from their website. The roadmap is intended to:

• "Discern the highest value nanoelectronics standards to provide maximum leverage to the industry by providing a platform of common definitions, processes and technologies.
• Identify a small set of near-term standards to jump start nanoelectronics standards development. Frame these standards (define their scope and purpose) to accelerate working group formation and progress. Build momentum within the industry by creating a few quick wins consistent with the longer range standards strategy.
• Complement, not replace, existing industry roadmaps and knowledge bases.
• Provide a framework for efficient communication and collaboration among industry members. Reduce barriers to industry convergence and efficient commerce.
• Speed the development and deployment of high value nanoelectronics standards; consistent with the maturity of processes and technologies.
• Create an extensible and living framework by which nanoelectronics standards development may be managed proactively, strategically and efficiently"

The IEEE-SA will hold a town meeting to present and discuss the roadmap at NSTI Nanotechnology 2007.

NN/LM-NER's PubMed Search Tags and Field Qualifiers Guide

Check out the latest revision of the NN/LM-NER's PubMed Search Tags and Field Qualifiers Guide!

http://nnlm.gov/ner/training/material/PubMedFieldTags.doc

Search like an expert! This handy guide lists the major search tags and field qualifiers for advanced PubMed searching. Keep it next to your computer for easy reference.
This guide is intended to be customized with your library's logo and contact information, folded in half and laminated. Don't have a laminator? No problem. It also makes a nice one page handout.

Or better yet... customize and post it on your web site!

Check out Boston University Medical Center's customized version at: http://med-libwww.bu.edu/pdf/pubmedfieldtags.pdf

Thanks to Michelle Eberle - Consumer Health Information Coordinator - National Network of Libraries of Medicine - New England - University of Massachusetts Medical School - for this information.

Illustrata: Natural Sciences database trial until May 5 2007

Illustrata: Natural Sciences is a new database that provides access to charts, tables, graphs, photographs, maps and other figures across a wide range of biological and environmental disciplines. With Illustrata: Natural Sciences it is possible to search the scholarly research literature for visual information previously not indexed. Using the “Search Tools” feature it is possible to search the scientific literature for graphs, illustrations, maps, photographs, tables and images.

“Researchers can then view the full object, including all caption and label text. Results can be easily saved or imported and used for presentations, lectures, or research.”

More than one million object records have been indexed covering over 880 different journals from a variety of publishers. It is projected that over two million objects will be indexed by the end of the year.

Three other forthcoming Illustrata resources include image databases for the fields of Technology, Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities.

Please let Maxine Schmidt (mschmidt@library.umass.edu) know your impression of Illustrata: Natural Sciences.

Geoscience World database trial until April 5 2007

Here's what the site has to say about itself:

"GeoScienceWorld (GSW) is a nonprofit corporation formed by a group of leading geoscientific organizations for the purpose of making geoscience research and related information easily and economically available via the Internet. GSW is an unprecedented collaboration of six leading earth science societies and one institute."

It also says that it is "indexed, linked, and inter-operable" with GeoRef. Right now, GSW is offering the content of the journals published by the founding member organizations: American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), American Geological Institute (AGI), Geological Society of America (GSA), The Geological Society of London (GSL), Mineralogical Society of America (MSA), Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM), and Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG).

Be aware, though, that because this is a trial, you won't find the handy little red SFX links that will take you to the full text sources for other journals. To get those, go through the Library's webpage to GeoRef, where you will be properly authenticated.

Let Maxine Schmidt (mschmidt@library.umass.edu) know what you think of GSW.

Cold Spring Harbor Protocols database - Subscription!

The UMass Amherst Libraries have subscribed to the Cold Spring Harbor Protocols database. In response to the requests of several patrons, we conducted a trial subscription last fall, and the reaction from most respondents was very positive. As a consequence, and because these methods are widely used on campus, we have added this database to our extensive collection.

