2007 Census of Agriculture

Today the 2007 Census of Agriculture data was made available from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.  From the census website, “The Census of Agriculture, taken every five years, is a complete count of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them. The Census looks at land use and ownership, operator characteristics, production practices, income and expenditures, and many other areas.”  The website provides other basic information about the 2007 census.

Data from the three previous censuses are also available online: 2002 | 1997 | 1992
Historical censuses (i.e., 1840-1950) are available in pdf format.

Full text in CAB Abstracts

CAB Abstracts is a leading database for the applied life sciences, including agriculture; environmental sciences; and human health, food and nutrition.

As of January 1, 2009, CAB Abstracts includes all full text content that was previously available only with a separate subscription. As a result, over 30,000 journal articles, reports and conference papers are now available full text (in pdf format) to ISU faculty, staff and students. Please note that CAB Abstracts includes over 5 million records, so only a small percentage of these will be available full text. Nevertheless, the full text content is often not available electronically elsewhere, because CABI focuses on hard to find research.

Lists of the full text journals and conferences (as of October 2008).

ISU’s current subscription to CAB Abstracts is limited to one simultaneous user. If you have trouble accessing the database because of this, please let me know so that I can consider increasing the number of users allowed.

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy

The Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE) is a new, online-only, peer-reviewed journal from the American Institute of Physics (AIP). It is an interdisciplinary journal covering all area of renewable and sustainable energy-related fields that apply to the physical sciences and engineering communities. Topics covered include:

• Bioenergy – bioreactions and bioengineering
• Geothermal energy – geysers, heat pumps, and novel devices
• Marine and hydroelectric energy – waves, tides, and dams
• Nuclear energy – fission and fusion
• Solar energy – photovoltaics and solar thermal converters
• Wind energy – turbines and electrical systems and controls
• Energy conversion – solid oxide and proton exchange membrane fuel cells and novel devices
• Energy efficient buildings – photovoltaics, solar thermal converters, and passive solar approaches
• Energy storage – hydrogen and batteries
• Power distribution – conventional and superconducting transmission, fluctuating loads, and controls
• Renewable energy resource assessment
• Transportation – hydrogen, batteries, fuel cells, bioenergy, and vehicles

AIP has also created a companion website that includes:

• a blog in which insightful commentary on news, policy, and research related not just to the journal, but to renewable and sustainable energy in general, can be found
• a list of top stories culled from major newspapers, magazines, and websites, these stories cover the most important news happening in the field
• interviews (audio, video, and text) with researchers, newsmakers, and other persons of interest to the field of basic renewable and sustainable energy research.

JRSE research papers will be freely accessible through 2009. In 2010, a subscription will be required. If you find this to be a useful journal, please let me know, and Milner Library can consider a subscription for 2010.

Gartner Portal

In partnership with the Administrative Information Systems department, Milner Library is able to provide access to the Gartner Portal to all faculty, students and staff of Illinois State University. The Gartner Portal provides an extensive collection of reports on topics such as business intelligence, IT asset management, open source, security and privacy, and web services.

The Gartner Portal can be accessed via Milner’s website – http://www.library.ilstu.edu/ – or directly via – https://gartner.ilstu.edu/.

A Gartner representative gave a demo of the portal this morning at the College of Business. Here are some highlights from that session:

Magic Quadrants – Allow you to understand the relative positions of vendors in a market. These reports are updated approximately every 18 months, unless a market is very stable. Each report includes a market overview, the vendor inclusion and exclusion criteria, the evaluation criteria for “ability to execute” & “completeness of vision,” an explanation of the challengers, leaders, niche players and visionaries, and the individual vendors’ strengths and cautions.

Hype Cycles – Allow you to understand the relative maturity of technologies in a given domain. The graphs show where a technology is on the cycle of trigger technology, to peak of inflated expectations, to trough of disillusionment, to slope of enlightenment, to plateau of productivity. The graphs also use symbols to indicate the number of years to mainstream adoption. You can click on any of the technologies on the graph to see a definition, a justification, the business impact areas, selected vendors, market penetration, maturity, user advice, and more. These graphs seem like a great resource for students struggling to identify a topic for a project or research paper.

