Showing posts with label chemistry_news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemistry_news. Show all posts

Friday, January 16, 2009

Search multiple databases from DOE

Science Accelerator is a federated search engine for the U.S. Department of Energy's science and technical information. Using Science Accelerator, users can search Research & Development reports, e-prints, conference proceedings, patents, and Web sites. Using a basic search or an advanced search, users can access primarily full text information. In addition, Science Accelerator has a number of features usually found in subscription databases, such as the ability to download results to bibliographic citation software, automatic spell-checking, and topic clustering to assist in narrowing your search. Basic searches in various topics yielded results in energy, environment, computing, physics, geology, chemistry, and marine science.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Web resources for science topics

A consortium of seven UK universities has put together Intute, which is a collection of vetted, educational Internet resources in many topics. There are many useful resources to be explored for science students. Subject booklets have been created in Science and Technology and Health and Life Sciences. Each booklet contains an annotated bibliography of web resources.

In the Science and Technology section, the following booklets are available:

  • Internet resources for environmental science
  • Internet resources for materials engineering
  • Internet resources for environmental engineering
  • Internet resources for physics
  • Internet resources for chemistry
  • Internet resources for computing
In the Health and Life Sciences section, the following booklets are available:
  • Internet resources for biological sciences
  • Internet resources for pregnancy and childbirth
  • Internet resources for animal health
  • Internet resources for physiotherapy and orthopaedics
  • Internet resources for agriculture, food and forestry
  • Internet resources for healthcare and medicine
Many of the resources are international or British organizations, which may help expand your personal favorite sites list beyond the United States.

Another valuable resource at Intute is the Virtual Training Suite. The VTS offers tutorials on conducting research on the Internet in a number of different scientific, social science and humanities disciplines. First the tutorials give you a "tour" of the best available. As you read about sites, you can add the ones that interest you to your own "basket."Next there is a research section that offers information on finding and evaluating sites. Finally you can read success stories on how others use the Internet effectively. At the end you can add the links you collected in your basket to your favorites, or you can email or print them off.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Scifinder Scholar accessible on the Web

Happy New Year and welcome back for Winter Term!


I know many students and faculty are experiencing Winter Term off campus. I was going to wait until Spring semester for this announcement, but I am too excited. Plus, as most of you know, I will be having a baby around the start of Spring Semester, and I did not want you to miss this news.

Scifinder Scholar has migrated to its Web platform for Eckerd College. This means you do not have to access Scifinder Scholar via the desktop platform, which is only available in the library and the chemistry lab.

The new Scifinder Scholar interface is available through the library web page in the database list and on some of the science subject guides:

To use the new interface, you have to establish an account with Scifinder Scholar. This will be a free account, and it will only accept your Eckerd email. To sign up, click here. Once you have an account, you can log in to use the database.

Not only is the platform different, but so is the search interface. I think many of you will find it similar to other databases you may use, such as Web of Science. Web training, how-to guides, and strategies for new search interface are available from CAS.

Note that while the access point has changed, our access limits are still in place. We share 2 seats among 3 colleges. Therefore, you may encounter times when you cannot enter the database. Try again later. For this reason, I also urge you to log out when you are finished so you are not blocking another user. (You will be logged out automatically if you leave the interface idle for too long.)

UPDATE: Jan 20. I have learned that you cannot register for Scifinder Scholar off campus, and at this time, you also cannot access the web version off campus. However, the latter issue is being worked on by our It department. Soon you should be able to access the Web interface from off campus AFTER you register on campus.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

National Chemistry Week


October 19-October 25 is National Chemistry Week. The theme for the 21st annual event promoted by the American Chemical Society is HAVING A BALL WITH CHEMISTRY. The only Florida event listed on the events page is taking place in Jacksonville. To find more information, visit the National Chemistry week site.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Consider a career as a science librarian

During the interview process at Eckerd a year ago, I discussed with one of the interviewers the prospects of science librarianship as a career for students who graduate with a science degree. This is still an avenue I wish to explore with students at Eckerd, and as I look into ways to bring this career path into focus, I thought to start with a blog post. The following resources may be of interest if you are a science student who is considering a different, exciting, flexible career with many opportunites.

Leaving Science for LIS
This article describes a study done with librarians who came from the sciences. It includes advice to scientists considering a career in librarianship

From Engineer to Librarian
Personal story of a fourth year engineering student whose heart wasn't in it, and how becoming an engineering librarian was the perfect solution

Science Majors Needed
A brochure from the Association of College and Research Libraries-Science & Technology Section

Medical Library Association Career Development
Brochures, videos, job lists, and more for medical librarianship

Resources on Careers in Chemical Information
Blog, books, web articles and other resources from the American Chemical Society

So there's just a taste, and hopefully more information will be forthcoming in your classes, in a workshop, or ...

Thursday, September 25, 2008

200 open access journals from Bentham


Prof. Meylan brought a new open access resource to my attention: Bentham Open. Bentham aims to provide more than 200 open access journals in Science, technology and medicine. At least one, but often several, journals are featured in each of the following subjects:

Most are being indexed by Google Scholar, and Chemical Abstracts has also picked up a number of journals. This means that the journal articles will appear when searching Scifinder Scholar.