From the "About" section of the CSH Protocols Website:
Cold Spring Harbor Protocols is a definitive, interactive source of new and classic research techniques. The database is fully searchable by keyword and subject, and it has many novel features—such as discussion forums and personal folders—made possible by online publication. Its coverage includes cell and molecular biology, genetics, bioinformatics, protein science, and imaging. Protocols are presented step-by-step and edited in the style that has made Molecular Cloning, Antibodies, Cells and many other CSH manuals essential to the work of scientists worldwide. Protocols will be continuously expanded, updated, and annotated by the originators and users of the techniques.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact the ISEL Library staff.

UMass Amherst Digital Quadrangle Series Colloquium: " Showcasing Research and Teaching in the 21st Century: A Digital Approach"

NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: 03/1/07

CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162

Amherst, MA - UMass Amherst will host “Showcasing Research & Teaching in the 21^st Century: A Digital Approach” on March 29, 2007, from 1:00 – 4:45 p.m. in the Cape Cod Lounge of the Student Union at UMass Amherst. David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs of the National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC), will give the keynote talk “If It Cannot Be Found on the Net, It Does Not Exist: Increasing Impact for UMass Scholarship.” Provost Charlena Seymour will introduce Dr. Shulenburger.

The event will mark the official debut of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, the new digital repository for campus researchers and scholars. The complete agenda for the afternoon is available at: http://www.umass.edu/research/Mar2907Agenda.pdf. A wine and cheese reception in the Student Union Art Gallery will follow the program. Faculty, staff, and graduate students are invited to attend. The event is open to the public.

David Shulenburger is active nationally and internationally as an advocate for reform in the areas of scholarly communication and academic accreditation. Shulenburger previously held the positions of Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor at the University of Kansas from 1993 to 2006, where he received several University-wide teaching awards. He is chair of the board of the Center for Research Libraries, consulting editor for “Change,” past chair of the NASULGC Council on Academic Affairs, board member of BioOne, and has served on the boards of numerous other non-profits. Previously a faculty member at Clemson University and a labor economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, he received his PhD and masters degrees from the University of Illinois.

The second half of the program includes two panel discussions. In the first, “The ScholarWorks Track: A Panel of Case Studies,” faculty members will discuss the adoption of ScholarWorks and its impact on their research and teaching. Representatives from the Center for Teaching, Office for Research, Graduate School, and UMass Press will serve on the second panel, “Tools and Policies: Getting to Your Destination.” Discussion topics will include intellectual property, the potential for transforming teaching models, the electronic master’s theses project, and open access from the perspective of UMass Press.

This second annual Digital Quadrangle Series Colloquium is sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries, Office for Research, Center for Teaching, and the Graduate School.

For more information, contact Marilyn Billings, 545-6891, or mbillings@library.umass.edu.

The Secret to Google page ranking

From Maxine - A rather amusing explanation of how Google determines which pages are listed first when you do a search. Suffice to say it involves PCs - pigeon clusters.

Librarians and other information mavens have long wondered about Google's relevancy algorithms, which Google regards as a trade secret. We like to know how to make our search strategies as efficient as possible, and knowing how the search engine works would obviously be useful, but as a commercial enterprise, Google doesn't want to help people 'game' the system. So this explanation is meant to be funny, but at the same time, it is twitting their critics.

UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES TO SURVEY CAMPUS COMMUNITY

Amherst, MA – The UMass Amherst Libraries will conduct a survey, LibQUAL+™, of all faculty members and graduate students, and a random sample of 2,000 undergraduates between February 27 and March 16, 2007. Participants will be emailed and asked to participate in the 10-minute web-based survey. A free beverage coupon to the Procrastination Station Café in the Du Bois Library will be given to those completing the survey.

The results of the survey will be used to help assess and improve the UMass Amherst Libraries’ services, collections, and facilities. The results will also indicate how UMass Amherst library services compare to other institutions of similar size and mission. It will allow the Libraries to benchmark its results against those of other colleges and universities to determine best practices and indicate where to concentrate improvements for UMass Amherst users. UMass Amherst is among over 200 libraries participating in this year's survey.

