Staff Portal

Written by Terrence R. Burke Jr., Ph.D., Senior Investigator in the Chemical Biology Laboratory and Head of the Bioorganic Chemistry Section

I’ve always loved libraries; everything about them. Growing up in a small town in central Washington State, there was something magic about going to the town’s only library: It had a certain “book” smell” that permeated every nook and cranny. It was divided into a “children’s section” located on an upper balcony that overlooked the main floor, which was the “grownup section.” When I was young, I would look down from the balcony and dream of being able to explore the mysteries below. In due time, I was allowed to do so.

I would spend hours roaming the stacks and soaking up everything from tomes on ancient artifacts to the country’s planned (but as yet not publicly announced) Space Program. I was once asked what place I would most like to see on visiting a new city, and my answer came without pause; the town library!

The wheels of time turned and after graduating with a B.S. in chemistry from a small Benedictine liberal arts college (interestingly, it was the Benedictines who preserved Western civilization during the Dark Ages) I found myself as a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle. The University’s main library was Suzzallo Hall; an imposing Gothic structure with one of the largest open-stack collections in the country. Under Suzzallo’s vaulted ceilings it seemed that I had gone to heaven without having needed to die. During that pre-internet era, one of the defining characteristics of obtaining a Ph.D. was learning how to use a library, and there could have been no better place to do this than in Suzzallo.

My first stop after obtaining my Ph.D. was to undertake a postdoctoral position in room 8N110 of Building 10 on the main NIH campus in Bethesda. It was 1979 and the open stack library in Building 10 was the beating heart of research on the campus. In 2000, the Laboratory (at that time, the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry, but renamed to the Chemical Biology Laboratory in 2009) relocated to the NCI at Frederick campus. Although the Building 549 Scientific Library was physically much smaller than the Building 10 library, it was amazingly well endowed with almost all of the essential scientific journals, and (importantly) it was open stack.

There was something calming about sitting in a quiet library carrel and hand-writing a manuscript while accessing “in real time” important references from the stacks. The Library staff was amazingly courteous and helpful and in those rare instances when I needed a paper or book that was not on site, the staff would go to any length to get a copy as soon as possible (in one case, this involved obtaining the microfiche of a Ph.D. dissertation from Australia). As the scientific literature transitioned increasingly to online platforms, the Library was extremely nimble in adapting to a changing environment. In most cases, I have been able to obtain needed reprints or information in digital form directly online from the Library’s website.  When this is not possible, submission of an online request normally gets the needed PDF file to me within a day or two.

I am also highly appreciative of the Library’s constant effort to provide training and to assist in other ways to address the needs of NCI at Frederick investigators. As a recent example, Joelle Mornini, the Scientific Library Public Services Librarian, prepared custom WebEx presentations for my Group dealing with searching the patent literature and with disambiguating author names in major online indexing, such as Web of Science and Scopus. Attendance was open to all. Given today’s electronic connectedness, I now access most of the Library’s resources from off-site. However, not a day goes by that I do not deeply appreciative having such a precious resource as the Scientific Library.

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 July 9, August 13 and September 10.  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 Skype.  For questions, or if you have a suggestion for a class offering, please contact us with your thoughts.

NOTE: All Library Instruction during Summer 2020 will be given via WebEx webinars.

InCites is a tool that can help you analyze institutional research productivity, monitor collaboration activity for authors and institutions, identify influential researchers, and discover areas of research opportunity.  There are many different methods available within InCites for visualizing your results, and result sets can be exported.  You can access InCites via Web of Science using your Web of Science/Journal Citation Reports/EndNote online profile.  If you do not have an account, it is easy to register for one at Web of Science.  You can access InCites, along with many other resources from the Library’s Databases List. 

RESOURCE TRAINING

The Library’s instruction team is pleased to announce that the Summer 2020 Resource Training Schedule is available on the Library’s Orientations and Classes website.  Class dates and descriptions are also listed on the Events Calendar.  Registration announcements & WebEx meeting links will be sent on the NCIF community listservs.  We are pleased to announce a new webinar on TOOLS FOR LOCATING PREPRINTS on Thursday, July 30 at 11:00 a.m. and an additional webinar on UPCOMING CHANGES TO PUBMED on Friday, September 25 at 11:00 a.m.   

TOOLS FOR LOCATING PREPRINTS (NEW!)

Thursday, July 30, 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

MANAGING RESOURCES WITH ENDNOTE

Thursday, September 17, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

UPCOMING CHANGES TO PUBMED

Friday, September 25, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

RESOURCE OF THE MONTH WEBINARS

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 2020 or contact the Library for more information:

JULY – MENDELEY

Mendeley is a reference manager and an academic collaboration network that can increase researcher productivity.  Learn how to add pdf articles from your browser or import any documents from your desktop, access your library from anywhere using the web, desktop, or mobile versions, and how to connect with other researchers worldwide.