Research - You can browse and search all of the Gartner reports. You can browse by topic, industry, author, date, and more. All of the reports are available in html and pdf. The Gartner rep said that these reports can be shared with ISU students, as long as they are not made freely accessible to anyone. You can also create an alert so that you receive an email when a new report of interest is available.

Research Fast Finder – Near the middle of the main Gartner page, you can browse by markets, topics, and industry. One industry that would be of particular interest to ISU staff and faculty is the Education industry.

Teleconferences - Gartner hosts teleconferences that any ISU faculty, student or staff can register for. If you are unable to participate in a teleconference or if you would like to use a teleconference in class, recordings are available for download in the Replay Archive. The Gartner rep indicated that these recordings are usually available for approximately 6 months.

If you have any questions or comments about the Gartner Portal, please feel free to contact me.

Plant Management Network

Milner Library now provides access to the Plant Management Network.

This cooperative resource for the applied plant sciences offers an extensive searchable database comprised of thousands of resource pages from the network’s partner universities, companies, and associations. PMN also includes the network’s four peer-reviewed journals: Plant Health Progress, Crop Management, Forage and Grazinglands, and Applied Turfgrass Science.  The Plant Disease Management Reports are also included.

The four peer-reviewed journals are included in Milner’s Find It service, so if an article from one of these journals appears in a database search you’ve done (e.g. in AGRICOLA or CAB Abstracts), you should be able to link directly to the full-text!

Web of Science

Milner Library now provides access to the Web of Science database!!! This link defaults to searching all databases (i.e. Web of Science and Medline). If you wish to search only Web of Science, simply click the Web of Science tab.

Milner’s current subscription covers 1998 to present, so you can search for articles published in those years. And despite its name, Web of Science includes scholarly articles in the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities.

Milner’s subscription also includes access to the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Science Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. You can use these resources to do a cited reference search (i.e. find out how many times an article has been cited). For articles published from 1998 to present, you can find out how many times an article has been cited and see a list of the citing articles. For articles published before 1998, you can only find out how many times an article has been cited. To do a cited reference search, be sure to click the Web of Science tab, and then you will see a Cited Reference Search link.

A variety of Web of Science training materials are available, including an Introduction to Cited Reference Searching.

Of course, I’m also available to answer any questions that you have.

New Information Assurance & Security Books at Milner

In a partnership with five other Illinois academic libraries, I secured $2500 in grant money from CARLI (Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois) for Milner Library to support the School of Information Technology’s research and education in the area of information assurance and security.

Below are the titles I ordered. Most, but not all, of the titles are already available at Milner.

• Assessing and managing security risk in IT systems
• A brief history of cryptology
• Computational intelligence in information assurance and security
• Critical information infrastructures: Resilience and protection
• Digital contagions: A media archaeology of computer viruses
• Digital data integrity: The evolution from passive protection to active management
• Handbook of information security (3 volumes)
• Information assurance: Dependability and security in networked systems
• Introduction to cryptography: Principles and applications
• Intrusion detection and correlation: Challenges and solutions
• Mobile and wireless network security and privacy
• Network security: Current status and future directions
• Online business security systems
• Optical and digital techniques for information security
• Process for developing a common vocabulary in the information security area
• Securing the information infrastructure
• Security and usability: Designing secure systems that people can use
• Security in distributed and networking systems
• Security in distributed, grid, mobile, and pervasive computing
• Trust, privacy and security in digital business
• Trust, complexity and control: Confidence in a convergent world

If you are interested in any of these books, search the Milner Catalog for the call number and status (e.g. available, checked-out).

Federated Searching Feedback Presentation

As chair of Milner Library’s Federated Search Committee, I have been heavily involved in the customization, implementation and assessment of Search It, Milner’s federated search engine.  It’s really been a great experience.  The committee spent about 5 months customizing Search It (January – June 2006).  Search It was implemented on June 5, 2006, and since then we’ve done two rounds of assessment – usability testing in August 2006 and focus groups in June & September 2007.