In 2004, the UMass Amherst Libraries conducted a LibQUAL+™ survey, contributing to the Libraries’ initiating many improvements, particularly in the Du Bois Library. Improvements include more electronic resources, increased hours to 24 hours/five days a week, increased wireless access, group study rooms, comfortable chairs, additional computers, scanners, a fax machine, and vending machines on the Lower Level, quiet study spaces on Floors 2 and 3, a renovated lobby with a coffee shop, book delivery on campus, and more flexible lending policies.
LibQUAL+ ™ is a rigorously tested web-based survey administered by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

For more information, contact Jan Higgins in the Library Office, at 545-6868 or libqual@library.umass.edu. More information about the survey is available at www.library.umass.edu/assessment/libqual.html.

Check it out! Origami and Math from Robert J. Lang

A recent profile in The New Yorker magazine of Robert J. Lang sent us to this website. Lang retired from a successful career as a physicist and engineer, during which he authored or co-authored over 80 technical publications and 40 patents on semiconductor lasers, optics, and integrated optoelectronics; he is now a full-time origami artist. His work is exhibited, and has also been used in television commercials and other media.

Lang writes and speaks extensively on the intersection of origami and mathematics, and has developed computer applications to simulate and help design origami. Dr. Lang resides in Alamo, California.

And yes, this "dancing crane" was folded from a single sheet without cuts. Lang's website has images of his work, many with crease patterns which (theoretically) one could use to reproduce the figure.

Database Trial: CSH Protocols

We have a trial set up for the subscription database, CSH Protocols, or Cold Spring Harbor Protocols (http://www.cshprotocols.org). This includes the full text of the latest versions of their laboratory methods in molecular and cellular biology. If this is of interest to you, please give it a try, and let me, Naka Ishii, know if you think this is a worthwhile addition to our collection.

As with any new library resource, if we decide it is valuable, we will need to figure out how to fund it, and weigh the options against the utility of the new resource, so please be clear about how useful it is, what priority you would give it.

You can also access this trial through our Database Trials webpage on the Library's website. From the Library homepage, www.library.umass.edu, click on the tab for Services, then from that list, select Research Help and Support. On the left side of that page, there is a link to the Database Trials page.

Thanks in advance for your help in evaluating CSH Protocols.

Darwin Goes Digital

Cambridge University is in the process of making the complete works of Charles Darwin available online. The collection includes images of books and manuscripts, as well as Darwin's field notebooks! So far the developers estimate that 50% of the total material is now accessible, and more is added each day. They expect to complete the project in 2009.

A new look to UMass Amherst Library Website, and the new online catalog

The Library's Website has undergone a radical redesign, and we hope that our patrons will find it easier to use, once they get over the initial shock. The content is essentially the same, except for the new catalog, which had its debut this week also.

In the months to come, we are also changing the way the contents of the Library's Website are organized, so that behind the scenes, it will be contained in a "content management system." While we hope that this change will be invisible to our patrons, we also believe that it will allow the content to be more current, since global changes will be easier to make.

The new online library catalog, mentioned above, has 'gone live' as they are saying over in Du Bois, and it is not without problems. This gigantic piece of software is really called an 'integrated library system' or ILS. An ILS not only contains the catalog of our materials and electronic resources, it also includes the circulation system and all the transactions, patrons, holds, bills, etc., and the acquisitions module - this tracks all the library materials we order and purchase. On top of that, this one system is shared by five separate institutions, the Five Colleges; so you can see that glitches are inevitable in the implementation of something so massive. We beg your patience and understanding.

That said, please do let us know when you encounter a problem. You might be the first one to notice something awry. Do also let us know if you find something that you like - though at this juncture I'm not holding my breath!

Wish us luck!

A new library catalog!

The Five College Library System is instituting a big change. A new Five College Library Catalog will debut the week of August 28, 2006, providing improved access to the millions of resources at the UMass Amherst Libraries and those of the Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith College Libraries. After a detailed market review, the libraries chose ALEPH® by Ex Libris to replace Innopac by Innovative Interfaces, the existing library software system. The new catalog will be available through the Library home page at http://www.library.umass.edu/ or directly at http://fcaa.library.umass.edu:8991/F.

The software will make searching for information easier. For example, it will permit online searching of all libraries simultaneously, foreign language searches, focusing searches on specific research areas, and limiting searches to a particular collection or format (i.e. book, CD, journal, etc.). It will now be possible for users to set up personal accounts to receive email notifications of new arrivals in designated subject areas, and to review personal searches and borrowing histories.

