Six campuses (Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Barbara) have purchased the LandScan 2011 Global Population Database. Produced by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), LandScan provides ambient population (24-hour average) data by country, admin1 unit (state/province), pixel (sq km), and custom area. Data is broken down by gender ratio and age group. Access is provided by East View Geospatial through the East View LandScan Global 2011 Web App at http://uclibs.org/PID/241791. Off-campus access is available through campus client VPN.  Proxy server access has been unreliable or unconfirmed at most campuses, but it does work through the UC Berkeley proxy server.

For more advanced users, data can be downloaded from the Web App for use in GIS software. GIS users can also access the data directly through their GIS software using the Web Map Service (WMS) or Web Coverage Service (WCS), though this access has been spotty, especially off-campus:

• WMS: http://wms.cartographic.com/GWS/services/LandScan2011/Dataset/mapserver/WMSServer
• WCS: http://wms.cartographic.com/GWS/services/LandScan2011/Dataset/mapserver/WCSServer

Here is the fuller ORNL description of the database: “At approximately 1 km resolution (30″ X 30″), LandScan is the finest resolution global population distribution data available and represents an ambient population (average over 24 hours). The LandScan algorithm, an R&D 100 Award Winner, uses spatial data and imagery analysis technologies and a multi-variable dasymetric modeling approach to disaggregate census counts within an administrative boundary. Since no single population distribution model can account for the differences in spatial data availability, quality, scale, and accuracy as well as the differences in cultural settlement practices, LandScan population distribution models are tailored to match the data conditions and geographical nature of each individual country and region.” For more information, East View has an FAQ at http://www.eastview.com/online/faq_landscan.

Teal Smith (UCM), the Resource Liaison for PsycINFO (on the ProQuest/CSA Illumina platform), has notified CDL that some PsycINFO records are missing journal issue publication dates.   This problem is expected to be resolved by the end of March.   

 From ProQuest technical support: “reported records have been corrected.  All records going forward will contain the year date, and the remaining records will be corrected in the yearly reload which is fast approaching [March].”

 The problem seems to be fairly widespread. Below is a screenshot of some examples.  Teal reports, “I did a sample search for ‘china’ and ranked by relevancy (ranking defaults to the most recent, but the problem was fixed for recent records).  On the first page, 12 of 25 records were missing the date.”

Literature Resources from Gale (LRG) is the new gateway to the following systemwide databases — Literature Resource Center (LRC), Twayne’s Authors Online, and the Scribner Writers Online.  The Literature Resource Center (LRC) is now a stand-alone product, separate from the Twayne and Scribner series. The Scribner and Twayne series have migrated to the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) platform.

On Friday, September 2, CDL will update the PID (http://uclibs.org/PID/20324) that currently links to the Literature Resource Center to point to the new Literature Resources from Gale platform. The impact of this change should be negligible to UC users as the LRG search will continue to allow the option of searching LRC and the two series (contained in GVRL) simultaneously.

If you have questions about these changes or the databases themselves, please feel free to contact the LRC (soon to be LRG) Resource Liaison, Frank Gravier, via email (gravier@ucsc.edu) or by phone at 831.459.3319.

 - Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu), Resource Liaison to T&F Journals

Beginning Tuesday, March 2, 2010, the IOP Publishing journals, which UC licenses, are now accessed via the IOPscience <http://iopscience.iop.org/> platform. This new system provides users with advanced functionality, new features and a clean, user-friendly interface.  

All sites access the same content, and license agreements have not changed. The IOPscience <http://iopscience.iop.org/> platform is just a superior way of displaying the content to which UC currently has access.

Redirects have been put in place so that researchers attempting to access an article from the www.iop.org platform are automatically sent to the equivalent page in IOPscience. Bookmarks will also be automatically redirected.

With IOPscience users can:

• Speed up research: find relevant content quickly with enhanced search filtering
• Save time: re-run previous searches, tagging your favorite articles
• Keep up to date: receive RSS feeds and email alerts when new content is published
• Access more content: view articles plus pre-prints and news
• Interact and share: embrace social bookmarking to share articles
• Discover related research: explore relevant articles based on subject classification codes
• Make it personal: customize alerts, save articles of interest, and view newly published articles within subject areas

The transition was seamless and subscribers are able to access and browse all content in the usual way. IOP has transferred all user accounts to IOPscience, as well as any Table of Contents alerts that users may have set up.

Visit http://iopscience.iop.org/info to learn out more about IOPscience and take a free online tour.

