One Stop Shopping for Penrose "Cool Tools"

We now have a Research Guide that provides access to many of the Web 2.0 resources that the library has focused on.

New Journals from SPIE

DU students, staff and faculty can now access the six journals from the SPIE. They are:

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing
Journal of Biomedical Optics
Journal of Electronic Imaging
Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS
Journal of Nanophotonics
Optical Engineering

Take a look at the Peak records for more info.

New term -- "Science Churnalism"

What is the role and value of embargoes in science journalism? I would think faculty, students and the general public would want scientific information sooner than later. In the new e-post age, there should be no need to wait until the printed copy comes out...

iGoogle Gadget from Penrose

Here is a cool little tool. We now have an iGoogle Gadget so that you can easily search the Penrose Library catalog, Peak from your Google feeds. WorldCat has an iGoogle gadget, too.

Scientific American Article -- Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?

This is a good article covering new venues for scholarship (wikis, blogs, etc.), particularly in the sciences."The explosively growing World Wide Web has rapidly transformed retailing, publishing, personal communication and much more. Innovations such as e-commerce, blogging, downloading and open-source software have forced old-line institutions to adopt whole new ways of thinking, working and doing business.

Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive."

The effect of open access and downloads on citation impact

This looks like it provides some interesting research.

The Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact

Another interesting article from an IEEE source -- "Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact," by Chawki Hajjem, Stevan Harnad, and Yves Gingras. Summary -- In 2001, Lawrence found that articles in computer science that were openly accessible (OA) on the Web were cited substantially more than those that were not. We have since replicated this effect in physics. To further test its cross-disciplinary generality, we used 1,307,038 articles published across 12 years (1992-2003) in 10 disciplines (Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Health, Political Science, Economics, Education, Law, Business, Management).... Comparing OA and NOA articles in the same journal/year, OA articles have consistently more citations, the advantage varying from 25%-250% by discipline and year.

Generation Y and NASA

This blog links to an interesting presentation given to NASA "bigwigs" trying to convince them that NASA needs to market to younger people in more relevant ways."A few months ago a few of us had a chance to participate on a 'strategic communications committee' at Johnson Space Center that was convened to discuss NASA’s strategic communications strategy released in ‘07. After a few meetings on the committee, we asked if we could share our perspective with the group on why we think an entire generation isn’t connecting to NASA."

The Amazonification of articles?

There is an interesting article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine...

"People Who Read This Article Also Read," Greg Linden. "The recommendation systems that suggest books at Amazon and movies at Netflix will soon bring you personalized news.... The newspaper, that daily chronicle of human events, is undergoing the most momentous transformation in its centuries- old history. The familiar pulp-paper product still shows up on newsstands and porches every morning, but online versions are proliferating, attracting young readers and generally carving out a sizable swath of the news business."Thanks to Gary Price for noting at his blog.

Euclid Prime set of journals

We can now access the "Euclid Prime" set of journals from Project Euclid. Here is a list of the journals in that collection and others from Euclid.

• Abstract and Applied Analysis
  
• Advances in Theoretical & Mathematical Physics
  
• Asian Journal of Mathematics
  
• Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society-Simon Stevin
  
• Communications in Information & Systems
  
• Communications in Mathematical Sciences
  
• Current Developments in Mathematics, 1995-
  
• Experimental Mathematics
  
• Homology, Homotopy, and Applications
  
• Internet Mathematics
  
• Japan Journal of Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  
• Journal of Applied Mathematics
  
• Journal of Symplectic Geometry
  
• Kodai Mathematical Journal
  
• Methods and Applications of Analysis
  
• Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic
  
• Publicacions Matemàtiques
  
• Real Analysis Exchange
  
• The Review of Modern Logic
  
• Revista Matemática Iberomericana
  
• Tokyo Journal of Mathematics
  

"The Euclid Prime Collection, launched by Cornell University Library, provides full-text access to over 20 scholarly serial titles along with reference linking and interoperability through the Open Archives Initiative."

Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project...

Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester, edited by Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons, Association of College and Research Libraries, ALA, Chicago 2007"This book provides a view into the groundbreaking application of ethnographic tools and techniques to the understanding of undergraduate students and their use of information. The publication describes findings of the work at the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries and provides insight into how academic librarians might use these techniques on their own campuses."

Happy Anniversary to Physical Review Letters

The 50th anniversary retrospective of Physical Review Letters <http://prl.aps.org/50years/milestones>."As part of the celebration of PRL's 50th anniversary, we will be presenting throughout 2008 a series of milestone Letters that made long-lived contributions to physics, either by announcing significant discoveries, or by initiating new areas of research."

Institute of Physics Journals Enhancements

Here is an update on new developments to the IOPscience platform for February. You can begin to benefit from these immediately:

Be alerted by e-mail -- Set up an HTML Table of Contents alert for any journal and have new papers delivered direct. You can also manage your alerts from My IOPscience.

Export article details --They have added the option to export article abstracts, references and citations from the article page. You can also export to RefWorks from the article page and the 'Export Search results' page.

Discover highly cited articles -- They have updated their 'most cited' lists. These now show Top 10 articles from the last two years, based on internal data.

Are You a Facebook "Fan" of Penrose?

The Penrose Library now has a Facebook Page. Please let your students know they can become a "fan" of the Penrose Library. This way, they can receive automatic updates concerning major resources and events.

1,250 Journals from Springer

After double checking some of the journal titles, we now have access to most of the journals from Springer through SpringerLink going back to 1997 in most cases.

LibX plugins for IE and Firefox

We have created LibX plugins for Internet Explorer and for Firefox.

What are the cool things this plugin can do? See this explanation.

Science Author Carl Zimmer coming to campus

Event Info: Carl Zimmer, Author Series Lecture
Carl will discuss his recent book, Soul Made Flesh, his working process, and the art of writing about science.

Host: Penrose Library - University of Denver
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Location: Community Room, Craig Hall (Social Work)
Street: 2148 S. High Street
City/Town: Denver, CO
Contact Info Phone: 303.871.3016
Email: jabrams@du.edu

One can also register for the talk on the Penrose Library Facebook Event Page.

Description -- The Penrose Library, in association with the Univeristy of Denver Provost's Office, cordially invites you to attend the Second Annual Penrose Library Author's Lecture by acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer, who will discuss his work, his working process, and the art of writing about science. The program is free and open to DU students, faculty, staff, and community members. Refreshments will be served.

More about the book -- "The subtitle doesn't do justice to this illuminating book, which transcends the 'history of X and how X changed the world' genre with a deep and contextualized exploration of two millennia's worth of human theories about consciousness and the soul. Zimmer, a columnist for Natural History and author of the highly praised Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, is interested in how philosophers and scientists moved from a view of the human soul as immaterial and residing in the heart to the common explanation of thought as having a material grounding in the brain and nervous system." [From Amazon / Publishers Weekly]

New Royal Society of Chemistry journals

We now have access to a bunch more journals from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). We can access most all of their journals going back atleast 10 years. Some of the added titles are the Analyst, Annual Reports Sections A, B, and C, Journal of Environmental Monitoring, Natural Product Reports, Molecular BioSystems, New Journal of Chemistry, and Soft Matter. There are many others, but those listed above are the most requested titles.

We are currently working on a license for the archive going back to the 1800's, and we have "trial" access while the deal is being worked out.

The records for the journals are not in the Peak catalog yet, but we should be able to have the records available within the next month.

National Engineers Week

You guessed it -- this week is National Engineers Week. It runs February 17-23rd.

Yet even more on the Harvard OA Plan

Library Journal Academic Newswire -- This Week's News
* A Shot Heard 'Round the Academic World: Harvard FAS Mandates Open Access
* After Harvard, the Open Access Deluge?
* Shieber: Librarians Very Involved with Harvard OA Motion

Open Access News
Here are some comments on the Harvard OA mandate. They are from Paul Courant at Au Courant, Jonathan Eisen at Tree of Life, and Peter Murray-Rust at The CML Blog.

Harvard To Collect, Disseminate Scholarly Articles For Faculty
"In a move to disseminate faculty research and scholarship more broadly, the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted today to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member's scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit...."