The Dibner Library is pleased to announce the addition of Synthesis Digital Library of Computer Science and Engineering to its collection of electronic resources.  The collection consists of over 30 subject series in many areas of engineering, primarily related to electrical engineering, computer science, and bioengineering.

Each series consists of electronic books that synthesize an important research or development topic, authored by an expert contributor to the field.  The e-books (or “lectures” as they are called)  range from 50-275 pages and are available in PDF format.  They provide students and researchers a convenient way to get a better understanding of an area of interest.

The range of content level in Synthesis is intended to be fairly broad, from state-of-the-art research overviews to presentations appropriate for undergraduates or professionals seeking a review.  To find out more about the collection, read this detailed review.

Now until June 1st, take the opportunity to try out: Synthesis Digital Computer Science and Engineering Collection - a new electronic collection covering 30 engineering areas, primarily related to electrical engineering, computer science, and bioengineering.  It contains relatively brief introductions (50-250 pages) to complex topics written at an advanced undergraduate level.  These introductions (called “lectures”) provide students and researchers with an excellent opportunity to learn about a new topic or get up to speed quickly in a new research area.

To access the collection, go to www.morganclaypool.com from a computer on campus (off campus access is not yet available).  You can browse by series to find a topic that you are interested in or search for specific terms.

The range of content level in Synthesis is intended to be fairly broad, from state-of-the-art research overviews to presentations appropriate for undergraduates or professionals seeking a review.  During the trial period you are free to view, print and download whatever you would like without restriction.

To find out more about the collection, read this detailed review.

If Synthesis is a resource you would like the library to subscribe to, let us know by leaving a comment.

What do you get when you combine a smart phone, a tiny projector, and a camera?  Seamless access to information that makes the iphone seem quaint.

There is no simple way to describe what the “Sixth Sense” is.  The Sixth Sense website states it’s “a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.”  In other words, it’s a cool gadget that brings to life the gesture-based interfaces of Minority Report.

To really appreciate the amazing capabilities of this technology, you must watch the video below.  If you have the time, watch the whole video for an explanation by Pattie Maes. If not, go to minute 3:00, where Pranav Mistry—the MIT student who developed the Sixth Sense—shows how it works.

Open Source fans rejoice - Open Source Living is here. It’s a huge new directory of open source software and offers a forum for discussions about open source products as well as other OS-related issues.

From the site:
“Through a simple, elegant and efficient presentation of resources and information, OS Living aims to highlight small and large OSS projects, to inform and raise awareness to OS ethics, and to reinforce the credibility of OSS as a viable alternative to corporate funded, closed source software.”

As a community-driven site, it continues to expand with more and more resources daily.

IEEE publishes loads of high quality literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics.  An easy way to keep up to date with the latest research is to review IEEE”s Top 100 Documents page.  You can scan the citations and abstracts of the top 100 documents accessed last month.

Another great way to stay current is to view the most recently added material at the Content Updates page.  Or better yet, sign up for Email Alerts or take advantage of their RSS Feeds and have new content notifications come to you!

Dibner Library is pleased to announce the addition of Safari Books Online to its expanding electronic resource collection.  Safari offers a wide selection of nearly 300 popular computer programing and information management books covering topics such as operating systems, programming, networking, and much more.

This month ScienceWatch.com released the highest-cited papers from 20 countries spanning the globe.  The countries featured were selected based on their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals from January 1998 through August 31, 2008.

The United States ranked number one with 2,959,661 papers and 42,269,694 citations.  The most cited article comes from the field of clinical medicine: “Mechanisms of disease: atherosclerosis – an inflammatory disease” (full text available in ProQuest).

In addition to clinical medicine, disciplines covered in the top 20 papers include: biochemistry, chemistry, physics, materials science and computer science.

ScienceWatch.com provides a behind-the-scenes look at the scientists, journals, institutions, nations, and papers selected by Essential Science Indicators.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) “the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society,” recently introduced a new search capability to its digital library.  This new technology enables users not only to explore existing data but also to discover unexpected information that goes beyond simple query results and helps to foster more research.

The new guided navigation allows users to refine search results by keyword, people, publications, or conferences by selecting from links along the left side of the search results. Additionally, users can discover related journals, magazines, interest groups, or meetings by clicking the tabs along the top of search results.

You can access the ACM Digital Library via our web site.  It contains full text of ACM magazines, journals, and proceedings, with a six-year online archive and a bibliographical reference database going back to 1985 for most ACM publications.

Learn more about this new search technology on ACM’s information page.

You can now access Books24×7, a leading  provider of business, technical and engineering content, via Dibner Library.  Books24×7 contains thousands of digitized “best-in-class” books, book summaries, research reports and best practices.

Search for content in fields such as networks & protocols, software engineering, web development, and multimedia. You can also use the Browse Topics tree (pictured above rightside)  to drill down the list of topics and subtopics to find lists of titles.

Books24×7 has many useful features such as saving titles to folders and sharing bookmarks with others.  For a quick overview, look for the “Take the Virtual Tour” button on Books24×7 homepage.

Dibner Library now offers easy online access to the research journals published by the American Chemical Society.  With this new database, you can access some of the most cited peer-reviewed journals in the chemical and related sciences.

In addition to 34 research journals, the society also publishes the premier weekly news magazine of the chemical enterprise, Chemical & Engineering News.  ACS Publications provides searchable access to over 130 years of original research in chemistry, including more than 750,000 articles dating back to the inaugural volume of the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1879.

The journals included in this database cover a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines— biotechnology, analytical chemistry, applied chemistry, biochemistry & molecular biology, chemical biology, chemical engineering, computer science, energy & fuels, food science, environmental science, inorganic & nuclear chemistry, material science, medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, pharmacology, physical chemistry, polymer science, and toxicology.