June 24, 2009

Seminar: Infrastructure for The Data Web

I thought many of you would be interested in attending this seminar! Especially if you are dealing with large data sets or are interested in making data and publications more freely available on the Web.
(please pardon redundant notifications)


Speaker: John Wilbanks, VP for Science, Creative Commons
(creativecommons.org; sciencecommons.org; neurocommons.org)

Title: The Digital Commons: Infrastructure for The Data Web

Where: NCSA Auditorium (Room 1122 NCSA Bldg)

When: 3 - 4 PM, Monday, July 13th

Please read the accompanying flyer for a descriptive abstract of the talk.

Local Contact: "Beth McKown" bmckown@ncsa.uiuc.edu, 244-0078

~ Katie
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Prof. Katie Newman
Biotechnology Librarian

Office: 2130 IGB (Inst. for Genomic Biology)
Email: florador@illinois.edu
Phone: (217) 265-5386
FAX: (217)-244-1800

Biotechnology Information Center (BIC) website:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/biotech/
BIC News: http://www.library.illinois.edu/blog/bicnews/
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Posted by mmalliso at 3:01 PM

April 15, 2009

Biology Open House Research Poster Competition

The Biology Open House* is preparing an Undergraduate Research Poster Competition for Biology majors. The Open House is being held on Saturday, April 25th, on the second and third floors of the Natural History Building. Participants will be required to present their research to judges and a small audience. The best presenters will be awarded a monetary prize, the value of which is to be determined later. All you need to do is register by e-mailing Kamil Stelmach (kstelm2@illinois.edu).

*The Biology Open House is an event for middle school and high school participants of the Science Olympiad**, their parents, and middle/high school teachers to find out more about biology and what the programs at U of I have to offer. The Open House is being hosted by two student groups: Ligase MCB Club and the Illinois Biological Society .

**The Science Olympiad is a national organization that encourages science competitions between middle/high school students. Competitions include everything from being quizzed on science knowledge to building rockets, planes, catapults and robots.

Posted for
Kamil Stelmach
Illinois Biology Society Secretary
Illinois Biological Society (IBS) Biology Open House Poster Competition Chairman


*****************************
Melody Allison
Assistant Biology Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration
Biology Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
101 Burrill Hall, 407 South Goodwin
Urbana, IL 61801
mmalliso@illinois.edu
(217) 333-7461; 3654

Posted by mmalliso at 10:29 AM

March 31, 2009

Biology Library closure meeting/input

There will be an open meeting this Friday, April 3, at 8:00-9:00AM in the
Grainger Engineering Library Commons (room 235), to discuss changes in the
science libraries, which includes closing the Biology Library. Despite the
late notice and early hour, I encourage you to attend and/or send your
comments to Scott Walter, swalter@illinois.edu, or Paula Kaufman,
ptk@illinois.edu. Please copy me as well, if you send in comments.

As you may remember, back in January the University Library was asked by
Provost Katehi to accelerate its movement towards departmental library
consolidations as part of the “New Services Models” program. In late
January I sent out a message to the department chairs and school heads
informing them of the proposal included in the Provost’s letter to close
the Biology Library and merge its collections and services into the Funk
ACES Library. After lengthy discussions between the librarians who serve
other life sciences libraries we agreed that if the Biology Library was to
be closed, then consolidating it with the Funk ACES library and creating a
life sciences library containing all or parts of the collections and
services pertaining to the Applied Health Sciences, ACES, and Biology
libraries, as well as Veterinary Medicine at a later date, was the best
solution. Under this model, the Biology Library collection would need to
shrink to no more than half its current size. As you will see in the
attached proposal from the University Library administration, this
proposal was not accepted. Instead, they propose that the Biology Library
materials and services would be split between the Chemistry Library, the
Funk ACES Library, and perhaps the Library of the Health Sciences.

I do not support the proposal to split the Biology Library collections and
services. There is no bright line between the collections and services
used by the two schools, but in this proposed split it would roughly be
MCB going to the Chemistry and Health Sciences libraries and IB going to
the ACES library. The Chemistry Library has room for only about 6,000
volumes, which amounts to half of the Biology Library books that have
circulated recently and only a very few journal volumes.

