Latest News
The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control has released its draft report on the future of bibliographic description in light of advances in search engine technology, the popularity of the Internet and the influx of electronic information resources.
The group's five general recommendations, available at its Web site at www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/ , emphasized the role of the Library of Congress not as a sole supplier, but rather as an important leader in the cataloging world.
The report is available at: http://harvester.census.gov/imls/pubs/stla/pub_detail.asp?id=114#.
It includes a wide array of information on topics such as libraries' internet access, services, collections, staff, and revenue, and is used by state and federal policymakers, researchers, and others.
..For the first time ever, the Senate voted to demand an OA mandate at the NIH. Because the House of Representatives adopted the same language in July, this is also the first time ever that both houses of Congress have demanded an OA mandate at the NIH...
This ballot provides voting for new SLA DBIO officers for Chair-Elect, Director and Secretary.
The link for the ballot is given below. Simply connect to this Survey Monkey link and complete the ballot as directed.
You may vote for one person per position or write-in an individual of your choice. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=iG_2bAMPe5xrhsak1FC_2bRF_2fQ_3d_3d
The California Wildfires Web page includes information on the health effects from fires and exposure to smoke; links to air quality resources, environmental clean-up following fires, and animals in disasters. In addition, resources for emergency responders and information in Spanish are included. Searches of NLM databases, such as MedlinePlus, PubMed, TOXLINE, Tox Town, and Haz-Map (occupational health) are included for additional health information.
The page also provides the locations of facilities reporting to the EPA Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund sites in and around San Diego (TOXMAP).
This web page is designed to help emergency responders, health care providers, public health workers, and the general public find authoritative and timely information about key health concerns from wildfires. Links to other federal government web sites, including USA.gov, FEMA, and the Department of Health and Human Services are included..
From: NLM-TOX-ENVIRO-HEALTH-L
"Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections."
The Electronic Green Journal, Issue #25: http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/index.php/egj (free log-in registration, go to issue, then to article). This article looks at resources supporting information presented in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," by providing several lists of ten.
This is NOT a comprehensive inventory, just some suggestions.
GMR Sponsoring MLA Webcast Sites for Scholarly Publishing and Open Access
Visit http://nnlm.gov/gmr/funding/mlawebcast.html for detailed information on how to become a sponsored site.
The GMR will coverregistration costs for up to two (2) sites per state in the region for this webcast. Because of the limited number of sites we can sponsor, we encourage you to work with your state and local health science librarian groups to identify centralized locations. Sites will be selected based on geographical location, accessibility, and potential number of attendees. To find out about this exciting webcast by visit: http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/scholarlypub/.
The deadline to get your registration and information to the GMR is Friday, October 12, 2007.
Koshland was born in New York City, but his family later moved West. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1941 at the University of California-Berkeley. During World War II, he led a group working to purify plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the world's first nuclear weapon. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1949. After working at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Rockefeller University, he returned to Berkeley in 1965 to head the Department of Biochemistry and on the Chancellor's Advisory Council on Biology. Koshland's own early work on "induced fit" theory had met a mixed response, and in his work at Science, he maintained a strong conviction that important research is often controversial-but worth the editors' efforts. He won the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical The tribute to this eminent scientist can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/koshland/.
Eleanor MacLean, Moderator
Scott Reece, Assistant Moderator
Biomedical and Life Sciences Poster Session
Graduate School in the Basic Biomedical Sciences
This course introduces participants to the training and activities of basic biomedical science researchers. The scientific method, nature of "research", and models of graduate programs will be addressed. Basic science disciplines (e.g. molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, etc.), model organisms, and clinically-relevant technologies will be described. Ph.D. and M.D. training programs will be compared and contrasted. Attendees will explore the role that special libraries and librarians have in serving the needs of such researchers.
Ticket Number 110
Pharmacovigilance: Online Resources and Strategies for Monitoring Adverse Events
This course will provide practical examples on online strategies designed for systematic surveillance of the published literature, exploring terms and techniques that take advantage of special database indexing features to answer typical-and not so typical-adverse event inquiries. Government regulatory requirements will also be reviewed, along with applications and implications of free Web sources that compile product safety reports already submitted through official surveillance programs in Europe, Canada and the United States.
