S&E Browsing Collection - New Books

These books have just been added to the S&E Browsing Collection. Click the title to see if the book’s available or place a request for one that’s checked out.

+ The ten most beautiful experiments
+ Nanotechnology 101
+ Nets, puzzles, and postmen
+ Very special relativity : an illustrated guide
+ Crime scene chemistry for the armchair sleuth
+ Symmetry : a journey into the patterns of nature
+ Rocketeers : how a visionary band of business leaders, engineers, and pilots is boldly privatizing space
+ Making mathematics with needlework : ten papers and ten projects
+ Physics of the impossible : a scientific exploration into the world of phasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel
+ You call this the future? : the greatest inventions sci-fi imagined and science promised
+ Archimedes to Hawking : laws of science and the great minds behind them
+ Welcome to BioTech nation : my unexpected odyssey into the land of small molecules, lean genes, and big ideas
+ Earth, the sequel : the race to reinvent energy and stop global warming
+ Stories of modern technology failures and cognitive engineering successes

Roger links to Google, NextGen Melvyl, etc.

When you search Roger, you’ll now see some links in a table on the right-hand side. Clicking these will rerun your search in that particular database or catalog.

From the results page, you can now run your search again in

• Circuit (SD Libraries)
• the NextGen Melvyl pilot (UC Libraries and beyond)
• Google Books
• Google Scholar

From the single record view, you can run the search again in Circuit, NextGen Melvyl, Google Books, AND Amazon. Under the list is the “Send by Text Message” feature if you want to send yourself the book’s call number.

NextGen Melvyl Catalog

INTRODUCING NEXT-GENERATION MELVYL (http://ucsd.worldcat.org)

The UC Libraries have launched Next-Generation Melvyl, a potential replacement for the UC-wide Melvyl Catalog.

Through a single interface, NextGen Melvyl searches holdings in:
• UCSD, all UC Libraries, and libraries around the world (with UCSD stuff listed first)
• as well as:
  • UC books digitized by Google
  • citations for articles in MEDLINE (PubMed) and ArticleFirst, which includes some physical science and engineering articles

Other key points:

• Throughout the pilot, the current Melvyl Catalog and all its functionality will be maintained and available as usual.
• Not all current library holdings are represented in the pilot.
• Users can request items held elsewhere, both within the UC system and beyond. However, we recommend using Circuit to request books from our Circuit partners (SDSU, etc.).

NextGen Melvyl will be available for at least 6 months and is very much a work in progress as improvements continue to be made. YOUR FEEDBACK DURING THIS PILOT PHASE IS VITAL. Please test NextGen Melvyl as frequently and as vigorously as possible, and use the “Survey - Your Voice Counts!” link located in upper-right corner to give us that feedback.

Molecule Man: U-T Feature on Nicolaou

UCSD/Scripps Research Institute chemistry professor KC Nicolaou was featured in the April 24th San Diego Union-Tribune. In the article, Dr. Nicolaou discusses his just-published book, Molecules That Changed the World, about the history, synthesis and impact of aspirin, penicillin, taxol and other important chemical compounds.

Molecules That Changed the World (publisher website) The Nicolaou Group at Scripps Research Institute

Link to Google Books in Melvyl

You will now see links to Google Books in Melvyl search results. Depending on the book’s copyright status you’ll see:

• More About this Book, which includes a brief description of the book, reviews, references to the book on other websites, and links to Amazon and other sites to buy or borrow the book.
• Preview This Book Online! With these books, you can search the text of the book and view a limited number of pages.
• Read This Book Online! This is the “full view” of the book, and you can view every page. You may also be able to download a PDF copy of the book. To see an example, go to Melvyl and search for Einstein’s theories of relativity and gravitation.

More information about UC’s mass digitization projects, including the one with Google.

New Books, March to mid-April

The New Books listings have just been updated for March through mid-April.

