Obama to pick a physicist for science advisor

Got a tweet from the BadAstronomer that Pres-Elect. Obama may be picking physicist John Holdren as his science advisor. He is currently the director of the Wood Hole Research Center.

The Washington Post also reports on the news.

Peak Beta catalog has been updated

The new Peak Beta catalog has been updated.

• http://lib-lakshmi.cair.du.edu/iii/encore/

Now, you can login to the system using your campus login and password. This is your DUID number and your Passcode. After you login, you can then tag your books. For example, faculty can mark the books they recommend for classes using a class number, such as Chem101 or INTS4999. Students can tag books by genre. Groups of people can mark books relevant for a group project. One can also easily limit by the format that is needed. Looking for a DVD? Easy, just limit your search to DVD/Video using the "refine" area on the left hand side.

Pop quiz -- How many authors are there for this paper?

Take a look at the author list for this IOP journal article -- "The ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider." How many authors are there?

Thanks to the folks at the scholarly kitchen for noting...

Another great video

Here is another good video that is about the Creative Commons...



Got this from the Travelin' Librarian.

Science Commons explained in just two minutes

Got a Boing Boing Blog pointer to this HD video via Jambina.

Hubble Image Advent Calendar

This is a really cool Hubble astronomical image advent calendar. Thanks to Charles Early at NASA Goddard for finding this.

Chemists -- Don't party too hard...

CAS Registers 40 Millionth Substance

azulenobenzofuran derivative rel-(1R,2aR,5aR,7S,10bR,10cR)-1,2a,3,4,5,5a,6,7,8,9,10,10b-dodecahydro-1-phenyl-7,10c-epoxy-10cH-azuleno[4,5,6-cd]benzofuran

"On November 21, CAS Registry Number 1073662-18-6 was assigned to the azulenobenzofuran derivative at right. CAS REGISTRY, the world's most authoritative collection of disclosed chemical substance information, now includes 40 million organic and inorganic substances. More than 100 million CAS Registry Numbers have been assigned to organic and inorganic substances and biosequences.

The 40 millionth substance was identified by CAS scientists in a journal article published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition:

* Oh, C.H.; Lee, J.H.; Lee, S.J.; Kim, J.I.; Hong, C.S. Intramolecular Huisgen-Type Cyclization of Platinum-Bound Pyrylium Ions with Alkenes and Subsequent Insertion into a Benzylic C-H Bond. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2008, 47, 7505-7507."

Ithaka's 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education

This report was published a couple of months ago. The blurb below was modified from OCLC's press release.

The report (PDF Format), based on a survey of faculty members to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects, suggests a number of specific lessons for libraries:

• The library is in many ways falling off the radar screens of faculty.
  
• In a networked world, scholarship increasingly occurs across disciplinary or institutional boundaries, challenging the ability of any individual node to alone support this work.
  
• For a campus or its library to create a viable information strategy for a competitive environment, it must develop and maintain a thorough understanding of the needs of its important constituents.
  
• Despite the growing significance of information to scientists, the role of the library is diminishing in importance fastest among this group.