After much development and testing, IEEE is switching to its new version of the Xplore Digital Library on Saturday, February 13th. This database gives the UC Campuses access to:

• IEEE journals, transactions, letters, and magazines from 1988 with select content back to 1913
• IEEE conference proceedings from 1988 with select content back to 1953
• IEEE standards from 1948
• IET journals, letters, and magazines from 1988 with select content back to 1965
• IET conference proceedings from 1988

This version offers new search, display and personalization features, and offers a cleaner look. Existing Table of Contents Alert searches will not carry over to the new interface and have to be set up again in the new system, by following these steps:

1. After the new site goes live, register for a personal account or use your existing IEEE Web account User Name and Password
2. Sign in with your personal account
3. Go to “My Settings” then “Preferences” and add your e-mail address to your personal preferences
4. Click “Manage Alerts” on the home page to be taken to the Table of Contents Alerts page
5. Select the check box next to each title for which you want to receive updates by e-mail, and then click “Update”

More information and a short video showing the new version are here http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/subscriptions/newieeexplore/index.html

The URL will remain the same: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/dynhome.jsp

The IEEE website carries this message: “The new site is coming on 13 February! Users may experience intermittent service interruptions between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm ET”

As part of the CDL negotiated 3-year Web of Science renewal, UC campuses now have access to Social Science Citation Index back to 1900 through the Web of Science database.  This carefully selected and evaluated collection delivers to users the most influential scientific research information from the 20th century. The world itself changed dramatically during the first half of the 20th Century, and the published research during this period of time is reflective of these great changes.  Students and researchers can now search this information in one place, across many disciplines of the social sciences, following paths forward and backward in time through cited reference navigation.

This summer UC will switch to a new Thomson platform, Web of Knowledge 5.0.  At that time we will also gain access to the Biosis Citation Index, which includes citation data for all Biosis journal titles back to 2006.  This new platform will remove the 100,000 record searching limitation, which will be a welcome enhancement.  Thomson expects to run both platforms in parallel for a couple of months.

The new National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) indexes over 2 million technical reports produced from government-sponsored research, with over 500,000 of those reports in full-text and more to be added as they are digitized.  Reports cover a wide range of subjects including health care, energy, transportation, civil engineering, and more, and are published by agencies like the Departments of Energy and Defense, among others.  More information about NTRL can be found at http://www.ntis.gov/products/ntrl.aspx.

UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, UC Irvine, UC Merced, and UC Davis willbe participating in the Tier 2 agreement, with UC Berkeley as the leading campus.  Lisa Ngo, at UC Berkeley’s Engineering Library, is the Resource Liaison.

INSPEC, the premier database for computer science, information technology, physics and electronics engineering, will move from Ovid to the ISI Web of Knowledge platform.  Beginning April 20, 2009, INSPEC will run in parallel on both sites.  Special features are the ability to obtain review articles, limit topic by experimental, theoretical, or applications approach.  Moving to the ISI Web of Knowledge platform allows powerful numerical range searching for properties of materials, searching for astronomical objects by acronym or location, and searching for inorganic chemical substances.

The INSPEC database will continue to be available via the current Ovid interface through June 30, 2009.  Beginning July 1, 2009, INSPEC will only be available through the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge search interface, where INSPEC will have its own site and unique URL link.

CDL has created an interim screen from the links to INSPEC and the INSPEC Archive in the Melvyl Catalog.  The interim screen links to both platforms (Ovid and WoK), which will run in parallel through June 30.  If campuses are currently using a direct URL to the INSPEC database, they may wish to change to the persistent identifiers (PIDs) in their lists of databases, guides, etc. On July 1, the PIDs will change automatically to the new ISI Web of Knowledge URL.  Note that in the ISI WoK platform, the INSPEC Archive is no longer a separate file and thus it will not have a unique PID.  After July 1, the Archive PID will point to the single, complete INSPEC file.

The PIDs for the databases are:

 INSPEC PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/22771

 INSPEC Archive PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/56834

Columbia University Libraries and Columbia University Press have announced that Columbia Earthscape: An Online Resource on the global environment will cease on June 30, 2009.  The site will no longer be supported. 

This resource began in 2000 exploring the intersection of the earth and environmental sciences.  There were many resources on this site that supported teaching, learning, research and public policy in the ever changing global interests of environmental studies.  Unfortunately, subscriptions alone could not longer sustain the rising costs of operations to maintain the site.  Please contact your librarians on each campus for information about related resources that will support your learning in these subject areas.  Columbia CIAO and the Columbia Gazetteer will be continued products accessible to the University of California Libraries.