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National Technical Information Service (NTIS) Newsletter

The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) values its recognition by the technical information community, libraries, and participating Federal Government agencies as the leader in providing must-have U.S. Government technical content.  To this end, NTIS will always strive to acquire, index, abstract, and archive the largest collection of Government-sponsored technical reports in existence.   

NTIS is committed to increasing electronic access and electronic delivery of this content to its customers:

• In 2007, NTIS increased access to Federal technical reports by extending the search function at www.ntis.gov to include its entire bibliographic file, which dates back to 1964. 
• In addition, NTIS improved the precision of search results by reengineering the advanced search function on the Web site to allow customers to more narrowly define the information they are seeking by year, author, etc.   
• Beginning May 2008, NTIS began a program to increase electronic output options. 

Now, NTIS wishes to further serve our customers with a free NTIS Technical Reports Newsletter (go to http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/ntrnews-vol1.pdf).  The Newsletter, which will be sent electronically each month, highlights and alerts you to recently indexed and abstracted titles in particular categories – this first issue is about Going Green. Future editions will feature various NTIS content categories as well as showcase the relevancy of past U.S. Government technical reports to the current issues of our times.

To subscribe is easy. Just send us an email with your name and email address to ntrnews@ntis.gov.

Eresource Update: Springer Ebooks

The USF Libraries have recently purchased three Springer e-book collections with close to 2,000 titles. These ebooks are available 24/7 with an unlimited number of users.   All titles  are fully searchable. The Springer ebooks are fully integrated with the Springer Online Journals for convenience.  All collections  include publications from 2005-2008.  As USF does not provide access to all 28,000 titles on the Springer site, titles owned by USF are flagged with a green icon.

The collections acquired by USF are:

Earth and Environmental Sciences.  Springer publishes over 200 titles in earth and environmental sciences that are captured in this collection.  Includes book series such as Lecture Notes in Earth Science, Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library and Environmental Science and Technology Library.  Reference works include volumes from the Encyclopedia of Earth Science such as Gornitz:  Paleoclimates, Ancient Environments , Oliver:  World Climatology, and Schwartz:  World Coasts.

Biomedicine and Life Sciences.   With over 300 titles published each year, the collection covers the fields of biological sciences, experimental medicine, biomedicine, food science, and environmental and plant sciences.  Includes such titles as Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology; textbooks such as Modern Food Microbiology and  Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem; book series like Topics in Current Genetics; and major reference works such as Encyclopedic Reference of Cancer,  the  Encyclopedia of Entomology, and Drug Discovery and Evaluation:  Safety and Pharmacokinetic Assays.

   

Computer Science.  With over 500 titles in 2005 alone, this collection covers the applications, concepts, theory and technology of computer science.  Titles address artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, networks and telecommunications, image processing, computer vision, security and cryptology, pattern recognition and graphics, software engineering, and information systems and applications.  The series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, including the subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics are part of this collection.  Book series include the Natural Computing Series , Advances in Information Security, and Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 

All ebooks can be accessed at the item level  through Endeca, WorldCat Local, and Springer Link.  For these and other library resources visit http://www.lib.usf.edu.  Click on Databases by Title/Subject, the USF Libraries Catalog or the Next Generation Catalog to begin.

PRONTO / PRONTO Books & More - Delivered To Your Desktop or to Your Door!

PRONTO Document Delivery and the expanded service, PRONTO Books & More, deliver articles, books, or media owned by the USF Tampa Library directly to USF faculty and A&P personnel, free of charge without you ever having to make a trip to the library! 

PRONTO's Document Delivery service offers electronic scanning of articles from print journals owned by Tampa Library. Prior to requesting materials, please verify in the USF Libraries Catalog that the Tampa Library does own the journal that you want. You can then ask that your article be put on e-reserve for you or that the article be sent to you electronically through email. To request an article, please complete the electronic request form on the USF Tampa Library's web site. The Tampa Library will process up to 20 requests per user per week.

When ordering PRONTO Books & More, you will need to use a separate electronic library request form, that is also available on the USF Tampa Library's website.  These requested materials are delivered directly to your campus address. The Tampa Library will process up to 20 requests per user per week. Both services, PRONTO Document Delivery and PRONTO Books & More, have a processing time of two business days. Please contact Richard Schmidt at rschmidt@lib.usf.edu or call him at (813)974-8776 if you have any questions.

Final Phase of the Print Journals Review - Your Input Is Needed!

