Free music for you!

In addition to being a librarian, I am also a graduate student in Education and I stumbled upon the most wonderful thing this week. It may not be quite library related, but I couldn't pass up this oportunity to make sure you all know about it.

[Section deleted due to the inexorable march of time and change - The CDIGIX service has been discontinued and the new service is known as Ruckus]

For more info go to http://www.cnc.ucr.edu/legal2share/index.php?content=start

RSS

Okay, so many of you techie types are already aware of RSS and may already be set up to receive alerts on a variety of topics, but I do want to point out some RSS 411 that may be new to you.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about when I say RSS, it is basically a technology that allows makers of "news" to package the news in such a way that a browser, website, email reader or other independent application on your side can go pick it up and show it to you. You can monitor many of these news "feeds" from the same program at the same time, so these programs are often call aggregators, because they aggregate all of your important news in one place for you.

Most all traditional news sources (Is Yahoo! news traditional?) now produce feeds. Feeds are also available for weather, craigslist, blogger (most any blog really) etc..., and now a growing array of library-type resources. Not only does the library have an RSS feed of library news (and my humble little blogs as well) but now O'Reilly, Web of Science, Compendex, Factiva, the Springer Book Series, and probably more, offer RSS feeds of their latest content.

Look for the lovely little orange rectangles or the more recent orange square.

Feeds can be picked up by Mozilla Thunderbird, put into your myYahoo!, placed onto your Firefox links toolbar as an "active link," converted to HTML and fed to any Web page (Including iLearn), or read in a dizzying array of ather ways.



For more information and a somewhat realtime list of our resources that support RSS, visit the RSS page on the Libraries' Web site.

Oh and do remember to copy this URL into your aggregator:

http://englibucr.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Remote Access Services

The Campus' Remote Access Services allow you to get to the Libraries' resources from the comfort and convenience of your home or any other location with an internet connection. I would urge all of you to get this working. Sometimes it can be a little bit of an investment, but it is worth it.

Too get more information, click on the "Connect from home" link in the upper left hand of the Libraries' Home page

[Section deleted due to the inexorable march of time and progress]

Username = UCR NetID (same as email)
Password = NetID PAssword (same as email)

Note: If you use EndNote to connect to databases, or if you use SciFinder Scholar, you will need to download the Client VPN.

If you have any difficulties, please feel free to contact me.

ENGnetBASE - eBooks

Another set of eBooks that we have acquired for you engineering types is the ENGnetBASE. This collection includes a large number (511 at last count) of CRC eBooks on a variety of engineering topics. These books can be found by searching Scotty, or directly at http://www.engnetbase.com.

There are also several sub-collections for specific engineering areas:

Electrical Engineering
Environmental Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Information Security
Info Technology
Materials
Nanotechnology
Telecommunications

Remember to use the Proxy or VPN to read these at home. Enjoy!

IEEE and ACM

I want to take this opportunity to remind you all that we have the complete online library of journals and proceedings from IEEE and ACM. These two collections represent the majority of the literature produced in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. If you are using Inspec or Compendex and the UC-eLinks button indicates that there is a journal or proceeding that we don't have from IEEE or ACM, it is simply wrong. The following links will take you directly to a searcheable, browseable interface for accessing these publications.

• ACM = http://library.ucr.edu/go/acm
• IEEE = http://library.ucr.edu/go/ieee
  

New Books Lists

One great way to find out what is new in the Libraries is to get on the email list of new books in your area. The lists are separated by broad catagories based on Library of Congress call numbers, (e.g. T= Engineering QA=Math and Computer Science).

To sign up: Visit the new books page for your subject and scroll to the bottom. Enter your email address in the box and click on the button "email me __'s."

The Latest T's for 7/25/06

• Biological and pharmaceutical nanomaterials
• Integrated governance and water basin management : conditions for regime change and sustainability
• Introduction to microfluidics
• Mechanical tribology : materials, characterization, and applications
• Vehicular engine design
• Enduring passion : the story of the Mercedes-Benz brand / Leslie Butterfield.

The Latest QA's for 7/25/06

• Mathematical methods for scientists and engineers
• Beginning RSS and Atom programming
• Building the data warehouse

Powersearching Google

On Thursday, I will be teaching a class on getting the most out of Google. It is unfortunatly full, or I would invite each and every one of you. However, I have made the slides available on the Libraries' Web site.

One of the topics I am covering in the workshop is Google Books, and the method for linking directly to Scotty from Google Books when using the Firefox browser. It is quite cool.

Panorama in Process

I am working on a panorama tour to go with the existing Virtual Tour of the Science Library. I haven't quite managed to get the stitching and lighting just right, but it will improve more as I learn more.

O'Reilly Books

I am not sure if any of you out there in Engineeringland are unaware of our extreme fortune, but I want you all to know that we have the great good luck to have a subscription to all of the O'Reilly Technical Books written in the last few years - online. If you are on campus, simply go to http://library.ucr.edu/go/oreilly. If you are off campus, you will want to use the proxy. There are more than 300 books available from Ajax to Zope.

Using Compendex

Check out this demo for learning how to use Compendex at the UCR libraries!