Digital Library at Penn State using CiteSeerX

Posted on by

"Digital library developed by Penn State researchers hits 1 million articles mark – 10 Jun 2009

Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) has announced that a new digital library and search engine created by its researchers now holds more than 1 million journal articles and other scholarly works that can be easily accessed by anyone.

CiteSeerX (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu), based in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), is designed to enhance the dissemination of scientific literature by making papers and other documents easier to locate online. The library provides resources such as algorithms, data, metadata, services, techniques and software that are transferable to other digital libraries – supplying users with more than just an index of search results. The newest version, released in early 2009, added the capability to search tables.

The search engine was developed by C. Lee Giles, David Reese professor of information sciences and technology and Isaac G. Councill, a Penn State Ph.D. recipient. It is based on open source software, which means it can be adapted as needed, by anyone, to fit users’ requirements.

The search engine also includes a feature called MyCiteSeerX, a customisable personal space where the individual user can do tagging, make corrections, create his or her own collections and monitor paper updates.

Other tools currently being developed include Our CiteSeerX, an environment where collaborating teams can work and share information within the library, and a feature that will allow users to receive alerts about new papers of personal interest.

CiteSeerX was funded by the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, NASA and the College of IST.

Click here"

 

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

Cornell Lab of Ornithology — Macaulay Library

Posted on by

    "The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is the  world’s largest natural sound and video archive of animal behavior. Its mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species behavior and natural history and to make them available for research, education, conservation, zoos and aquaria, wildlife managers, publishers, the arts, and both public and commercial media. Since 1930, recordists of all backgrounds have contributed their recordings, which now number to several hundred thousand in total. A large percentage of the recordings can be searched and played online."

The library uses a free browser plugin called RavenViewer, which ‘enables you to see and visually analyze the sound as you play it.’   There is a search box, or one can browse taxonomically or by common names.

Source:  [ResourceShelf] Newsletter No.411

International Council for Scientific and Technical Information

Posted on by

ICSTI

ICSTI’s 2009 Summer Conference will take place in Ottawa on 9-10 June, followed by the General Assembly Meetings on 11-12 June. Hosted by CISTI, the Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, this year’s conference theme is ‘Managing Data for Science’. For early program and speaker details, as well as venue, accommodation and sponsor information, and the registration forms, please go to the Events page and click through to the conference website.

ICSTI 2009 Conference – 09 Jun 2009
Hosted by the NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), this annual conference has been largely viewed as being a dynamic engine for research and development as well as scientific data management and integration worldwide. This year’s conference will be structured around the data ‘lifecycle.’ The conference will address issues ranging from integration in published outputs and re-purposing, to hosting, archiving and preservation.
Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Click here

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter June 2, 2009

Applied Math and Science Education Repository — AMSER

Posted on by

The Applied Math and Science Education Repository is aimed at providing web resources for community colleges, technical schools, and the general public.  The link takes you to the science — and technology — resources.

From their home page: "AMSER is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use."

"AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Science Digital Library, and is being created by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout."

Science & Engineering Statistics at NSF.gov

Posted on by
National Science Foundation: Science and Engineering Statistics

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/

"Scholars, journalists and members of the general public will have a field day with the National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Statistics website. Visitors will note that the data contained within the site includes publications, working papers, data spreadsheets, and analyses divided into broad areas that include "Education", "Federal Government", "Industry", "International", and "Social Dimensions". Users can delve deeper into these broad areas and come up with related publications, policy briefs, and so on. Near the bottom of the page, visitors can look over the "New Releases" area for new reports on federal science and engineering support to universities, research expenditures, and the ethnicity and gender makeup of federal scientists and engineers. Finally, visitors can also sign up to receive their RSS feed."

Source:  University of Wisconsin’s Scout Report

Instructional Podcasts from Chemical Abstracts Service

Posted on by

Logging in to SciFinder Scholar today, I discovered that CAS has made some interesting and elegant instructional podcasts.  Examples include: ethanol, nanoparticle drug delivery, DNA to RNA transcription, nanotechnology for energy, and lessons from Katrina.  The videos last from 4 – 6 minutes.

