Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

Set up a free account at Web of Knowledge to be notified when articles are cited. This can alert you to potential collaborators who are working on similar topics, assist you with locating articles on similar topics, and help you know how widely your work is being disseminated.

 The Web of Knowledge database (containing Science Citation Index and more) is interdisciplinary and includes citations to materials in the health and life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities.  Personalized accounts are free. Create one, and sign in on subsequent visits, by clicking the  button at the top of any page inside the Web of Knowledge database.

You can set up citation alerts to send you an email or subscribe to an RSS feed.  To set up an alert, search Web of Knowledge for the paper you wish to use as the subject of the alert. Click on the title of the paper to view the full record (see screenshot below of a full record).  

Click on the  button on the right-hand side of the page to set up an alert, which will be active for one year from the date of creation. You will receive an email whenever your article is cited by another article in the Web of Knowledge database.

To view all your alerts, subscribe to an RSS feed for a citation alert, or renew an alert for another year, click the  link at the top of any page inside the Web of Knowledge database.

Cold Spring Harbor (CSH) Protocols is a database that includes protocols covering cell and molecular biology, neuroscience, genetics, bioinformatics, imaging, and more. 

Users can subscribe via RSS feed for new protocols, topic introductions (articles that provide general and background information, theory and applications for methods), and information panels (smaller discrete pieces of information relevant to particular methods). Subscribing to an RSS feed will allow the information to come to you, rather than you having to seek it out yourself. 

Read more about RSS feeds in our blog post entitled Tools for keeping up: using RSS feeds and other features of resources.

On Tuesday July 1 we alerted you to access and link problems with Wiley Interscience e-journals. As of July 2, full access has been restored to all UCLA-subscribed Wiley Interscience e-journals. There are still remaining problems with links to individual articles. All UC-eLinks icons in databases, the UCLA Library Catalog, or on Library web pages have been modified to take you to the individual article. Other links may take you to the main Wiley Interscience web page. In this case, you will still be able to navigate to the individual journal web page and locate your needed article.

Our technical staff are working to resolve these problems as soon as possible.

If you experience any access or link problems to UCLA-subscribed content, please contact the Biomedical Library.

There’s an online place just for doctors, and it’s called Sermo. Sermo (their tagline is “Know more. Know earlier”) is a social networking site where MDs can hang out and talk to other MDs about what doctors talk about, like medical observations, questions, and opinions that contribute to medical knowledge.

Check out Sermo’s FAQ that addresses some popular questions, such as:

• How will my personal information be used?
• If I give an opinion about a medical question, is there any potential malpractice liability?
• How do I know that Sermo members are really MDs?

Want to know even more? Click the below picture to learn about their business model and understand how clients (health care, governmental, and financial institutions), who pay subscription fees, use Sermo to inform their decisions.

Want to see Sermo for yourself? Check out the tour.

Want to read what people are saying about it? Check out their news page.

And, if you decide to use it, please come back and let us know your experience with it by leaving a comment below. Also, if you know of other collaborative tools–such as one specifically for nurses, public health professionals, dentists–please let us know.

I used to have about four different lists of favorite bookmarks: two on my work computer (one set for each Web browser, Internet Explorer and Firefox) and two on my personal computer (one for each Web browser).

That all changed a couple of years ago when I found out about del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a free Web-based bookmark tool…and much more! It is one place you can go from any browser, from any computer, to get to your own favorites. It also allows you to see other user’s bookmarks and tag them as your own.  By assigning tags (a.k.a. keywords), you can organize your favorite pages in different ways (see picture below).

And, once you have convinced your friends and colleagues to sign up for del.icio.us, you can forward your bookmarks to them.

Are you convinced? If so, go to the Get Started page…and get organized! Then, tell us what you think by leaving a comment on this post. Happy organizing!

Zotero is a web browser plugin that saves citation information from web pages and formats bibliographies. Zotero is free, open source, and only available for the Firefox browser. The newest version of Zotero was released on June 17, 2008, and is fully compatible with Firefox 3.

Zotero combines elements from other software programs to create a powerful tool for managing and using information. Running inside your web browser window as you surf the web, Zotero automatically senses the type of material you are viewing (e.g., Library Catalog records, article PDFs, book PDFs, newspaper articles, films, web pages, etc.) and displays an icon relating to the type of material in the web browser address bar. Click the icon and the complete bibliographic citation information for this item is added to your Zotero collection. The screenshot below displays a Zotero collection of books, a newspaper article, and a journal article.

You can create multiple collections and include items in more than one collection simultaneously. Once you have added an item to a collection, you can tag it with keyword(s) that describe its meaning. Use the tag panel (show below) to view and search all tags in your collections.

