Engineering & Physical Sciences Libraries Newsletters: Fall 2020

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Brian Quigley

Head, EPS Division;

Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science

bquigley@berkeley.edu

Kristen Greenland

Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Astronomy

kgreenland@berkeley.edu

Lisa Ngo

Engineering

lngo@berkeley.edu

Susan Powell

Maps, GIS, and Geography

smpowell@berkeley.edu​

Anna Sackmann

Science Data and Engineering

asackmann@berkeley.edu

Samantha Teplitzky

Earth Science and Open Science

samteplitzky@berkeley.edu

Most of the Library's services have moved online. Please see Library Services and Resources During COVID-19 for the latest information.

We are expanding some in-person services, including contactless pickup of physical items through Oski Xpress.

• Advancing open access - UC Libraries continue their work on negotiating transformative agreements with journal publishers to make more UC research open access. Consult the links below for more details about each agreement:

  • Springer Nature open access agreement

  • Public Library of Science (PLoS) open access agreement

  • Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) open access agreement 

  • Previously announced: ACM & Cambridge University Press

• SciFinderⁿ - SciFinderⁿ is the new, streamlined SciFinder interface from CAS (Chemical Abstract Service) that covers the chemical literature, indexing millions of journal articles, patents, substances, and chemical reactions. The current SciFinder is not going away, so UC has access to both versions at this time. Your SciFinder login will work with SciFinderⁿ; if you do not have a login, select your campus and follow the links to register for an account. Saved searches and “Keep Me Posted” alerts can be transferred into SciFinderⁿ.

• EarthArXiv - EarthArXiv.org is moving from the OSF Preprints platform to the Janeway preprint platform at the California Digital Library (CDL). In preparation for this move, EarthArXiv will stop accepting submissions on Friday August 21, 2020. EarthArXiv.org will redirect to the new service when it becomes public on October 1, 2020.

• O'Reilly for Higher Education - Safari Tech Books Online has migrated to a new platform called O'Reilly for Higher Education. With this transition, we have expanded access beyond O'Reilly ebooks to include ebooks, computer manuals, videos, and more from O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Manning, Prentice Hall, and other technical book publishers.

• Select ISO and IEC standards via Techstreet Enterprise - Access to select ISO and IEC standards are now available to UC Berkeley faculty, researchers and graduate students. Requests are filled using BSI (British Standards Institute) Standards; BSI adopts approximately 75% of ISO standards as well as some IEC standards. Requests or questions can be sent to the library at epslibs@berkeley.edu.

• Wiley Digital Archives - The Library now has access to three archival collections through the Wiley Digital Archives:

Purchase Recommendation - we welcome your suggestions! Please contact your librarian or fill out the purchase recommendation form if you would like to suggest that we purchase a journal or book for the collection.

To help meet the needs of researchers and students in a primarily remote environment, we built a Jupyter book that includes virtual tutorials on our most requested course materials. Check out the virtual Online Library Tutorials (vOLT) Jupyter book to learn more about searching, organizing, and writing tools and resources or attend one of our workshops below.

Please visit the Library Workshops Calendar to register and view additional workshops. 

OSC/b, the Open Science Community at Berkeley launched last semester. Join our google group to learn about future events and services: https://osc-berkeley.github.io/openscienceberkeley/

The Kresge Engineering Library is offering a workshop series called Introduction to Data Analysis with Python for Engineers. The three part series is designed for undergraduates in the College of Engineering who have little or no experience with Python. Each workshop is designed to act as a starting point for learning concepts and will familiarize attendees with additional resources for getting help.  

Contact us to schedule workshops about Overleaf, research workflows, data management and more! We're happy to present personalized sessions for your course or research group. 

In case you missed it... the Mapping the Bay: Exhibit & Student Mapmaking Contest launched in late Spring 2020. The online exhibit features highlights from the Earth Science & Map Library's Historic Maps of the Bay Area Collection. It launched in conjunction with our first student (K-12 & college) mapmaking contest. You can view the winning entries and other finalists on the exhibit website, and get postcard printouts of the winners!

The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Collection at the Engineering Library is a collaboration between the College of Engineering and the Kresge Engineering Library. The collection consists of physical books as well as electronic books and other electronic resources. Although some books are housed in the engineering library, this resource is for the entire campus. The collection is meant to be dynamic and will grow over time.

This collection was created by the College of Engineering's Director of Community Engagement & Inclusive Practices Fatima Alleyne, Head of Engineering & Physical Sciences collections Brian Quigley and Engineering Librarian Lisa Ngo.

Access the collection here: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/EngineeringLibraryDEI

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Following the Engineering Library's lead, a similar effort was created in partnership with the Earth & Planetary Science Department and the Earth Sciences and Map Library. This guide stems from a Call to Action by Earth & Planetary Science graduate students and was co-created by Bonita Dyess and Sam Teplitzky from the library, and Tyler Cadena and Michelle Devoe from the EPS department.

The guide can be found here: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/geo_dei

Agnes Concepcion, Circulation/Reserves Supervisor at the Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Library and Physics-Astronomy Library, retired in June after 37 years of service with the Library. She had also previously worked at NRLF, the Engineering Library, and the Environmental Design Library.

With her retirement, Michael Villarreal will now take on a new role as the Circulation/Reserves Supervisor for the Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Library, Mathematics Statistics Library, and Physics-Astronomy Library.

As a result, Blake Lindsey will become the Circulation/Reserves Supervisor for the Engineering Library. 

Bonita Dyess, Earth Sciences & Map Library Circulation/Reserves Supervisor, was elected to the Berkeley Staff Assembly (BSA) Governing Council as Co-Chair Elect for 2020/21.

Lisa is taking part in the Leadership & Career Development Program (LCDP) offered by the Association of Research Libraries. As part of this year-long program, her cohort will participate in training and mentoring to enhance their leadership skills and prepare for future leadership roles. The program is designed to address "the need for greater representation of people of color in leadership of research libraries and archives."

Susan presented a keynote address at Geo4LibCamp 2020 in February on her work building & sharing a historical GIS database for twentieth-century Mongolia.

Sam co-authored an article on authorship and contributorship with other members of the Force11 Attribution Working Group: Vasilevsky, N. A., Hosseini, M., Teplitzky, S., Ilik, V., Mohammadi, E., Schneider, J., ... & Himmelstein, D. S. (2020). Is authorship sufficient for today’s collaborative research? A call for contributor roles. Accountability in Research, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2020.1779591

Brian is collaborating with other staff from the Library, Research IT, and the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society on a qualitative research study to identify the support needed by faculty conducting research with big data. The Ithaka S+R Supporting Big Data Project is being conducted simultaneously at 21 institutions and will lead to a final report synthesizing the results of the parallel studies.

Kristen continued her work with LSTRC, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee at their Winter and Summer Meetings. LSTRC is a National Library of Medicine committee that meets three times a year to review and recommend journals for inclusion in MEDLINE.

Anna joined the DMPTool Editorial Board to assist with editing and developing new funder templates. She also taught a workshop at the annual PEARC (Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing) conference on supporting computational and data-intensive research through successful Library and Research Computing collaborations.