About Louise Deis

Science & Technology Reference Librarian Emerita Princeton University

Wikipedia is not the only free online encyclopedia, but

it is by far the most used with Scholarpedia a distant 2nd “with only… 5% of the number of papers referencing Wikipedia.”

All other free online encyclopedias tallied less than 50 papers referencing them in 2011.

  • Citizendium: “an English-language free encyclopaedia project launched by Wikipedia’s co-founder.”
  • Knol: “Knol is a Google project including user-written articles on a range of topics.”
  • PlanetMath: “a collaborative encyclopaedia focussing on mathematics.”
  • Scholarpedia: “peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia, where knowledge is curated by communities of experts.”
  • Wikibooks: “a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit.”
  • Wikipedia: “a free, collaborative, multilingual Internet encyclopedia.”
  • Wikisource: “Wikisource is an online library of free content publications, collected and maintained by the Wikisource community.”
  • Data from Scopus.  Reference from: Research Trends (bibliometrics newsletter) Issue 27, March 2012.  “The influence of free encyclopedias on science”, by Sarah Huggett.

    Harold Shapiro will receive the National Academies’ highest award

    Shapiro to Receive Public Welfare Medal, NAS’ Most Prestigious Award

    Harold T. Shapiro, an economist lauded for his ability to distill, debate,

    and resolve the complex aspects of controversial scientific issues,

    has been awarded the National Academy of Sciences’ Public Welfare Medal.

    From:

    What’s New @ the National Academies  Mon, Jan. 23, 2012

    March to the Moon — new digital archive from NASA & ASU

    “Arizona State University announced last week the launch (no pun intended) of the new Project Gemini Online Digital Archive, an online archive of NASA’s Gemini spacecraft flights. (From the announcement: “Project Gemini (1964-1966) was the second United States human spaceflight program, after Project Mercury (1960-1963). The overarching goal was to test systems and operations critical to the Apollo program (1961-1975), conceived with the purpose of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth’.” The archive is available at http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/. “

    Source:  Tara Calishain’s ResearchBuzz Jan. 19, 2012

    Wikipedia – a 24-hour protest blackout January 18th!

    “Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.”

    Thanks to Library purchases & subscriptions, including those to many online encyclopedias, we should survive!

    From: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

    NBII To Be Taken Offline Permanently January 15, 2012

    “In recent years, however, the NBII–like so many other important federal programs–was plagued with budget cuts. The FY 2012 budget mandated its termination. The main Web site, www.nbii.gov, will be taken offline on January 15, 2012, along with all of its associated node sites.

    The NBII provided three main benefits to the biological resource community. First, its design as a federation of partners allowed it to assist data owners in maintaining critical assets that might not otherwise be made broadly available; second, scientists, managers, and others searching for data on a particular subject could do so from a single, Web-based source rather than having to go to the sites of numerous organizations to compile the results they sought; and third, the NBII provided users with direct access to many data resources that are deeply embedded in structured databases on the Web and that are relevant to biology–resources that would not be revealed to them using a standard search engine such as Google.

    USGS staff now are working with partners to identify ways that–to the extent possible–will help to fill the gap in data access that will be created when the NBII goes offline.”

    To read more about the National Biological Information Infrastructure, here’s a link from which the above quote was taken:

    http://www.usgs.gov/core_science_systems/Access/p1111-1.html

    A Postscript:

    “The Library of Congress is a part of a collaborative web archive project to archive U.S. Federal Government Websites, and this site has been crawled by the Internet Archive as a part of that project. It is not publicly accessible yet but it has been preserved.

     

    Since we’re a part of the collaborative project, we’ll eventually get a copy of that capture for the Library of Congress archives.”

     

    /mrc (Margaret Clifton, mcli@loc.gov)

     

    PubMed Health — A comprehensive online resource about “what works”

    “NLM Announces Expansion of PubMed Health

    New Resources Create a Comprehensive Online Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Reviews

     

    The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health, announces the expansion of the information available from PubMed Health (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/), which provides integrated access to clinical effectiveness reviews.  

    NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), in partnership with England’s national Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, the Cochrane Collaboration, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and other agencies in the US and abroad, now makes available more than 18,000 clinical effectiveness reviews via PubMed Health. PubMed Health organizes these clinical effectiveness research results, including full texts as well as summary information, for consumers and clinicians.

    Effectiveness studies are essential for informed clinical and consumer decision making. Multiple studies are necessary over time, and interpreting their complex and often conflicting results is a challenge.

    Systematic reviews of clinical effectiveness studies address this need with rigorous scientific methodology. However, they are scattered across the biomedical literature and the Web sites of public health agencies around the world that produce many of them. The National Library of Medicine is uniquely positioned to gather these critical clinical resources in one place.

    Users of PubMed Health can: 

    • Access the whole comprehensive collection of resources in a single search, including cancer information for consumers and clinicians from the National Cancer Institute
    • See the results of a simultaneous search for reviews in PubMed
    • Refer to consumer medical encyclopedia search results also delivered simultaneously
    • Follow RSS feeds of featured reviews and “Behind Headlines,” which looks at the research behind news stories
    • Learn to make sense of research results in its “Understand clinical effectiveness” and “Behind Headlines” sections
    • Share resources via e-mail and social media with “Add this”

    NLM invites you to visit PubMed Health, learn more about the Web site (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/about/) or follow the project on Twitter @PubMedHealth (https://twitter.com/PubMedHealth) to help you keep up with the evidence on healthcare effectiveness.”

    Source: NLM New files for the week of Dec 12, 2011 (NLM Announces)

    Cambridge University puts Isaac Newton papers online [BBC News]

    “The notebooks in which Sir Isaac Newton worked out the theories on which much classical science is based have been put online by Cambridge University.

    More than 4,000 pages have been scanned, including his annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, containing Newton’s laws of motion and gravity.”

    To read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-16141723

    Source: Library Link of the Day, Dec. 15, 2011

     

    Medical vocabulary changes in PubMed or Medline

    Overview of Vocabulary Development and Changes for 2012 MeSH

    • 454 Descriptors added
    • 42 Descriptor terms replaced with more up-to-date terminology
    • 15 Descriptors deleted

    Totals by Type of Terminology

    • 26,582 Descriptors
    • 83 Qualifiers
    • 202,066 Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs)

    Helpful Links

    Please consult the 2012 online Introduction to MeSH for more details. Lists of new and changed vocabulary are available at these links:

    MeSH Vocabulary Changes
    New Descriptors – 2012
    Changed Descriptors – 2012
    Deleted Descriptors – 2012
    New Descriptors by Tree Subcategory – 2012

    Source: NLM New files for the week of Dec 5, 2011

    Princeton Univ. authors get discount when publishing in BioMed Central

     BioMed Central unveils newly redesigned website02 Dec 2011

    Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced the launch of its newly redesigned website (www.biomedcentral.com). BioMed Central, which currently publishes over 220 open access journals, has introduced a streamlined design and new look which makes the high-traffic website much more straightforward to navigate. The redesigned site also introduces a range of new and enhanced features.

    Emphasising the company’s commitment to meeting the evolving needs of authors and readers, the new site includes a greatly improved ‘My BioMed Central’ section offering users convenient access to the latest research in their subject areas together with status updates on manuscripts which they are submitting or reviewing. Other features include enhanced navigation for archives, supplements and special article collections; additional RSS feeds and embedded social linking technologies; and improved subject gateways, providing a central starting point to find research on particular scientific topics.

    Sister website Chemistry Central will also benefit from the new look and significantly increased functionality.

    In addition to the new appearance, the site is built using modern open-source java technologies, which provide a firm foundation for the enhancements and new services still in development.”

    Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

    Bassler Wins L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Award in Life Sciences

    Bassler Wins L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Award in Life Sciences
    National Academy of Sciences member Bonnie L. Bassler has been selected as the 2012 L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Laureate for North America. Bassler was chosen for her work in understanding chemical communication between bacteria and its use in developing anti-bacterial therapies to combat infectious disease.”

     

    Source: What’s New @ the National Academies