Biology Library News

Planning for fall semester classes

I would be delighted to work with course instructors or teaching assistants to produce guides to library resources and services to enhance a course. I'm also happy to meet with students individually or in groups. Tip: Both customized guides and face-to-face sessions may be most effective when they are targeted to specific assignments, such as a writing assignment, or course goals. Please contact Ruth to discuss what might be helpful for your classes. Thank you.

New faculty and graduate student reception, August 26, 2013

The annual reception and Olin Library tours for new faculty and new graduate students will be held Monday, August 26, approximately 3-5 pm. I will post more information on the library guide for new folks in biology and mathematics. Please pass along the information if you know of people who might like to attend. Thank you!

Olin Library summer hours - slight expansion

Olin library now opens at 8 am instead of 8:30 More info

Summer library hours and summer workshops on twitter, Blackboard, etc.

Upcoming workshops on Twitter, etc. - see http://wulibraries.doattend.com/.

Upcoming Blackboard training from the Teaching Center - see http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/Blackboard/Pages/Events.aspx. Note: Telesis ends June 30th! Some classes are in the new Active Learning Classroom pilot in Eads Hall and some are in the Arc Lab, Level A, Olin Library. New sessions on new features, Discussion Boards, File Management/Content Collection, Tests and Surveys, Videos, and Blackboard Mobile have been added to the lineup.

Summer Library Hours: http://library.wustl.edu/about/hours.html

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.