Staff Portal

The Virtual Laptop Librarian Program virtually gets Librarians out of the Library and into the NCIF/FNL community via weekly or monthly e-mail visits and short staff meeting presentations to participating groups. Librarians provide news targeted to the interests of the groups they serve and keep their patrons aware of upcoming programs offered by the Scientific Library that may be of interest to them. These librarians provide EndNote support, search assistance, and library training tailored to their patrons’ needs. This program started with one NCI at Frederick group and has expanded to three so far. If your group would like to see what a Virtual Laptop Librarian can do for you, please let us know, and we will work with you to provide timely information and training relevant to virtually all your research needs.

LIBRARY ORIENTATIONS

Library Orientation sessions are held monthly via Webex on Thursdays from 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m*.  The dates of upcoming sessions are October 14, November 10, and December 9.  We invite all employees to attend these sessions to learn about the many services and resources offered by the Library.  Registration is not required.

If you are not able to make it to our scheduled webinars, our librarians can work with your schedule to provide one-on-one training at your convenience via Webex or Microsoft Teams.  For questions, or if you have a suggestion for a class offering, please contact us with your thoughts.

*November Orientation to be held on Wednesday, November 10 due to the Veterans Day holiday.

NOTE: All Library Instruction during Fall 2021 will be given via Webex webinars.

RESOURCE TRAINING

The Library’s instruction team is pleased to announce that the Fall 2021 Resource Training Schedule is available on the Library’s Orientations and Classes website.  Class dates and descriptions are also linked on the Events Calendar.  Registration announcements & Webex meeting links will be sent on the NCIF community listservs.

MANAGING REFERENCES WITH ENDNOTE

Thursday, October 7, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

PHARMAPROJECTS: AN INTRODUCTION

Friday, December 17, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Each month the Library will feature a different resource and offer a 30-minute webinar to provide more information.  Watch for announcements about the resources highlighted in 2021 or contact the Library for more information:

OCTOBER – SELECTED CLINICAL RESOURCES

Learn how to locate and utilize clinical information, patient education, pharmaceutical information applications and calculators available through several resources—DynaMed, UpToDate, Stat!Ref, and Lexicomp Online.

Thursday, October 28, 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

NOVEMBER – HSTALKS

HSTalks (Henry Stewart Talks) provides immediate access to over 3,000 online, seminar-style talks by many of the world's leading scientists and clinicians.

Thursday, November 18, 2:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

DECEMBER – DERWENT INNOVATIONS INDEX

Derwent Innovations Index provides patent information from more than 50 patent issuing authorities and searching capabilities that make it easy to find the patents most relevant to your interests.

Thursday, December 16, 3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

In addition to the training and assistance offered by the Scientific Library, consider the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Learning Page.  It offers links to recorded and live webinars, tutorials in various formats, and documentation for all of NCBI’s resources, including PubMed and BLAST.  You can also follow NCBI on social media for updates on new learning opportunities.

Overcoming obstacles that caused the cancellation of the Student Science Jeopardy! Tournament last summer, Scientific Library staff used a virtual platform to hold the fourteenth annual tournament in July.

Four students participating in the Summer Internship Program competed in the event, which followed a format similar to Jeopardy!, the popular game show. Instead of mastering the signaling devices used when the game was held in person, students were challenged with remembering to click their online buzzers and unmute themselves in Webex when answering.

Many people attended to support the students as they showed their knowledge of Nobel Prize winners, the periodic table, genetic code, and other categories. Because of the virtual format, interns from other NCI locations were able to participate in the tournament for the first time.

Alan Doss, chemical sciences informationist, hosted the tournament and helped the players navigate the gaming system. Returning judges Dina Sigano, Ph.D., senior technical laboratory manager of the Chemical Biology Laboratory; Howard Young, Ph.D., senior investigator in the Laboratory of Cancer Immunometabolism; and Walter Hubert, Ph.D., scientific program director of the Office of Scientific Operations, were able to resolve any questions about responses.

Yasmine Zouhairi, an intern with the Education Outreach Program, Office of Scientific Operations, NCI (mentor: Cathleen Cullen), created the questions for the game boards. She also created a “Science in the Movies Trivia” slideshow that entertained attendees during the short break between rounds.

In past years’ games, three teams of two students played in three preliminary rounds, then the top teams from each round played in the final round. This year, the tournament consisted of two rounds with the four contestants matching wits individually.

First place went to Katherine Lei in both rounds, with 5,600 points in the second round alone. Her mentors are Liza Lindenberg, M.D., and Esther Mena, M.D., who are both with NCI’s Molecular Imaging Branch. Lei will be a sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall.

Brian Richardson took second place in both rounds, with a score of 4,399 points in the second round. Richardson, a senior at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall, interns with Jianxin Shi, Ph.D., his mentor in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics Biostatistics Branch.

In both rounds, Phil Huang, who will be a senior at the University of Michigan in the fall, came in third, despite wagering all of his points in the final round. His mentor is Stanley Lipkowitz, M.D., Ph.D., in NCI’s Women’s Malignancies Branch.

Lariana Cline made a valiant effort and conquered the Final Jeopardy question on bacteriology in the second round. Cline, a sophomore at University of California, Berkeley, this fall, is an intern in the Chemical Biology Laboratory under the supervision of Joe Barchi, Ph.D. 

The Recreation and Welfare Club Frederick provided Dunkin’ Donuts e-gift cards and NCI at Frederick face masks as prizes to all the players, and Occupational Health Services gave each player a goodie bag of items from Cigna.

Library staff plan to continue to use this new game platform for future tournaments but look forward to holding this event in person next summer.