This fall, with the support of the Faculty Senate's Library Council, the USF Tampa Library subject librarians are finalizing a Print Journals Review project begun in Spring 2008. At that time, the faculty were surveyed about their use of selected print journals in their subject disciplines. The purpose of the final stage of this review is to offer faculty and students an opportunity to contribute to the conclusion of the review process which is designed to ensure that our print journal collections match the needs communicated to us by the faculty in the survey results from last spring. If cancellations are appropriate, we intend to reinvest the savings in new titles.

Please visit the USF Tampa Library's web site and review the title lists, available in complete A-Z title order or by title within specific disciplines. Click on any title you feel should be retained and fill out the accompanying electronic form stating why this print title is important to your teaching or research. For print titles that are also available electronically, please indicate why the print format is crucial to you. Also on the Journal Retention Form is a place where you can suggest titles the library currently does not own. The Print Journals Review site will be available from August 15-September 30.  We want to hear from you to ensure that our journal collection does reflect the teaching and research needs of our faculty and students!

New Feature in This Issue of STM News @ USF Libraries

STM News @ USF Libraries in constantly changing and improving and welcomes any and all feedback from you! There is another new feature added this month and there are other changes in the works.  The purpose of this newsletter is to deliver the latest information from the USF Libraries directly to the desktops of the USF science population in a timely manner.  Our goal is also to provide you with direct contact to the research librarians who are most closely connected to the science disciplines that they represent. Please let us know how we are doing!

The new permanent feature premiering with this issue is linked over on the right hand column of the newsletter:   

• Scholarly Communication - Open Access Journals - Scholarly Communication is a term that is used to describe the process that academics, scholars, and researchers use to share and publish their research findings so that their research can be made available to the wider academic research community.  The term “open access” refers to providing free, permanent online access to full-text, scholarly journal articles or other research materials. This site links to information about the issues involved in the current "crisis" in scholarly communication and a list of open access resources.

The following new features premiered in the last issue of STM News @ USF Libraries:  

• Alerting Services - Links to all of the Sci/Tech databases that provide email alerts for new journal articles in your research area, table of contents for the journals in your field, or citation alerts to let you know when someone has cited one of your articles.
• E-Resources @ the USF Libraries - Links to the latest information on newly-acquired electronic resources in all academic disciplines.
• Science.gov - Links to the vast amount of scientific and technical information that is available online from United States government agencies.
• Subject Guides for Science & Engineering - Links to Subject Guides in the Sciences and in Engineering.  These guides provide a listing of databases, e-books, print resources, and related web resources in science and engineering.

Coming Soon!  Listings of New Books by Discipline and the latest information on the USF Libraries' ARL collection initiatives.  Stay Tuned!

Updated Version of Beilstein CrossFire

Beilstein CrossFire Commander 7.1, the latest online version of the Beilstein's Handbook of Organic Chemistry, is now available.  The Beilstein CrossFire database contains the world's largest compilation of chemical facts and is an essential resource that can be used to generate new leads, plan synthetic routes, determine bioactivity, physical properties, and the environmental fates of chemical compounds.  Beilstein CrossFire indexes three primary data domains: substances, reactions, and literature.

Beilstein CrossFire provides a comprehensive collection of articles about a compound, collated from different publications into one single record. The over 320 million experimental data contained in these records provides an overview of the compound's properties and the different reaction conditions, that can be exported in order to review or compare data and tables.  With this latest update, Beilstein CrossFire now contains the experimental properites and ID data for over 10 million compounds.

To download Beilstein CrossFire to your computer, you will need to click on this link: Beilstein CrossFire Installation Instructions. You will need to have a Net ID and password in order to access this MDL/Elsevier software program and if you are accessing Beilstein CrossFire from a remote location (not on the USF network, either hardwired or wireless) it will also be necessary to set up a USF Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection on your computer. All of the instructions needed to download the software to your computer is located on the Beilstein CrossFire pages, located on the USF Libraries’ website, including links to Academic Computing's instructions for setting up a USF VPN. If you need any assistance in downloading Beilstein CrossFir, please contact Cheryl McCoy, USF Site Administrator for Beilstein CrossFire and Research Librarian for the Natural Sciences.

SciFinder Scholar 2007 for Macs!

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has issued an updated version of SciFinder Scholar for MacIntosh. This version is designed for Mac OS X and will not work on older Mac operating systems. If you still have an older Mac OS, and have not already downloaded SciFinder Scholar to your computer, you will need to contact, Cheryl McCoy, USF Site Administrator for SciFinder Scholar, for assistance in obtaining access to the older version of SciFinder Scholar.

