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Spring Workshops

By
Sara Scheib
– February 2, 2017Posted in: Events

Spring 2017 Sciences Library WorkshopsThe following workshops will be offered at the Sciences Library during the Spring semester. Our workshops are open to everyone and there is no need to register. They will be held in 102 SL, the classroom on the first floor of the Sciences Library. If you have any questions, please contact Sara Scheib.

Pro-Searching Tips – Wednesday, February 8 at 1 – 1:50 PM 
This is your chance to learn how to search like a librarian! Bring your questions and learn how to save time and effort by applying some simple search strategies. You’ll learn how to improve your search results, which resources are the best bets for different types of information, and how to refine your results when you get overwhelmed. And you’ll learn how to evaluate the quality of the information you find, no matter where you find it.

Staying Current – Wednesday, February 22 at 1 – 1:50 PM
How do you keep up with the news and research in your field? Would you like to learn how to use technology to find new information? Join us for a Staying Current workshop, and learn how to use RSS feeds and other alert options to keep up with blog posts, news, and scholarly articles.

EndNote – Wednesday, March 8 at 1 – 1:50 PM
In this workshop you will learn to use EndNote to import references from popular databases, organize and share your references, use tools to automatically format in-text citations and bibliographies, and use Microsoft Word add-ons to include pre-formatted citations in your paper. Participant’s questions about other citation management tools will be addressed if time permits.

Scholarly Publishing – Wednesday, April 5 at 1 – 1:50 PM
Have you ever wondered how the scholarly publishing process works? Have you heard the buzz about open access and wonder if/how it changes things? Are you worried about predatory publishers? This workshop will provide an overview of traditional and open access scholarly publishing models. Participants will also learn more about the UI Libraries Open Access Fund, author’s rights, and how to identify predatory publishers.

Data Management 101 – Wednesday, April 12 at 1 – 1:50 PM
Are you confused about funding agencies’ new data management and sharing policies? Or do you need some help managing your research data? You’re not alone, and we can help! The purpose of this workshop is to explain research-data management and its importance, help identify some common data management issues, and learn about best practices and resources that are available.

Scholarly Impact – Wednesday, April 26 at 1 – 1:50 PM
In this workshop, participants will learn how to use tools such as Ulrich’s, Journal Citation Reports, Web of Science, and Scopus to determine the impact that journals, articles, and authors have had on a particular field. Topics include impact factors, H-indices, and other metrics.

If you’re interested, but unable to attend these workshops, private appointments and webinars are available. Contact Sara Scheib for more information.

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Finals Week at the Sciences Library

By
Sara Scheib
– December 8, 2016Posted in: Uncategorized

You’re getting ready for Finals Week, and so is the Sciences Library! The following special activities will be available all week (Mon., Dec. 12 – Fri., Dec. 16)!:

  1. Missing Mascot Mug Giveaway – Our mascot, Chauncey, is missing! Find him in the Library, bring him to the service desk, and win a free Sciences Library travel mug (while supplies last)!Travel mugChauncey
  2. Legos, K’Nex, and coloring – Take a study break and relax with building games and coloring pages/crayons!toys and games
  3. Free coffee, tea, and treats – We always put out free coffee and tea to help fuel your studies, but Finals Week is special, so we have treats too! Pam is making her famous mini brownies!coffee and treats

We’ll be open from 8:30 a.m. – 10 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Friday. Join us!

 

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SpringerMaterials Database

By
Sara Scheib
– November 3, 2016Posted in: Chemistry, Physics

The UI Libraries now has access to the SpringerMaterials database, a unique and authoritative source SpringerMaterialsfor numerical and graphical data on the properties of materials. This database contains more than 500,000 online documents covering 3,000 properties spread across 250,000 materials and chemical systems. It consists of seven major parts:

  1. The Landolt-Börnstein Series: 461 volumes, 290,000 substances and 1,400,000 citations.
  2. The complete Linus Pauling Files: A comprehensive database covering the properties of inorganic solid phases and containing 255,000 documents with 129,000 interactive structures.
  3. A subset of the Dortmund Database of Software and Separation Technology which covers the thermophysical properties of pure liquids and binary mixtures, with 472,000 data points.
  4. An Adsorption Database covering over 1,500 reversible, equilibrium isotherms on 66 adsorbents.
  5. A Polymer Thermodynamics database containing 30,000 data points covering 150 polymers.
  6. The MSI Database, a collection of 4,100 critically evaluated reports on binary/ternary elemental systems and 7,500 interactive phase diagrams.
  7. Corrosion Database, compiled from various literature sources by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), contains 24,724 unique records of corrosion rates/ratings of 1,026 different materials in 288 different environments, under various exposure conditions.

