Is it possible to laugh at the people who brought you Genbank, OMIM, Nucleotide databases and Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins?  The answer is YES. Check out a blog called NCBI ROFL. We all know that NCBI stands for National Center for Biotechnology Information, and ROFL stands for ‘roll on the floor laughing’ in IM or texting slang.

Here is a quote from a certain Nebraska Community Outreach Liaison after I sent her the link to the blog: “I just want you to know that I haven’t gotten anything else done since you sent me that blog and I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. ”

Please be forewarned that science isn’t always rated PG.  http://ncbirofl.blogspot.com/

[rb]

This is the “capstone” class for the Toxicology databases - presented as the third of three focused on this topic in the series of class for Spotlight! on National Library of Medicine Resources, presented by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, MidContinental Region.   The topic includes coverage of  Hazardous Substance Data Bank, Haz-Map, and WISER, TOXLINE, TOXMAP, Toxics Release Inventory, and Tox Town. (Attendance at previous sessions is not required)

Tune in on Wednesday, July 22 at 1:00MT, 2:00CT for the MLA CE class Toxicology Capstone presented by John Bramble.

This online training is FREE, and requires no registration. All you need is a computer with Internet access and a phone. You’ll sign in as a guest, enter your phone number when prompted and the system will call you! Access it by going to: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcr. To receive Medical Library Association Continuing Education credit, you will need to attend the class, participate in the exercises and e-mail Marty Magee: mmagee@unmc.edu. An evaluation form will be sent to you to complete before the MLA CE certificate will be sent to you.

The Spotlight! on National Library of Medicine Resources, targeted for the fourth Wednesday each month will continue on August 26, when Marty Magee presents the Public Health Partners (PHPartners.org) database.(mm)

Worried about the air around you? Or the location of hazardous waste? Check out this archived Spotlight! session: TOXLINE, TOXMAP, Toxics Release Inventory, Tox Town - presented by Dana Abbey

https://webmeeting.nih.gov/p61493833/

[rb]

NLM and the NN/LM MidContinental Region offices will be closed on Friday, July 3, 2009 in observance of Indepenence Day.

Jenny Jones is giving away funding to individuals to help their community. The funding amount is for up to $25,000. For more information and a link to a very easy to fill out application form, see http://www.jennysheroes.com/index.shtml [scb]

Posted on behalf of Rebecca Raszewski, MS; Assistant Information Services Librarian. Rebecca’s contact information is below.
*****
I would like to invite all librarians who have a health sciences degree to participate in a survey. The degrees include the following fields:

* Allied Health
* Behavioral Sciences
* Dentistry
* Life Sciences
* Medicine
* Nursing
* Occupational & Physical Therapy
* Pharmacy
* Public Health
* Veterinary Medicine

I am interested in learning about the following things:

* health sciences professionals’ former career
* how they feel about working as a librarian
* if they feel their health sciences background is advantageous in their current position.

Please go to the website below to take part in the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=4VQy38sHiOyVSRd6mwyd1g_3d_3d

The survey will take about fifteen minutes of your time. No personal information will be collected, nor will any institution be identified in the results. I plan to share the results through publication and/or presentation. Your participation in the survey provides implied consent.

The project has been approved by University of Illinois at Chicago. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the survey.

Rebecca Raszewski, MS
Assistant Information Services Librarian
University of Illinois at Chicago
Library of the Health Sciences (MC 763)
1750 West Polk Street
Chicago, IL 60612-7223
Email: raszewr1@uic.edu
Phone: 312-996-2759

[rb]

The Disrupted Library Technology Jester blog has published an excellent comparison of three new search services: Wolfram|Alpha, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google Squared; see http://dltj.org/article/alpha-bing-squared/. Wolfram|Alpha and Google Squared are “fact retrieval” search engines whereas Bing is more like existing search engines that retrieve web links about a topic.

The post features an 8-minute long screencast that contrasts results from the three search engines. I recommend taking the time to watch the screencast; you will come away with a good understanding of the differences between the three services. Note the new service described at the end of the post that provides a way to conduct a search across all three engines. [SD]

The second annual m-Libraries conference was held in Vancouver from June 21 - 24 (see http://m-libraries2009.ubc.ca/). The conference focuses on the use of mobile technology within the library. You can follow the conference on Twitter using the hash tag #mlib09, or see the tweets from Twitter search at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23mlib09. [SD]

The Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce website, http://PHPartners.org, has been revised to make public health information easier to find and to highlight public health news and resources. Check it out today! (mm)

MCR’s own stimulus funding is available again. We are now accepting applications for projects focussed on health information literacy, hospital library advocacy, or emergency planning.

Network members in the MidContinental Region are eligible to apply for up to $15,000 and take up to 18 months to complete the project. Deadline for proposals is December 31, 2009. We expect to fund approximately 8 projects. For the Continuity of Health Information Request for Proposal go to http://nnlm.gov/mcr/funding/Continuity.html

We will review applications as they are received and awards will be announced as they are approved. Do not wait till December to apply; we may have run out of funds by that time. RML liaisons are ready to answer your questions. Technical sessions will be scheduled starting in July. During these sessions the request for proposal will be reviewed, questions on writing proposals will be answered, and advice provided on your project ideas. /ch