Librarycasting SE

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

PubMed makes it easier to stay current with some of its literature and bioinformatics databases by providing several news feeds in the RSS 2.0 format. These feeds, available at the NCBI website, describe the latest enhancements in the PubMed database, the PubMed Central full-text repository, new entries in the Unigene and Homologene databases, etc. There is also a brief FAQ page about PubMed RSS. If you would like to learn more about using RSS to stay current with research literature, there's a video tutorial (3 minutes, 19 seconds) about this topic.

Posted by at 3:36 PM | Permalink

Engineering Village offers several training resources at its Support Center website. There are six downloadable powerpoint presentations:
- Searching Compendex on Engineering Village
- Using RSS and Blog this! on Engineering Village
- Faceted Searching and Browsing on Engineering Village
- Patents searching on Engineering Village
- Inspec on Engineering Village
- NTIS on Engineering Village

In addition, there are quick reference guides (pdf) for Engineering Village, Compendex and Inspec available at the same webpage, and an Engineering Vilage simulation / demo.

Posted by at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

VCU Libraries is a Patent and Trademark Depository Library (PTDL). This screencast tutorial provides a brief introduction (3 minutes 21 seconds, with audio) to some methods for beginning a search for U.S. patents. Topics covered include:

- Navigating to online patent resources
- Searching using a patent number
- Searching using an inventor name
- Searching using class/subclass numbers and the manual of patent classification
- Finding patent search templates

Posted by at 3:53 PM | Permalink

There are several types of reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry (SN1, SN2, E1, E2, rearrangements, etc.) A very common assignment in organic chemistry courses is writing reaction mechanisms. Successfull completion of the assignment involves correctly representing the movement of electron pairs using curved arrows. This in turn is built on many foundational concepts (carbocations and carbanions, Lewis structures, Lewis acid-base concepts, formal charge, resonance structures, molecular orbitals, electronegativity, etc.).

Some helpful interactive tutorials for this material (including quizzes to test your knowledge) are available online:

Curly Arrows: An Interactive Tutorial in the Writing of Organic Reaction Mechanisms (Dr. Mary Masson, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Aberdeen): covers substitution, elimination and rearrangement reactions.

Two selections from the Online Virtual Chemistry Laboratory (Dr. K.N. Harrison's research group, Dept. of Chemistry, Oxford University):
Interactive Organic Mechanisms: covers SN1, SN2, E1, E2.
Named Organic Reactions: covers more than 50 reaction mechanisms.

Posted by at 4:02 PM | Permalink

RefWorks is a web-based tool for importing, organizing and managing your literature citations. It is available to all VCU-affiliated users. You can also use RefWorks to automatically generate bibliographies in numerous formats (ACS, AIP, CBE, APA, MLA, Chicago) in Microsoft Word. Several screencast tutorials are available that demonstrate how to use the various features in RefWorks, such as importing references directly from databases, Write-N-Cite, One Line/Cite View, etc. These videos range from 45 seconds to 7 minutes 37 seconds in length. If you haven't used RefWorks before, there's also a brief screencast describing the registration process.

Posted by at 5:51 PM | Permalink

The Protein Data Bank is the international, public-domain depository for macromolecular (protein and nucleic acid) 3D structure data.

The narrated PDB video tutorial covers many facets of the website, incuding:
- searching, browsing and query results pages
- structure summary pages
- several alternatives for viewing 3D molecular structures
- downloading structure coordinate files (PDB files)

The PDB also provides several traditional web-page tutorials describing data deposit procedures. More tutorials about this are here.

There is also an RSS feed for the latest released structures

(for latest structures)

Posted by at 9:51 PM | Permalink

Cn3D is free molecular viewer software available from NCBI, a division of the National Library of Medicine. This video tutorial (2 minutes, 21 seconds) illustrates how to use Cn3D to customize and annotate the appearance of a known molecular structure. It also briefly discusses basic searching in Entrez Structure, and the PDB (Protein Data Bank), where all protein data is archived.

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

Posted by at 9:22 PM | Permalink

Librarycasting SE is beginning to also provide some iPod-ready video tutorials. These have been specially adapted to fit the small video iPod screen. The first one is entitled "Finding New / Recently Purchased Books."

Download Links (right-click on link for pc, shift-click for mac):

(2.7 MB, 1 minute 1 second).

(1.7 MB, 1 minute).

Posted by at 7:09 PM | Permalink

Engineering Village provides 3 powerpoint presentations covering search techniques, rss/blog and faceted searching. There is also a 17 page user guide which briefly highlights the main features in EI (searching, thesaurus, RSS, blog, alerts, facets, etc.), and a quick tour animation

Posted by at 12:32 PM | Permalink

The National Library of Medicine has produced several screencast tutorials for the PubMed database. The tutorials are 1 - 7 minutes in length, and include audio. Topics covered are:

- searching PubMed by author, subject
- finding a specific journal
- saving searches, citations online using MyNCBI
- using the MeSH controlled vocabulary (subject terms)
- and others ...

