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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Feeds from this site
Feeds from this site are available in rss and xml. Click on the little orange xml icon in the right hand navigation column to access the feed.
What is a feed? It's basically a syndication service. A good definition can be found at Wikipedia. Many websites update their content constantly and instead of you revisiting the site, a feeds delivers the updates to you. Basically feeds push information to you as a kind of alerting service.
Bloglines is nice as it's web-based, so there's no program installation required and you can read it from any computer anywhere..
Once you have a reader you can add feeds from sites you visit that offer them. Nature magazine at http://www.nature.com gives you the option to syndicate it's news items, for example.
Now is a good time to send me details of texts or topics for study next semester. As it can take up to a month for items to arrive (be processed, classified, etc...), I would prefer to take an 'active' approach to buying material on reading lists, rather than a 'reactive' approach (ie. buying more copies when I notice there's 19 holds on a title!). If you are:
a) Using a new textbook this semester b) Teaching a topic for which students have commented in the past on the lack of resources c) Teaching a new topic for which we don't have resources .. then please let me know so I can get resources ordered now. Some staff simply send a copy of their Waterstones textbook order, which is great as it identifies the title, author, ISBN and number of students expected.
Early advice on next semester's textbooks would be appreciated!
The University of Bath Library and Learning Centre has posted their Strategic Plan 2005-2008 on the library website at http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/about/strategicplan.html. Key points include: Identify library user needs via regular feedback mechanisms. Improving the Reading List system. Upgrading the quality of information in library catalogue records. Providing an improved library environment in keeping with changing user needs, including the remodeling of level 2. Making more material available digitally. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions regarding the Strategic Plan
The Pacific Journal of Mathematics is now available online from Vol.1(1), 1951 through Project Euclid. The archive can be accessed from the library website by clicking on 'Online Resources', then 'E-journals A-Z' and clicking through the alphabetical list to Pacific Journal of Mathematics. Continue by clicking on either the Directory of Open Access Journals or the Free e-journal website listed on the A-Z, then 'Online Archive' which links to Project Euclid.
One for the biologists & biochemists: Taken from last week's Science Magazine 310(5751), p.1099:
"Microarrays reveal which genes crank up or slow down in diseases such as diabetes and cancer, but they yield a torrent of data that leaves many researchers feeling swamped. A new site called L2L (for "list-to-list") from the University of Washington, Seattle, can help scientists cope with the flood. Users plug in their lists of regulated genes, and L2L compares them to more than 350 other lists compiled from published microarray papers. The output highlights common patterns of gene expression that suggest underlying molecular mechanisms. L2L can help researchers tease apart the effects of complex diseases on gene activity." http://depts.washington.edu/l2l With thanks to Frank Norman, Librarian. National Institute for Medical Research
Our access to JSTOR has been established. JSTOR is a database of archival journal material that covers Biological Science, General Science, Mathematics, Humanities & Social Sciences. Although it doesn't give current issues, it provides a solid backfile of journal titles many of which start from volume 1.
All titles (about 800) available through JSTOR have now been added to the e-journals A-Z.
A link to JSTOR has also been added to the Electronic Journals Services menu at <http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/ej/> which will take you to a list of the collections we have access to.
Lots of new Mathematics books on the shelves this month...
Individual-based Modeling and Ecology by Grimm and Railsback, 2005 Part of the Princeton series in Theoretical and Computational Biology The abstract reads: The authors begin their book with a general primer on modelling before addressing the problems of theory and conceptual framework for individual-based ecology. An extensive review illustrates the ecological problems that have been addressed with individual-based models. Shelfmark: 513.79 GRI .
Also new this month: Barenblatt, G.I. 2003. Scaling. 530.082 BAR Comer, D. 2004. Computer networks and Internets : with Internet applications. 518.73 COM Fisher, M. 2005. Handbook of Temporal Reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. 518.81 FIS Howison, S. 2005. Practical applied mathematics : modelling, analysis, approximation. 514.022 HOW Intelligent virtual agents : 5th international working conference, IVA 2005, Kos, Greece, September 12-14, 2005, proceedings. Sh 518.24 Schechter, M. 2004. An introduction to nonlinear analysis. 513.215 SCH
As a subject librarian, newsletters to departments seem like a very sensible method for communication and information sharing. Newsletters in the form of weblogs are a reasonably new concept and there's plenty of libraries around the world who use blogs to communicate with their audiences. I've decided to jump right in and try it out using blogger.com as my pilot. Let me know how it goes.
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was formed in 2000 by scientists and physicians to make peer-reviewed research freely accessible online to the world. They publish the following open-access journals:
Open-access journals are freely available on the web and are accessible based on a Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning you can copy, distribute and use the work so long as the original author is credited.
This is serious, reputable publishing - PLoS Biology was recently ranked in the top-tier of life science journals by The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), with a preliminary impact factor of 13.9.
