Librarycasting SE

Several NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) lectures and computer workshops will be held on the MCV campus (Sanger Hall and Tompkins-McCaw Library) during the first few days (March 12 - 14) of spring break. Class titles are listed below below. These classes will be taught by visiting staff from the National Library of Medicine. For complete class descriptions, scheduled times, and to register for the classes, go to the VCU Training website, type "ncbi" (without the asterisks) into the keyword search box, and click the "Search" button to see a listing of all the NCBI classes being offered.

Class Titles:
- NCBI Field Guide Update
- Making Sense of DNA and Protein Sequences
- Blast Quick Start
- Identification of Disease Genes
- Correlating Disease Genes and Phenotypes

Posted by at 8:14 PM | Permalink

RefShare is a new feature that has recently been added to the VCU RefWorks subscription. It allows you to easily share citations and references online, that you have already imported into RefWorks, with other students and colleagues. Sharing any RefWorks folder containing the references you wish to share is as easy as clicking on the "Share Folder" button for that folder. This creates a unique hyperlink that can be pasted into a web page, Blackboard class page, etc.

A few possible applications for this feature include:
- Shared reference lists for collaborative projects such as research proposals, student group projects, etc.
- Required reading lists for students to view
- Lists of publications for researchers, faculty

Because RefShare is fully integrated with RefWorks, it takes advantage of already-existing capabilities for easy retrieval and organization of literature citations from almost any database at VCU Libraries, and the automatic creation of in-line citations and references in your final Word document. Additionally, RefWorks/RefShare is RSS-capable, and can be used to search and import citations from the VCU Libraries Catalog.

If you would like to know more about RefShare and RefWorks, take a look at some of the video tutorials listed below. In addition, VCU Libraries provides several training workshops throughout the academic year.

(RefShare video tutorials)

(RefWorks video tutorials)

Posted by at 5:32 PM | Permalink

Cn3D is a versatile, free molecular viewer available from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The video tutorial (2 minutes, 21 seconds, workstation version) illustrates how to use Cn3D to customize and annotate the appearance of a known molecular structure.

Cn3D has many additional capabilities, which are described in traditional web-based tutorials at the NCBI website.

To download the file for a video iPod: right-click on the first iPod video link immediately below for pc, shift-click for mac
(4.8 MB, 2 minute 3 seconds).

(video for normal workstation playback, 2 minutes 21 seconds)

Posted by at 11:30 AM | Permalink

You can setup RSS feeds for searches (search alerts) that you run in Web of Science / Science Citation Index. This means automatic updates for specific searches that you have run in WOS. A similar feature is available for monitoring the citation of a specific article by other authors (citation alerts).

For search alerts, access this feature by running the search of interest, then click on the Search History button near the top of the page, then click Save History button . You'll be prompted to login (click the register link to setup a new user name and password). The Save Search History page (for e-mail alerts setup) will appear, enter a History Name and click the Save button; leave the A Server Save Confirmation page will appear with an orange XML button; this is the RSS feed for the search.

Citation alerts work by opening the record for the specific article of interest, clicking the Create Citation Alert button on the right, and login as needed. The XML button for the feed appears in the Citation Alerts Save Confirmation page.

Note that the alerts will also go to an e-mail box, there is no option to only receive the RSS alert.

Posted by at 12:42 PM | Permalink

This Thursday, the workshop will introduce three important tools for molecular structure viewing and searching: Scifinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts Service), Crossfire Commander for Beilstein / Gmelin (MDL), and Entrez Structure / Cn3D (National Center for Biotechnology Information). More info ...

Time & Location: Thursday, October 26, 2006, 11:00 - 12:00 noon, Cabell Library 3rd floor instruction classroom.

Register for the workshop

Posted by at 1:15 PM | Permalink