ProQuest Training: March 20, 9:30-11

Karen Hinton, our ProQuest trainer, will be here on March 20 in Information Commons Classroom B (MacKimmie Library Block, 2nd floor) to hold a training session on ProQuest databases (including former CSA databases plus other titles).

The session is scheduled for 9:30-11:00 am (though we may not need that long).

Please attend if interested and bring your questions. Also, please invite any interested colleagues.

Some familiar ProQuest and CSA databases:
ABI Inform Global
Canadian Newsstand
CBCA Complete (Canadian Business & Current Affairs Databases)

Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI)
Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management

PSA-Emergency Response Testing: Thursday Feb 28/08

(From the Provost)

The University of Calgary is committed to maintaining a safe and secure learning and living environment for students, staff and faculty. As part of ongoing measures to ensure the safety of the campus community, the University is holding a one day test of evacuations for 4 buildings and the emergency text message system on Thursday February 28, 2008.

An emergency evacuation drill will be held in Earth Sciences, McKimmie Library Tower, Engineering Complex and Science A according to the following schedule. Each drill will last approximately 30 minutes. When the evacuation alarm sounds, all students, staff and faculty should leave the building and proceed to their building’s Assembly Point. A complete list of Assembly Points can be found on the Emergency Management Program website at
www.ucalgary.ca/emergencyplan.

09:00 a.m.
Building to Drill and Assembly Point
Earth Sciences - ICT Food Court
MacKimmie Library Tower - Professional Faculties Food Court

2:00 p.m.
Building to Drill & Assembly Point
Engineering Complex - ICT Food Court
Science A - Social Sciences Food Court

All evacuations will be evaluated by health and safety staff, and recommendations for improvement will be developed. For further information about the building evacuations and emergency response procedures, please visit the Emergency Management Program website at
www.ucalgary.ca/emergencyplan. Questions or comments can be sent to ucsafety@ucalgary.ca or by calling 220-6345.


On the same day as the drills, the University will also test its Emergency Text Messaging system. The system, launched last fall, alerts members of the campus community to serious incidents on campus. Students, staff and faculty may sign up for the text messaging system at www.ucalgary.ca/emergencyplan . If you have already signed up, you will receive two test messages on February 28th beginning at noon. The first message will be a text message, followed by a verbal message.

Please note, the messages are a test of the University’s new system. If you have signed up and do not receive one (or both) of the messages please email ucsafety@ucalgary.ca

Stay safe on campus by reporting suspicious behaviour to 220-5333, or by calling 911 in the case of an emergency.

New Database-Environment Complete

Environment Complete offers deep coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more. Environment Complete contains more than 1,722,000 records from more than 1,660 domestic and international titles going back to the 1940s (including 1,094) active core titles as well as more than 100 monographs. The database also contains full-text for more than 600 journals.

Access it via our Research Databases page, or:
http://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca:2048/login?url=
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=eih

It replaces Environment Index, from the same people (the content in Environment Complete is more ...complete.)

New Feature in Scopus (Elsevier Database)

Tired of saving pdfs from Scopus individually to your hard drive?

Well, Scopus has come up with a new "Document Download Manager" that lets you save its pdfs en masse. More info is on their Web page at:
http://www.info.scopus.com/february_08/

There's no mention of bibliographic management software like EndNote, RefWorks, etc., so one probably can't save directly to them, but this is a pretty big improvement nonetheless.

I am trying it out as I type. It's chugging in the background and it seems a bit slow - I selected three articles. An interesting thing is that even though the article is not available full-text in Scopus, the Manager will find a pdf copy anyway, and download it to your hard drive. This must be the relationship with "QUOSA" that the news release mentions. How does this compare with what SFX finds? Well, it doesn't seem to be as complete as SFX. This means that if Scopus' Document Download Manager doesn't download a pdf, that pdf could still be available in another database for download. Darn.