The feedback that we received from the assessment was so valuable and interesting!!  Thankfully, Angela Bonnell and I were able to share some of this information at the Internet Librarian 2007 Conference in Monterey, California on October 29.  Our presentation was titled Federated Searching Feedback from Usability Testing and Focus Groups … not as creative as what we proposed, but we were sharing the time slot with another presenter.  Check out the presentation … the statistics and quotes are fascinating … at least I think so. =)

Google Scholar Library Links

While this isn’t extremely new technology, this will be the first semester that I’ve incorporated Google Scholar Library Links in some of my library instruction sessions.

Milner Library is collaborating with Google, so that when when Milner Library provides online access to an article in Google Scholar, a “Find It @ ISU” link should appear in Google Scholar. It is not perfect; I have discovered that sometimes links display when online access is not available, and other times links do not display when online access is available. Nevertheless, if you’re a Google Scholar user, the library links provide a seamless way to access some resources from Milner Library.

It’s easy to get these “Find It @ ISU” links to appear. You just need to set your Scholar Preferences.

For more information, see the Google Scholar Library Links page.

New Renewable Energy Books at Milner

At ISU, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Economics, and the Department of Technology have teamed up to provide a new undergraduate major in Renewable Energy. In response to this, the Technology Librarian and I ordered 56 books this spring to support the courses being offered and research being conducted.

This week I checked the status of these books, and 48 of them are available in Milner Library, although a few of them are already checked-out. The available titles are:

• Advanced Materials For Energy Conversion; II
• Alternate Energy: Assessment and Implementation Reference Book
• Alternative energy demystified
• Alternative energy resources: The quest for sustainable energy
• Alternative Energy: Political, Economic, and Social Feasibility
• Alternative fuels: The future of hydrogen
• Artificial Photosynthesis: From Basic Biology to Industrial Application
• Big coal: The dirty secret behind america’s energy future
• Biodiesel basics and beyond: A comprehensive guide to production and use for the home and farm
• Bioprocessing for value added products from renewable resources: new technologies and applications
• Careers in focus: Energy
• Clean energy
• Compendium of Sustainable Energy Laws
• Developing Wind Power Projects: Theory and Practice
• Energy Autonomy: The economic, social and technological case for renewable energy
• Energy Science: Principles, Technologies, and Impacts
• Energy switch: Proven solutions for a renewable future
• Ethical markets
• Fundamentals of renewable energy processes
• Future For Renewable Energy 2: Prospects and Directions
• Global warming in the 21st century
• Grid Integration of Wind Energy Conversion Systems
• Integration of alternative sources of energy
• Kicking the carbon habit: Global warming and the case for renewable energy
• National energy policy: Major federal programs and status
• New and Renewable Energy Technologies For Sustainable Development
• Renewable City: A Comprehensive Guide to an Urban Revolution
• Renewable Energy
• Renewable Energy in Europe: Building Markets and Capacity
• Renewable Energy in Nontechnical Language
• Renewable Energy Policy and Politics: A handbook for decision making
• Renewable energy resources
• Renewable energy resources: Basic principles and applications
• Renewable Energy Systems: Design and Analysis with Induction Generators
• Renewable energy: A global review of technologies, policies and markets
• Renewable power in developing countries: Winning the war on global warming
• Renewable resources and renewable energy a global challenge
• Renewables-based technology: sustainability assessment
• Sustainability and environmental impact of renewable energy sources
• Sustainable energy and the states: Essays on politics, markets and leadership
• Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options
• Switching to renewable power: A framework for the 21st century
• Thermal Energy Storage for Sustainable Energy Consumption: Fundamentals, Case Studies and Design
• Transforming power: Energy, environment, and society in conflict
• Wind electrical systems
• Wind energy: proceedings of the euromech colloquium
• Wind Energy: Technology, Commercial, Projects and Laws
• Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security

If you are interested in one of these books, search the Milner Catalog to find the call number and status (e.g. available, checked-out).