• Engineering
• Math, General and Computer Science
• Physical Sciences
• E-Books, including new titles from Knovel, Safari, Synthesis, the CRC NetBase collections, SPIE and various Springer series

Browsing Books - Recent Additions

Here are the new additions to the S&E Browsing Collection. Follow the link to see if the book’s available, or use the Request feature in Roger and we’ll hold the book for you when it’s returned.

• Chemistry in the garden
• Endless universe : beyond the Big Bang
• The open laboratory: the best science writing on blogs 2007
• Astrophysics is easy! : a introduction for the amateur astronomers
• Why there’s antifreeze in your toothpaste : the chemistry of household ingredients
• Winning our energy independence : an energy insider shows how
• The big switch : rewiring the world, from Edison to Google
• Censoring science : inside the political attack on Dr. James Hansen and the truth of global warming
• Cosmological enigmas : pulsars, quasars, & other deep-space questions
• Blip, ping & buzz : making sense of radar and sonar
• The joy of physics
• The physics of NASCAR : how to make steel + gas + rubber = speed
• Robots in space : technology, evolution, and interplanetary travel
• The mystery of the missing antimatter

Encyclopedia of Spectroscopy and Spectrometry

UCSD now has the Encyclopedia of Spectroscopy and Spectrometry, online.

This is a comprehensive encyclopedia of spectroscopic fundamentals, methods, techniques, instrumentation and applications in the sciences, engineering and medicine. The articles are grouped by subject (Atomic Spectroscopy; Electronic Spectroscopy; Fundamentals of Spectroscopy; High Energy Spectroscopy; Magnetic Resonance; Mass Spectrometry; Spatially Resolved Spectroscopic Analysis; and Vibrational, Rotational and Raman Spectroscopies), and then subdivided by concept (Historical Overview, Theory, Methods and Instrumentation, and Applications). It also a search engine and A-Z title/subject/author indexes.

Sample articles include:
• Forensic Science, Applications of Atomic Spectroscopy
• NMR Spectrometers
• Inorganic Chemistry, Applications of Mass Spectrometry
• IR Spectroscopy Sample Preparation Methods
• Chromatography-MS, Methods
• X-ray Spectroscopy, Theory

Knovel - New Interface, and problems

Last week, Knovel released a new interface (the old www.knovel.com URL now redirects to the new site, as do the links in Roger for all the Knovel titles).

Major Changes:
• The new site defaults to Basic Search, with the actual search box in the upper left. The Fielded Search is the advanced search where you can use the drop-down menus to search by keyword or property. The Browse tab will bring up the familiar list of subject areas that you can click to bring up lists of titles, as well as view new titles, titles with productivity tools, etc. User Preferences is not yet available.
• The “Search Within This Title” feature has disappeared. We have already contacted Knovel about bringing it back.

There have been some performance issues with the new interface, though most of them appear to be resolved as of March 2. However, please contact support@knovel.com if you experience any problems using Knovel, such as:

• The redirect to the new site takes too long.
• You get error messages when you try to access tables and graphs identified in your search results.
• You lose your list of relevant pages, tables and graphs while navigating through the list of titles that came up in your search, and instead get the full table of contents for those titles.

Please contact the S&E Library if you have questions about using Knovel or other science/engineering resources.

New Browsing Books

Here are some of the latest additions to the S&E Browsing Collection. Follow the link to see if the book’s available, or use the Request feature in Roger and we’ll hold the book for you when it’s returned.

• Love + sex with robots : the evolution of human-robot relations / David Levy
• Dark cosmos : in search of our universe’s missing mass and energy / Dan Hooper
• From quanta to quarks : more anecdotal history of physics / Anton Z. Capri
• How to build a robot army : tips on defending the planet Earth against alien invaders, ninjas, and zombies / Daniel H. Wilson
• Where’s my jetpack? : a guide to the amazing science fiction future that never arrived / Daniel H. Wilson