Access Scopus through the UofC via our Research Databases list, or:
http://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca:2048/login?url=
http://www.scopus.com

Gallagher Library - Sunday Feb. 24, 2008

Due to a power outage in the Earth Science Building to allow for completion of repairs to the main electrical system, the Gallagher Library will be closed on SUNDAY FEBRUARY 24, 2008. (Not the Sunday of the long weekend, but the one after.)

MADGIC News

Our GIS Librarian, Laurie Schretlen, will be leaving the U of C at the end of this month. Her last day is Feb 29/08.

Last Update on BLT - It's Open Again

I swear! But keep reading, there's some good stuff near the end of this post.

BLT is open again, but there'll be reduced seating until the carpets are cleaned and repairs finished.

Current Periodicals with the call number range from HD 9560.1 .S73 to JA1 .C65 will be on 11LT until the cleanup is finished and the shelving is moved back in place. There will be signage directing you to 11LT for these periodicals.

Now, for something slightly different, and just for fun:
Two of my colleagues, Chris Thomas and Jerremie Clyde, are researching gaming and learning and have created this demo of the flooded BLT. I'm pretty sure the water wasn't quite that high...
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~cthomas/Basementflood.wmv

For more info on their research, see:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/hardplay/

Special Issue of Science on Cities - Volume 319, Issue 5864

The Feb 8/08 issue of Science (volume 319, iss. 5864) features cities. Have a look:
http://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.sciencemag.org

Table of Contents for the feature articles:

Cities: Introduction to special issue

Reimagining Cities
Caroline Ash, Barbara R. Jasny, Leslie Roberts, Richard Stone, and Andrew M. Sugden

Cities: News
China's Living Laboratory in Urbanization
Dennis Normile

Calming Traffic on Bogotá's Killing Streets
Jon Cohen

Durban's Poor Get Water Services Long Denied
Robert Koenig

Pipe Dreams Come True
Jon Cohen

Rebuilt From Ruins, a Water Utility Turns Clean and Pure
Erik Stokstad

Living in the Danger Zone
Jennifer Couzin

Choking on Fumes, Kolkata Faces a Noxious Future
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

From Gasoline Alleys to Electric Avenues
Eli Kintisch

Unclogging Urban Arteries
Elizabeth Quill

Upending the Traditional Farm
Gretchen Vogel

Imagining a City Where (Electrical) Resistance Is Futile
Daniel Clery

Money--With Strings--to Fight Poverty
Jocelyn Kaiser

Building on a Firm Foundation
Jocelyn Kaiser

Cities: Perspective

The Urban Transformation of the Developing World
Mark R. Montgomery

Reproducing in Cities
Ruth Mace

Health and Urban Living
Christopher Dye

The Size, Scale, and Shape of Cities
Michael Batty

Cities: Review

Global Change and the Ecology of Cities
Nancy B. Grimm, Stanley H. Faeth, Nancy E. Golubiewski, Charles L. Redman, Jianguo Wu, Xuemei Bai, and John M. Briggs

Urbanization and the Wealth of Nations
David E. Bloom, David Canning, and Günther Fink

Quick Update - Basement of the Library Tower

The Basement of the Library Tower will reopen Thursday afternoon with reduced seating. We will have to wait until the carpets are completely cleaned and repairs are finished before the seating is back up to full capacity. Repair of the damaged drywall will take place today and tomorrow. Cleaning of the carpets will begin during the weekend.

Basement of the Library Tower Flooded, and Fallout

If you've tried to access the current periodicals recently, you know that the Basement of our Library Tower is flooded (burst pressure valve.)

No one is allowed down there and some of the current periodicals have been moved to 11LT:
HD 9560.1 .S73
to
JA1 .C65

We hope to have it back open on Wednesday some time, once the carpet has dried out.

The other thing resulting from this was that last night, our connection to IT was severed, which cut off our access to just about all things library (Web pages, catalogue, research databases...)

So, our Public Services & Systems Librarian and crew have created this Web page, which sits on an entirely different server than the Library's other resources. It lists access to our catalogue, the e-journal list, and all of our research databases:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/all.html
In the unlikely event that this ever happens again, you can use it to access the library's research tools.