As a separate but related issue, Melody Allison, the Assistant Biology
Librarian, will be moving this summer to the ACES library as Assistant
ACES Librarian due to staffing cuts at the ACES Library. This will leave
only one librarian serving SIB and SMCB.

A final report will be sent to the Provost at the end of April. I
encourage you to provide your input on the proposed library mergers and
consolidations before then.

Diane Schmidt
Biology Librarian


Posted by mmalliso at 1:15 PM

March 25, 2009

Biology Library Notes: Lecture announcement "Open Source Biology” (forward)

Information in Society Spring 2009 Speaker Series

"Open Source Biology”: Delivering redistributive justice for a creative biological commons?
Bronwyn Parry
Queen Mary University of London

Tuesday April 7, 2009

Lunch discussion: LISB 341, 12-1 pm
Office hour: LISB 341, 1:30-2:30 pm
Lecture: LISB 126, 3-4:30 pm

LISB is located at 501 E. Daniel, Champaign

Lecture abstract:
Biological information, whether rendered in actual or virtual forms (as embodied DNA or as databased sequences) can be understood not only as a foundational resource but also as an ‘enabling technology’ that provides the basis of many prospective biotechnological inventions. Drawing on the principles of ‘open-source’ access pioneered in other realms of the digital informational economy, recent global initiatives have attempted to support the generation of a creative biological commons by realizing the concept of ‘open source biology’. Focusing on the distinction between DNA as ‘a tool of innovation’ and an ‘end-product’ these initiatives are designed to make widely available in the scientific community, bio-informational technologies and sequences that would otherwise be the subject of restrictive intellectual property rights regimes. Building on her earlier work on the political economy of the collection, use and regulation of bioinformation (Parry, 2004, 2008, this presentation turns to an analysis of the desirability and viability of this uniquely informational mechanism for delivering redistributive justice to the brave new world of 21st century biotechnology.

Speaker biography:
Bronwyn Parry is an economic and cultural geographer whose primary interests lie in investigating the way human-environment relations are being re-cast by technological, economic and regulatory changes. Her special interests include the rise and operation of the life sciences industry, informationalism, the commodification of life forms, posthumanism, bioethics and systems for knowing, disciplining and governing nature. Her book Trading the Genome was published to wide acclaim by Columbia University Press in 2004. She is currently completing a large Wellcome Trust funded project that investigates how human body parts and derivatives are understood and used as occasional commodities within the contemporary life sciences industry. She has published widely on the ethical social and legal implications of developments in the life sciences, and is a member of the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics where she has undertaken research into the ethical implications of the forensic use of bio-information and the recent crisis in public health in the UK. She has also undertaken comparative work on the role of international regulatory regimes and indigenous knowledge systems in resource management and use in a consultative capacity for both the UN and the UK government.

Before her lecture, please join Dr. Parry for a lunch discussion from 12-1 pm. Contact Linda Smith (lcsmith@illinois.edu) if you have questions or to let her know you will attend lunch. Lunch will be provided for the first 10 participants. Dr. Parry will also be available to meet during an office hour from 1:30-2:30 pm. The lecture will be recorded and linked from the GSLIS Guest Lectures pages at http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/news/lectures.html
_______________________________________________
InfoSoc_Speakers mailing list
InfoSoc_Speakers@lists.lis.illinois.edu
https://mail.lis.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/infosoc_speakers

Posted by mmalliso at 1:55 PM

February 29, 2008

NCBI Field Course Will NOT be Held

In January, it was announced that the University of Illinois would be hosting the Field Guide to NCBI Resources Course . I've had several inquiries about it (originally scheduled for April 17-18).

Unfortunately, that tremendous training opportunity will NOT occur. Yesterday the NCBI Field Guide coordinator, Peter Cooper, sent the following email:

Because of budgetary constraints, NCBI has made reductions in some of its programs, and the education programs are affected. In fact, all outreach education programs (Field Guide, Mini-courses, Structures, PubChem) are terminated effective immediately. At this point we cannot reschedule this course or accept requests for future courses of any kind. This was as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.

