Swain Library News » Uncategorized

E-reading’s future may not be iPad, but Blio

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:57:15 +0000

Blio’s makers say it will allow students to interact with textbooks in full color.

“Despite all the buzz about Apple’s iPad tablet and how it could be useful for reading electronic textbooks, a new software program on the way might hold even more promise for education.

Blio, a free eReader program that is expected to be available in February, reportedly will allow users to read more than a million electronic books on nearly any computer or portable device, with the ability to highlight and annotate text, hear the text read aloud, and more.

Blio was announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and is the brainchild of education technology pioneer Ray Kurzweil, creator of Kurzweil Educational Systems and a range of assistive technology products.

Perhaps the software’s most impressive feature is that it can support the original layout, font, and graphics of any book in full color, its creators say. It also can support embedded multimedia such as video and audio, and readers have the ability to highlight, annotate, and share information.

Blio isn’t yet available, but already it’s backed by Baker & Taylor, one of the world’s largest publishers, as well as Elsevier, Hachette, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley. Blio users will have access to more than 1 million books altogether, its makers say—including a large selection of current bestselling titles…”

Linking Electronic Resources in Coursework & CCNet: Engineering Library Workshop

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:35:42 +0000

Please bring your lunch and join the Engineering Library for their continuing series of workshops. This workshop will give an overview of the options within CourseWork and CCNet for linking to licensed electronic content for required or supplemental course reading. Examples of e-books, e-book chapters and journal articles will be covered. More information at the Engineering Library blog.

Local Harvest

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:14:29 +0000

The Sounds of Science

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:03:25 +0000

“The Sounds of Science is a small group of graduate students and recent alumni of UC Berkeley that share a common love of science and music. Our aim is to promote awareness of science to the community of all ages through fun music videos available free on the internet.”

Safety song
Safety comes first! Bokor monster learns that while science is fun, it’s important to be aware of the many hazards in the lab.

Nanosong
What a wonderful surprise!: when certain things get really really small, they behave much differently than they normally would. Glory sings about what it means to be nano, and some of the applications of nano-sized materials.

Science of Synthesis Webinars Training Schedule for Nov. and Dec.

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:21:36 +0000

Science of Synthesis Webinars Training Schedule

Are you getting the most benefit from the Science of Synthesis online reference work in synthetic methodology? Learn about the powerful search and navigation capabilities available in Science of Synthesis and how this toolbox of evaluated synthetic methods can save you time and help you work more efficiently.

What you’ll learn…
Locating critically evaluated synthetic methods and full experimental procedures for a functional group transformation using:

Browsing in Science of Synthesis
Reaction search
Full-text and name reaction search
Structure and Reaction Search (including atom mapping, chemoselective searches and more)
Searching within the references and locating citations to Science of Synthesis

Who should attend?
Synthetic organic chemists, chemical information managers and chemistry librarians

Duration: 1 hour
Fee: Complimentary

The webinar is available at two different times for your convenience:

Wednesday, November 04, 2009, 7–8AM Pacific Standard Time
Monday, December 07, 10–11AM Pacific Standard Time

Online tutorials and pre-recorded sessions are also available.

Periodic Tables

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:12:38 +0000

This year’s NCW theme celebrated the Periodic Table of the Elements. To view more resources on periodic tables, go to the Resources for NCW 2009 site or see Swain’s Periodic Tables page.

National Chemistry Week 2009

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:06:29 +0000

National Chemistry Week

October 18–24, 2009

It’s not too late to celebrate!

National Chemistry Week 2009: “Chemistry — It’s Elemental!”

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:02:04 +0000

Mark your calendar: This year’s National Chemistry Week (NCW) celebration will be October 18–24, 2009, and the NCW theme this year is “Chemistry — It’s Elemental,” in recognition of the 140th anniversary of the Periodic Table of the Elements.

General Library Information

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:03:48 +0000

Library Maps (pdf)

Library Hours

Publish or Perish

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:49:03 +0000

Are you applying for tenure, promotion or a new job? Do you want to include evidence of the impact of your research? Is your work cited in journals which are not ISI listed? Then you might want to try Publish or Perish, designed to help individual academics to present their case for research impact to its best advantage.

Publish or Perish is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and presents the following statistics:

Total number of papers
Total number of citations
Average number of citations per paper
Average number of citations per author
Average number of papers per author
Average number of citations per year
Hirsch’s h-index and related parameters
Egghe’s g-index
The contemporary h-index
The age-weighted citation rate
Two variations of individual h-indices
An analysis of the number of authors per paper.

Available for Windows and Linux platforms