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Reply to Library Shop Classes | The Sheridan Libraries Blog

Replied to Library Shop Classes by Robin Sinn (The Sheridan Libraries Blog)

Library shop classes? Of course!

The Sheridan Libraries offers many tools to help you with your library research. While you can always stop at the Reference Consultation Office on M Level, use our Ask a Librarian service, or contact your liaison librarian with any questions you may have, we also offer workshops about specific tools. These tools include databases and citation management programs.

Below is a list of our Fall Workshops, with links for registration.

Refworks 2.0 Workshops
Tues., Sept. 20, 2011, 11:00-12:00 Wed., Sept. 21, 2011, 4:00-5:00 One class can help trim hours off your time spent researching and writing. Come learn the secrets of organized citations and easy, quick bibliographies.

Citation and Organization Tools
Wed., Sept. 28, 2011, 2:00-3:00 Wondering what tools can help keep you and your papers organized? We provide a comparison and overview of several popular tools. RefWorks, Mendeley, Zotero, and Papers will be included.

Scopus and Web of Science
Wed., Sept. 28, 2011, 4:30-5:30 Help your research and save your time: learn to use these two powerful tools in the most effective ways. Feel free to bring topics that we can use as search examples!

Making the Best of Google
Tues., Oct. 4, 2011, 4:00-5:00 You seek. But do you find? Join us for a tour of Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books. Learn how they really work and how to make the best use of each.

E-Books for Academics
Wed., Oct. 5, 2011, 4:30-5:30 We love reading our fun fiction on our mobile devices, but the JHU libraries have 1 million academic e-books as well. Bring your e-readers, tablets, and any mobile device that you use to read books. Find out which e-books can/can't be downloaded directly to your e-device, and practice while the librarians are there to help.

Copyright and Fair Use
Wed., Oct. 12, 2011, 10:30-11:30 With the increasing use of images, music, and other kinds of audio-visual resources as well as the delivery of course content through online course management systems like Blackboard, scholars and academic institutions are facing challenges as to what constitutes fair use and what does not. Therefore, the aim of this workshop is to create awareness about some of the challenges related to copyright and provide an electronic toolkit for the participants.

History Detectives: The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition
Wed., Oct. 12, 2011, 6:00-7:00 Want to impress your friends and professors alike with research skills that would surpass those of Sherlock Holmes? Detective-Librarians Chella and Heidi will lead you on a madcap journey through Victorian London as we discover the secrets of the Crystal Palace. Gumshoes will have the opportunity to put together their own case files explaining the who, what, when, where, and whys of the Crystal Palace!

PubMed
Wed., Oct. 26, 2011, 5:00-6:00 Great tips for using the tools within PubMed that will help you find exactly what you want, much more quickly. You'll be able to practice online, too, while the librarians are there to help!

I hope that some discusses LibX in some of these presentations. It’s my favorite new research tool!

📅 18th International C. elegans Meeting, 22nd-26th June 2011

RSVPed Attending 18th International C. elegans Meeting

The Organizing Committee invites you to attend the 18th International C. elegans Meeting, sponsored by the Genetics Society of America. The meeting will be held June 22 – 26, 2011 at the University of California, Los Angeles campus. The meeting will begin on Wednesday evening, June 22 at 7:00 pm and will end on Sunday, June 26 at 12:00 noon. On Friday, June 24 at 5:00 pm there will be a Keynote Address by Joseph Culotti, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Toronto, Canada

Bob Frankston on Communications

Watched Triangulation 4: Bob Frankston by Leo Laporte and Tom Merritt from TWiT Network

Computer pioneer who helped create the first spreadsheet, Bob Frankston, is this week's guest.

On a recent episode of Leo Laporte and Tom Merrit’s show Triangulation, they interviewed Bob Frankston of VisiCalc fame. They gave a great discussion of the current state of broadband in the U.S. and how it might be much better. They get just a bit technical in places, but it’s a fantastic and very accessible discussion of the topic of communications that every American should be aware of.

Reply to Mythbusters | The Sheridan Libraries Blog

Replied to Mythbusters by Margaret Burri (The Sheridan Libraries Blog)

Ever walk past a campus tour and wonder how much of it is true? While most of it is, and we love the plug for “your own librarian,” there are a couple of long-standing inaccuracies that we’d like to put to rest:

“No building on campus can be taller than Gilman Hall because that’s what’s in Gilman’s will.” Wrong. Decisions about buildings’ heights, including that of the library, have been made based on the scale of the campus and the architecture of Homewood House. Stand at the middle of the lower part of the beach, and look through the glass windows of MSEL. Notice anything? That’s right–Gilman Hall is beautifully framed in the center.