Thursday, July 23, 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

AUGUST – INFORMATION RESOURCES ON ANIMAL MODELS AND MODEL ORGANISMS

Learn how to find information on animal models and model organisms, including biomedical articles, genetic information, patents, E-Books, and print books in the Library collection.

Thursday, August 20, 11:00 a.m.  – 11:30 a.m.

SEPTEMBER - PUBLONS

Publons is an author profile platform for sharing and tracking publications, citation metrics, peer reviews, and journal editing work.  Learn how to create a Publons profile and link it to your Web of Science author record.

Thursday, September 24, 10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Learn about electronic tools and databases created by researchers at NCI at Frederick and Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research during the Digital Resource Fair Webinar Series throughout July. Presenters will provide brief demos of their electronic tools and resources, including demos of:

• DAVID Bioinformatics Resource – Presenters Brad T. Sherman, M.S., Xiaoli Jiao, Ph.D, and Weizhong Chang, Ph.D - Wednesday, July 8, 12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Tissue Sample and Usage Inventory – Presenters Shikha Sharan and Vladimir Krepets – Monday, July 13, 12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m.
• A Bento Lunch - Data Sharing – Presenter John Otridge, Ph.D (Biomedical Informatics and Data Science (BIDS)) - Wednesday, July 15, 12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Customized Electronic Documentation System – Presenter Ryan Baugher, M.S. – Monday, July 20, 12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m.

View the full schedule at the Resource Fair webpage on the Scientific Library website.  Learn about other online tools and resources created by  National Cancer Institute at Frederick and Frederick National Laboratory researchers at the Sharing Tools and Resources (STAR) webpage on the Scientific Library website.

Join the Scientific Library in reading the E-Book Failure: Why Science is So Successful by Stuart Firestein during the Scientific Library E-Book Club throughout July 2020.  Participate in WebEx discussions covering two chapters at a time, and join in the discussion at any time by posting your comments on the Scientific Library E-Book Club Microsoft Team.  See the discussion schedule and more information on accessing the E-Book on the Scientific Library E-Book Club webpage.

Email NCIFredLibrary@mail.nih.gov to be added to the mailing list and Microsoft Team for the E-Book Club, and receive discussion questions and other E-Book Club announcements. 

Book Description (from E-Book Central): In his sequel to Ignorance (Oxford University Press, 2012), Stuart Firestein shows us that the scientific enterprise is riddled with mistakes and errors - and that this is a good thing! Failure: Why Science Is So Successful delves into the origins of scientific research as a process that relies upon trial and error, one which inevitably results in a hefty dose of failure. In fact, scientists throughout history have relied on failure to guide their research, viewing mistakes as a necessary part of the process. Citing both historical and contemporary examples, Firestein strips away the distorted view of science as infallible to provide the public with a rare, inside glimpse of the messy realities of the scientific process. 

While teleworking, Scientific Library staff continue to provide electronic resource access and a wide variety of services to NCI at Frederick researchers, including options to request an article or book chapter, literature searches, current awareness services, EndNote support, online trainings, and more.  The Library’s online trainings have been particularly popular during telework, with attendance three times higher than normal during April and May. Library staff provided weekly webinars from mid-April through May on finding E-Book and online resources to learn about topics like programming languages, histology, disaster medicine, lab animal science, project management, virology, and nanotechnology.

Library staff also planned special events and outreach initiatives through online formats, including:

• National Library Week Online Research Skills Challenge in April
• E-Book Club in June and July
• Digital Resource Fair Webinar Series in July
• Weekly emails each Wednesday highlighting online Library resources and services and listing upcoming Library trainings.
• Creation of a webpage for Online Resources for a Healthy Workplace (in collaboration with Occupational Health Services) to provide NCI at Frederick researchers and staff with reliable health information resources related to coping and stress reduction, nutrition, exercise, and more.

Check the Scientific Library homepage for announcements on more upcoming virtual events and trainings that researchers and staff can attend and participate in online.

NCI at Frederick researchers and staff were invited to participate in an Online Research Skills Challenge during National Library Week in April, and winners were selected in May from players who submitted responses to the Challenge Questions and Bonus Challenges. The Challenge Questions and Bonus Challenges included four categories:

• Literature Searching
• Current Awareness
• Sharing Research
• Finding Full Text

The two winners for the Online Research Skills Challenge are Jerry N. Alexandratos, Ph.D., Technical Laboratory Manager of the Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory and Robin Harrington, Research Associate III at the Molecular Characterization Lab.  Each winner received a digital $10 Barnes & Noble gift card (donated by Library staff).  Congratulations to both winners!