Home Sweet Home

The Biomedical Library is now open for business in our newly expanded and renovated building next to the School of Medicine. Our books and journals are in place, our computers and copiers are set up, and our staff are all here and ready to help you.

As with any move of this size, we have encountered some bumps in the road. Most notably, delivery of most of our public furniture order has been delayed by a couple of weeks. As a result, implementing some of our most exciting new features has also been delayed. Specifically, our Information Commons, group study rooms, and the 24-hour Graduate Study space will all be coming online gradually during the month of August as furniture arrives.

Also, we are still experiencing a few lingering technical glitches as a result of this morning’s power surge, but we expect those to be resolved very soon.

New from Google: Accessible Search

New on Google Labs is Accessible Search, a Web search tool for the visually impaired. The interface is slightly less cluttered, but the unique feature of Accessible Search is that the search results are ranked according to a different algorithm than regular Search, one that gives higher priority to sites that conform to accessibility guidelines. These sites are more likely to work well for users with visual impairments who use assistive technologies like screen readers.

As Google puts it in the FAQ for the new service, “Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.” Accessible Search is still being worked on, but represents an interesting step by Google.

TOXLINE New Version

A new version of the National Library of Medicine’s TOXLINE was released today. TOXNET offers features such as relevancy ranking, flexible sorting, one window display and multiple downloading options.

TOXLINE is part of NLM’s Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET). TOXLINE provides bibliographic information covering the biochemical, pharmacological, physiological, and toxicological effects of drugs and other chemicals. It contains over 3 million citations, most with abstracts and/or indexing terms and CAS Registry Numbers. TOXLINE covers much of the standard journal literature in toxicology and it is complemented with references from an assortment of specialized journals and other sources. Citations from PubMed link back to PubMed for convenience in using their related records, UC-elinks and document ordering functions.

Toxline is available from the BML/MCL list of databases.

Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issue

The journal Nucleic Acids Research runs a special issue in July devoted to “web servers” which complements the annual Databases issue, published each year in January. From this year’s introductory editorial: “The Web Server Issue highlights the many servers that are available on the internet to perform useful computations on DNA, RNA and protein sequences and structures as well as a few servers that help to mine the literature or cover other aspects of biology.”

Link to Issue Table of Contents
This year’s issue features 150 papers and if nothing else it’s interesting perusing the titles - from ASPIC and BAGEL to VOMBAT and YOGY. All content of this issue is available for free to all.

My NCBI Features for PubMed Users

Have you ever noticed the “My NCBI” login in the upper right-hand corner of the PubMed screen? Sign up for a free My NCBI account so that you can:

* Set up email alerts for search topics, or to receive references for articles from your favorite journals

* Save PubMed references using “My NCBI Collections”

* Save PubMed search strategies

* Use filters to group your search results (e.g., all Reviews, or all English)

* Set up your My NCBI User Preferences (e.g., color highlighting of your search terms in your PubMed search results)

There is a great set of *short* online tutorials (”Quick Tours”) that describe how to use the My NCBI features. Or, as always, contact the Biomedical Library for assistance.

ISI Web of Knowledge updates

If you use the ISI Web of Knowledge platform (Web of Science, BIOSIS), you’ll notice a couple of new databases available: MEDLINE and Zoological Record.

Zoological Record is a database oriented towards animal biology and covers a number of journals that aren’t picked up by BIOSIS or other databases. We currently have access to Zoological Record on the CSA database system, but we’re moving it to ISI’s Web of Knowledge so that we can offer cross-searching between ZR, BIOSIS, and Web of Science. More information will be coming out later in the year about this transition. The CSA version will be available until the end of 2006.

MEDLINE is familiar to you as the main component of PubMed. While this version doesn’t have quite all the bells and whistles of the PubMed interface, the cool thing here is again being able to cross-search MEDLINE with other databases. Search MEDLINE with BIOSIS and Web of Science simultaneously, and you’ve just increased the reach of your search to thousands more journals as well as conference papers and selected patents.

Also, FYI, ISI will be making some interface changes this weekend. The most notable change is that in title and topic searches, the default will be AND instead of adjacent, so if you want to search an exact phrase you’ll need to start putting that phrase in quote marks.