Author: Brian Quigley
OskiCat and proxy server downtime on Nov. 23
OskiCat and the library proxy server (for accessing licensed electronic resources off-campus) will be unavailable from 2:00-4:00 p.m. on Friday, November 23, while we perform scheduled maintenance. This also means that UCB call number and availability information will be unavailable in Melvyl. For off-campus access, the VPN will still work.
IET eBooks now available
We now have access to the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) eBooks Collection. The collection includes over 300 books published from 1979-2012. For each title, you can download individual chapters or the whole book as PDF files. Records for these ebooks will appear in OskiCat eventually.
Please note: The IET Digital Library includes ebooks, journals, and conferences, but we only have access to the ebooks on this platform. Our access to IET journals and conferences is via IEEE Xplore.
New platform for Springer journals and ebooks on Nov. 26
Springer journal and ebook content will be migrating to a new Springer platform effective Monday, November 26. You will automatically be redirected to the new SpringerLink site at that time. The new SpringerLink site is faster, easier to use, and optimized for most mobile devices.
Please note: Individual personalized accounts created on the old SpringerLink platform will not be migrated to the new platform. Users wanting to save searches and alerts will need to create a new account when the new platform is made available. The old platform will remain accessible through the end of 2012, in case you need to retrieve settings from your old account.
Originally posted on CDLINFO News.
DataUp: describe, manage and share your data
Recently the California Digital Library (CDL) and its partners released DataUp, a free tool to help researchers (especially in the earth, ecological, and environmental sciences) to manage and archive their tabular data. It was developed to integrate with Microsoft Excel, though researchers can use the Web application and/or Microsoft Excel add-in. Both versions allow users to:
- Perform a “best practices check” to ensure data are well-formatted and organized
- Create standardized metadata, or a description of the data, using a wizard-style template
- Retrieve a unique identifier for their dataset from the data repository
- Post their datasets and associated metadata to the ONEShare repository.
More information about DataUp can be found in the press release and the DataPub blog. DataUp joins other data management tools developed by CDL and its partners including:
- DMP Tool: to help prepare and save data management plans for your grant applications
- EZID: to create and manage unique, persistent, and citable identifiers for your data
- Merritt: to manage, preserve, and/or share your data
Please see our Scientific Data Services for more information on these tools and other data management services.
New look to the National Geologic Map Database
Today is Geologic Map Day! In honor of this celebration, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) have released a redesigned National Geologic Map Database. The National Geologic Map Database pulls together geologic maps from the USGS, state geological surveys, and other publishers to help users find geologic mapping of locations across the U.S.
The redesign upgrades both the interface and underlying infrastructure, utilizing the latest technologies to improve search and discovery. This includes the brand new MapView search.
International Open Access Week
The Library will be sponsoring a number of events during Open Access Week and all are invited to attend! There are two events of particular interest for faculty and researchers in the sciences:
- Open Access at UC: Maximizing the Reach, Visibility and Impact of Your Research, A Faculty Conversation on Scholarly Communication with Richard Schneider (UCSF), Tuesday, Oct. 23, 3:30-5:00pm, Education-Psychology Library
- Publish Smart, Maximize Impact: Sciences, Thursday, Oct. 25, 11:00am-12:30pm, Engineering Library
More information about these events and other scholarly communication issues can be found on The Library’s Scholarly Communication News at Berkeley blog.
Homecoming book and map sale October 6
Celebrate Homecoming by acquiring some good books and maps!
Date: Saturday, October 6
Time: 10:00 am to 2:30 pm
Book sale (303 Doe): Hunt for treasures in our selection of 3,000 books. Most are hardbound works from donated collections, covering virtually every subject collected by the University Library. Prices vary, but all are low. Don’t miss this chance to add to your own library!
Map sale (190 Doe): Don’t miss this special sale of nearly 3,000 duplicate and superseded maps priced at $1 each (or 25 maps for $20). The maps are mostly USGS topographic quadrangles, nautical and aeronautical charts, and a small assortment of other topographic, street, and tourist maps.
More tours and events can be found at the Homecoming 2012 website.
Embase database now available: 25 million citations strong
We are happy to announce that UC Berkeley campus users now have access to Embase, a biomedical and pharmacological database with over 25 million citations.
Comprised of the MEDLINE database (which is also in PubMed) and citations from over 2,000 unique-to-Embase journal titles, Embase has especially strong coverage in drug, pharmaceutical, and toxicological research, including economic evaluations.
Please see the original post on the Sheldon Margen Public Health Library News blog for more information.
Knovel University Challenge 2012
The Knovel University Challenge 2012 has begun!
Use Knovel to correctly answer a series of engineering-related questions for a chance to win an iPad, Beats Headphones, and other prizes. The contest runs September 10 through December 1. Chances to win include:
- A Grand Prize Drawing on December 2 for an Apple iPad selected from all eligible entries.
- Weekly Drawings for a new Western Digital HD TV Live Streaming Media Player from the pool of student entries that week.
- The first 10 universities with 100 players join a contest-within-the-contest, with one student participant from each university winning a set of Beats Tour earphones.
The deadline for Grand Prize entries is Midnight on December 1, 2012.
RefWorks: Storage limit increased to 5 GB
Attention RefWorks users! You can now store up to 5GB of your stuff on RefWorks’ “cloud” – a significant increase from before. The UC Berkeley Library has communicated this need to RefWorks, and the change was made today.
What would you store in RefWorks? Besides all the citations, you can store PDFs and other files in your RefWorks database. This new storage limit ensures that you will not likely run out of space, no matter how many files you upload.
Help and tutorials on using RefWorks is available on the Public Health Library’s website.
Originally posted on Sheldon Margen Public Health Library News.