In addition to storing information, Zotero lets you interact with your collected items. You can add notes to individual items, link notes between multiple items, or write notes about entire collections. If you capture a web page, you can add annotations to the page. This screenshot shows 2 notes and a screenshot attached to the citation for a journal article by Hillyer et al.

Use Zotero to create bibliographies with Microsoft Word, Open Office, or Google Docs. Multiple styles are supported, including American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychological Association (APA), National Library of Medicine, Nature journals, Cell journals, and Council of Biology Editors (CBE). New styles are added frequently.

To get started using Zotero or find out more information about the product, check out Zotero’s Support Documentation which includes section on installing the plug-in and a quick start guide.

Learn about tools you can use to organize your academic work this summer on the Biomedical Library blog. Between June 16 and July 21, you can read articles about software to help you manage PDFs and citations, the advantages of setting up accounts at Library-provided resources,  how to incorporate RSS feeds, tables of content alerts, and other special features into your daily work, and social bookmarking and networking tools.

This post will focus on the social networking site Facebook. Facebook is a free website that is very popular on college campuses. (Many UCLA Library employees have Facebook profiles!) You might be most familiar with Facebook as a place to connect with friends or play games, but many in the academic world are also using Facebook to connect with colleagues and conduct scholarly work.

One popular way to use Facebook is to form or join groups. You can use groups to meet and network with colleagues.

Librarians from all 10 University of California campuses participate in the UC Librarians Facebook group. Members use the group to set up meetings, conduct discussions on topical issues in librarianship, and share web links. You can search for existing groups in your specialty area, like the Ecological Society of America , National Nurses Organizing Committee, or the American Dental Education Association Council of Students, or create your own.

You can also add applications to your Facebook profile to help you search for and locate information, like the UCLA Library Catalog or PubMed.

Facebook can be great place to conduct discussions, meet and keep up connections with far-flung colleagues, and locate important information. Leave a comment to tell us how you’re using Facebook to support your academic work!

The University of California Libraries have launched a pilot version of a replacement for the current Melvyl Catalog, which contains records for library holdings at all ten UC campuses. Users are encouraged to test the pilot, called Next-Generation Melvyl, and offer feedback on how well it meets their needs. The UCLA version is available at http://ucla.worldcat.org. Please provide feedback using the survey link found in the upper right-hand corner of the search page.

The pilot, which will last at least six months, features a single interface that searches holdings in all UC Libraries, those of libraries around the world, and UC books digitized by Google. It searches for U.S. government publications and incorporates information from Medline and other databases to provide citations to articles in medicine, health, psychology, and other fields.

Next-Generation Melvyl search results are displayed with local records first, then records from the other UC campuses, then records from other libraries worldwide. From the individual records, users can check circulation status, place holds on items at their home campuses, and request items held elsewhere, both within the UC system and beyond.

Other features, many of which are new with this pilot version, include the ability to easily refine searches, build and share lists of library resources, view personal ratings and reviews of items, cite items in various styles, export citations in multiple formats, and search the catalog using several languages.

Following completion of the pilot phase of Next-Generation Melvyl, a decision will be made about whether to move forward with it or to pursue other options. For more information about the pilot, view the PowerPoint presentation on the University of California, Office of the President (UCOP) website. As always, your librarians are available to answer questions and provide help.

The Biomedical Library and the Technology and Learning Center housed in the Biomedical Library will alter their hours between June 2 and June 22, 2008.

The Biomedical Library will remain open until midnight between June 2 - 12. On June 13, the Library will close at 6 p.m. and will have reduced hours of operation through June 22:
June 14: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
June 15: 1 - 5 p.m.
June 16-19th: 7:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.
June 20: 7:30 a.m. - 6 p.m.
June 21: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
June 22: 1 -5 p.m.

Summer session hours will begin on June 23.

Between June 9 - 22, reference desk hours will be reduced. During the work week, the desk will be open from 10 a.m. - noon, and 1 -5 p.m. The reference desk will be closed on the weekends.

For complete information, view a schedule of Biomedical Library hours.

The Technology and Learning Center (TLC) will be closed for maintenance between June 16 - 20. The TLC will reopen on June 21 with updated computers and software. Read the TLC web page to find out more about the closure.

Searching for an evidence-based decision support tool to download onto your PDA? Try DynaMed! The same great DynaMed content– clinically organized summaries of over 3,000 topics– that UCLA affiliates access online is now available for more PDA models, including BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Smartphone, Pocket PC, and Palms. Read more about the technical specifications and request a serial number to download and set up DynaMed on your PDA today.