What is RSS?

One of my library colleagues at UC Santa Cruz created this page:
http://library.ucsc.edu/science/rss.html
It gives a good explanation of RSS and how to set up an aggregator.

Library Re-opens

If you haven't checked the UH website, the library is open today (Tuesday) from 10-4. We'll be open Wednesday from noon-12:45am. Back to normal hours on Thursday.

Physics Colloquium

This might be of interest to some of you in Technology:

Tuesday September 20th, 4pm
634 SR1

New frontiers in Nanotechnology Applied to Biological Systems
Prof. Miguel Jose Yacaman
University of Texas - Austin
Chemical Engineering Department


Recently physics, chemistry and engineering sciences have advanced towards the biological frontier. Indeed, nano-sciences have been pushing the frontier of knowledge. For instance, the need of fabricating semiconductor devices that continue to follow the Moore's Law has pushed the idea of understanding self-assembly of quantum dots, as a way to produce devices on the future. The needs of drug delivery have required a more deep understanding of polymer and colloidal physics. The needs of the oil industry, coupled with the demand for a cleaner environment, have forced a new view of catalysis. Therefore, the synthesis of new catalysts has passed from a serendipitous type of activity to a more scientific based activity. Here, the understanding of selectivity, such in enzymatic catalysis, has connected again forefront chemistry at the nanoscale with biology.
The present talk will focus on the topic of "Nanotechnology Applied to Biological Systems" including nanostructures systems such as nanowires, nanotubes, nanoparticles and the like. We will discuss several examples that show how the advances in chemistry, physics, and engineering sciences are pushing the borders of our understanding of biological phenomena.

Coffee and Tea will be provided in Room 616 at 3:30 p.m.

Workshop: Monday Sept. 19, 5:30pm

Lingguang Song was kind enough to open up his class' workshop to all of the Engineering Technology graduate students. Faculty are also welcome to come. I'm pasting his notice here:

A library workshop will be offered by the Research and Instructional Services of the University Libraries to graduate students in the Engineering Technology department. The workshop features:

 Introduction to the UH Libraries
 Searching in the library catalog and databases
o Review the basics of searching
o Introduce more advanced searches as well as the tricks for finding resources
 Effective Internet searching
o Review searching techniques and research tools, such as Google Scholar

Time:

5:30-7:00PM, Monday, September 19, 2005

Location:

Room 10G, M.D. Anderson Library. 10G is in the basement of the library. To get there, walk straight through the lobby and go down the stairs or elevator. The classroom is to the right from the stairs or to the left from the elevator.

Bioengineering Gateway

The Greater Western Library Alliance (or GWLA) is a consortium we belong to. We buy many of our electronic resources through this group. They have put together a Bioengineering Gateway that may be of interest to some of you. The link is:
http://www.lib.iastate.edu/other/gwla/

RSS Feeds for Journals

http://library.usask.ca/ejournals/rss_feeds.php

I don't have a complete list of journals we subscribe to which offer table of contents/alerting service RSS feeds. However, libraries are beginning to put together these lists. The link above is to the University of Saskatchewan's list. If you want to know about specific titles, either check the publisher's website or send me an email and I will check for you.

The benefit of this type of service is that the journal's table of contents is delivered to you. If we subscribe to the online version of the journal, the table of contents links will take you to the full text of the articles. With some journals you are also able to set up keyword alerts, so that citations for any new articles that match your keywords will be emailed to you. I admit I'm very fond of this type of service myself.

hurricane relief

You have probably already heard that we are supporting as many of the college students from hurricane-affected areas as possible. At the library, we are allowing students with current IDs from those colleges to use our computers. We also have computers available to the general public that can be used for research and others for checking email. If you know of anyone needing to access computers, please send them to the library.

The library is also collecting leisure-type books, games and toys. If you have any that you would like to donate, call me (x39767) or email me and I'll come pick them up.