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In This Issue:
HIGHLIGHTS AND FEATURES
Check Out New Features in Stanford's Redesigned Computing and
Communication Web Site
CourseWork Debuts at Stanford
Web Interface to Majordomo
Media Solutions: Rediscovering Homer's Odyssey
HighWire Launches Biomedical Web Portal for Researchers
Come to the IT Open House!
Collaborative Web Sites: If You Build It , Will They Come?
MyStanford: Gateway to the Stanford Web
Academic Technology Lab: A Resource for Faculty and TAs
Student Use of Computers at Stanford for 2001-2002: A Summary
of the Latest Survey Results
Center for Teaching and Learning: What's New
LIBRARY RESOURCES
E-Book Developments at Stanford Libraries
Scholars' Workshops for Spring
Online Books in Science and Technology
Workshops on Scientific and Engineering Information
Self-Service Delivery for Patents
Know Where That Book Is in Green Library?
Spring Workshop on GIS and Spatial Analysis in the Social Sciences
Humanities Digital Information Service
SSDS and SSS
An Alternative to the Web of Science: LANL
MathSciNet Now Available for Searching via LANL
Getting Here from There: Links from FirstSearch to Socrates
OCLC Changes/New Interface for RLG's Eureka
Exporting from FirstSearch into EndNote
ResearchIndex: An Online Paper Search Tool
Gazetteers on the Web Offer Geographical Information
Selected Online Resources in Computer Science
Research Methods for Life Sciences on the Web
BioOne: E-journals in the Sciences
Lane Medical Library Offers New Course on Teaching Tools
Cambridge Structural Database
SPRING COMPUTER NEWS
Stomping Out Viruses at Stanford
Academic Computing's Spring Workshops
Kronos: New Timekeeping System at Stanford
Language Lab's New Web Site
Spring ITSS Instructional Program
New, Improved Webmail Is Here
Stanford Web Developers: Use Google!
Academic Technology Specialists Continue Their Work
VPUE's Academic Technology Program: Team Complete
MacLeland for OS X Users Now in Beta
Residential Computing's New Online Services
New BaRS Service Backs Up Your Files
Online Information about Leland Systems' Software
Stanford's PeopleSoft Projects Wrap Up
Different Strokes for Different Folks. Inspiration Software and
Learning Styles
Stanford Palm Project at the Medical School
TAKE NOTE
LOCKSS: Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe
SUL/AIR Web Site Has Google Search Option
Take a Break at the SU Bookstore Computer Store!
Try SUndial: Stanford's New Calendar System
Get About Computing at Stanford
On February 27, ITSS and SUL/AIR released an update to the Stanford Web's Computing and Communication pages. You can find it by clicking on Computing in the black square at the top of Stanford's top level Web pages or by going directly to:
This site, often referred to as "CompComm," is the central source for information on the Web about Stanford's technology-based tools, from software and servers to cell phones and networks.
The update includes four new features, described below, to make the Computing and Communication pages more comprehensive, searchable, and topical. In addition, the pages have a new, more streamlined organization of categories and links, and a different look.
If you're like many users of "Stanford Home", you're probably a fan of its alphabetical list of Web sites. Now the Computing and Communication site has an alphabetical catalog of technology services that includes descriptions and links to provider Web sites. Besides accommodating users who prefer alphabetical scanning to search engines, the new list makes it easy to browse for information when you're not absolutely sure what it's called or under which category it might be listed.
Another benefit of the alphabetical list is that it can help Stanford's technology service providers notice when a particular service is missing. In the process of creating the new list, the project team has already nearly doubled the number of services included under Computing and Communication and ITSS and SUL/AIR hope that service providers all over campus will take the opportunity to let the "CompComm" team know if it missed anything. (Please send email to compcomm-team@lists.stanford.edu.)
To keep Computing and Communication up-to-date and responsive to the community's needs, the designers implemented an easy-to-use feedback form. The form is available on each of the site's 25 pages and invites users to submit any service that may be missing from the site. The form can be submitted anonymously or not, invites general comments, and gives the user the option of a simple "useful" or "not useful" vote.
The new site uses an internal database to provide initial search results only from the Computing and Communication pages. This internal search function provides results that are more focused and accompanied by more helpful descriptions than what you might find from other search services. The page on which search results appear provides a "Search Stanford" function that you can use in case Computing and Communication doesn't contain the information you want.
Computing and Communication's top page now includes a "spotlight" article about a technology-related service, course, research project, or event that may be of interest to the community. These articles, along with their illustrative graphics, are changed regularly to keep the page topical and interesting to visitors.
