Collection News: August-September 2008

• Ebsco's New Look
• Research Wizard to the Rescue
• Project Muse Update
• Beilstein Structure Draw Plugin

What did the popular Ebscohost databases do over summer vacation? They got a whole new set of clothes and doo-dads so that you can start the school year off with a bang!

Ebscohost 2.0 boasts a clean, streamlined look and feel, with plenty of personalization features to help you save time and keep your research organized. Some of the new offerings include:

And there's so much more! Visit the Ebscohost support site for Flash demos of the new interface and in-depth coverage of the the new functionality.

Need help with that paper assignment? The University Libraries have recently released the first version of a Research Paper Wizard designed to help students through the research process by providing step-by-step instructions and schedules.  The Wizard will break down the research process into manageable steps and suggest a target date for each one. 

Incorporating guides, advice, and video tutorials from the Libraries and from the Quality Writing Center, the Wizard allows students to specify the subject area of their paper as well as the due date.  The Wizard then supplies suggested sources and strategies, including recommended databases for the assignment subject.   Topics covered include background information, locating books and articles, citation and quotation, and writing and revision.   The Wizard won't write your paper for you, but he can help you navigate the library labyrinth while keeping to an assignment schedule. Need more help? You can always ask a librarian.

Project Muse offers almost 400 influential journals in the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and philosophy and mathematics. A complete list of available titles can be found in InfoLinks, the library catalog.

In August, Project Muse launched a redesigned web site with several features designed to aid researchers, including:

• RSS feeds for new issues and new journals added to the database
• linked subject headings
• new hyperlinked HTML article formats
• email links to articles
• hyperlinked author searches

With almost 130,000 articles now online, Project Muse has become a rich repository for the humanities researcher. Users can search across the database for keywords in article text, in a fashion similar to the JSTOR journal archive. (In fact, Project Muse has many of the current issues of titles that are archived in JSTOR.)

If you haven't explored this resource recently, give it a whirl. You may find Project Muse to be inspirational!

Chemistry and biochemistry researchers who consult the Beilstein Crossfire Commander database now have a new tool to aid in structure searching. The new version of Symyx Draw, previously known as MDL Draw, allows you to to create 2D and 3D structures and reactions to query the Beilstein database.

Some of the enhancements to Symyx draw include:

Chemical drawing and display

• IUPAC-compliant display of atom charges and radicals:
  
• Use the Atom Tool to add charge, isotope, radicals, or hydrogens to an atom symbol  as you type; or to type the name of an abbreviated structure, as in Symyx ISIS/Draw. (Abbreviated structures completely replace atom aliases).
• Improved Chemistry > Calculator: increased precision (significant figures) in calculation of formula weight, exact mass, and composition; dot-disconnect formula display; isotopes display separately in formulas.
  
• Add a structure to a drawing by typing the SMILES string.
• Click-drag on template tools to make spiro compounds.
• On reactions, display atom-atom maps on reaction centers only.

Presentation graphics

• Additional commands for manipulating objects: Rotate > Bond to Horizontal,  Rotate > Bond to Vertical
• Ruler, square grid and axes for improved alignment of objects in a drawing.
• Movable crosshairs allow you to align the grid with an object or an object with the grid.
• More flexible scaling of drawings: Object > Scale Sketch provides you to scale atom font independently of other objects in the sketch.
• Use Up/Down/Left/Right arrow keys to move objects one pixel at a time.
• Check marks on formatting and right-click menu commands show which option is currently active.
• Title bar displays zoom percentage.
• The Molecule Select tool can now be used with any object, including graphic objects and text.

Download links and installation instructions can be found on the Libraries' Beilstein page (page only available to computers on the UofA campus).