As part of the transition, the five-college request function and self- renewal features will be temporarily suspended from August 19 until the week of August 28, 2006 and the virtual catalog request function has been suspended through January 2007. Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery will continue to operate normally and users can continue to submit requests.

ALEPH was created by a team of librarians, systems analysts, and programmers to provide an automated library system that was efficient, user-friendly, and multilingual. Other libraries using the ALEPH software include Harvard, Duke University, MIT, State University of New York (SUNY), University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Maryland, University of Notre Dame, and many others.

Staff here at the Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library and at Du Bois will be available if you need help navigating the new features, or to speak to your classes about the new system and the libraries in general. As always, feel free to call me with any questions.

Wellcome Trust Biomedical Image Awards 2006

The Wellcome Trust has just announced its Biomedical Image Award winners for 2006. Stunning images of life from the molecular/cellular level on up. Check out the gallery...when you click on an image, you'll be given the opportunity to listen to a sound file of the scientist behind the image discussing his/her work.

Keep up on scholarly communication issues on Create Change website

You all know that dissemination of research has been changing rapidly in recent years. Publishers, funding agencies, professional societies, educational instititutions, and others are stakeholders in how best to shape the future of this process. Libraries and librarians have long been intermediaries in this process, and are active participants in the discussion. Create Change is a website advocating for using the benefits of technology for wider access to the fruits of your labor. It also gives examples of initiatives in open access scholarly publishing from many fields of study.

From the About page of the Create Change site:

"Create Change is an educational initiative that examines new opportunities in scholarly communication, advocates changes that recognize the potential of the networked digital environment, and encourages active participation by scholars and researchers to guide the course of change.

"Create Change was developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and is supported by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)."

Lost in a sea of science data

A free article from the Chronicle of Higher Education describes how librarians are teaming up with scientists to archive and preserve huge amounts of scientific data:

Science is experiencing revolutionary changes thanks to digital technology, with computers generating a flood of valuable data for scientists to interpret.

But that flood could drown science.

Data from experiments conducted as recently as six months ago might be suddenly deemed important, but researchers might never find those numbers — or if they did, might not know what the numbers meant. Lost in some research assistant's computer, the data are often irretrievable or an indecipherable string of digits. That's a scenario increasingly familiar to scholars, says James M. Caruthers, a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University.

"We are starting to die from data," he says bluntly.

To vet experiments, correct errors, or find new breakthroughs, scientists desperately need better ways to store and retrieve research data, Mr. Caruthers says, or "we are going to be more and more inefficient in the science that we do in the future."

Dealing with the "data deluge," as some researchers have called it, will be among the great challenges for science in the 21st century. Many in the field say that scientists should not be left to manage the data on their own.

Instead, librarians will have to step forward to define, categorize, and archive the voluminous and detailed streams of data generated in experiments. Already, librarians on some campuses — among them Purdue, the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of California at San Diego — are beginning to take on that role.

(read entire article)

Art of Science Competition / 2006 Gallery

Check out some really striking and lovely images and video from Princeton University's 2006 Art of Science competition....I especially liked this one:


Color Patterns of an Iron Extraction Time Series, Andrew Altevogt, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

More about the Art of Science competition.

Technology in Geologic Time...

I have a copy of my Geology MS thesis on a 5" floppy disk, which I carefully copied and coddled while I wrote (and rewrote and wrote and rewrote) my masterpiece. Now I might as well use it as a coaster for my double half-caf skinny latte. The era of the 31/2 disk is also well and truly over, I'm told. Are CDs and flash drives far behind? So if every new technology is doomed from its inception, how do we preserve our data for future scholars, or even for our own future projects? This concern is raised in stlq, one of my favorite blogs. Fortunately, UMass is working on a solution-- a digital repository, tentatively named UMass Scholarly Commons. For examples of other universities' digital repositories, look here. Aside from the important issue of preservation, there are other opportunities associated with this project--open access journals, for example. If you have questions, or want to become an early adopter of this technology at UMass, contact Marilyn Billings in the Library.