A more traditional webpage-based PubMed tutorial is also available.

Posted by at 11:27 AM | Permalink

This screencast (video tutorial, 1 minute 47 seconds, with audio) describes how to locate many other tutorials available through VCU Libraries. The available tutorials cover both general library services and subjec-specific resources relevant to the sciences and engineering.

Posted by at 7:37 PM | Permalink

VCU Libraries has recently added a search feature for recently purchased items, called "New Titles," to its online catalog. New titles are currently defined as those acquired within the last three months. This feature can be accessed by clicking on the yellow "New Titles" tab at near the top of the library catalog search page. A screencast tutorial (47 seconds) demonstrating this new feature is now available. There is also an iPod-readyvideo tutorial available for downloading (2.7MB).

Posted by at 6:57 PM | Permalink

RSS is an easy, automated way to stay current with research news, recent journal articles, the latest search results from a few databases (eg., PubMed, Compendex / Engineering Village), and even new tutorials from VCU Libraries. There is a screencast tutorial (3minutes, 19 seconds) that describes how to do this. In addition, workshops (see the library schedule) are taught each semester that describe the use of RSS in more detail than the tutorial.

Posted by at 6:45 PM | Permalink

Chemical Abstracts Service (ACS) provides a tutorial web page describing how to print and save search results in SciFinder Scholar 2006.

Posted by at 4:58 PM | Permalink

Chemical Abstracts Service (ACS) provides tutorial web pages covering the use of SciFinder Scholar 2006 for exact structure searching and substructure seaching.

Posted by at 4:53 PM | Permalink

Chemical Abstracts Service provides interactive tutorials demonstrating the use of SciFinder Scholar 2006. These three tutorials cover general chemistry, biology, and chemical engineering respectively. They can be either dowloaded or run in a browser (requiring the Macromedia Authorware Web Player).

Posted by at 4:45 PM | Permalink

This tutorial (2 minutes 30 seconds) describes how to find conserved domain information. Conserved domains contain conserved amino acid sequence patterns, and correlate to protein stucture and function. Organism information is included in the domain records.

Posted by at 4:34 PM | Permalink

This tutorial (2 minutes 59 seconds) describes how to use NCBI's gene Map Viewer resource to access the promoter region of a gene.

Posted by at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This tutorial (50 seconds) describes how to locate intron and exon sequence information for a specific gene, using the gene table feature of NCBI's Entrez Gene resource.

Posted by at 4:20 PM | Permalink

This tutorial (1 minute 45 seconds) describes how to locate the genomic DNA, mRNA, and protein (amino acid) sequences for a specific gene, using NCBI's Entrez Gene resource.

Posted by at 4:14 PM | Permalink

This video tutorial (47 seconds) provides basic instructions for using NCBI's Entrez Gene resource to find information about a specific gene.

Posted by at 3:59 PM | Permalink

This tutorial (29 seconds) shows how to quickly identify all the full-text databases in a particular subject area when you're using the "databases by subject area" tool accessible from the library home page.

Posted by at 1:04 PM | Permalink

This can be an effective technique when exploring an unfamiliar subject area, carrying out an extensive literature review, or searching a cross-disciplinary / interdisciplinary topic (1 minute 35 seconds).

Posted by at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cabell Library is located on the Academic Campus at VCU. Details regarding finding e-journals, online full-text articles, and locating print copies (current or archive), are explained (2 minutes 3 seconds).

Posted by at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This video tutorial (3 minutes 19 seconds) describes how to use RSS technology, to automatically stay current with a variety of information sources. This technology can be easily used with the free Firefox browser (as described in the tutorial), or with a number of free RSS aggregator tools (available for use either online or on your desktop).

Posted by at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New RSS feeds for tutorials (covering library tools and services, life sciences, and physical sciences) have just been added to the site. These feeds are active, and link to tutorials created here at VCU Libraries, and elsewhere. They will be periodically updated. A feed for engineering tutorials will also be activated soon.

Posted by at 8:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Librarycasting SE is a compilation of selected educational and information resources for the sciences and engineering, with a strong emphasis on new media and communication formats such as screencasts (pc screen video), video, and podcasts (audio). Resources covered include those produced at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, the VCU campus community, and the extended sciences and engineering world community beyond.

A major goal of Librarycasting SE is to make available a range of brief screencast and podcast tutorials answering specific questions, and demonstrating specific techniques, relevant to the sciences and engineering. Conveniently access these resources at any time from your Firefox browser bookmarks or RSS aggregator, through the subject-specific automatically updated RSS feeds provided at this site. These tutorials are in constant production at VCU Libraries, and your suggestions for new tutorials in this format are always welcomed!

Pete Kirlew, Ph.D., MLIS
Reference Librarian for the Sciences and Engineering
VCU Libraries

Posted by at 5:52 PM | Permalink