The Field Course, as well as the Mini-Courses and the Structure course , has been tremendously popular and useful (see list of sites where the Field Course has been offered recently ), but the NCBI budget situation will not allow NCBI to continue to travel and offer these courses for the foreseeable future.

If we would have been able to host the Field Course, registratants would have been asked to print out the PowerPoint slides for the 3-hour lecture presentation, and the Workshop exercises ahead of time. Here they are...


Additionally, you may find the following materials of interest, from the Mini-courses and the Structure Course:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This message has been archived .
Katie
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Prof. Katie Newman
Biotechnology Librarian, Biotechnology Information Center (BIC),
and UIUC Scholarly Communication Officer

Office: 123A Burrill Hall, MC-112
Email: florador@uiuc.edu
Phone: (217) 265-5386
Fax: (217) 333-3662

Posted by mmalliso at 10:17 AM

February 25, 2008

Web of Knowledge Training sessions

Forward from the Illinois Natural History Survey Library:

On Tuesday, March 11th, a Web of Knowledge training instructor from Thomson Scientific will offer hands on training for Web of Knowledge special features, and the Science Citation Index and Zoological Record databases.

Web of Knowledge The Web of Knowledge has recently released a newly designed interface with powerful new search features. A Web of Knowledge training instructor will review specific aspects and services offered to searchers such as creating alerts and RSS feeds, and researcher ID’s. This session is geared for Librarians and GSLIS students and will start at 1:00 PM.
The Science Citation Index is a multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the sciences, indexing over 6650 major journals. A cited reference searching enables you to find articles that cite a previously published work. This session will be at 2:00 PM.
Zoological Record is the world’s leading taxonomic reference database indexing over 5000 journals plus monographs and conference proceedings. It is the unofficial registry of animal names and it covers the years 1864 to the present. There will be a general review of the database with an emphasis on locating records of new species. This session will be at 3:00 PM.
These will be held in the ACES Library (1101 S. Goodwin) in the 5th floor computer training lab, room 509. The search interface for these two article databases has recently been redesigned so you can learn about some new and exciting features. Also, fyi, Zoological Record is now available online from 1864 (volume one) to the present.

If you are interested in attending please sign up soon. Each session can accommodate up to 40 participants and seats may fill up quickly.

To sign up click on the following link to access the University Library calendar.
http://130.126.32.16/evanced/lib0/eventcalendar.asp

Go to the month of March and click on the event(s) you would like to attend. The popup window will direct you to an online registration form.

Contact Beth Wohlgemuth, Head Librarian, Illinois Natural History Survey Library, 244-4907 with any questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Melody Allison

Assistant Biology Librarian and Assistant Professor of Library Administration
Biology Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
101 Burrill Hall, 407 South Goodwin
Urbana, IL 61801
(217) 333-7461; 3654


"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

-- James Madison

Posted by mmalliso at 1:38 PM

February 22, 2008

Sixth Annual Symposium on Graduate Education


Sixth Annual Symposium on Graduate Education

Co-sponsored by the Graduate College and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research


Research Integrity: Whose Rights? Whose Responsibilities?


A symposium for graduate faculty, students, and alumni


THIS Monday, February 25, 2008, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

Illini Union Rooms B & C

Review the program:

http://www.grad.uiuc.edu/events/symposium/2008/program.htm

Register: (requested)

http://www.grad.uiuc.edu/events/symposium/registration.asp


Please note: At 1:10 Dr. Drummond Rennie , Adjunct Professor of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco and Deputy Editor of JAMA will give a talk: 

Who Wrote My Paper? R&R in Academia [Research & Responsibility}




Katie

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Prof. Katie Newman

Biotechnology Librarian, Biotechnology Information Center (BIC), 

and UIUC Scholarly Communication Officer

Office:  123A Burrill Hall, MC-112

Email: florador@uiuc.edu

Phone: (217) 265-5386

Fax: (217) 333-3662



Posted by mmalliso at 9:26 AM