The impact of impact; and, peer review reexamined

Following up on Maxine's post about impact in physics....

A couple of interesting items regarding scholarly publishing have been making their way across the wires today.

(1) ACRLog points to some recent discussions about journal impact factors, including a Wall Street Journal article that discusses impact factor inflation and a Chronicle of Higher Education article (subscription required; UMass users can follow link) on problems quantifying impact in the humanities.

(2) Nature is hosting a web focus, including an online debate, regarding peer review in the scientific publication process:

Peer review is commonly accepted as an essential part of scientific publication. But the ways peer review is put into practice vary across journals and disciplines. What is the best method of peer review? Is it truly a value-adding process? What are the ethical concerns? And how can new technology be used to improve traditional models?

(via Science Library Pad)

These are issues that are definitely on people's minds here at UMass Amherst, as the campus undergoes a research benchmarking process and begins to explore the creation of an institutional repository.

Physics is Hot!

Read the story here.
I found this on another blog, From Your Science Librarian's Desk , and thought it might interest people. What do you think of this characterization of research, and what do you think is behind it? I wonder about the effect of this kind of measurement of on the future of scientific learning.

Undergraduate writing in the sciences: three nice examples

In working with a few of the junior year writing classes in the sciences here at UMass Amherst, I've been impressed with some of the creative assignments instructors are using to engage students in the process of scholarly research and writing.

Recently, I've come across a few other examples of innovative scientific/scholarly writing projects for undergraduates, which I'd like to share here.

First, from the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology comes Animal Diversity Web, "an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology." Many of the species articles in Animal Diversity Web are written by undergraduates, and articles go through an editing and peer review process. From their website:

An essential feature of the ADW is student authorship of species accounts. Students learn considerable detail about the biology of a species, then share their work with users worldwide by making it part of our permanent database...Instructors and ADW staff review and edit accounts before they are added to the site. Classes at a number of universities contribute to the ADW project, and the resulting growth of the database makes us even better for inquiry learning.

Secondly, I saw a great presentation at this year's NERCOMP conference that described a collaborative writing project in the sciences at Vassar College. A professor teamed with educational technologists, a science librarian, and a writing center staffer to create an assignment whereby teams of students collaboratively wrote scientific review articles on topics in protein chemistry. The presentation focused on both the pedagogical and technological aspects of the project--students used an open-source content management system called Plone as a platform for collaborative writing and bibliography assembly. The end result was a series of very impressive scholarly review articles on topics including the pharmacogenetics of HIV/AIDS, chemical biology and cell cycle control, the metabolomics of mad cow disease, and proteomics and Vioxx.

Finally, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a student-run, peer-reviewed journal, the Wisconsin Undergraduate Journal of Science. The creation of the journal strives to meet the following goals (from their "About" page):

* To integrate peer-reviewed writing into the undergraduate science curriculum
* To assist students in finding research opportunities both on and off campus
* To allow students to be directly involved in the publishing process

If you or your department is involved in an innovative project to introduce undergraduates to writing in the sciences, feel free to leave a comment below!

Microsoft launches academic search engine

Today, Microsoft launched a search engine devoted to scholarly, academic publications. Dubbed "Windows Live Academic," the search engine (still in beta) so far indexes content in the areas of computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and related areas.

Comparisons are already being drawn with Google Scholar, another major initiative by a search company aimed at indexing scholarly literature. (UMass Amherst has partnered with Google Scholar to make materials that we license accessible to our users. Microsoft will be working with libraries in the weeks to come to achieve something similar.)

Microsoft is fairly explicit about which content they are indexing.

Windows Live Academic is still brand new, and it will be interested to see how it is received by the academic community in the days to come. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment on this post or contact the library.

Happy National Poetry Month, Scientists!

April is National Poetry Month, and let it never be said that science and poetry are incompatible. Here are two instances of the intersection of poetry and science:

Fibs: poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence, a famous mathematical series (via Slashdot)

The Periodic Table of Poetry: click on an element to read a poem about it. Poems contributed by readers! Feeling inspired? There are several elements that still don't have poems.

(As I write this, I notice that my colleage Stephanie Willen Brown, aka CogSci Librarian, has just posted links to some poetry podcasts.)

