There is a recent trend among universities to upload content, often free, on the web. YouTube, capitalising on this trend, launched its education channel YouTube EDU last year. Last month, it made it international and found strong support from nearly 45 institutions of higher learning in Europe and Israel. Check out these educational online videos today.

To access YouTube EDU, please click here.

ChemMobi is a free application which allows iPhone / iPod Touch users to search across 30 million chemical structures via webservices.

NTU Library invites you to attend the following talk:

Supporting Faculty Knowledge Production
Challenges and opportunities for information professionals in a digitally connected work
Mary Lee Kennedy, Executive Director,
Knowledge and Library Services, Harvard Business School

Wed 25 Nov 09 :: 10.30am :: LT5 :: NTU :: MAP

This talk looks at some of the primary shifts in digital scholarship and the related changes in the nature of the information profession. It highlights the challenges of being in a time of transition as well as the opportunities to create new services and products that bring significant value to our constituents. Mary Lee Kennedy will refer to the work at Harvard Business School, as well as related activities with colleagues in other institutions, including the new opportunity for a Global Knowledge Exchange via GKEN.

Mary Lee Kennedy is the Executive Director of Knowledge and Library Services at Harvard Business School. She is responsible for the School’s knowledge and information management strategy and its implementation. Prior to Harvard, Mary Lee held knowledge management positions with global responsibility for Microsoft Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Please register @ https://wis.ntu.edu.sg/pls/webexe/REGISTER_NTU.REGISTER?EVENT_ID=OA09111015555229.

NTU Library held its annual e-Resource Fair on 12th and 13th Oct this year. Allan Phua Yi Hao from SPMS/CBC was one of the two lucky winners of the e-Resource Fair Grand Draw. He won a Sony eBook reader (sponsored by Elsevier) and was presented with his prize on 29th Oct during a lunch event specially organised for the prize winners.

Ms Janice Chia (left) from Elsevier presenting the eBook reader to Allan

The new release of Reaxys was deployed on Sunday October 18^th 2009.

The feature highlights of this release are:

• Reaxys Alerts. The Reaxys database is updated on a regular basis and each update provides more reactions, more compounds and more data. In order for the user to see whether anything has been changed to a given query profile from one update to another it is now possible to define so-called query alerts:
  -  Displayed in the Results view just below the breadcrumb, the hyperlink “Create Alert” will allow users to activate and further define an alert.
  -  Reaxys will notify the user of the results of an activated alert by e-mail.
  -  The new My Alerts menu will display all the active alerts and their status.
• The Reaxys Results pages will display more hits: the display limit has been extended to 99 hits per page.
• Other improvements:
  -  Query page – Removal of the View Results button: a search will not stop once finished, but will automatically switch to the result page.
  -  Structure Editor – a new version of ChemAxon Marvin sketch (5.2.4) has been implemented.
  -  Synthesis Plans – Removal of unnecessary synthesis plans: users can now close plans which are no longer needed.
  -  Results page – Operators in the Value filters:  it is now possible to use operators in the value filters, i.e. you can enter queries like “>244” in the Mol. Weight filter.

More details about the improvements and fixes implemented, and further information about the Reaxys system and the tested environments, are provided in the About Page. You can access this by clicking the “About Reaxys” hyperlink displayed at the bottom of the Query page.

Listed below is a selection of notable journals in Chemistry subscribed by NTU Library:

1. Analytical Chemistry
2. Green Chemistry
3. Inorganic Chemistry
4. Journal of Biological Chemistry
5. Journal of Computational Chemistry
6. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry
7. Journal of Natural Products
8. Journal of Organic Chemistry
9. Journal of Organometallic Chemistry
10. Journal of the American Chemical Society
11. Nature
12. Science

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath for their studies on the structure and function of the ribosome. Their work focused on atom-by-atom mapping of the protein-making factories within cells.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited the laureates in helping researchers with the scientific understanding of life and the development of antibiotics. In their work, they generated three-dimensional models that show how different antibiotics bind to ribosomes.

Notably, Dr Yonath, an Israeli, is only the fourth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

For more information regarding the scientific background of the prize-winning research, please click here.

In addition, much of the three scientists’ research is represented in the CAS databases, with more than 200 references to their journal articles since 1980. To learn more, read the latest CAS – Science Connections article at: www.cas.org/newsevents/connections/ribosome.html

Come attend the talks at the upcoming e-Resource Fair!

  To register for the above talks on 12th Oct, click here.

To register for the above talks on 13th Oct, click here.

There is an increasing trend among database vendors switching their databases from client-based to web-based. A recent article by Susan Harkins and Drew Wutka entitled “10 reasons to turn your access applications into web-based applications” highlights this trend. The 10 reasons listed by them are as follows:

1. Client versus server
2. No client installation
3. Easy cross-platform usage
4. Simplified security
5. Easy use of NT authentication
6. Goodbye to corruption!
7. No version problems
8. Live, behind-the-scenes interface updates
9. Portability
10. More users

Obviously there are many advantages for having web-based access to databases. This is also why NTU Library will be converting two of its Chemistry databases from client-based to solely web-based. The details of the conversion are as follows:

SciFinder
Currently of the 8 seats available, 5 are web-based and the remaining 3 are client-based.
However, the 3 client-based seats will also be converted to web-based seats by the end of the year.

Reaxys
Reaxys is the web version of the CrossFire Database Suite consisting of Beilstein, Gmelin and Patent Chemistry databases. Currently NTU Library subscribes to both Reaxys (web) and CrossFire (client).
However, the client version CrossFire will no longer be available by December 2010.

A new release of Reaxys was deployed on 6th September!

This release focuses on the following points:

1. The Reaxys Query forms have been equipped with the following features:
   -   Copy to reactions tab/copy to substances tab buttons. The structure query window (and the reaction query window resp.) displays a new button allowing to rapidly copy a chemical structure from the reaction query page to the Substance and Properties Query page, and vice versa.
   -   Clear button: it is now possible to delete the content of your structure/reaction box using this new button, without any modification of the other data constraints added to your query.
2. The Reaxys Citations Results page has been redesigned:
   -   Reactions and Substances tabs on Citations View. Results of a bibliographic search are displayed in a new layout, which displays three additional tabs: the Reactions tab lists all the reactions and the Substances (Grid) and Substances (Table) tabs list all the substances related to the given citation hitset.
3. Customization capabilities
   -   Reaxys allows changing the layout of the citation “Full Text” link, e.g. it is possible to add a graphical button representing your internal literature linking service.

More details about the improvements and fixes implemented, and further information about the Reaxys system and the tested environments, are provided in the About Page. You can access this by clicking the “About Reaxys” hyperlink displayed at the bottom of the Query page.