Enhancements for SciFinder Scholar 2007 for Mac OS X include the ability to: Combine two answer sets of the same kind; Access journal titles; View full journal titles in Analyze by Journal Name histograms; Include abbreviated and full journal titles in Tagged and Quoted Save As formats; Explore or Refine from a substance display by inserting a copied structure directly into the Structure Drawing window; Export commercial source information to Microsoft Excel®; and Print substance records in grid format.

To download SciFinder Scholar to your computer, you will need to click on this link: SciFinder Scholar Installation Instructions. You will need to have a Net ID and password in order to access the CAS software program and if you are accessing SciFinder Scholar from a remote location (not on the USF network, either hardwired or wireless) it will also be necessary to set up a USF Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection on your computer. All of the instructions needed to download the software to your computer is located on the SciFinder Scholar pages, located on the USF Libraries’ website, including links to Academic Computing's instructions for setting up a USF VPN. If you need any assistance in downloading SciFinder Scholar, please contact Cheryl McCoy, USF Site Administrator for SciFinder Scholar and Research Librarian for the Natural Sciences.

New Acquisition: Porphyrin Handbook

The USF Tampa Library has just purchased all twenty volumes of the Porphyrin Handbook, which is a major reference source for scientists in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and medicine who are currently investigating porphyrins and their numerous analogues and derivatives. Porphyrins are being used as platforms for the study of theoretical principles, as catalysts, as drugs, as electronic devices, and as spectroscopic probes in biology and medicine.   

The Porphyrin Handbook is located on the first floor of the USF Tampa Library in the Reference Collection.  The call number for this handbook series is Ref QD401 .P824 2000.

E-Resource Update: Referex for Engineering, Chemistry, and Environmental Science

The USF Libraries have acquired three Referex ebook collections from Elsevier, in support of engineering, chemistry, environmental sciences, and related fields.    

Referex:  Mechanical Engineering and Materials, a collection of handbooks, professional resources, and practical guides covering automotive, aeronautical, and marine engineering, metallurgy, tribology, maintenance, quality systems, health and safety.   Includes such titles as: Plant Engineer's Reference Book; Nanomaterials: Design and Simulation; Handbook of Advanced Ceramics: Materials, Applications, Processing and Properties; Additives for Plastics Handbook; Handbook of Offshore Engineering; Handbook of Pumps and Pumping; Handbook of Valves and Actuators; and Reinforced Plastics Handbook.

Referex:  Electronics and Electrical is comprised of a comprehensive range of books for electrical power engineers, electronics engineers and circuit designers, embedded systems and computer engineers, and communications engineers.  The breadth of this collection is reflected in its key titles which include: Power Electronics Handbook; Electrical Engineer's Reference Book; Handbook of Image and Video Processing; Handbook of Medical Imaging; Texas instruments Op Amps for Everyone; Marty Brown's Power Supply Cookbook; and Video Demystified.

Referex:  Chemical, Petrochemical and Process provides the leading titles in energy, chemical engineering, chemical hazards, process engineering, oil and gas engineering, and environmental engineering. Key titles include: the definitive Bretherick's Handbook of Reactive Chemical Hazards; and the unique handbooks from Gulf Professional Publishing, such as Standard Handbook of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering and Rules of Thumb for Chemical Engineers.

For this  database and other library resources visit http://www.lib.usf.edu.  Click on Databases by Title/Subject to begin.

Faculty Serials Review - Survey of Print Journals - Thanks for Your Input

We want to thank everyone who participated in the Faculty Serials Review - Survey of Print Journals that was recently sent to all of the natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering faculty. The survey  included a list of journal titles,  sorted by discipline, that were only available in print, without any electronic equivalent, and other print titles with varying levels of full-text through one or more of the libraries’ databases.

The response rate for the survey was high and the results will be analyzed later this month.  The final results of the survey will be made available for further faculty review in September 2008. Your participation in the survey is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or comments about the Faculty Serials Review, please contact Cheryl McCoy (Natural Sciences), John Abresch (Social Sciences) or Matt Torrence (Engineering). Thanks for your input.


Cheryl McCoy                            John Abresch                         Matt Torrence
cmccoy@lib.usf.edu                   jabresch@lib.usf.edu             torrence@lib.usf.edu

(813) 974-3530                         (813) 974-7221                      (813) 974-2779