[Sigsti-l] SIGSTI Newsletter April 2006

[Jian Qin]

SIG/STI Newsletter 2006-04-06
http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGSTI/sti.html 

Inside this issue:

1. Updates on Scientific and Technology Information 
    +Science.gov 3.0 Launched
    +Open Access 
2. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Continues Sponsorship for the SIG/STI Student Travel Award 
3. News and Pointers
     +The 20th International CODATA conference call for presentation proposals
     +Highlights of relevant publications: the Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship
4. Panel proposals submitted to ASIS&T annual meeting 2006 

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Updates on Scientific and Technology Information 

+Science.gov 3.0 Launched

The new version of science.gov was released last November. The following are excerpts from the news release: 

Science.gov 3.0 is available to everyone. The improvements will be especially helpful to scientists and information specialists in their searches. 

Science.gov 3.0 introduces "MetaRank" which uses a sophisticated method for ranking science queries by searching "metadata," or bibliographic information such as title, author, date, abstract or other keyword identifiers. This technology complements the relevancy ranking capabilities of QuickRank. 

Science.gov is the gateway to reliable science and technology information from 17 organizations within 12 federal science agencies.  A single query searches across 30 databases and 1,800 Web sites. Science.gov allows users to search the surface Web as well as the deep Web, where traditional search engines cannot go.  The information is free and no registration is required. 

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Open Access 

Péter Jacsó recently published an article about the Oxford Journals collection. It is located at:  http://reviews.gale.com/index.php/digital-reference-shelf/2006/04/oxford-journals-collection/. The following are two excerpts from his article: 

"If you include PubMed in your search on HWP, the total number of open access bibliographic records goes up to 17.3 million and the number of open access abstracts of articles to about seven million. Unfortunately, the HWP versions of the PubMed records do not display when articles, such as the more than 5,000 from the Journal of the Medical Library Association and its predecessor, are open access. Instead, it links the user to the Infotrieve document delivery service which charges $28 for every item from this publication. This is a weak point of HWP as there are links in PubMed to 1.2 million open access full-text articles with obvious icons."

"The HWP stable itself is large, but it is not the largest. Elsevier (through its ever- improving Scirus subsidiary) has open access bibliographic information for about 6.4 million articles and open access abstracts for about 4.2 million. There are about 7.5 million full-text articles in the native Elsevier ScienceDirect database, but, except for some temporary freebies, these are accessible only for subscribers (although the full text is searchable for anyone)."

Other good resources on open access and scholarly communication include:
Open access and scholarly communication - a selection of key web sites: http://www.istl.org/05-summer/internet.html  

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Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Continues Sponsorship for the SIG/STI Student Travel Award 

With the sponsorship of CAS, SIG/STI is offering a grant again this year to a library and information science student with an interest or background in chemistry or chemical engineering to defray the cost of attending the ASIST national meeting. Please see the awards Web site http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGSTI/awards.html for application information. 
The 2006 CAS Student Travel Award offers  $1000 to defray the cost for the student winner. This money is made available through a grant from Chemical Abstracts Service, a division of the American Chemical Society. 

The deadline for application is June 30, 2006.
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News and Pointers

+The 20th International CODATA conference will be held in Beijing, China, October 23-25. The call for paper is open until April 17. The topics include scientific data archives, data quality, metadata, data policies and legal issues, data publishing and service, e-science, scientific data for education, economy, environment, and society, among others. If you are interested in submitting a presentation abstract, you can visit the Web site: http://www.codataweb.org/06conf/all.html. 

+Highlights of the new Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, Number 45, Winter 2006 ( http://www.istl.org/06-winter/index.html ): 

Reaching the Engineering and Science Communities: New Technologies and Approaches at MIT. by J. Darcy Duke, Stephanie Hartman, and Angela Locknar, 

Creating a BUZZ: Attracting SCI/TECH Students to the Library! by Mary Axford, Ray Bedner, Cathy Carpenter, Leslie Madden, Brian Matthews, Crystal Renfro, and Joanne Tobin

The Beat of a Different Drum: Using the Arts in Outreach to Science/Engineering Students and Faculty by Jeanne L. Pfander and Barbara A. Williams

Materials Used by Master's Students in Engineering and Implications for Collection Development: A Citation Analysis by Virginia Kay Williams and Christine Lea Fletcher

Surveying Graduate and Professional Students' Perspectives on Library Services, Facilities and Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Does Subject Discipline Continue to Influence Library Use? by Tina E. Chrzastowski and Lura Joseph

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Panel proposals submitted to ASIS&T annual meeting 2006 

SIG/STI submitted a number of panel proposals to the annual meeting, including:

+Access to scientific data: the social and technical challenges and strategies
+How chemists are really finding and using information in our digital environment? 
+The landscape of metadata research and development

This is only an incomplete list. The program committee is  reviewing all the proposals. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

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SIG/STI officers: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGSTI/officers.html
Issue editor: Jian Qin












Jian Qin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
235 Hinds Hall
Syracuse, NY 13244
(315)443-5642  fax: (315)443-5806
http://www.ist.syr.edu/