You can use SpringerMaterials to search by keyword, element, or structure. There’s also a separate Corrosion Search. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, you can also browse by collection. Property information is already collected and formatted, so you don’t need to retrieve and analyze the primary literature sources.

UI students, faculty, and staff can access SpringerMaterials on or off-campus using the links on the Libraries’ websites. It is linked from the Chemistry and Physics subject guides. It’s also listed in the A-Z Databases list and in the library catalog. If you are off-campus, you will be prompted to login with your HawkID and password.

If you have questions about SpringerMaterials or would like a demonstration, please contact the Sciences Library for assistance.

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Haunted Laboratory Exhibit

By
Sara Scheib
– October 19, 2016Posted in: Exhibits

The Sciences Library has a spooky new exhibit, just in time to celebrate Halloween. Come check out our Haunted Laboratory exhibit! Many thanks to the Museum of Natural History for the loan of spine-chilling items from their collections.

Haunted Laboratory, case 1 Haunted Laboratory, case 2

 

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Use Google Scholar to access library subscriptions

By
Sara Scheib
– October 18, 2016Posted in: Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences, Math, Physics

Question: How do I access articles the library subscribes to through Google Scholar?

Answer: The answer to this depends upon where you are when searching Google Scholar. If you are using a computer connected to the campus network, Google Scholar automatically detects that and provides a text link to UILink. Follow that link to see if we have access to the article.

UILink in Google Scholar

If you are searching Google Scholar from off campus, you have two options for getting Google Scholar to recognize that you are affiliated with UI. If you use our link (http://purl.lib.uiowa.edu/GoogleSch) from Databases A-Z, you will be prompted to log in with your Hawk ID and then UILink will appear in Google Scholar results.

If you are working off campus and prefer to go directly to Google Scholar, you can show it that you are UI-affiliated if you have a Google account. When logged in to your Google account and on the Google Scholar search page, go to Settings in the upper right, then Library links on the left side of the Scholar Settings page. Use the search box to locate University of Iowa, then the check box to turn on University of Iowa – ViewIt@UILink in results.

Google Scholar Settings

Note: You may need to uncheck “UIowa InfoLink:Full Text” first. And if you want to retain your settings across devices, you must turn on cookies.

If you have any questions or problems with setting up UILink in Google Scholar, please contact Sara Scheib.

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ORCiD Researcher Identifier – sign up today!

By
Sara Scheib
– September 28, 2016Posted in: Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences, Math, Physics

ORCiD member logoThe UI Libraries, partnering with Information Technology Services, the Office of the Provost, the Division of Sponsored Programs, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance are leading an initiative to help all research active University of Iowa staff and faculty obtain an ORCID iD and/or link their existing identifier to their University of Iowa email address.

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a non-profit, platform agnostic registry of unique author identifiers. Many publishers, funders and academic institutions have already adopted ORCID and may be requiring its use in the near future.

Having an ORCID iD

  • makes your work discoverable by others
  • connects your research to you throughout your career, no matter how your name appears in publication
  • distinguishes you from other researchers with similar names
  • minimizes the time you spend filling out forms when submitting research or applying for grants
  • is being required by major journal publishers and funders
  • gives you access to an ImpactStory page (an altmetrics tool)

Click the green button below to sign up for your ORCID iD (Hawk ID and PW required)

Click to create and ORCID iD or Connect Your ORCID iD

To learn more about ORCiD at the UI, see the UI Libraries information page.

If you have any questions about ORCiD please contact the Sciences Library.

See an example ORCID iD page.

See an example ImpactStory.