Please send comments and suggestions about the updated site to compcomm-team@lists.stanford.edu.
Since its debut in the beginning of Winter Quarter, CourseWork has increasingly become the preferred learning management system among faculty, teaching assistants, and students. CourseWork boasts 180 courses in 42 academic departments and serves over 4000 faculty, teaching assistants, and students. This number is expected to increase significantly in the upcoming quarters as more people become aware of this resource.
Using CourseWork, instructors and TAs can set up a course Web Site that displays announcements, online readings, a syllabus and schedule, online assignments and quizzes, a discussion forum for students and a grade book.
One of CourseWork's major strengths lies in its flexibility. CourseWork is designed for both faculty with little Web experience, who wish to develop their course Web site quickly as well as for expert Web-users, who can use it to organize complex, Web-based materials and link them to Web communication tools. CourseWork tools can be turned "on" or "off," allowing instructors to adopt only those that meet their teaching needs.
During Winter Quarter, the CourseWork development team received extensive positive feedback from faculty and TA's. Some highlights include:
Sohui Lee, Program in Writing and Rhetoric
"Overall, I thought CourseWork was extremely useful as far as allowing students to have access to online information. (I used to have a web page for that, but this is much more efficient.) I especially liked the ability to send email announcements"
Andrew Rutten, Acting Assistant Professor of Political Science and of Public Policy
The CourseWork team is "far and away the most responsive computer help folks I've run into today I've gotten responses from at least two different folks."
Taylor Martin, Graduate Student
"I am TAing a statistics class in the School of Ed this quarter. I just wanted you to know that I really appreciate the CourseWork system. I just finished my grading for the week and it took a lot less time than it would on paper. It's also really great for lab sessions because the whole class can look at the histograms and we can see what we basically understand and what we need to work on. Thanks!"
Many new features are planned for Fall 2002, but a few new features will be available in CourseWork this Spring. These include:
For more information about CourseWork:
Go to http://coursework.stanford.edu and click on About CourseWork.
To request a CourseWork course:
Go to http://courses.stanford.edu and click on Request a CourseWork site.
This Winter, ITSS released @lists, a new Web interface to Stanford's email list service (also called Majordomo). Many workgroups and instructors on campus use email distribution lists like Majordomo to distribute memos and announcements to all members of a group or to students in a course.
For the first time, @lists will give list owners the ability to manage their email lists via the Web. With the new interface, list owners will be able to add and remove new members, add additional owners, and modify settingssuch as who can join the list, and who can send messages to it.
The new interface provides an attractive option for list owners, but if they choose, they can still manage their lists the traditional way (i.e., by sending email commands to majordomo@lists.stanford.edu).
To login to @lists, for more information on majordomo, or to request a new list, point your browser to:
A delegation of Japanese educators and media technology specialists recently visited Stanford University Media Solutions. They were interested in learning how strategic partnerships could be formed to create educational multimedia productions. Media Solutions introduced them to "Encountering Homer's Odyssey," the Lifelong Learning seminar produced by Stanford's Alumni Education Program, and its partner, the Alliance for Lifelong Learning.
"Encountering Homer's Odyssey" is an interactive CD that uses a rich graphical interface to explore the epic's context within Greek culture, the medium of oral-traditional poetic performance, and the poem's significance for a modern audience. It is being marketed to alumni of Alliance partner institutions.
"Encountering Homer's Odyssey" began with a desire to create a multimedia exploration of Homer's Odyssey that would support an on-line seminar. Media Solutions worked with Nora Sweeny, Director of Stanford University Alumni Education Special Projects, and Richard Martin, world-renowned classics professor. Professor Martin provided the content and the context of the seminar, while Media Solutions designed the multimedia elements. The result is an interactive electronic textbook that engages the user's imagination and encourages questions, exploration, and "riskful thinking."
As the Japanese visitors learned, "Encountering Homer's Odyssey" is but one example of how Media Solutions partners with Stanford faculty and staff to create compelling Web sites and interactive courseware. For more information on this CD or other Media Solutions products and services, see http://mediasolutions.stanford.edu, or contact Charla Baugh, Educational Program Specialist, at 723-9801.
Want a one-stop Web portal to all online research reports in biology and medicine? Want a system designed to meet the needs of scientists and teachers? Try HighWire Press's Library of the Sciences and Medicine, a new Web portal that provides access to all Medline content (12 million articles from 4500 Medline journals), as well as to the free, full-text articles of 300 journals produced by HighWire (e.g., Science, New England Journal of Medicine, PNAS.
