The Lubin Files

Follow-up on Artificial Meat.

In an earlier blog post, the possibility of growing meat in petri dishes was presented as a way to provide a desired food product while avoiding the environmental damages of large scale animal husbandry.  Now the Economist takes up the subject as well.  At the moment it is expensive and not realistic to provide meat grown from stem cells, but is this a realistic option for the future? See the article here.

New easier access to full-text articles provided by the library.

Check out the library's new URL link resolver, which allows you to click directly on links to available full text of journal articles from databases like Scopus or CAB Abstracts. The icon has been rebranded to say "Check for full text" as seen here: http://bit.ly/A2FVOg . This service enables David Lubin Memorial Library(DLML) to deliver easy access to full text in any number of locations. It is a friendly and intuitive interface with language options and provides custom links to ILL forms, web resources and direct export to citation management tools as well as 1-click to article service that bypasses the results screen. The new link resolver and E-Journal Portal on the library's homepage make it easier and more efficient for FAO staff in HQ and in the Field offices to find full-text articles in the DLML collection.

Popular Science placed FAOSTAT amongst its 10 most amazing databases.

Popular Science tells why it believes that FAOSTAT is one of the most amazing databases. Click here to discover why FAOSTAT deserves this acclaim and to see the nine other databases that share this honor.

On World Food Day, small farmers may be the key to feeding the world.

The following article in the Financial Times is particularly relevant today.  It provides hope that it is possible to feed the world, but steps must be taken now by world governments and leaders with a commitment to achieving the goal of feeding the world's hungry.  The author sees the role of small farmers as critical, but their contributions will depend on the leaders in their countries and on technology.  See the article here. (You will have to register for a free account in order to have access.)

Library databases from home

Did you know that you can access library databases like Proquest and the Economist Intelligence Unit from home?

As long as you have a username/password for FAODOMAIN (most people at headquarters) then you can access the library homepage from the Secure Access Gateway.

Following to the links to the databases from the library homepage will connect you no matter where you are.

"Publish or Perish." A tool for citation analysis

Citation analysis investigates the number of times an article or an author has been referred to by others in the field of scholarly literature.  It can be used to judge the impact an author or a publication has had upon its peers.  FAO staff members often use citation analysis as part of the auto-evaluation process. 

Historically, the only tools available for citation analysis are ones such as the (extremely costly) ISI Web of Science or the Elsevier Scopus database.  We here at FAO do not have access to Web of Science, but we do have a subscription to Scopus.  Having access to either of these databases does not answer every need that we have at FAO, however. Due to the nature of the type of publications that FAO produces, many of them are just not searchable in the usual places.

I just recently witnessed the demonstration of a citation analysis tool called Publish or Perish that looks to be promising for FAO staff who are looking to judge the effectiveness of their work.  This tool is free to download, and it runs on input from Google Scholar.  As I mentioned above, no citation analysis tool is without flaws, however, Google Scholar may provide insight into the kind of publications produced by FAO that often fall between the cracks of the traditional analysis tools.

Publish or Perish calculates statistics based on the following metrics:

Total number of papers
Total number of citations
Average number of citations per paper
Average number of citations per author
Average number of papers per author
Hirsch's h-index and related parameters, shown as h-index and Hirsch a=y.yy, m=z.zz in the output
Egghe's g-index, shown as g-index in the output
The contemporary h-index, shown as hc-index and ac=y.yy in the output
Two variations of the individual h-index, shown as hI-index and hI,norm in the output
The age-weighted citation rate
An analysis of the number of authors per paper

You can read a detailed comparison of Google Scholar with ISI Web of Science here.

Tech tips for the basic computer user

It took me a couple of months to figure out that you press function-F11 in order to switch to the dekstop on a Macintosh.  And then after I figured it out, I forgot it...

Every time I find one of these lists, I see something that I didn't know.  This is a pretty good one.  It includes not only computer advice, but also basic internet common sense, like:

Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else...

This list comes from a technology blog on the New York Times.  I'm sure that each one of us knows something that somebody else hasn't heard of before...

Living a Second Life

I just read about Second Life this morning, in this article about library marketing, published by Sirsi/Dynix.  Here is what the article has to say about it:

• IBM has 400(!) employees working on environments for this site. Companies, libraries, and charities are having early successes here. Check out the libraries in Second Life for Alliance Library System, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County, McMaster University, etc. Check out American Cancer Society and March of Dimes presences.
• I am told that every U.S. presidential candidate has a presence here. Indeed, John McCain’s Second Life site was vandalized by a feces-spewing robot.
• Think about this for orientations, events, education, walk-in book tours, author events, teen outreach, etc.

The subject of Second Life came up again over coffee this morning.  A friend of mine referred me to this article, "Living a Second Life," published in the Economist Magazine.

The Future of Facebook

Time Magazine interview with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook social utility.

E - networking

This month's "Two Work: The UN Dual Career and Staff Mobility Newsletter" has an interesting article on e-networking.