Fine tune your research skills with the following workshops:

• September 15: PubMed: the Basics and Beyond
• September 16: Current Awareness Tools (email alerts & RSS feeds)
• September 17: RefWorks for the Sciences

For details and registration, click on the complete list of workshops in the Life Sciences.

In the latest UBC Library Friends newsletter, you can read about our colleague Dean Giustini, Librarian at the Biomedical Branch Library at VGH who was identifed as a 2009 Mover & Shaker by Library Journal.

Dean is well known for his Search Principle blog and UBC Health Library wiki.

Congratulations Dean!

On Monday, July 20, Tony Clement, Minister of Industry and James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages launched nationwide consultations to solicit Canadians’ opinions on the issue of copyright.

The current copyright legislation was enacted in 2001, and new legislation which will stand the test of time, and also reflect the current technological realities is definitely in order.

The Government of Canada is encouraging Canadians to participate in the discussions and express their views over the coming weeks. The consultation period extends from July 20 to September 13, 2009. The consultation website http://copyright.econsultation.ca/ provides opportunities for submissions to the discussions.

Five questions have been posed to generate discussion:
1) Based upon Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?
2) How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
3) What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
4) What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
5) What kind of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

Copyright is an issue of considerable importance to those of us who work in academic/research settings, so please voice your thoughts!

(posting adapted from message by Marlene Dorgan, President of the Canadian Health Libraries Association)

CAB Direct, a key database for agriculture, animal science, conservation, forestry, global health and nutrition has a snazzy new look. The new interface, which is available now and will replace the existing version on September 1, offers a more intuitive search experience. Features include:

• Simple and advanced search screens.
• Suggestions for spelling variations.
• The ability to refine search results by subject, year, journal, author, geographic location and language.
• Abstract snippet views at the results level.
• Links to full text articles using the View Full Text and UBC eLink icons.
• MyCABDirect, a personal account where you can set-up email alerts and RSS feeds based on saved searches.

A heads-up about RefWorks: The Direct Export feature is not available in the new interface. Instead you can download the results and save them as an .RIS file, and then Import the file into RefWorks using the .RIS filter.

For help with the new interface, please contact Sally Taylor or Katherine Miller at Woodward Library.

During the summer, reference librarians are available Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm at Woodward Library, and 9am-5pm in the UBC hospital libraries. Please ask at the Circulation Desk for assistance.

You can also contact your Subject Librarian directly for help via email or telephone, or to make an appointment.

A new librarian at Woodward? Photo by Joseph Procyk

Feel like browsing in the bookstacks?  But not quite ready for a trip to campus?    Try a visit to the Internet Archive — www.archive.org.  Then click on texts.   There are over a million books to browse;  you’ll find standard formats such as PDF but also nostalgic formats such as the flip book.  You’ll find almost 200,000 volumes from Canadian libraries.  One of my favorites is an early volume (1905) of Canadian Nurse.  And there are 30,000 amazing volumes from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project.  This project is a joint effort of  natural history museum libraries,  botanical garden libraries, and research institutions such as Harvard and Woods Hole.   Most volumes are pre-1923.  The book pictured below on whale-fishery was published in 1820.

Happy browsing!

The Cochrane Library is currently available to all Canadians for a trial period ending December 31, 2009.  This pilot is a joint initiative of the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre and the Canadian Health Libraries Association (CHLA), and was made possible by building on the leadership of the existing subscribers from provinces, territories and institutions across Canada.

For more information about the project,  see the CHLA page at: http://www.chla-absc.ca/?q=en/node/340

Feedback on this resource is most appreciated – please use the feedback form at: http://toby.library.ubc.ca/survey/eresources/trial.cfm?id=1547

Happy searching!

Black and white printing and photocopying price reduced! Also, you can now print in colour at all of the Life Sciences Libraries!

• Black & white printing and photocopies price reduced to 7 cents (A savings from the former cost of 12 cents per page for copying and 13 cents per page for printing.)
• Colour printing: 40 cents per copy
  
• double-sided printing and photocopying
  

Colour photocopying at Woodward Library: 40 cents per copy

Dean Giustini, Reference Librarian at the Biomedical Branch Library at Vancouver General Hospital has been honored as a 2009 Library Journal Tech Evangelist “Mover & Shaker”.

You can view the article on Dean here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/MS2009Inductee/2140335997.html

Dean was also CHLA’s Hospital Librarian of the Year in 2007.

Congratulations Dean!

The BC Research Libraries Group invites UBC faculty, staff and students to attend the following presentation:

Field Study Findings on Faculty & Researcher Use of New Models of Scholarly Publishing & Communication presented by Karla Hahn.

• Thursday, March 5, 2009, 2:00pm – 4:00pm (refreshments served 2:00 – 2:30pm)
• Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dodson Room (Rm. 302) University of British Columbia

Please RSVP at http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=6437

In the Spring of 2008, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) engaged Ithaka, a not-for-profit organization promoting innovation in academia, to conduct an investigation into the range of new models of scholarly publishing and communication valued by scholars, with a particular focus on those works that are pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional formats and are considered innovative by the faculty who use them. A field team of 301 librarians at 46 institutions interviewed professors about the digital resources they use. Among the key findings and works Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at ARL, will describe include:

• Evidence that innovative digital resources can be found across the humanities, social sciences, and scientific/technical/medical subject areas.
• Almost every resource cited by faculty operates under some form of peer review or editorial oversight.
• Some the resources with greatest impact are those that have been around a long while.
• Many digital publications are capable of running on relatively small budgets and are tailored to small, niche audiences.
• Innovations relating to multimedia content and Web 2.0 functionality appear in some cases to blur the lines between resource types.
• Projects of all sizes, especially open access sites and publications, employ a range of support strategies in the search for financial sustainability.

The findings were published in November 2008 and are available at: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/current-models-report.pdf

About the Speaker

Karla Hahn has been the Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at ARL since May 2005. Key areas of activity for the office include the assessment and implementation of selected new scholarly communication models; the development of alliances to advance new systems of scholarly communication; and advancement of library outreach efforts to inform the educational and research communities on trends, findings, opportunities, and their impact on promotion and tenure, on teaching and research, and on university budgets. Karla holds a PhD from the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, an MLS from Syracuse University, an MS from the University of Chicago, and a BS from Wittenberg University. Her writings include Electronic Ecology: A Case Study of Electronic Journals in Context and numerous articles on issues relating to publishing and electronic communication.

For more information, contact Joy Kirchner (joy.kirchner@ubc.ca) or Kat McGrath (kat.mcgrath@ubc.ca).