Connexions — an Open Education Resource

Posted on by

If you want to customize some lecture notes, create a textbook  or collect some special readings for your class, Connexions might help.  It is rather like Open Courseware, but it is a wiki textbook product, and developed in modules.  Prof. Peter M. Grant from the University of Edinburgh gave a presentation about it at the Friend Center yesterday.  It was developed at Rice University but now is independently run in Houston, TX, being funded by Heulett.  It’s content is continually growing…recently consisting of 500 collections, courses, or books, and 10,500 modules or chapters of 4-8 pages.  It operates under a Creative  Commons license.  147 countries are involved.  The most prevalent language is Spanish, but there is also English, Thai, Japanese and Chinese.  All subjects are present, even though it was first developed as a Communications and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) resource.  Introduction to Music Theory is a popular text available at Connexions.  However, ~65% covers science and technology.  Anyone can contribute, become an author, and most contributions are peer reviewed at some point.  "Lenses" for quality control and review are centered at IEEE, Rice and IMS, and other institutions and individuals depending on the subjects.  One very cool application is LabVIEW which displays active analytics, for example, the graphical output readings resulting from different input filtering devices in electronics.   (More about LabVIEW. ) XML is used to store content, and texts are easily uploaded from Microsoft Word or LaTeX. 

Information about the presentation and Prof. Grant which was sponsored by: The Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education.

Common Chemistry — a web-based, free resource from Chemical Abstracts Service

Posted on by

 
1078-commchem.gif

 CAS launches free web-based resource for non-chemists – 15 May 2009

 Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, has launched a new, free, web-based resource called Common Chemistry. This resource is helpful to non-chemists and others who might know either a chemical name or a CAS Registry Number of a common everyday chemical and want to pair both pieces of information.

Common Chemistry contains nearly 7,800 chemicals of widespread and general interest, as well as all 118 elements from the periodic table. With the exception of some of the elements, all other substances in this collection were deemed of widespread interest by having been cited 1,000 or more times in the CAS databases.

While not intended to be a comprehensive CAS Registry Number (CAS RN) lookup service, Common Chemistry does provide access to information on chemicals of general interest. The CAS Registry Number is recognised throughout the world as the most commonly used, unique identifier of chemical substances. The full CAS REGISTRYSM database contains more than 46 million organic and inorganic substances. Research discovery and patent tools such as SciFinder and STN allow users to search the entire database.

Click here

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter &  CAS.

Note:  Princeton University Library subscribes to the complete CAS Chemical Abstracts and Registry database — available as SciFinder Scholar.

 

Nature Chemistry — new online journal from Nature Publishing Group

Posted on by

Nature Chemistry — the second issue is now online, and covers a wide range of topics, including catalysis, mesoporous materials, synthetic methodology, anion transport, and DNA conductivity. In addition, there is a commentary about pre-university chemical education, a review article on Mobius aromaticity and a thesis article that looks at alternative forms of the periodic table.

[Princeton University Library has subscribed, but for a time, it’s free to all.]

Source: an email announcement from Nature Publishing Group

Global Health Database open to all — to assist H1N1 effort

Posted on by
From a May 1, 2009 news release from the United States Agricultural Information Network:
 
CABI today has announced free access to its specialist Global Health database – the definitive database for public health information – www.cabdirect.org/globalhealth
 
{ Princeton does have a subscription which is listed under our "Articles & Databases" groupings.}

Simultaneously CABI has developed a Swine flu ‘dashboard’ that brings together up-to-the-minute information on the virus (http://www.netvibes.com/cabialerts).The ‘dashboard’ includes resources from CABI and critical advice from key health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Influenza researchers urgently need to be able to refer back to previous scientific work in this area to understand the behaviour of previous strains of the virus and to research effective mechanisms for handling earlier outbreaks.
 
In a fast changing sequence of events that has led to the rapid escalation of concern from WHO, and the reaction of national governments in considering their response to a possible influenza pandemic, release of the database is designed to give urgently needed support to those who need it most: scientists, medical professionals and health authorities investigating the causes and treatments of the disease and linkages to past outbreaks.

The Global Health database brings together global knowledge on every aspect of influenza since 1910. The knowledge it contains could provide a key weapon in health researchers’ response in understanding and controlling the virus.

Much of the data in Global Health is derived from publications that have long since vanished. They tell us a great deal about past pandemics, from rates and patterns of transmission, duration, timing of epidemiological peaks, geographical distribution of the disease, government preparedness and quarantine provisions through to effects on different age and social groups, severity in developing versus developed countries, symptoms, causes of mortality (secondary problems, especially pneumonia, were devastating in the Spanish flu) and mortality rates.

 By opening the door to a wealth of historical information on past pandemics, the Global Health database has the potential to reveal vital clues in the international fight against swine flu (influenza A – H1N1).
CABI Swine Flu Dashboard – www.cabdirect.org/globalhealth
Global Health database – http://www.netvibes.com/cabialerts