Online Reference Services and Research Help

The Koshland Bioscience, Natural Resources, & Public Health Library’s reference services have moved online at least through the end of March, in alignment with “social distancing” recommendations from campus.

Contact a Librarian

Librarians are available Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm to answer any questions you might have. Email one of us or click on the link to schedule a Zoom meeting or Google Hangout.

24/7 online help

Chat

Chat with a librarian. The chat service is staffed by Berkeley librarians, but at peak service times or off-hours you may be connected with a librarian from another academic institution.

Online guides, tutorials and videos

Connecting from off campus

If you are not on campus, use EZProxy or the VPN (VPN users: choose Library Access – Full Tunnel rather than the default Split Tunnel) to authenticate yourself as a Berkeley student, faculty, or staff to access online books, journals, databases, and other resources.

If a desired resource is not available as a full-text version online, Berkeley students, faculty, and staff can place a request to our Interlibrary Borrowing Service. If the Library is closed due to unforeseen circumstances, we will update you about our ability to provide this to you via email.


Author Event with Dr. Jennifer Doudna

Tuesday, November 14, 2017. 4:30-6:00pm.
Bioscience & Natural Resources Library, 2101 VLSB.
A Crack in Creation

Dr. Jennifer A. Doudna, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry, UC Berkeley and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, will discuss her new book, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, a fascinating chronicle of the discovery of CRISPR and the ethical questions to come.

Sponsored by: University Library, Life & Health Sciences Division.

The Library attempts to offer programs in accessible, barrier-free settings. If you think you may require disability-related accommodations, please contact the event sponsor, Susan Koskinen, skoskine@berkeley.edu, as soon as possible.


Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) workshop

Ingenuity Pathway Analysis

A representative from Qiagen will offer a hands-on training workshop on using IPA to interpret expression data (including RNA-seq).

Date: Thursday, Nov. 9
Time: 1:30-4:30 pm
Location: Bioscience Library Training Room, 2101 Valley Life Sciences Building

You are invited to participate in this free training, and are encouraged to bring your own laptop or use the computer workstations in our training room.

Please register if you are interested in attending.

The workshop will cover how to:

  • Format, upload your data, and launch an analysis
  • Identify likely pathways that are expressed
  • Find causal regulators and their directional effect on gene functions and diseases
  • Build pathways, make connections between entities, and overlay multiple datasets on a pathway or network
  • Understand the affected biological processes
  • Perform a comparison analysis: utilize a heat map to easily visualize trends across multiple time points or samples

Questions? Please contact Elliott Smith (esmith@library.berkeley.edu)


Citation Management: Best Practice

Overview of the best citation management software tools to use for your documents, bibliographies, pdfs + more.
Drop-in, hands-on workshop.
Location: Bioscience Library Training Room, 2101 VLSB
Date: Thursday, September 7
Time: 12 – 1 pm

No pre-registration is required; all are welcome.

Questions? Please contact Susan Koskinen, skoskine@berkeley.edu


Advanced PubMed workshop

PubMed logo

Want to make your searches for biomedical information more effective and efficient? The Library’s Life and Health Sciences Division is holding a hands-on workshop on advanced features of PubMed, including:

  • How to use filters to focus search results on specific article types, publication dates and more
  • How to add field tags to find articles by author, title, journal, and other criteria
  • How Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) can help you find additional relevant information
  • How to use My NCBI to save searches, set up alerts, and display results in your preferred format
  • How PubMed links to information in other NCBI resources

Location: Bioscience Library Training Room, 2101 VLSB
Date: Tuesday, September 5, repeated Wednesday, September 6
Time: 12 – 1 pm

No pre-registration is required; all are welcome.

Questions? Please contact Elliott Smith at esmith@library.berkeley.edu

For additional workshops on NCBI bioinformatics tools, citation managers, searching Scopus, writing and collaboration tools, data visualization, productivity tools and techniques, and other topics, please see the Science Libraries Events Calendar.


NCBI bioinformatics tools: An introduction

NCBI-Logo_sm

A hands-on workshop introducing NCBI bioinformatics tools such as PubMed, Gene, Protein, Nucleotide, and BLAST:

  • Starting with a disease, syndrome, or process, identify the genes/proteins involved
  • Starting with an organism and a protein, find the protein sequence and gene coding region
  • Starting with a sequence, identify the gene/protein and source

The workshop will cover selecting the proper tools for your question, navigating through the interlinked NCBI databases, and saving your results. It will be offered twice:

  • Dates: Tuesday August 29 (add to bCal) and Wednesday August 30 (add to bCal)
  • Time: 12 – 1 pm
  • Location: Bioscience Library Training Room, 2101 VLSB

Open to all interested students and researchers; no registration is required.

Questions? Contact esmith@library.berkeley.edu

For additional workshops on citation managers, searching PubMed and Scopus, writing and collaboration tools, data visualization, productivity tools and techniques, and other topics, please see the Science Libraries Events Calendar.


Advanced PubMed workshop

PubMed logo

Want to make your searches for biomedical information more effective and efficient? The Library’s Life and Health Sciences Division is holding a hands-on workshop on advanced features of PubMed, including:

  • How to use filters to focus search results on specific article types, publication dates and more
  • How to add field tags to find articles by author, title, journal, and other criteria
  • How Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) can help you find additional relevant information
  • How to use My NCBI to save searches, set up alerts, and display results in your preferred format
  • How PubMed links to information in other NCBI resources

Location: Bioscience Library Training Room, 2101 VLSB
Date: Wednesday April 12
Time: 12 – 1 pm

No pre-registration is required; all are welcome.

Questions? Please contact Elliott Smith at esmith@library.berkeley.edu