Day: February 10, 2015

Map Your Data with GIS Tools

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Image by Jer Thorp, CC 2.0, http://tinyurl.com/l7v6ls4

Maps are powerful tools for analyzing and displaying patterns among data sets. Librarian Susan Powell will introduce basic concepts and tools used in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in a short workshop on February 18, 2015 from 12:00 pm – 12:30 pm in the Bechtel Engineering Center, Engineering Library Training Room. The workshop will cover key GIS resources that the library offers, as well as some of the best freely available sources and will be helpful to beginning as well as more advanced researchers. No registration required.

Another workshop introducing three web platforms for mapping thematic and demographic data–SimplyMap, Social Explorer, and Policy Map–will be held on February 26, 2015, from 11:30 am-12:00 pm in the Bechtel Engineering Center, Kresge Engineering Library, Room 110.

ChemSpider seminar on March 24

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

RSC ChemSpider Seminar — Managing and Integrating Chemistry on the Internet to Build Community for Chemists

The LBNL Library is hosting a seminar for researchers interested in online collaboration, data storage and curation, data exchange, crowdsourcing, and open access.

This seminar will explore ChemSpider ? a free access service providing a structure centric community for chemists and the richest single source of structure-based chemistry information.

March 24, 2010 ? Wednesday
3:00 p.m. ? 4:30 p.m
Building 50 Auditorium
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Bring your laptop for a hands-on demo session.

**** For UC Berkeley personnel: Please contact Jeffery Loo (JLLoo@lbl.gov) by Monday, March 22, 12:00 p.m. for a visitor pass and shuttle bus directions. A visitor pass is required for entry into the Berkeley Lab by UC Berkeley guests.

ABSTRACT

The increasing availability of free and open access resources for scientists on the internet presents us with a revolution in data availability. The Royal Society of Chemistry hosts ChemSpider, a free access website for chemists built with the intention of building community for chemists.

ChemSpider is an aggregator of chemistry related information, at present over 20 million unique chemical entities linked out to over 300 separate data sources, ChemSpider has taken on the task of both robotically and manually curating publicly available data sources. It is also a public deposition platform where chemists can deposit their own data including novel structures, analytical data, synthesis procedures and host data associated with the growing activities associated with Open Notebook Science.

This presentation will examine chemistry on the internet, the dubious quality of what is available and how the ChemSpider crowdsourced curation platform is fast becoming one of the centralized hubs for resourcing information about chemical entities.

We will also review our efforts to provide free resources for synthesis procedures, spectral data and structure-based searching of the chemistry literature and how chemists can contribute directly to each of these projects. Following the presentation and a question and answer session, a hands on session showing how to search for, curate and deposit data on ChemSpider will be given for interested parties.

SPEAKER

Antony Williams, PhD, is a leader in the domain of free access chemistry. He is the Vice President of Strategic Development at the Royal Society of Chemistry and is the host of ChemSpider, a free online structure centric community for chemists.

ChemSpider began as a hobby project in a basement and went on to become one of the most popular Chemistry websites with the highest quality of data available online. Antony spent over a decade in the commercial scientific software business as Chief Science Officer for ACD/Labs, one of the domain leaders in scientific software. He is an accomplished NMR spectroscopist with over 100 peer-reviewed publications. During his career he was the NMR Technology Leader for the Eastman-Kodak company and has worked in both academia and national government research institutions.

Library Research Prize deadline April 18

Posted on by Brian Quigley

The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research rewards excellence in undergraduate research projects that use library resources and demonstrate sophisticated library research skills on the part of undergraduate researchers. The library offers up to six prizes annually: $750 for lower-division students and $1,000 for upper-division undergraduates.

Projects from Summer 2010, Fall 2010, and Spring 2011 are eligible. Submissions will be accepted through April 18, 2011.

Questions? Visit the Library Prize website.

Mobile library website released

Posted on by Brian Quigley

Screenshot of mobile version

As part of the new mobile campus website, the Library recently launched its own mobile website. The mobile version provides easy access to hours, library locations, chat reference, contact information for subject librarians, events, and mobile versions of the OskiCat and NextGen Melvyl catalogs.

Library users on mobile devices should be automatically redirected to the mobile version (unless you have set your smartphone to load the full version). The mobile website can also be accessed at http://mobile.lib.berkeley.edu/.

WebCSD – easy access to crystallography data

Posted on by Anna Sackmann

If you work with small molecules and value reliable crystallographic data, you probably already know about the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), a collection of almost 400,000 organic and organometallic crystal structures.  But did you know that UCB students, faculty and staff have access to WebCSD, an online portal to the CSD?  With the intuitive interface of the WebCSD and no need to download data or software, the WebCSD is an excellent instructional tool for the classroom as well as an advanced research tool for the laboratory.

Features of WebCSD include:

  • Substructure searching
  • Similarity searching
  • Text/numeric searching (journal reference, compound name, all text)
  • Reduced cell searching
  • Easy structure and result export features
  • Customizable 3D display

To read more about WebCSD, click here.
The full CSD client system is still available for downloading here.

Knovel University Challenge

Posted on by Anna Sackmann

The Knovel University Challenge has begun!

Answer 3 questions correctly for a chance to win an iPad, cash or cool stuff. You have until (midnight) December 1 to submit your answers. All entries with a total of 3 correct answers in the same difficulty level will be placed into a single random drawing for the following prizes: (1) iPad 2, (1) Cash, (8) Cool Stuff and up to (10) iPod Nanos for qualifying schools. The drawing will take place on December 2, 2011.

OSA’s Optics ImageBank +

Posted on by Elliott Smith
Now available OSA’s Premium Optics InfoBase!  The Optical Society of America added the  Optics ImageBank and expanded Conference Proceedings to their core digital resource, which provides access to peer-reviewed articles on optics and photonics.

The Optics ImageBank contains more than 200,000 images from OSA’s journal articles, many are cross-linked to related images.  Images can be browsed and searched by keyword, exported to PowerPoint and PDF formats for educational purposes, and enhanced interactive equations can be exported.  The Optical Society of America is continually updating the Premium Optics InfoBase & the ImageBank.
Try it out!

SCOAP3 edges closer to goal….

Posted on by Elliott Smith
Moving toward its goal, SCOAP3, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, announced article processing charges for twelve journals. CERN and the publishers also announced that all articles in high-energy physics would be open access from 2014, in return for a yearly fee paid by the publishers & library partners.

Visit SCOAP3 at CERN for more information.