IAPril Information Workshops 2007

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in these hands-on workshops.

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Every Wednesday in April at 5, and every Friday in April at 12pm (noon). Light refreshments will be served.

Wednesday, April 4, 5-6pm, RefWorks Basics

RefWorks is a web-based resource designed to help you to organize references and create a bibliography. RefWorks allows you to search, retrieve relevant citations, and build your bibliography. It allows users to create individual or group accounts, and makes it easy to write papers, or post your results to web pages.

This session will be a hands-on practicum. Attendees will create a personal web account and create a database of cited literature by importing references from resources such as Barton, Web of Science, PubMed and other sources of published literature. You will learn how to organize your references, and to generate manuscripts and bibliographies.

Friday, April 6, 12-2pm, Bioinformatics for Beginners

This class is a basic introduction to NCBI bioinformatics resources. It covers the available databases, details of sequence records, and basic BLAST searching.

Wednesday, April 11, 5-6pm, EndNote Basics

EndNote is a “personal bibliographic software” package which allows you to create and manage a database of bibliographic references. Your database can be used to automatically generate in-text citations and bibliographies in your manuscripts. It can also help you organize and manage your PDF files. This session will be a hands-on practicum. Attendees will create a personal database of cited literature by importing references from resources such as Barton, Web of Science, PubMed and other sources of published literature. You will learn how to search and manipulate databases, and to generate a manuscript and bibliography.

Friday, April 13, 12-1pm: Patent Searching Fundamentals

While you won’t come out of this session qualified to be a patent attorney, you will be able to successfully find patent references from all over the world and know how to obtain patent text and diagrams. The session will be a hands-on practicum which will help de-mystify the patent literature and expose attendees to key resources for finding patent literature. Using patent literature is important for understanding competitive technologies and keeping abreast of current product innovations.

Wednesday, April 18, 5-6pm: Flavors of Citation Searching

Have you ever used Web of Science to find citations? Have you used Google Scholar? Ever used citation links in journal articles? This session will explore the different ways you can use the citation searching method for identifying literature on a subject to benefit of your research. The concept of citation searching has been around for over 50 years, but it has evolved with technology. Several examples will be given, and we would enjoy hearing about your own techniques.

Friday, April 20, 12-1pm: Copyright and Scholarly Publication: Retaining Rights & Increasing the Impact of Research

Can you use and re-use your own work for future writing and teaching? Or is it locked tight behind a vault of copyright restrictions? This session will help you find the keys to fully realize the potential of your own work for yourself and the world. It will provide a very brief summary of copyright law and how it affects your work, and an overview of actions you can take to improve the impact and reach of your research – including why retaining rights to your work matters, and how you can take advantage such rights to increase citation and readership.

Wednesday, April 25, 5-6:30pm: Library toolbars, extensions and web apps: little tools with big impact

Tired of hopping between Google Scholar, Amazon, and library catalogs and databases? Can’t find that great article you meant to read later? Need better ways of sharing scholarly resources within your group?

Come hear about some new web tools that may help you work more efficiently. Learn to organize and share your references, catalog your personal book collections online, and search seamlessly between library resources and other web sites.

We will demo: LibraryThing, del.icio.us, CiteULike, library-relevant Firefox extensions, and more.

Friday, April 27, 12-1pm: Company Research for Engineers and Scientists: Know your Prospective Employer or Partner

You may be a skilled investigator in the area of Science or Engineering, but what do you know about company research? This session will introduce you to library-supported databases about companies and industries. We will also use examples and hands-on exercises to demonstrate strategies for learning about industry trends and prospective employers or partners.

No advanced registration required.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.
Contact the Science Library for more information.