Biology Library News

Miscellaneous links to share, April 2013

Elsevier has acquired Mendeley, a popular reference management tool. There has been so much hype, hysteria and discussion about this in April that I'm not going to provide any links beyond this Q & A post. An internet search will give you lots of info. Mendeley does continue to be free to users, for now.

New on the Internet Archive: Oral histories of 12 Neuroscientists: Terry Jones, Doctor Ann Silver, Salvador Moncada, Geoffrey Burnstock, Alan North, Uta Frith, Peter Mansfield, Elizabeth Warrington, Richard Frackowiak, Roger Ordidge, Michael Rutter, Richard Gregory. This project was supported by a Wellcome Trust Public Engagement grant in the History of Medicine. Professor Tilli Tansey (QMUL) and Professor Leslie Iversen (Oxford) recorded interviews with 12 prominent neuroscientists, between 2006 and 2007.

April 21-27 was Preservation Week. Several new guides are now available includes General Collections Care for Users. Check it out!

Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a new, unique, web-based Federal resource for finding species in the U. S. and territories. It collects species occurence data from many sources.

Darwin-Hooker letters 1200 letters exchanged between Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker are being made available in the Darwin Correspondence Project | A Trove of Darwin's Correspondence Is Published Online, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2013.

Webinar, free for WU: Power and Challenge: The Now and Next of Women in STEM Tuesday, May 21, 2013 noon-1 PM CDT. More info and preregistration

Upcoming workshops at the library

Upcoming workshops on Zotero, Mendeley, Twitter and Adobe Creative Suite - see http://wulibraries.doattend.com/.

Purchase on Request: The Complete Dinosaur, 2nd ed

I thought I would use this as an example of our Purchase on Request program. There's a book review of this on one of the Phenomena (National Geographic) blogs. This title appears in our catalog as a "purchase on request" item (or at least it did when I posted this). The location note says "To have the Library purchase this, please click the Request button or Request link on your screen." If you run across these titles in the catalog and believe we should own the book, please do feel free to request them. There are not too many biology titles listed this way, because I've chosen not to use this system so far, but you may sometimes see them. Sometimes they are for ebook titles which you can REQUEST and have immediately; sometimes these are paper book titles which take longer to arrive. Of course, in this case there are at least 2 copies available from MOBIUS so you can request that way instead of requesting WU purchase the title. It's up to you.

Library news: Blackboard mobile, sharing undergraduate theses, GIS, upcoming classes

Download the free Blackboard Mobile Learn app today!

When you work with honors students, please let them know they can share their honors thesis in WU's repository Open Scholarship, either open access or restricted to WU. More info.

GIS program moves to University Libraries

Upcoming classes: workshops on Zotero, Mendeley and Evernote resume in February and March. For more information see http://wulibraries.doattend.com/.

Olin Library paper journals to Level A

Before Jan. 14, 2013, unbound paper journals, previously shelved on Level 1, will be moved to Level A, where VHS tapes were shelved. [VHS tapes will be moved to Level B.] Locations in the catalog will be updated. Most biology journals are available online, but please ask if you have trouble finding the new location.

Neureuther Book Collection Essay Competition

Washington University undergraduate and graduate students may enter. Entry deadline is Feb.28, 2013. More info about the 26th annual Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition.

Miscellaneous links which might interest you?

-- You may now check out Mac laptop chargers at Olin Library! More info.

-- Video tip of the week: OneZoom viewer for large phylogenetic trees


-- The Future of Energy, Episode #1 of Hold that Thought podcast series. Speakers include Robert Blankenship, Ursula Goodenough and Himadri Pakrasi. About 1 hour long.

-- ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) has been in the news a lot this month; ORCID has launched. What’s next?. Becker Medical Library has a helpful guide on Establishing Your Author Name; please look there for more information about ORCID, Scopus Author Identifier and ResearcherID. I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with these tools. I will try to have this information on our site soon, probably on the Research Impact and Evaluation pages.

-- Upcoming classes: Topics include Twitter, Research management series featuring Zotero, Mendeley, Ipad productivity, Evernote. For more information see http://wulibraries.doattend.com/.

Calling all students: focus groups for student feedback about the library in early October

How do you use the Libraries? What do you need that we don’t currently provide? These are just some of the questions we’d like to know. Based on past student feedback, we’ve made changes and launched new initiatives--what should we do next?

Any currently enrolled WU student is invited to join us for a one-hour session including pizza, drinks and conversation. Please find a session you can attend and preregister. Thank you!

Graduate student discussions and preregistration links:
Wed., Oct. 3, 12-1 pm, at Olin Library, meet in lobby
Wed., Oct. 10, 12-1 pm, at Liberman Graduate Center, DUC room 300
Thurs., Oct. 11, 4-5 pm, at Olin Library, meet in lobby
Please RSVP online using a preregistration link, by phone 314-935-7277 (Charmaine) or email cgscott@wustl.edu

More info and undergraduate students session info: Discussion/Focus Group-- Students: What do you need from your Libraries?

Tips, Notes, News

-- If you are still using Internet Explorer 7, it is time to upgrade. PubMed will not work with IE7 after January 1, 2013.
-- Interesting reading: Whither science publishing?, The Scientist, August 2012. Also Opinion: OA Coming of Age: Open-access journals are reaching the same quality levels as their subscription counterparts, By David Solomon and Bo-Christer Björk. This post refers to the authors' recent article: Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact (BMC Medicine 2012, 10:73 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-73); it also refers to Predatory Publishing from August The Scientist.
-- A Push Grows Abroad for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research, by Jennifer Howard. Chronicle of Higher Education Technology News, August 13, 2012.
-- The annual Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issue came out in July. It is open access.
-- "PMC (formerly known as PubMed Central) has shortened its name in order to avoid confusion with PubMed…." Frankly I think they will just create more confusion! More info.
-- Three anthropology researchers, who work in Archaeology, Physical Anthropology, and Sociocultural Anthropology, will be discussing their research methods in Olin Library, room 142, Tuesday, October 30, 3:30-5 pm. We are calling this Anthropology Research 101. We expect several librarians and members of the anthropology dept.; biofolk are welcome to attend!

Upcoming classes

Class topics include Twitter, Research management series featuring Zotero, Mendeley, Ipad productivity, Evernote. For more information see http://wulibraries.doattend.com/. Also we have begun to plan some classes and events for Open Access Week, October 22-28, 2012. Information will be posted at Open Access at Washington University guide.