FAES

Funding for National Ag Library Threatened

britton.4 — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:30:18 +0000

A recent article in the Washington Post highlights the budget constraints affecting the National Agricultural Library. Essential services and collections are threatened by proposed cuts to the NAL budget; these cuts would also affect agricultural libraries at the state level which depend on this national library.

OSU Wooster Hosts National Ag Librarians Conference

britton.4 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:58:16 +0000

The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) and OSU Libraries are honored to host the 11th Biennial meeting of the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN). The meeting, which will be held at the Shisler Conference Center in Wooster beginning Sunday, April 27 through Wednesday, April 30, carries the theme “Tradition in Transition: Information Fueling the Future of Agbiosciences.” Speakers include Dennis Keeney, senior fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Bruce Dale, editor of Biofuels, Bioproducts, and Biorefining and head of the Biomass Conversion Research Laboratory at Michigan State University; Stephen Myers, Director of the Ohio Bioproducts Innovation Center; Ann Christy, professor, Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Ohio State University (OSU); Clive Edwards, OSU Professor of Entomology and director of the soil ecology program; Deborah Stinner, coordinator of OSU’s Organic Food and Farming Education and Research program; Randy James, Geauga County Extension Educator and author of Why Cows Learn Dutch; and David Kline, Amish farmer, author of several books, and editor of Farming Magazine. The closing speaker will be Tomas Lipinski, Co-Director and Associate Professor, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee. Complementing the plenary sessions will be contributed papers, panels and posters selected from proposals submitted by attendees. Numerous vendors will be exhibiting at the conference and providing generous support.

Following the conclusion of the USAIN meeting, partners participating in AgNIC will hold their annual meeting. AgNIC is a voluntary alliance and partnership of nearly 60 member institutions and organizations working to offer quick and reliable access to quality agricultural information and sources.

Make $50 for two hours’ work

Eboni — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:38:44 +0000

The Online Computer Library Center, Inc., (OCLC) is looking for people willing to demonstrate and discuss how they conduct research for a paper, project or publication.

The one to two-hour in-person interviews will be held in Room 244A of the Sullivant Library, at the corner of North High Street and 15th Avenue, or the Prior Health Sciences Library at 376 W. 10th Ave. Interviews will be scheduled the weeks of April 7 and April 14.

Each session will take 1 to 2 hours.

Participants should be:
•Undergraduate or graduate students, or instructors
•Non-professionals in the library or database searching

Library employees, including student employees, are not eligible to participate.

Participants will be asked to comment while doing their own research at the library or their office. Participants will also need to bring a laptop capable of a wireless connection to the Internet. Comments will be recorded with the participant’s consent.

If you’re interested, please contact Mike Prasse, OCLC, at ulab@oclc.org.

5th Annual James F. Patterson Land-Grant University Lecture

Eboni — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:07:12 +0000

Speaker: Dr. E. Gordon Gee, President, The Ohio State University

“Securing the Future: Envisioning the Role of Land-Grant Universities”

Date: April 15, 2008
Time: 3-5pm
Location: Blackwell Inn & Conference Center, The Ohio State University

We are pleased to announce that President E. Gordon Gee will give the 5th Annual Patterson Lecture. President Gee was instrumental in the establishment of Ohio State’s outreach and engagement efforts during his first term in office. He will share his insights on the current and future state of the 21st century engaged land-grant university.

Register online. Deadline: April 8. For information, call 614/688-3041, e-mail outreach@osu.edu, or visit the Office of Outreach and Engagement web site.

The James F. Patterson Land-Grant University Lecture honors former Board of Trustee member Jim Patterson and the cause to which he is most committed, a vibrant University fulfilling its land-grant mission in an ever-changing world. The lecture brings to campus annually a prominent figure to speak to the range of challenges facing land-grant institutions in the 21st century and beyond. Mr. Patterson served on the University’s Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2003 and served as Chair of the Board 2002-2003.