Enjoy....

UMass faculty: Your input requested

Faculty members: If you can spare a few moments, please fill out the following survey on the possible creation of a digital repository here at UMass.

The deadline for the survey is Friday, April 7.
http://www.library.umass.edu/forms/insfacrepository.html

If you have questions or comments about the proposed digital repository, please contact Marilyn Billings at mbillings@library.umass.edu or (413) 545-6891.

Thank you!

Attention, all SciFinder Scholar users.....

If you use SciFinder Scholar on your own computer, take note! As of April 1, all users must upgrade to the most recent SciFinder Scholar release (downloadable from the library's SciFinder Scholar web page). More information is available over at the Chemistry blog. Questions? Please contact dbhelp@library.umass.edu.

Get all your ISEL news in one feed....

As astute readers may know, in addition to this main blog (ISEL Update), we also have blogs for several of the individual departments that ISEL supports (links are in the right-hand sidebar of this blog). As of this writing, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Engineering, Math & Statistics, Microbiology, Physics, and Veterinary & Animal Science have their own ISEL blogs containing news about information sources in those disciplines.

If you'd like to get updates from ALL ISEL blogs in one feed, rather than subscribing to them individually, you can now do so by subscribing to the following feed:

http://www.rssmix.com/u/10345/rss.xml

This uber-feed was created using a free tool called RSS Mix. RSS Mix lets you roll any number of individual RSS feeds together into one feed, which you can then subscribe to. Very handy!

We'll be adding blogs for more departments as time goes on...watch this space!

Web of Science's Science Citation Index now goes back to 1900

Recently, the UMass Amherst Library sent out a press release to announce new electronic resources. Here is one item, particularly pertinent to researchers in the sciences:

• Web of Science’s Century of Science makes available 850,000 older, twentieth century scientific journal items in one place for the first time from 262 journals. This comprehensive collection is fully searchable, with complete bibliographic data, cited reference data and navigation, and direct links to the full text. Century of Science provides comprehensive backfile and cited reference data from 1900 to 1944. This important tool allows researchers to discover which articles were highly cited during that time period, what journals they were published in, and trace a topic through over one hundred years of research literature.

This is actually just the extension of our Science Citation Index subscription back to 1900, a great thing, but not a separate title. So now you can find out that Albert Einstein's 1935 article in Physical Review, v. 47, no. 10, p.777-780, has been cited at least 2,698 times, and by whom!

Maxine Schmidt, new librarian at ISEL

Maxine Schmidt has joined the ranks of librarians at the Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library at UMass Amherst, and we are very happy to have her. Maxine came to librarianship later than many, having earned a BA and MS in Geology at UMass, then going on to work in the public sector in environmental health. She completed her MLIS from Simmons College in May 2005. Welcome, Maxine!

Benchmarking Workshops in March

Update 3/8/06: All workshops are now open to all departments--no more separate sessions for sciences vs. social sciences/humanities! Also, 3 dates have been added--see below.

Anyone who will be involved with gathering benchmarking data for academic departments here at UMass Amherst is invited to attend one of several workshops in March sponsored by the UMass Libraries. Workshops will be held on:

March 13 11:00 am at the Science Library, 2nd Floor, Lederle Low Rise
March 14 3:00 pm in the Du Bois Library Room 1620
March 15 Noon in the Du Bois Library Room 1620
March 16 2:00 at the Science Library, 2nd Floor, Lederle Low Rise
March 27 Noon in the Du Bois Library Room 1620


Sessions will cover: how to efficiently and effectively gather faculty publication data for your own department as well as your benchmark institutions. Different sources and strategies can be employed to make this process as quick and painless as possible! Librarians Emily Alling and Steve McGinty will demonstrate some searching techniques using databases like Thomson/ISI's Web of Science and other discipline-specific resources.

Bring your department's indicators & benchmark institutions--there will be opportunities for hands-on practice and individual consultations. Follow-up appointments are also possible.

Please contact Emily Alling (ealling@library.umass.edu; 413-545-6740) or Steve McGinty (smcginty@library.umass.edu; 413-545-1871) for more information.

