BC Wood WORKS!/Canadian Wood Council annually host the Western Canadian Wood Catapult Competition on the UBC Campus in Vancouver BC. The third annual Wood Catapult Competition will take place at the UBC Campus in Vancouver on March 28th, 2009.

The purpose of the competition is to challenge registered college or university students to design and build a wood siege engine capable of accurately hitting targets at 20, 30 and 45 meters using a cement ball. Teams consisting of students and one faculty member submit a short report prior to the competition about their catapult design. On the morning of the competition each team will be required to give a fifteen-minute presentation to the judges, after their weigh-in and setup.

For information on the registering for this competition and technical requirements, go to the
BC Wood WORKS! Competitions website.

Background Reading

Denny, Mark. Siege engine dynamics. European Journal of Physics. 2005. 26 561-577.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Materials Engineering, Physics and Astronomy

The most recent Sci-Bites newsletter from Thomson Reuters reports that UBC CS department has the Highest Impact in Computer Science in Canada, ranked by average citations per paper, among Canadian universities that published at least 50 papers in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals of computer science & engineering between 2003 and 2007.

http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/09/feb22-09_2/

Congrats to our CS faculty and students!

** Photo by gillicious

There are wide variety of CO2 calculators available on the web. Here’s a short list.

Government of Canada’s ecoACTION Tools and Calculators

EPA Climate Change – Greenhouse Gas Emissions Personal Emissions Calculator

My Carbon Footprint Carbon Calculator

Umweltbundesamt CO2 Rechner

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, and Geography.

Our new article – “Comparing Safari Tech Books Online and Books24x7 E-book Collections: A Case Study from the University of British Columbia Library” has just been published this week in the Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship.

It is open access and is available for everyone.

Abstract:

Most academic libraries are seeking to provide electronic access to the very dynamic and changing field of technology related material. Safari Tech Books Online and Books24x7 are the major e-book collections in this area. We compared the Safari Tech Books Online and Books24x7 e-book packages as to their usefulness for the University of British Columbia Library, second largest academic library in Canada. In our sample, we found that Books24x7 had more titles to offer (25% more); the overlap between the collections was relatively small (13-16%) and publishers varied considerably; and although there were no major differences in the “usefulness” measures of the titles in the two packages (Amazon.com ratings, WorldCat holdings and Reviews.com reviews were quite similar for both packages), O’Reilly titles, available only through Safari Tech Books Online, were held by a slightly higher number of libraries worldwide. We conclude that in order to have comprehensive coverage of this constantly changing area of knowledge, a large research academic library needs to subscribe to both collections. If subscribing to both collections is not an option, we recommend selecting a package based on the pricing that the library can negotiate with ProQuest, the vendor of both products, since the collections are complimentary in their nature.

Please feel free to ask us any questions or follow-up with this area of ebooks evaluation.

** photo by Adrian

The 4.02m Euro project aims to create a universal emulator that can open and play obsolete file formats.

Using the emulator, researchers hope to ensure that digital materials such as games, websites and multimedia documents and are not lost for good.

For the full story, go to BBC News Technology section.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Science and Engineering

A short article from the New Scientist discusses the Financial Times Energy Conference in London last week. It is a pretty interesting short read.

To see UBC researchers work in this area, you could go to Compendex database (a primary engineering database) – http://toby.library.ubc.ca/resources/infopage.cfm?id=715
and type “sustainable energy” as a topic search and UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA as “author affiliation”

** Photo by Lollie-Pop

The University of British Columbia Library and Springer are delighted to introduce a new Print on Demand feature linked to the Library’s eBook collection: MyCopy powered by SpringerLink.

As a current faculty member of the University of British Columbia, MyCopy allows you to order your own personal print copy of a Springer eBook included in the Library’s collection. The individual copy will be delivered as a printed soft cover version directly to your doorstep. Best of all, it will be available to all patrons for just $24.95 (USD plus GST & PST, including shipping and handling costs).

The University of British Columbia Library is one of the first libraries to introduce the MyCopy service that includes more than 11,000 eBooks out of a total of 30,000 eBooks available on SpringerLink. We invite you to take a look, browse this comprehensive eBook collection and take advantage of the MyCopy service.

If you find an eBook that you would like to use for a course, you can simply copy the URL in the address bar on SpringerLink and add this to your course syllabus. The students can then follow the URL and purchase the eBook directly on http://www.springerlink.com for home delivery.

Below are directions for ordering a MyCopy book for just $24.95 (USD plus GST & PST, including shipping and handling costs)
1. Go to SpringerLink: http://www.springerlink.com
2. Search or browse eBooks in your research area (Available titles will have an orange MyCopy label associated with it.)
3. Click on the eBook or eBook chapter of your interest
4. Click on the MyCopy Logo found underneath the eBook or eBook chapter information, or the “add to shopping cart now” link within the orange box on the right hand column to start the ordering process.

We trust you will find this feature a valuable addition to Springer’s eBook collection. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact UBC Librarians Joy Kirchner (joy.kirchner@ubc.ca) and Aleteia Greenwood (aleteia.greenwood@ubc.ca) or Springer at http://www.springerlink.com/feedback.

For a complete list of all Springer Ebooks including MyCopy titles go to the Springer eBooks by Subject Collection page and download the Excel spreadsheet for your discipline. Look for the column that contains the Springerlink openurl and paste this url into your browser.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for the Physical and Applied Sciences.

This is a quick post to remind you about various standards we have in the SciEng library:

* ASTM up to 2006
* CSA and ANSI standards up to 1995 (How to get those?)
* IEEE Standards: The IEEE Electronic Library provides access to over 1,000 current, revised and superceded standards in the field of electrical and computer engineering. You must be a UBC faculty, student or staff to access these resources. Print standards can be found in the UBC Library catalogue, though coverage varies.
* ISO: We own a number of ISO standards that are listed individually in our library catalogue, mostly from the early 1990s. Try typing ISO and standard? in catalogue search box.
* Open Access Standards (Free):
a.International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T)
b. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Standards. The Standards Council of Canada will grant a license for use of ISO and IEC international standards by recognized Canadian educational institutions in a credit course. Please contact us to learn more about this option.

Please do not hesitate to contact Kevin Lindstrom or Eugene Barsky if you require any additional info!

** Photo by Sifter