Don’t Miss the Wetterhahn

… it’s all about science and students at the Karen E. Wetterhahn Science Symposium.   Thursday May 23rd marks the 22nd year of this annual event, named in honor of the late Karen Wetterhahn, Professor of Chemistry, and co-sponsored by the Dean of Faculty Office of Undergraduate Research, Thayer School of Engineering, Sigma Xi—the Scientific Honor Society, and the Women in Science Project.  The late afternoon event unfolds in several parts:

A Keynote Address which is always really interesting (and this year looks to be no different).   This year’s speaker is
Terry Plank, D’85, Professor, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

“Under Volcanoes: What Drives Explosive Eruptions?”
Keynote Address: 4:00 PM Oopik Auditorium, Room 100 Class of 1978 Life Science Center

… followed by a terrific Undergraduate Poster Session from 5:00 – 7:00 PM in the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center.     Students stand by their posters and talk informally about their research, explain their results and answer questions, while attendees wander about and eat delicious snacks.

Also during the Symposium, a team of Dartmouth Chapter of Sigma Xi members will judge the senior honors thesis posters as part of the Christopher Reed Sigma Xi Poster Competition.   Judging takes place during the afternoon, and awards are announced at the start of the symposium.

2012 Poster Competition Award Winners On Display in Kresge Library

The winning posters are displayed in Kresge Library for the coming year (#shamelesspromotion) and we hope you’ll come see them!

Graduating This Year? Pay It Forward on Kresge’s “Graffiti” Wall!

Graduating? Got some advice to pass along? Kresge Library has a wall and some colorful sharpies for you to share it on!  Stop by and post your best tips (about research, science, or life in general!) for other science majors and Kresge regulars.  Feel free to get creative. Hurry before you graduate!

Graduating? … Here’s What You Need to Know About Your Library Account!

Graduating on June 9th?  Here are a few tips to help you sail smoothly towards that happy day!

All materials are due by 7pm on Wednesday June 5th.   Check your library account online to verify that it is clear of any library materials checked out to you.

Payments after May 10^th may only be made IN CASH or by money order at Kresge Library.  NOTE that you MAY pay by credit card at Baker Berry, even if it is for a bill from Kresge or one of the other campus libraries.

Did you know that many services and resources of the Library are available to you even after graduation?  Here’s great information about setting up an alumni account.

Note that you must clear all current library obligations before applying for an alumni account.  Alumni accounts will be available at the Baker Berry circulation desk after 12pm on June 10th.

ACS ChemWorx – Reference Manager (And A Whole Lot More)

ACS ChemWorx Desktop – view of reference library

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has released an application called ACS ChemWorx (free, upon registration) that manages references and pdfs, imports existing collections of references and files from existing libraries (like EndNote or Zotero), allows you to share collections with collaborators and research groups, and has a nifty integrated search interface to a variety of widely-used science research databases (like Web of Science) and publishers’ collections (like ScienceDirect).   In their words, “ACS ChemWorx is a free, total research management and storage system that combines reference discovery and management, professional networking, group and task management and manuscript preparation in a single interface, accessible from anywhere.”

It looks like there are some interesting analytics views that you can generate for your reference library – authors, journals, keywords, a citation/link explorer, and a publication timeline. There’s a desktop client app (for Windows, Mac, or Linux) that syncs to a web account; the web account connects to a private, cloud-based manuscript/document storage area where you can work collaboratively with others on documents; there’s also a connection to something called the ACS Publishing Center, where researchers can submit and track manuscripts, view the ACS Style Guide, do quick citation look-ups, and perform other useful manuscript-related tasks.   There are mobile versions for iPhone/iPad and Android.

• ACS ChemWorx – main page
• Read more about ACS ChemWorx features

ACS ChemWorx Desktop – integrated search options

Pretty nifty!  Now with Elsevier having bought Mendeley, it’s pretty much of a big-time reference manager smackdown in the land of the publishing giants.   ACS ChemWorx will appeal mostly to researchers in chemistry and related fields, but it looks pretty impressive to me after an hour of poking around with it (one irritant is that there’s no place to add your library’s link resolver, – so if access directly from the publisher’s website doesn’t work (i.e, if your library has a different form of access like through JSTOR or BioOne or as a print journal), you’ve got to back out of the application, go to your library website, and hunt down the article yourself.  This would be an easy one to add, too, so I don’t know how they missed it.)

• Read a recent blog post about ACS ChemWorx by Megan Kocher, a science librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries.  Thanks Megan!

 

 

Sustainability Solutions Cafe – Today (Earth Day!) at 3pm

What better way to celebrate Earth Day?

Dr. James McCarthy is a Nobel Prize winning oceanographer, environmentalist, member of the IPPC, past president of the AAAS, Chair of the Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a Professor at Harvard University. He is today’s guest at the Sustainability Solutions Café,  which invites practitioners and scholars pioneering solutions to diverse sustainability problems to share their ideas in informal café-style discussions.

Today (Monday, April 22nd) at at 3pm, First Floor Fairchild Tower.

 

The Digital Public Library of America Site Goes Live

“… at first, the DPLA’s offering will be limited to a rich variety of collections — books, manuscripts, and works of art — that have already been digitized in cultural institutions throughout the country. Around this core it will grow, gradually accumulating material of all kinds until it will function as a national digital library.“  – Robert Darnton, Harvard University Librarian and history professor

_____________________________

At noon today, the Digital Public Library of America will go live with more than two million objects — including digital renderings of photos, books, manuscripts and other items from places such as the Smithsonian Institution, along with museums, libraries and historical institutions around the country.

The project began as an initiative at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, and was funded by foundations including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.  Content partners to date include the University of Virginia Library, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard Library Special Collections, The New York Public Library, ArtSTOR, and the National Archives.

Perhaps we should start a new Kresge blog category, … “Not_Science_But_Awesome.”

Note: Though Monday’s tragic event at the Boston Marathon have resulted in the postponement of the public launch event that was to have been held at the Boston Public Library, the site will go live at noon as planned.

Read more:

• “Book News: Vast ‘Digital Public Library Of America’ Opens Today : NPR.” NPR.org. Accessed April 18, 2013. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/18/177727014/book-news-vast-digital-public-library-of-america-launches.
• Darnton, Robert. “The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!” The New York Review of Books, April 25, 2013. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/25/national-digital-public-library-launched/.
• Digital Public Library of America | Berkman Center.” Accessed April 18, 2013. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/dpla#.
• Howard, Jennifer. “With New Leader, Digital Public Library of America Prepares for Its Debut.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Wired Campus, March 5, 2013. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/with-new-leader-digital-public-library-of-america-prepares-for-its-debut/42691.
• “Digital Public Library of America.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, April 17, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_Public_Library_of_America&oldid=550890564.
• “Digitizing Knowledge | News | The Harvard Crimson.” Accessed April 18, 2013. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/26/library-books-google-dpla/.
• “The Library of Utopia | MIT Technology Review.” MIT Technology Review. Accessed April 18, 2013. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/427628/the-library-of-utopia/.

Kresge Library Newsletter — Spring 2013

This is a quarterly electronic newsletter to update you on what’s happening in your Library! Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions or suggestions!

Click here to read the Spring 2013 newsletter!