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Fall 2016 Workshops

By
Sara Scheib
– September 19, 2016Posted in: Events

sciences-library-workshop-series-1The following workshops will be offered at the Sciences Library during the Fall semester. Our workshops are open to everyone and there is no need to register. They will be held in 102 SL, the classroom on the first floor of the Sciences Library. If you have any questions, please contact Sara Scheib.

EndNote – Monday, September 12 at 1:30 – 2:20 PM
In this workshop you will learn to use EndNote to import references from popular databases, organize and share your references, use tools to automatically format in-text citations and bibliographies, and use Microsoft Word add-ons to include pre-formatted citations in your paper.

Mendeley – Wednesday, September 28 at 2 – 2:50 PM
Mendeley Reference Manager is a popular tool used to save, organize, and cite references from journals, books, and other sources. In this workshop, you will learn how to use Mendeley for your research and writing.

Staying Current – Thursday, October 6 at 3:30 – 4:20 PM
How do you keep up with the news and research in your field? Would you like to learn how to use technology to find new information? Join us for a Staying Current workshop, and learn how to use RSS feeds and other alert options to keep up with blog posts, news, and scholarly articles.

Scholarly Publishing and Open Access – Wednesday, October 19 at 2 – 2:50 PM
Have you ever wondered how the scholarly publishing process works? Have you heard the buzz about open access and wonder if/how it changes things? Are you worried about predatory publishers? This workshop will provide an overview of traditional scholarly publishing and how the open access movement is changing things. Participants will also learn more about the UI Libraries Open Access Fund and how to identify predatory publishers.

Data Management – Monday, November 7 at 2 – 2:50 PM
Are you confused about funding agencies’ new data management and sharing policies? Or do you need some help managing your research data? You’re not alone, and we can help! The purpose of this workshop is to explain research-data management and its importance, help identify some common data management issues, and learn about best practices and resources that are available.

Scholarly Impact – Thursday, November 17 at 3:30 – 4:20 PM
In this workshop, participants will learn how to use tools such as Ulrich’s, Journal Citation Reports, Web of Science, and Scopus to determine the impact that journals, articles, and authors have had on a particular field. Topics such as impact factors, Eigenfactors, and H-indices will also be discussed.

If you’re interested, but unable to attend these workshops, private appointments are available. Contact Sara Scheib for more information.

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Public access to NASA-funded research

By
Sara Scheib
– August 26, 2016Posted in: Astronomy, Geosciences, Physics

NASA made an exciting announcement this week. It’s launching a new research portal to provide free public access to the data and publications resulting from NASA-funded research. The portal points to two new services.

The first, called “NASA’s Data Portal” is a catalog of publicly available datasets, APIs, and visualizations. You can use it to explore by category, or search to find a specific dataset.

The second service, called “PubSpace“, will provide free public access to peer-reviewed journal articles and other publications resulting from NASA-funded research. It is an extension of PubMed Central (PMC), which is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and operated by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). PubSpace will be fully functional in Fall 2016.

If you have question or would like to learn more about accessing federally-funded research data or publications, please contact the Sciences Library.

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Coming soon: ChemRxiv

By
Sara Scheib
– August 15, 2016Posted in: Chemistry

The American Chemical Society has announced it plans to launch a preprint server for chemistry, called ChemRxiv. The launch date for the service has yet to be released.

From American Chemical Society News Releases, August 10, 2016:

“The American Chemical Society (ACS) today announced its intention to form ChemRxiv, a chemistry preprint server for the global chemistry community, proposed as a collaborative undertaking that will facilitate the open dissemination of important scientific findings. The Society is presently in the process of inviting interested stakeholders to participate in helping to shape the service ahead of its anticipated launch.”

“”ChemRxiv is expected to follow the established models of arXiv in physics and bioRxiv in the life sciences by enabling researchers working across diverse areas of inquiry to share early results and data with their scientist-colleagues ahead of formal peer review and publication,” says Kevin Davies, Ph.D., who, as Vice President within the ACS Publications Division, will be spearheading the effort as part of a joint undertaking with the Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service.”

And more information from Nature: “Chemists to get their own preprint server”

This is an exciting announcement with the potential to change scholarly publishing in the chemistry community. The Sciences Library will provide more information about this new resource as it becomes available. Stay tuned!

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