UMass Libraries' Fourth Annual Dinner with Friends

On Saturday, April 1, 2006, at 6:30 p.m., the Friends of the UMass Amherst Library will host the fourth annual "Dinner with Friends" in the new Learning Commons at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library on the UMass Amherst campus

The event features three notable authors from the area-Norton Juster, Sabina Murray, and Ilan Stavans, a champagne and hors d'oeuvre reception with Celtic harpist Sarah McKee, and a gourmet feast. Tickets are $125 per person or $200 for two (of which $90 is tax-deductible, $130 for two).

Last year, attendees and sponsors raised over $16,000 for the Library. This year, all proceeds will benefit the expansion of the Learning Commons.

View invitation flyer (PDF).

For more information, contact Emily Silverman at the UMass Amherst
Library at (413) 545-0995 or email friends@library.umass.edu.

Trial sub for ISI Proceedings

The UMass Amherst Libraries have a trial subscription to ISI Proceedings, a database of articles published in "more than 60,000 conferences" in two segments which can be searched simultaneously, Science & Technology (STP) Database and Social Sciences & Humanities (SSHP) Database. The date range goes back to 1990 for both segments.

ISI Proceedings is a product of the same company that brings us Web of Science, the combined citation indexes (Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index). But ISI Proceedings' records do not include "Times Cited" information. They do include the references cited in each paper, and where those cited articles are journal articles included in the Web of Science database, they are linked to their records in WoS.

According to their database description, ISI Proceedings includes items from the following sources:

• Books
• Journals
• Reports
• Series produced by publishers or societies
• Sets of preprints (when preprints are the only publications from a conference)
• International proceedings (includes papers published in English and other languages)

If you have any questions about the database or the trial, please contact one of the ISEL librarians at 545-1370, or email Naka Ishii.

"Pity the Scientist who Discovers the Discovered"

An article in today's New York Times (registration required) discusses scientists who publish research that's....already been published. By others. Sometimes more than once. The problem? Poorly constructed or lacking literature searches! Don't let this happen to you! Librarians can help!

National Academies report on maintaining science & technology competitiveness in the 21st century

The National Academies was asked by Senators Lamar Alexander and Jeff Bingaman to respond to the following questions:

What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policy-makers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st Century? What strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?

A diverse commission of 20 people was convened to address these questions, and the resulting report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm; Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future,has been published by The National Academies, and is available on their Website for reading online, downloading or purchase. From the description:

In a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas. This congressionally requested report by a pre-eminent committee makes four recommendations along with 20 implementation actions that federal policy-makers should take to create high-quality jobs and focus new science and technology efforts on meeting the nation's needs, especially in the area of clean, affordable energy:

1) Increase America's talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education;
2) Sustain and strengthen the nation's commitment to long-term basic research;
3) Develop, recruit, and retain top students, scientists, and engineers from both the U.S. and abroad; and
4) Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation.

Some actions will involve changing existing laws, while others will require financial support that would come from reallocating existing budgets or increasing them.

This report has already been incorporated into legislation entitled PACE (Protect America's Competitive Edge) and this promises to be wide-ranging in its effects. It remains to be seen whether execution will match inception.

Easier access to Chronicle at UMass Amherst

Good news for UMass Amherst readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education: You can now access the Chronicle online without needing to enter a username or password. As with most of our other ejournals, you should be able to get right in and read articles in the Chronicle from any computer with a UMass Amherst IP address (i.e., on campus or through OIT dialup).

If you'd like to read the Chronicle from off campus, be sure to go through the UMass Amherst library catalog to access it. You'll be prompted to enter your OIT username and password. (If you just type "chronicle.com" into your browser, you won't be recognized as coming from UMass and you won't have access to subscriber-only content.) Once you log in, you should have full access to all online Chronicle content.

Any RSS users (Bloglines, My Yahoo!, FeedDemon, etc.) out there may also be interested in subscribing to one of the Chronicle's RSS feeds. They offer a daily news feed, a "Wired Campus Blog," and career feeds for dozens of job categories.

We hope you enjoy this easier access. If you have any questions or problems, please contact the library--we'd be happy to try to help.