Gilman died in 1908, and mentioned nothing in his will about buildings. In 1912, the Trustees began to plan a new “Academic Building.” This was completed in 1915, and formally named after Gilman in 1917.

“The library sank three inches when they put the 2.5 million books in it in 1964.” Wrong again. I often wonder how many parents, when they hear this, would like to end the tour right there. First, there weren’t 2.5 million books in 1964; we didn’t reach that milestone until the 1990s. When the new library opened on November 15, 1964, there were just over 1.1 million books on the shelves.

Second, no sinking occurred. The weight of the thousands of shelves and books had been calculated into the plan, and the foundation was, and remains, more than adequate to hold the weight.

One thing that is true about the library is that when the hole was dug, an underground stream was discovered, and had to be rerouted before work on the building could continue. John Berthel, the library director at the time, poses in the recently dug hole with some of the books that would later grace the shelves.

Did Winston go down into the new hole for the BLC while they were digging and take a similar photo with a pile of books? The two photos would make great “book ends!”

Bill Davenhall at TEDMED 2009 on Geomedicine: How Your Environment May Affect Your Health

Watched TEDMED 2009 on Geomedicine: How Your Environment May Affect Your Health by Bill Davenhall from TEDMED

Does where you live have an impact on your overhall health? Bill Davenhall believes that the location of our homes is critical to our medical history.

This is a great thing to think about the next time your doctor asks for your medical history. Perhaps with more data and a better visualization of it, it may bring home the messages of pollution and global warming.

Matt Ridley’s Thesis: When Ideas Have Sex

Watched When ideas have sex by Matt Ridley from ted.com

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

When extrapolated a bit, this thesis is one of the best arguments for why Twitter and other methods of social media are so useful. There really is a great idea at the core of this presentation.

Twitter Changes Rules on Users. No Auto-Follow. | Kyle Lacy

Replied to Twitter Changes Rules on Users. No Auto-Follow. by Kyle Lacy (kylelacy.com)

(hat tip to ZDNEt and Chris McEvoy for the lead) From ZDNet: “With no notice, Twitter yesterday “pulled the rug out from under its developers” one developer says, by discouraging auto-following and imposing 1,000 person-per-day following limits.” Now… this is not news to me because of the “pulling the rug out from under its developers” thing or the 1,000 person-per-day following limit… The news to me as a Twitter user… I don’t really remember getting a message or alert that the new limits were going to be enacted. I use Twitter on a daily basis. It seems fairly odd that I would not know about the change.

I’m personally glad they’d be implementing something like this and wish they had done it about a month ago. Eventually without any controls the site would have become a waste land. In the spirit of using it as the tool it has become, they needed to implement changes like this as the site scaled up to more and more people. It’s very similar to the changes they instituted in the fall of 2008 when they created a cap of being able to follow more than 2000 people when your own number of followers wasn’t commensurate with that number. As a game theorist, I’m sure that people will somehow find some other way to artificially game the system.

As a separate note, who really wants to waste the time building thousands and thousands of followers when none of them are really going to ever pay attention to you? Yes, it’s great to have a high number, but really what is your ultimate reach? How many people are you engaging?

Finished reading Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought by P.B. Medawar

Originally published in 1969. This book explains what is wrong with the traditional methodology of “inductive” reasoning and shows that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with Whewell, Pierce and Popper can give the scientist a useful insight into the way he thinks.

References:

History of the Inductive Sciences by William Whewell (1837)
Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale by Claude Bernard (Paris, 1865)
Karl Popper
Karl Pearson (math)

Acquired The Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver

Acquired The Mathematical Theory of Communication (The University of Illinois Press)

Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pace--but few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory in the Bell System Technical Journal more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.

Christopher J. Aldrich, Engr ’96, of Los Angeles, writes:
“I recently booked Bea Arthur into two episodes of the TV show “Malcolm in the Middle,” for which she received an Emmy nomination. Following this, I left Creative Artists Agency to join David Entertainment, where I helped to produce MGM’s Breakers, starring Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Now I’m preparing for production of Doctor Doolittle 2, starring Eddie Murphy and Behind Enemy Lines, with Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson.”