Patents at Lens- new site for patent research

From the ALA/ACRL/STS Blog, Inside Science Resources comes a review of the new patent research site out of Australia called Lens. Their creative tagline is "Open public resource for innovation cartography".

Their dataset includes:

• The European Patent Office’s DocDB bibliographic data from 1907 – present: 81+ Million documents from nearly 100 jurisdictions.
• USPTO Applications from 2001 – present with full text and images.
• USPTO Grants from 1976 – present with full text and images.
• USPTO Assignments (14+ Million).
• European Patent Office (EP) Grants from 1980 – present with full text and images.
• WIPO PCT Applications from 1978 – present with full text and images.
• Australian Patent Full Text from IP Australia

The site also has a Patent Sequence Database, called PatSeq, that can search DNA or protein sequences that have been used in patents or patent applications.

Check it out! Read the complete post.
 

DOE Data Explorer Overview

From the Blog ALA ACRL/STS Discovery and Access Tips comes a nice short post about the DOE Data Explorer:  https://insidescienceresources.wordpress.com/feed/ 

Explore the Data Explorer for yourself! It might come in handy some day!

Thought provoking article about Reference Services

Although his comments come from being a librarian in a public library, the author's observations and comments are mostly applicable in our academic environment. His premise: "Today’s reference user wants help doing things rather than finding things."

Where Reference Fits in the Modern Library: http://bit.ly/1KQrzAR

New: PatentsView_beta

The PatentsView search tool allows audiences to interact with nearly 40 years of data on patenting activity in the US. Use the tool to explore technological, regional, and individual-level trends through several search filters and multiple view options. I particularly like the "View on Map" option which shows you the location in the world of the patent at issue date.

For researchers in particular, PatentsView is intended to encourage the study and understanding of the intellectual property (IP) and innovation system; to serve as a fundamental function of the government in creating “public good” platforms in these data; and to eliminate the wasteful and redundant cleaning, converting and matching of these data by many individual researchers, thus freeing up researcher time to do what they do best—study IP, innovation, and technological change.

Switzerland completed construction on the world's longest tunnel

Tunneling and track-laying for the 35-mile NEAT Gotthard Base Tunnel has been completed, making it officially the longest tunnel in the world, surpassing Japan’s 14.5-mile Seikan Tunnel.

Switzerland financed the tunnel construction at a cool $10.3 billion!

The tunnel travels through the Alps connecting the countries along the "Blue Banana" or Europe's most densely populated belt, stretching from northern England south through the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Germany into northern Italy.

Read more and see spectacular photos: http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-longest-tunnel-switzerland-2015-8#ixzz3jyHcAUz3

It's Infrastructure Week! New app aims to help improve United States' D+ rated infrastructure

A new app from ASCE allows you to keep track of the state of your local infrastructure and then contact your local elected leaders for their support.

Download the new app for your iPhone or Android phone.

Enter your zip code to find out how many structurally deficient bridges there are in your county and how your state compares to the nation overall. The app for iPhone and Android includes infographics, videos, national and state data, and news. It then enables you to take all that information and do something about it in the Action Center. Through the app you can contact your elected leaders with just a few taps and let them know that you expect their leadership in making infrastructure renewal a priority.

Our nation’s infrastructure most recently received a “D+” in the Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. This app gives you the opportunity to share the stats of our aging infrastructure with your social networks and elected leaders, to help increase awareness of these often “out of sight, out of mind” issues

Electrical Engineering Kaleidoscope- 2015 Research Review

This is new to me, an annual publication from the UW EE Department: http://www.ee.washington.edu/news/eek/index.html . "The Electrical Engineering Kaleidoscope (EEK) is the department's annual research review, highlighting cutting-edge research conducted by faculty and students." We will have print copies free for the taking on the small display cabinet in the Engineering Library, shortly.

ProQuest and Google collaborate for full text indexing of ProQuest journals in Google Scholar -

ProQuest will enable the full text of its scholarly journal content to be indexed in Google Scholar, improving research outcomes. Work is underway and the company anticipates that by the third-quarter of 2015, users starting their research in Google Scholar will be able to access scholarly content via ProQuest.

The collaboration between Google and ProQuest enables authenticated ProQuest users to be recognised when they search using Google Scholar, directly connecting them to full-text scholarly content in their libraries' collections. Users who are not recognized will be sent to a landing page with the abstract or an image of the first page, protecting all rights holders. To read full text, the users will authenticate themselves. There is nothing for libraries to set up – the linking will be seamless and automatic.

The agreement with Google is just one in a series of collaborations that ProQuest has with other information providers. Since 2014, it has been working with Ex Libris to enable interoperability of the companies' discovery and management systems. In 2013, ProQuest and OCLC began a wide-ranging collaboration that shares metadata for ebooks and scholarly journal content.
Original press release

Exciting news for citation formatters! We have a 1 year trial to the online Chicago Manual of Scientific Style. Connect via this link. You can also find it in Primo and connect via the link there.

Here is the blurb from the publisher:

"Now in its eighth edition, the indispensable reference for authors, editors, publishers, students, and translators in all areas of science and related fields has been fully revised by the Council of Science Editors to reflect today’s best practices in scientific publishing. This fully searchable online edition makes it easy to find the answers you need quickly."

Enjoy!