Frost Byte, v. 5, iss. 43

News
Happy Thanksgiving! We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

Gloria is re-classifying some titles that are currently designated as journal issues but are really individual titles in a monographic series. If you are looking for something and can’t find it, please check with her. She has pulled her first group off the shelf and has them in her office.

Staff Report

ROCS will be closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Reminders

Although we do not charge a late fee, we do have due dates! Please return items when they are due in order to provide everyone a chance to use the item. Thanks.

Thanks for all of the candy for the library’s candy basket!!!

New Items in the Library
Journals and Reports

Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, vol. 25, iss. 6
EOS, vol. 89. iss. 46
Exchanges, vol. 13, iss. 4 (#47)
Il Polo, vol. 63, iss. 3
Antarctic Record, vol. 52 Special Issue: Glaciological and meteorological observations during the Dome Fugi Project from 1991 to 2007

Books, Reprints, and Other Formats

Climate and Hydrology of Mountain Areas. Editors: Carmende Jong, David Collins, Roberto Ranzi

Sensing Our Planet : NASA Earth Science Research Features 2008. Editors: Jane Beitler and Stephanie Renfrow

Origin and Evolution of Earth : Research questions for a changing planet by the Committee on Grand Research Questions in the Solid-Earth Sciences.

The KML Handbook : Geographic visualization for the Web by Josie Wernecke

Frost Byte, vol.5, iss. 42

News
Despite ol’ man weather’s intermittent attempts, fall is still here & gorgeous, more often than not. Hope everyone is taking advantage of the delightful weather.

We have received a number of new titles in the library; you should stop by and perhaps check one or two out for your leisure time! Due to the extensive list, I’m just providing the titles.

Staff Report

Gloria and Allaina are both in the office this week.

Reminders

The Librarians are here to help you with your information needs. Feel free to stop by the office, email, or send us an instant chat message!

Thanks for all of the candy for the library’s candy basket!!!

New Items in the Library
Journals and Reports
Bedford Institute of Oceanography in review 2007
Seppyo, vol. 70, iss. 5
EOS, vol. 89, iss. 44, 45
British Antarctic Survey annual report, 2007-2008
Physics Today, vol. 61, iss. 11
CIRA, vol. 30
Journal of Climate, vol. 21, iss. 21
Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 35, iss. 17
Cold Regions Science and Technology, vol. 54, iss. 2
Jökull, #57
Boreal Environmental Research, vol. 13, iss. 5
Ice, #146
Pôles Nord et Sud, #1

Books, Reprints, and Other Formats

Ice People [DVD—two week check-out only]
Climate variability and extremes during the past 100 years
Shirokuma no koe = Voice of polar bear
Geodetic and geophysical observations in Antarctica : an overview in the IPY
perspective.
Creating Spatial Information Infrastructures : toward the spatial semantic Web
Statistical methods for spatio-temporal systems
Datums and map projections for remote sensing, GIS, and surveying, 2nd ed.
Hierarchical modeling and analysis for spatial data
Explorer : the life of Richard E. Byrd
High-Arctic ecosystem dynamics in a changing climate
Recession of equatorial glaciers : a photo documentation
Global change and the Earth system
Canadian Oxford World Atlas, 6th ed.
Darkening peaks : glacier retreat, science, and society
BiPolar
Qitdlarssuaq : l'histoire d'une migration polaire : Qitdlarssuaq : history of a polar
migration

Frost Byte - Volume 5, Issue 41

News

Time again for another Info Tip from Mary Ellen Bates:

Bates InfoTip
__________________________
Silobreaker

I have been watching Silobreaker ever since it launched in beta back in 2006. It was cool back then, and it's even more interesting now, in its "official" version.

In essence, the web site provides ways to monitor and search news, through a number of specific filters or across the board, and offers data visualization tools to help understand emerging trends. I have been impressed at how well Silobreaker handles multiple types of content and provides surprisingly good analysis. Note that Silobreaker focuses exclusively on current news and events. The content comes from news, blog, transcript and multimedia sources that cover everything from the latest developments in science and technology to the gaming industry and the world’s environmental hot spots.

If all you want is news filtered by general topic, just head over to any of the search engines’ news aggregation sites. What Silobreaker does is attempt to break down the virtual “silos” of information (both within organizations and simply in our personal news gathering) to enable you to get a wider perspective on current events. It accomplishes this in several ways; first, the home page contains news snippets from around the world and several data visualization tools to help you understand the latest trends. Silobreaker also offers vertical news portals for dozens of global topics, ranging from terrorism to business mergers, neuroscience and the Middle East. There are also customized pages with information on the global hot spots related to human rights issues, natural disasters, bribery, and so on. Silobreaker also organizes specialized trend analyses related to media coverage of the US elections, avian flu and other current topics.

What Silobreaker does particularly well is provide you with visual displays of information, which enable you to spot trends or relationships that might not be initially obvious. Say, for example, you want to find out about transgenic research. Start with what Silobreaker calls the “360° search”, which looks across its indexes, including fields for entities (people, companies, locations, organizations, industries and keywords), news stories, YouTube videos, blog postings and articles.

The search results page is a bit info-dense for this Baby Boomer’s eyes, but ah... the data viz tools make my heart swoon. In my transgenics search results, I have several boxed graphics showing the relative volume of articles, blog postings, and audio or video content over the past month that mentioned the word, a map of the world highlighting areas that are particular hot-spots for transgenic research, the relative frequency of various related words (in this instance, “biotechnology” and “protein”), and even several pithy quotes from retrieved articles.

Even more intriguing is the “network” grid, which maps out relationships among concepts, entities, people and locations. The grid does in fact resemble a dynamic network, with nodes representing various concepts and lines indicating when both were written about in the context of your search. Adjust the slider bars along the top and you can focus on the people, companies or concepts of most importance in your search.

For the search on transgenics, for example, I could learn that Barcelona has been a hot spot for transgenics research, that I should remember to use “plant biotechnology” as a synonym for “transgenic”, that three major players are Monsanto, GTC Biotherapeutics and Syngenta, and that both Alzheimer’s researchers and crop scientists are looking into transgenics. All this without having to open a single document; when I moused over any of the nodes in the network, I saw the context in which the node word(s) appeared in the retrieved news items. I even have a list along the side of the grid, indicating the most common names, companies, concepts and so on within the retrieved search set.

Give this news engine a try and let me know what you think.

Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html

Staff Report

Allaina will be out of the office November 7^th – 11^th.

Reminders

The library is available for your use if you need more space to have a short meeting. It isn’t a private space, so you’ll have to share it with other library users. You can use the large table; although, you may need to bring in extra chairs. Just let us know if you need it, and we can help you get the space set up and also let you know if it is available.

New Items in the Library

Journals and Reports

Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 35, iss. 16

Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing [CD], vol 34, iss. 1-4

EOS, vol.89, iss. 43

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 89, iss. 7 State of the

Climate in 2007

Alaska GeoSurvey News August 2008

GewexNews – Special issue, vol. 18, iss. 3

Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World – Alaska Glaciers, USGS

Professional Paper 1386K

Books and Reprints

Snow and Climate : physical processes, surface energy exchange and modeling edited by Richard L. Armstrong and Eric Brun