This site indexes not only 12 million abstracts, but almost a million articles of full-text, over 400,000 of which are freely accessible to the world, and most of which are full accessible through Stanford library subscriptions. A single search can cover it all.
"This past year, as scientists and publishers have debated the merits of making more of the literature free, researchers have told us what is important to the productivity and quality of their research: barrier-free access to more full-text content; easier, more comprehensive and more-precise cross-journal searching; and subject-specific, personalized email alerts," said John Sack, Director and Associate Publisher of HighWire Press. "The new HighWire site is our publishers' and HighWire Press's specific response to researchers' stated needs."
HighWire's portal represents the largest collection of online, free, full text biomedical research reports in the world. HighWire Press is the online publishing division of Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources. For more information and a list of currently-available journals, see HighWire's Web site at:
This quarter, Stanford faculty, staff, and students can attend an IT Open House to get answers to those nagging computer questions and find out about the many IT services available to them.
Under one roof, attendees can find information about purchasing computer equipment and software through Stanford programs, connecting to SUNet from their home, backing up their desktop computer, technology in the classroom, programs to help in teaching, course software, data collections available for research and instruction, and more. Representatives from about thirty campus-wide technology service groups will be there for attendees to meet, ask questions of, and learn about resources.
The IT Open House, sponsored by SUL/AIR and ITSS, will be held in Meyer Library (in the lobby and on the decks adjoining the lobby) on Wednesday, April 24, from 11:00 a.m.to 2:00 p.m. Watch the Web for details at:
http://itopenhouse.stanford.edu
Last year, under the sponsorship of the Stanford Humanities Lab, a group of history instructors from campuses across the U.S. and at Stanford started the MedSpains project to exploit the World Wide Web as a medium for multi-disciplinary collaboration. The challenge was to develop a hyper textbook co-authored by multiple scholars working in the same period - Medieval Spain. The project's goals were to offer multiple levels of learning skills, primarily for undergraduate and graduate students, provide rich data of text and images, and offer a comprehensive and ambitious scope of coverage - 100 AD to 1600 Spain, covering the Roman, Christian and Islamic periods of Spain.
Building collaborative Web sites for teaching tests the very concept of the world wide Web.
Previous work of this nature required managing email attachments that increase to great proportions and are prone to getting lost. If there were tools that would easily allow a colleague to collect and review material by other colleagues and that then could be built into a Web site, the WWW would be far more richer and deeper as a source of knowledge. As it is, few tools are available for this sort of contributory effort and the commercial products are single-mindedly not suited for academic material.
As conceived, the MedSpains project, would potentially create hundreds of Web pages and hundreds more of text, images, and sound. The challenge was to organize the contributed material into some searchable and sort-able form from which a Web site would be built and which would also provide copyright information for sources from which permissions would be requested, procured and recorded. Since the project was modular, the system to manage the content and the Web design components could be separated and developed independently of each other.
Initially, a database to capture metadata for the documents and images submitted was built using Filemaker Pro Instant Web. The metadata fields were comprehensive, going beyond typical citation information to content organization and key word indexing. Thus, each file submitted could be identified as to which part of the Web it was intended for. Data fields were also available for copyright information. While Filemaker Pro proved to be adequate for prototyping the concept of a content management system, its robustness remained in question even as the project staff began adding records to it. Would it be able handle hundreds of records? Could its built-in Web server running on Windows be relied on? One major limitation was the absence of a file upload feature. While Filemaker could have been programmed, it would have meant acquiring different server resources and incurring additional programming cost.
When some project funds were unexpectedly released, the MedSpains staff were able to pursue the logical extension of the Filemaker prototype to a real world application. Their own content management system would give them features and performance that Filemaker Pro could not deliver without additional server and programming expense. However, the project decided on a better solution: to develop on Linux running an Apache server and a mySQL database with a Web front-end. Since the project staff already had a PC it was a simple matter of re-purposing it as a Linux server. All other applications were open source and freely available. Using the metadata tags developed in Filemaker Pro, Prasanth Pulavarthi, a Computer Science graduate student expert in these matters, quickly assembled the database into a system with user logins, editable metadata and, more importantly, with file uploading capabilities. Not only did each file have rich metadata, it was also in the right Web environment for becoming a potentially dynamically-driven Web site. With a short development time, the content management system (the CMS, as it is now called) was in operation within two weeks. Testing from Pennsylvania, Seattle and as far as Morocco proved the system to be reliable. Within a few days, content was being added to the database in a steady stream.
