Pie, of course. Before you head out for Spring Break, stop by the UI Libraries on Thursday, March 14 for the celebration. Grab an apple tartlet at:

Think back to your high school geometry class; Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi is approximately 3.14159, but has been calculated to over two trillion digits, it goes on infinitely without repeating or becoming a pattern. Science would not exist without Pi.  Mathematics, statistics, engineering, geography, geology, computer science, etc. all rely on Pi.

More information about Pi can be found at Wolfram MathWorld: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Pi.html

A new policy memorandum from Dr. John Holdren of the Office of Science and Technology Policy requires Federal agencies to develop plans to make the published results and digital data of federally funded research freely available to the public within 12 months of publication.

For more information, including the full-text of the memorandum:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/25/white-house-pushes-open-access-taxpayer-funded-research

Do you use Web of Science in your research? The UI Libraries provide free access to Web of Science, an excellent multidisciplinary citation database. Join us for a Web of Science Workshop and learn advanced techniques that will help you conduct your research more efficiently and effectively.

Lunch @ the Sciences Library
Web of Science Workshop
11:30am- 12:20pm, Wednesday, February 27th
102 SL (Sciences Library Classroom)

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Access Web of Science from off-campus;
• Use Advanced Search to retrieve more relevant search results;
• Analyze result lists by author, organization, publication year, etc.;
• Save citations from Web of Science to RefWorks, EndNote and other citation managers;
• Set up alerts to keep up with the literature in your field;
• Find the full-text of citations retrieved in Web of Science;
• Get help when you need it!

This workshop is free and open to all UI students, faculty and staff. There is no need to register. You may bring your lunch if desired. Free coffee will be provided. If you have any questions, please contact Sara Scheib at sara-scheib@uiowa.edu or (319) 335-3024.

Are you starting a new research paper or project and looking for a way to manage your references? Then join us for this useful and informative workshop about RefWorks! RefWorks is a web-based citation manager and it’s free to all University of Iowa students, faculty and staff.

Lunch @ the Sciences Library: RefWorks Workshop
Wednesday, February 13 @ 11:30am – 12:20pm
Sciences Library classroom (102 SL)

In this workshop, you will learn:

• How to sign up for a free RefWorks account;
• How to export references to RefWorks from popular research databases;
• How to use RefWorks to organize and share your references;
• How to use RefWorks format citations and bibliographies;
• How to download and use the free Write-N-Cite add-on to Microsoft Word to include preformatted citations and bibliographies in your paper.

This workshop is open to all UI students, faculty and staff. There is no need to register. You may bring you lunch if desired. Free coffee will be provided. If you have any questions, please contact Sara Scheib at sara-scheib@uiowa.edu or (319) 335-3024.

Sciences Library Winter Interim Hours, December 15, 2012 – January 21, 2013:

Exceptions: CLOSED December 24-28 & 31, January 1 & 21.

The August 2012 theses and dissertations are now available in Iowa Research Online (IRO), which is the repository of the research and scholarly output selected and deposited by the faculty, researchers and students of the University of Iowa. IRO is part of the larger Open Access movement to transform scholarly communication.

The sciences departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are well represented in IRO with the following departments contributing new disserations and theses.

• Chemistry – 3 contributions
• Geoscience – 3 contributions
• Mathematics – 9 contributions
• Physics – 5 contributions
• Statistics – 1 contributions

The UI Libraries are also happy to announce some improved functionality in Iowa Research Online.

• The internal search options are dramatically improved with facets included in the search results.
• There is a new follow option. You can now follow a series, person, discipline, etc. All you have to do is sign up for a free bepress account and then click follow. You will receive an email when new content is added.
• The disciplines are now more connected to other sites. The page listing them has been reorganized so that you can see the subdisciplines, authors and the works in the discipline. If an item is in a subdiscipline, it should also appear in the parent discipline. Each page includes a link to the “commons” which links all the bepress participating institutions together.

If you have any questions about the IRO or if you would like to deposit your research there, please contact the Sciences Library.