CABI helps you keep up with what’s new.

britton.4 — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:06:38 +0000

Staying up with your own field, much less with the other disciplines in agricultural and related sciences, is a challenging task. Subscribing to alert services, journal tables of contents and other automated information services are useful tools. The content specialists at CABI, the organization that produces the abstracting and indexing service CAB Direct, offer a new current awareness tool called “Hand picked…and carefully sorted.” This blog is written by specialists and highlights new research areas, interesting publications and what they call “signposts”– new information that we need to pay attention to. Recent topics include “nanotechnology in food” and “organic biofuels”. You can subscribe to this blog as an RSS feed.

OARDC Annual Research Conference and Graduate Student Poster Competition

britton.4 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:04:37 +0000

The 2008 OARDC Annual Research Conference will be held in Wooster on Thursday, April 17, 2008. The theme of the conference is “Recasting Our Agbioscience Research Agenda: Integrated Projects.”

A graduate student poster competition is being held in conjunction with the conference. Interested students should see the guidelines and deadlines for participation. Cash prizes will be awarded and the winners will be announced at the conference.

Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to register for the conference by April 7.

Help us test WorldCat Local

britton.4 — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:27:59 +0000

The OSU Libraries are pleased to offer “WorldCat Local,” Web access to the world’s richest database, listing over one billion items.

Basic features associated with WorldCat include:

A simple search box
Friendly, easy-to-use results display, including “faceted browsing”
Searches for materials at OSU, OhioLINK (Ohio libraries shared catalog; includes 86 academic libraries not including OSU), and libraries worldwide
Displays the availability of materials
Allows requesting of materials
Finds articles and provides links to full-text articles online
Result sets that bring multiple versions of a work together under one record
Citation formatting options

See the “What’s this” link for more details about the features.

The main change you’ll see is the new search box on the library home page, now displaying search results from WorldCat Local. You can still search the OSU catalog via the OSCAR interface by clicking the link just below the box, named “Search OSU Catalog”.

Let us know what you think about WorldCat Local. Please complete the survey linked in the “what’s this” link near the search box and at the upper right hand corner of the pilot pages, called “Survey – Your voice counts!”

IRS Warns of Rebate Scams

britton.4 — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:50:09 +0000

The Internal Revenue Service today warned taxpayers to beware of several current e-mail and telephone scams that use the IRS name as a lure. The IRS expects such scams to continue through the end of tax return filing season and beyond.

The IRS cautioned taxpayers to be on the lookout for scams involving proposed advance payment checks. Although the government has not yet enacted an economic stimulus package in which the IRS would provide advance payments, known informally as rebates to many Americans, a scam which uses the proposed rebates as bait has already cropped up. read more…

PMN Introduces Focus on Soybean

britton.4 — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:30:31 +0000

Plant Management Network announces the launch of its next-generation resource for those involved in soybean production and management. Focus on Soybean is an online-only web portal for growers, crop consultants, and researchers seeking information on producing healthy, high-yielding soybean crops. The central feature of the site is its educational webcasts. These currently include 15 narrated presentations totaling more than five hours of talks targeted toward consultants and producers. All are authored by university extension specialists recognized for their expertise and research related to soybean management practices.

Bird flu has resurfaced

Eboni — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:05:37 +0000

From The Columbus Dispatch (Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007):

Bird flu resurfaces in parts of Asia
Saturday, December 15, 2007 2:55 AM

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Bird flu has resurfaced in parts of Asia, with human deaths reported in Indonesia and China and fresh outbreaks plaguing other countries during the winter when the virus typically flares.

Indonesia, the nation hardest hit by the H5N1 virus, announced its 93rd death yesterday. A 47-year-old man died a day earlier in a Jakarta hospital, said Health Ministry spokesman Joko Suyono. The man fell ill on Dec. 2 and was admitted with flu-like symptoms, becoming Indonesia’s 115th person infected with the disease.

In China, the military in eastern Nanjing banned the sale of poultry this week after a father and son came down with the disease earlier this month. Health officials confirmed the 24-year-old man died from the virus a day before his father, 52, became sick. It was the country’s 17th bird-flu death.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.