Category Archives: Web resources

Wikipedia is not the only free online encyclopedia, but

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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.

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

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    “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!

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    “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

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    “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”

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    “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)

    Medical vocabulary changes in PubMed or Medline

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    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

    National Library of Medicine adopts auto-complete feature

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      “*NLM Technical Bulletin, Nov-Dec 2011, Search Auto-Complete Feature Added to NLM Main Web Site, MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus en Español

      http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd11/nd11_mplus_auto_complete.html “

    From NLM New files for the week of Nov 7, 2011

    NLM-ANNOUNCES@LIST.NIH.GOV

    Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) launched by UNESCO

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     Global Open Access Portal launched at UNESCO meet – 07 Nov 2011

    “The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) was launched at a special side event organised during the 36th session of the UNESCO General Conference at Paris headquarters. The portal is aimed at presenting a snapshot of the status of open access (OA) to scientific information around the world.

    For countries that have been more successful in implementing OA, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of OA development, it identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.

    The portal has country reports from over 148 countries with weblinks to over 2,000 initiatives/projects in member states. It is supported by an existing Community of Practice (CoP) on Open Access on the WSIS Knowledge Communities Platform that has over 1,400 members.

    The GOAP, launched together with the revamped Open Training Platform (OTP) and the first UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform, provides the information for policy-makers to learn about the global OA environment. They can also view their country’s status, and understand where and why OA has been most successful.

    Development of the portal has been made possible with support received from the governments of Columbia, Denmark, Norway and the US. The portal will be a work in progress, and shall be further improved with the support received from the community of OA practitioners.

    OA is reportedly at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate to provide universal access to information and knowledge. The UNESCO Open Access programme shall continue to facilitate policy dialogue in member states, share knowledge and best practices in the field of OA, and build and share local capacities through North-South and South-South co-operation to build knowledge societies for sustainable development.”

    Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter (today)

    DNA — Secrets of the Sequence

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    Secrets of the Sequence

    http://www.sosq.vcu.edu/

    “If you are looking to get in on the ground floor of the DNA sequencing that occurs in a high-tech laboratory, this video series is a fine place to start. Produced with help from a variety of sponsors, such as the National Academies and Pfizer, this site from Virginia Commonwealth University brings together 50 of the best videos from the public television series “Secrets of the Sequence” to “assist teachers in the application of genetic research across the biology curriculum.” Each of the videos is 8-10 minutes long, and they are divided into topical areas that include anatomy, bioethics, and DNA. Visitors can download each video, or just stream them directly from the site. Finally, the site also includes a number of helpful educational worksheets and guides for teachers.”

    Source:  The Scout Report, Univ. of Wisconsin, Oct. 28, 2011 

    Microbe World — Website with news, videos, images…

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    Microbe World (Last reviewed in the Scout Report on November 19, 1999)

    http://www.microbeworld.org/

    “Microbe World has grown by leaps and bounds since the Scout Report last reviewed the site. First-time visitors will notice that the homepage contains a featured image and a featured video, which usually features a science expert speaking on microbes via an archived webcast. Moving on, the right-hand side of the homepage contains informational videos that cover how to get started with using Microbe World. The “Videos” tab will allow users to learn from dozens of videos that cover a gamut of topics, such as genetically engineered bacteria and an investigation into the origins of the Black Plague. Visitors can also use the “Images” tab to view high quality images of microbes taken from various research laboratories, science organizations, and so on. Finally, users can use the “Resources” area to view laboratory demonstrations and find out about new microbe-related apps that are under development.”

    Source: University of Wisconsin’s Scout Report 10/21/11