Ticket Number 380
Information and knowledge transfer professionals can play a key role in minimizing uninformed decision making that can result in risks to the organization and to their own services. Assessing the role of information services and how these services can be leveraged to identify, analyze and mitigate risk is a primary value that information professionals can bring to their organizations Understanding the process for identifying or minimizing these risks and articulating them appropriately through the use of systems diagramming and other tools can help elevate the library professional to a strategic role in the organization and situate the information center's services as strategic tools.
Ticket Number 455
Claudia Lascar
DBIO Public Relations Chair
SLA: Getting the Most out of SLA 2007
SirsiDynix: Conference Tips
The Rocky Mountain Chapter has also created a helpful Denver Wiki.
A few more tips for new members, students, and first-time attendees:
You can make it through much of the conference without paying for dinner by "dining" at receptions and open houses. This, however, works best for people who are not on low-fat, low-sodium, high-fiber, or other types of eating programs.
Street hustlers are very good at identifying conference attendees, even when we don't have our badges and bags. If there really is an incredible deal on parking, dining, etc. it's going to get posted on the wiki or the conference listserve, not revealed by someone wandering around on the street. Also, no matter how sad or convincing some stranger's tale of woe, the best response to requests for money is no response. If you feel you must respond, a polite refusal is sufficient. You are an information specialist, not a Denver police officer or social worker. Some sessions will overflow their alloted seating. If you don't want to risk standing through an entire session, or sitting on the floor, try to arrive early.
Usually you will receive a tote bag or messenger bag when you pick up your Final Program at the conference site. These are great for carrying around vendor handouts and office supplies, but hard to distinguish from the literally thousands of similar bags people are carrying around at the meeting. Bring along ribbon (or something else) to uniquely identify your bag, or perhaps even bring your own bag/backpack/etc.
Denver's climate and altitude could be a surprise for those of us from lower and more humid areas. Pat Wagner has some useful tips on "Visiting Denver and Colorado for conferences."
However, Jack Marshall Maness has noted on another SLA list "because we have a dry climate and a burgeoning population, we also face rather significant water-shortage issues that have been compounded by below average precipitation in recent years...I would hate to think of hundreds of bathtubs being filled every night for non-essential purposes! I think Pat's other recommendations should prove more than sufficient for most."
See you in Denver,Nancy R. Curtis
DBIO Membership Chair
2009 marks the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Special Libraries Association by John Cotton Dana in 1909, as a professional association dedicated to serving the needs and interests of professionals who handle specialized information and research services. Today SLA announces the creation of the SLA Centennial Commission and asks its 11,500 members to send ideas and thoughts on how to best celebrate its 100 year anniversary to the Commission via the email address 100@sla.org.
The selection was done by the DBIO Board with assistance from the DBIO Ad-Hoc Website Redesign Committee. The Website Redesign Committee comprised of Claudia Lascar (Chair), Dorothy Barr, Alexa Hackbarth, Deanna Johnson, Chris Hooper-Lane (represents the Medical Section), Carol Lepzelter Berry (Webmaster), Meris Mandernach, and Jennifer Rojas, rigorously selected David Matthews among twenty qualified candidates.
David Matthews’s wife, Amy, has recently earned her MLIS degree and came across our RFP through the SLA Toronto Chapter’s listserv.
If so, the Biomedical and Life Sciences Division invites you to a free Science Divisions Newcomers Luncheon, on Sunday, June 3, from noon to about 1:30 p.m. Representatives from each sponsoring Division (ours, Science-Technology, and Chemistry) will be there to meet you, answer any questions you have about the Division, give you tips on navigating the conference, and describe how to get the most out of your SLA membership. It's a great opportunity to meet other new members, students, and "first-timers" attending the Denver meeting.
Please RSVP by Friday, March 9 to Nancy Curtis
Rev. July 2007