Access to IEEE Xplore is temporarily unavailable via the Queen’s webproxy.

A special issue of Nature looks at the transformation taking place in scientific publishing. Available at:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/scipublishing/index.html

The library now has access to the Springer 2013 E-Books for the following subject areas:
Behavioral Science
Biomedical and Life Science
Business and Economics
Chemistry and Materials Science
Computer Science
Earth and Environmental Science
Engineering
Humanities, Social Science & Law
Mathematics and Statistics
Medicine
Physics and Astronomy
Professional and Applied Computing

The agreement also includes access back to 1997 for the following series:
Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology
Advances in Polymer Science
Progress in Colloid and Polymer Science
Structure & Bonding
Topics in Current Chemistry
Topics in Heterocyclic Chemistry
Topics in Organometallic Chemistry
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences
The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry
Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences
Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics
Studies in Computational Intelligence
Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing
Lecture Notes in Mathematics
Advances in Solid State Physics
Lecture Notes in Physics
Springer Series in Optical Sciences
Springer Tracts in Modern Physics
Understanding Complex Systems
NATO Science for Peace and Security

Morgan and Claypool invited Aaron Swartz to contribute a short work to their series on Web Engineering (now The Semantic Web: Theory and Technology). He produced a draft of about 40 pages — a “first version” to be extended later — but unfortunately died before the work was finished. The paper included his ideas about programming the Web, his ambivalence about different aspects of Semantic Web technology, his thoughts on Openness, and more.

As a tribute to Aaron, Morag and Claypool have posted his work on their site as a free PDF download. It is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA-NC) license. The work stands as originally written, with only a few typographical errors corrected to improve readability.

Stephen A. Cook, a Toronto researcher who has dedicated his career to proving whether certain types of problems are solvable by computers, has won this year’s Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering. CBC News, Feb 27th, 2013

On Tuesday, February 26, join us in Speaker’s Corner, Stauffer Library, to celebrate our Freedom to Read. Public readings drawn from a wide variety of works in a range of disciplines and formats will take place each day between noon and 1pm.

The readings represent material that is inspiring, provocative, sometimes enjoyable and sometimes challenging. Many readings represent challenged and banned works.

Recognizing the nature of academic inquiry and scholarship, please note that the reading selections do not necessarily reflect the views or values of the readers, the Library or the University.

An assistive listening device is available from the Circulation Desk in Stauffer Library for persons who are hard of hearing.

Additional information on intellectual freedom, censorship issues and the Freedom to Read is available from the following websites:

Freedom to Read Week (Book and Periodical Council, Canada Council for the Arts)
PEN Canada
Canadian Library Association Statement on Intellectual Freedom
American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom

The 1966 Reading Room will not be available for study purposes from 5pm on Wednesday, January 9 until noon on Thursday, January 10th due to a staff meeting relating to the Library and Archives Master Plan.

The Screening Room Speaker Series Presents:
CHASING ICE + A Talk by Dr. Scott Lamoureux
Sunday November 18 @ 4pm
Advance tickets go on sale November 1

CHASING ICE is a new documentary about National Geographic photojournalist James Balog’s photographic records of the impact on global warming on glacial ice.

Dr. Scott Lamoureux is a geography professor at Queen’s University; his research interests are concerned with long term landscape changes in the arctic, particularly the interactions between climate, hydrology and geomorphology. Having carried out field research in the Canadian Arctic since 1988, he runs the Environmental Variability and Extremes Laboratory and is a participant in ArcticNet.

Nerve is an online science, technology and engineering magazine based out of Queen’s University. The magazine is completely student run and issues are published on the first Tuesday of every month.

Catherine Owsik, the founder, was featured in a recent Queen’s news profile http://www.queensu.ca/news/articles/profiles/catherine-owsik-student-and-online-science-journalist

Scopus: Over 19,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers; a comprehensive resource to support research needs in the scientific, technical, medical and social sciences fields and arts and humanities. On trial 18th October – 2nd November.

See a complete list of trial databases. Access restricted to Queen’s faculty, students and staff.