Welcome to new Science students

Welcome to all new Birkbeck Science students. If you'd like to learn more about the Library and its resources, come along to a Library tour and/or a Saturday workshop this term.

The Library tours are at 5.30pm every day Monday-Friday and last about 20 minutes. There's no need to book, just come to the Library entrance on the ground floor.

The Saturday workshops cover using the Library catalogue and ejournals - details are here
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/news/infoskills

To familiarise yourself with the resources that are most useful for you, take a look at the Library subject guide for your subject - there are guide for Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences and Earth & Planetary Sciences

A great example of how Open Access can change the world

A teenager has discovered a new test for pancreatic cancer by using journal articles that were available on open access http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19291258


Just one great reason to publish your research in open access journals.

Another good reason is that many funding bodies and research councils now require that research funded by them is put on open access.

Read the new policy from Research Councils UK here http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx
and from the Medical Research Council here http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Ourresearch/Ethicsresearchguidance/Openaccesspublishing/index.htm
The Wellcome Trust have a video here http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Spotlight-issues/Open-access/index.htm

More information on open access is here:
http://open-access.org.uk/
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/guidance/authors.html

ScienceDirect Apps

ScienceDirect has moved into the world of apps and developers have provided some useful extra add-ons to make searching ScienceDirect even more useful.


Some of the ones that caught my eye are:

BrainLink For all articles in select neuroscience journals, this application identifies all neuro-anatomical structures, provides their 2D- and 3D-images (in a mouse, rat, monkey, or human, if available), and links them to the structure within BrainNavigator.

eReader Formats The eReader Formats application allows users to convert ScienceDirect articles as seen in the browser into ePUB or Mobipocket format, whichever is appropriate for the user's electronic reader device.

Protein Viewer A Jmol-based application for ScienceDirect which is displayed below the abstract if the article contains author-tagged protein identifiers, allowing you to browse through all protein models tagged in the article and interactively explore each of them.

Snippets Easily take and save snippets from the different articles you are reading, along with the article citation in MLA or APA formats. Snippets can then be exported to Google Docs for easy sharing.

Interactive Map Viewer displays supplementary geospatial data from Elsevier online articles as an interactive map.

You will need to sign up for a personal account with ScienceDirect and then you can add the apps to your profile. There are currently 90 apps available - see the gallery of available apps here
http://www.applications.sciverse.com/action/gallery?currentSelection=product&productFilter=ScienceDirect

Plantwise Knowledge Bank

Plantwise Knowledge Bank is a useful new free resource for those interested in crop pests and diseases. It has a pest problem identifier, a factsheet library and a great mapping tool which can match the distribution of pests and diseases to factors like climate, etc. You can keep up to date with their blog and their new pest reports. All this at http://www.plantwise.org/KnowledgeBank/home.aspx

New electronic resource - Academic Search Complete

The Library has subscribed to a new major electronic resource which will be useful for Science students and staff. Academic Search Complete covers all subject areas and give us an extra 8,500 electronic journals, plus abstracts for a further 12,500. Some of the titles of interest to scientists include Nature back to 1997, many of the Nature and Nature Reviews sister journals, Science, Scientific American and New Scientist, as well as many others. The full list of titles is here.

Try Academic Search Complete now

Improve your search skills

There are still places on this Saturday's Library workshop on Improving Your Search Skills. This session will cover the general principles of preparing a search strategy and carrying out a literature search, together with useful hints and tips on how to get the best out of online databases.


Book your place now at http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/news/infoskills

Learn new skills - come to a Saturday workshop

The programme of Library Saturday workshops is now available on the Library web site at http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/news/infoskills. This term our workshops are mainly aimed at postgraduates, but all are welcome. If you would like to:

• Improve your search skills
• Find and access theses 
• Find out more about EndNote and EndNote Web
• Keep up to date in your subject area
• Learn to make the most of the Citation Indexes

book a place on a Saturday workshop. We look forward to seeing you there.