Developments in Sci-Tech Search

Christina K. PikasChristina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu

R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Themes in Science & Technology

-- And their impact on search

• Repositories, digitization

• Computer processing of newly available data

• Social Computing Technologies

Repositories - Digitization

• More full text, more data, in a useful and useable format

• Word and page-level access to old gray literature– Enables discovery– Not necessarily access

Aluka

• African Plants Collection

• Type specimens from European, American, and African herbaria

• Useable browser

• Licensed a la JSTOR

Biodiversity Heritage Library

• Digitization of taxonomic literature

• Open access

• Good metadata, neat interface, entity extraction for taxonomic terms

Google Books & Engineering Data

• Others discuss using Amazon or Google Books to locate information within books – on the shelf….…but have you considered using these for gray lit for engineering questions?

Examples: how much can I improve fuel efficiency by making my car more aerodynamic? What is the average drag coefficient of a modern passenger car?

Maybe the customer should just consider changing the mirrors?

Computer Processing

• Wealth of available full text has enabled new work in search and presentation

• Semantic Markup– Royal Society of Chemistry Project Prospect

• Chemical Search– eMolecules, PubChem, ChemSpider, SureChem

• Deep Indexing – access to tables and images– Illustrata, BioText

• Usable tables/graphs

Project Prospect

• Identification of compounds, gene ontology and subject terms within articles

• Structure search in articles

Chemical Search

• Ubiquitous structure search

• Using identifiers other than CAS-RN– IUPAC International Chemical Identifier, InChI– Simplified molecular input line entry specification,

SMILES

Empirical Formula: C8H11NO2 (in Hill order)

Systematic Name: 4-(2-aminoethyl)benzene-1,2-diol SMILES:Oc1ccc(cc1O)CCNInChI: InChI=1/C8H11NO2/c9-4-3-6-1-2-7(10)8(11)5-6/h1-2,5,10-11H,3-4,9H2 InChIKey: VYFYYTLLBUKUHU-UHFFFAOYAA

(I’d probably just call it dopamine – from ChemSpider.com)

Deep Indexing

• Not a new concept (maybe 1950s or 1960s)

• Newly interesting due to advances in algorithms and availability of electronic full text

• Examples– Automatic citation linking– Table and image search– Code searching in Safari

Useful/Useable Tables and Graphs

Knovel, CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and other ebook vendors actually let you get usable data from handbooks

Social Computing Technologies

• Scientists are using blogs, wikis, RSS, video sharing… for science

• They are– For personal use– For lab work or collaboration– For storage and retrieval of results– For working with non-scientists

ResearchBlogging.org

• For people who blog about peer-reviewed research in a thoughtful way

• Site is being revamped

Basic Concepts Posts

• Many scientist bloggers post “basic concepts” posts in which they provide a primer in an area of their expertise.

• See a list at: http://tinyurl.com/2pn9cc

Videos

• Journal of Visualized Experiments, JoVE

• SciVee

In the End

• Lots more content– Older but newly available– Some locked up– Some new and user generated

• Neat visualizations, information retrieval experiments, and ways to interact

• Be creative in finding, too!

Presented by:

Christina K. Pikas

R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Christina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu

http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com

Photo Credits

Blondyimp, Flickr

WINGFIN ANCHOVY, Pterengraulis atherinoides, Encyclopedia of Life

Sideritis hirsuta, Meerburgh, N. (1775). Afbeeldingen van zeldzaame gewassen. Te Leyden: Johannes le Mair. From Biodiversity Heritage Library, http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/533

Richard, A., Lefevre, C.T., Petit,A., & Quartin Dillon, L.R. (c1847-1851). Tentamen floræ Abyssinicæ: seu, Enumeratio plantarum hucusque in plerisque Abyssiniæ provinciis detectarum et præcipue a beatis doctoribus Richard Quartin Dillon et Antonio Petit (annis 1838-1843) lectarum. Paris: Arthus Bertrand. From Biodiversity Heritage Library, http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/334 (plate 81)

Barleria mackenii Hook.f. [family ACANTHACEAE] .Fitch, W.H.(1870) Curtis's Botanical Magazine. From Aluka, http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.AP.VISUAL.KCUR00000011&pgs=

Granger, R.A. (1995) Fluid Mechanics. New York: Courier Dover Publications. P.773

Hashimoto,T., Omote, M. and Maruoka, K. (2008) 6,6-Substituent effect of BINOL in bis-titanium chiral Lewis acid catalyzed 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of nitrones. Org. Biomol. Chem., 6, 2263 – 2265. DOI: 10.1039/b804987d

Deep sea octopus.(NOAA). Downloaded from http://www.neptunecanada.ca/gallery/index.html (8/11/2008)

Lab Cat. (2007) Basic Concepts: What are solutions? http://cdavies.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/basic-concepts-what-are-solutions/

Multiwavelength M8. NASA Spitzer Space Telescope Collection. NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Willner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). http://tinyurl.com/5vx46o