CalPoly

Just got this email from SFS…
We are pleased to announce that your institution now has unlimited access to SciFinder.

The Academic Unlimited Access Program no longer restricts SciFinder use by concurrent seats. Current students and faculty from all departments at your institution will benefit from access to CAS content with the world’s best product for chemical information. Under this program, CAS will use its best efforts to provide at least 95 percent access.

SciFinder access will continue to be subject to the terms and conditions of your SciFinder License. Please remember:

·         Your institution must first contact SciFinder Customer Support at scifi@cas.org prior to scheduling large classroom training.

·         Alumni do not qualify for SciFinder access.

·         Any use of SciFinder for commercial purposes under your institution’s license is prohibited. (Please contact us for your commercial SciFinder needs.)

Dear CP Staff, Faculty and Students,

Community Analyst and the BAO API have been added to the Cal Poly Esri Educational Site License Business Analyst Add-On.  In addition, Business Analyst Online subscription has been upgraded to the Standard Plus level.

To request BAO log into the portal, go to Technical Service Request, and request Software…

You will then receive an email from esri with login information. For instructions on activating your subscription, please refer to the email you received from baosupport@esri.com; it contains an activation link for distribution to students and faculty.  Esri Accounts that already have been activated for BAO do not need to be re-activated to begin using Community Analyst or the BAO API.

Anyone who has activated the Business Analyst Online subscription will now be able to access Community Analyst or the BAO API using the same Esri Global ID.   In addition, anyone who activates a subscription from this point forward will have access to all three products: Business Analyst Online, Community Analyst, and the BAO API.
To begin using Business Analyst Online, log in at bao.esri.com
To begin using Community Analyst, log in at communityanalyst.esri.com
To begin using BAO API, visit the ArcGIS Resource Center at resources.arcgis.com

By STEVE LOHR, Published: February 6, 2012

Stephen Wolfram, a 52-year-old scientist, software designer and entrepreneur, tends to go his own way — often with noteworthy results. He published his first physics paper at 15, earned his Ph.D. from Caltech at 20 and two years later won a MacArthur prize.

Less than three years ago, Dr. Wolfram created a new kind of search engine, called Wolfram Alpha. Unlike Google or Microsoft’s Bing, Wolfram Alpha does not forage the Web. It culls its own painstakingly curated database to find answers.

continued…

Academic Libraries in Flux
December 14, 2011 – 3:00am
By
Steve Kolowich
Some campus libraries might be under pressure to cut costs, but as of 2010 academic libraries were spending more money than they were before the financial downturn that started in 2008, according to new data released Tuesday by the Education Department….

Re-posted from Nicole Hennig

As the web becomes more and more inundated with blogs, videos, tweets, status updates, news, articles, and countless other forms of content, “information overload” is something we all seem to suffer. It is becoming more difficult to weed through all the “stuff” out there and pluck out the best, most share-worthy tidbits of information, especially if your topic is niche.  Let’s face it, Google definitely has its shortcomings when it comes to content curation and the more it tries to cater to all audiences, the less useful it becomes.

The demand for timely, relevant content that is specific to our unique interests and perspectives has given rise to a new generation of tools that aim to help individuals and companies curate content from the web and deliver it in a meaningful way.  These new tools range from simple, application-specific types such as social media aggregators and discovery engines, to more complex, full-blown publishing solutions for organizations.

Here’s a look at over 30 content curation tools (mostly free, but some paid/professional tools as well) that will help you cut through the clutter of your information stream to find the gems.  Each tool mentioned below has unique strengths, and none are exactly like any other.

Amazon Announces Digital-Textbook Rentals

July 20, 2011, 6:09 pm

By Jie Jenny Zou
(This story was updated on July 21, 2011)

Amazon has rolled out an e-textbook-rentals program, which could bring more attention to the emerging model of treating textbooks like online subscriptions.

Students can now download temporary copies of textbooks on Amazon’s Web site for reading on a Kindle e-book reader or on a computer, tablet, or smartphone running free Kindle software. The system lets customers specify rental periods lasting anywhere from a month to a year. Amazon argues that the digital rentals can save students up to 80 percent compared with traditional print textbooks.

For example, one textbook, Intermediate Accounting, which retails at $197 in print and $109 as an e-book, would cost $57 to rent from Amazon for three months. Students have the option to purchase the e-book during or after a rental period, and can extend rental period in daily increments.

Students will also be able to refer to any margin notes and highlights they made in their digital textbooks after the rental period is over. Amazon has tens of thousands of titles available for digital rental from major publishers like John Wiley & Sons and Elsevier and Taylor & Francis.

“Textbooks by nature are a disposable product,” said Sarah L. Glassmeyer, a faculty services and outreach librarian at Valparaiso University School of Law, in Indiana.

Ms. Glassmeyer, who is also an assistant professor of law at the university, said she supports the move by publishers to offer more digital-textbook options, which she says can save students money and lighten their backpacks—especially when it comes to heavy case-law books.

She said the ability for students to quickly and cheaply access textbooks and margin notes appeals to a generation of students she described as “digital learners,” and she expects digital rentals to catch on.

CourseSmart, a digital-textbook seller started by major textbook publishers, allows rentals but only for periods of six months or more. “CourseSmart has found that the current rental periods offered are those preferred by students as they align with the length of a course,” said Emily Peck, senior account executive at CourseSmart.

From the Google Blog “Today we’re introducing Google Scholar Citations: a simple way for you to compute your citation metrics and track them over time.”

The service is limited to a small group of folks, but no doubt it will be available to all shortly.

Check it out! http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qc6CJjYAAAAJ&hl=en

What librarians & Google are for…
Librarians are there:

To help, aid, assist. To teach, collate, enthuse. To catalogue, index, arrange, organise. To find, discover, promote, display. To interest, intrigue, amuse and amaze. To instill wonder. To help children, adults, old people, the underprivileged, the rich, the poor, those with voices and those without. To protect resources, to archive them, to store them, to save them for the future. To provide differing viewpoints, to engender thought, conversation, research, fun. To provide the best answer possible, to match the answer to the enquirer, to provide just enough information without overwhelming the user, but enough to always help. To better a local community, a company, a school, a college, an organisation, a country, the world.

Google is there:

To make money

A series of two public talks by researchers from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be given on the Cal Poly campus over the next two weeks.

On Tuesday, July 12, Dr. Jorge Vazquez will present “Global Warming Guaranteed: It’s All About Watching the Oceans!”

The following Tuesday, July 19, Dr. Rosaly Lopez will present “Where the Hot Stuff Is: Volcanoes on the Earth and the Solar System.”

Both talks will be held at 7:30 PM in Building 8 Room 123.

These events are sponsored by the Cal Poly Center for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education (CESaME), the Central Coast Science Project (CCSP), and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Please contact cesame@calpoly.edu for further details.

Melville, NY, June 17, 2011 — AIP Publishing, a division of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the opening of its Beijing office. To mark the occasion, AIP has launched a Chinese-language version of its website (http://china.aip.org), which gives Chinese researchers access to critical information about AIP in their own language. The site mirrors much of the content found on the English-language website, including links to AIP journals and conference proceedings, and to information on how authors can submit their manuscripts.