The contributors were delighted. The interface was straightforward and simple, something that a busy professor should always have. Mistakes could be edited and the data could be sorted and viewed using a Web browser. The Web designer did not have to guess which file was meant for which Web page and which image was meant for which page. A major Web site build is scheduled for March and April. By which time, CMS will be an integrated part that drives the collaborative effort.
Michael Gonzalez, the Academic Technology Specialist for the Overseas Studies Program, is the technical lead and Web developer for the Medieval Spains Project, which is funded by the Stanford Humanities Lab. The Director and Principal Investigator is Prof. Kathryn Miller (History) with several contributors from Bryn Mayr College, the University of Cincinnati, and Kenyon College, as well as several graduate students from Stanford. A static page demo of the CMS is at http://medpains.stanford.edu/cms_demo.html. For more information about the MedSpains project, contact the Stanford Humanities Lab (http://www.stanford.edu/group/shl/).
Are you wondering how to create a Web site for your class? Looking for information on women's volleyball? Interested in getting updates on your benefits package? MyStanford, the one-stop gateway to the Stanford Web, consolidates tools, news and Stanford-related Web resources for the Stanford community.
While the portal provides default views to all users based on their affiliation as a staff member, faculty member or student, once logged in, individuals can tailor the site to suit their interests by adding, removing, and re-organizing content. If you logged on to the portal today, you could get daily news from Stanford Report, the Stanford Daily and the Athletics Department, see information about transportation and parking, search the directory and the Stanford Web, and get a day-by-day view of your SUndial calendar. (See also, "Try Sundial, Stanford's New Calendar System" on page 27.)
At the portal's initial release in September, the focus was on students; included were academic information for undergraduate students and updates from the ASSU. Recently, the Lane Medical Library channel was added, directed primarily towards medical students.
The focus is now on developing a faculty portal and MyStanford project staff are working with groups across campus to develop more teaching and research-based modules and to consolidate this information to keep faculty apprised of updates and news in areas such as computer training and teaching innovations. Faculty can currently use the portal - including the Teaching Resources channel to find the information they need. This includes details about technology support in the classroom, publications on teaching at Stanford, and updated workshop and event information from the Center for Teaching and Learning.
In late spring and early summer, MyStanford's focus will turn towards staff, and incorporate portions of SUPAD and other staff Web resources into the portal.
Check out MyStanford at:
Please direct any questions or comments to libusha@stanford.edu.
The Academic Technology Lab (ATL) located in Meyer Library, room 181 is a resource center for faculty and their teaching assistants who are interested in integrating the use of technology into their teaching to enhance student learning.
During Winter Quarter, faculty, TA's and Academic Technology Specialists used the ATL for projects which involved a variety of different technologies including scanning, image editing, video digitizing, CD-ROM burning, and the creation of materials for use online for class Web sites or the CourseWork learning management system. (See also "CourseWork Debuts at Stanford" on page 2.)
The ATL has recently installed the following equipment:
Formac Studio Analog-Digital Converter: The Formac converter provides higher quality digital video than the ATL's previous Sony boxes and supports both PAL and NTSC formats. You can grab video from a digital video cam, VHS, Hi8, miniDV and DVD. Export options include printing to tape, saving back to camera, QuickTime movies (which can then be burned to CD-ROM), or prepping for iDVD.
DVD-Burning Station: The lab now has a DVD-burning station with iDVD 2.0.5 available for Academic Technology Specialists' use. (See also "Academic Technology Specialists Continue Their Work" on page 20.)
Region Free Sampo DVE-611 DVD Player: The Sampo DVE-611 is capable of playing DVDs from anywhere in the world.
The Lab has a collection of books and training materials. Items include iMovie 2: The Missing Manual, DVD Demystified, Dreamweaver 4 Bible and the Fireworks 4 Bible, as well as various Lynda.com training CD-ROMs on Dreamweaver, FireWorks, and Photoshop 6.
Faculty are encouraged to set up appointments with ATL staff to arrange for consulting and training support. Appointments can be arranged by sending a request to acomp-consult@lists.stanford.edu.
For more information about the ATL, visit the Academic Technology Lab Web site at http://acomp.stanford.edu/atl/, or contact Kim Hayworth at kimhwrth@stanford.edu or 725-5522.
Following are some summary results from the 2001-2002 Residence Survey relating to student use of technology at Stanford. Residential Education conducts the annual assessment focusing on residence staff and undergraduate life in the residences, in collaboration with Residential Computing. (See "Residential Computing Launches New Online Services" on page 22.)
This year about 2600 or 40% of all undergrads took the online survey. About 33% of the respondents were first year students, 28% sophomores, 20% juniors, and 19% seniors; 49% were female. Residential Computing and Academic Computing use the computing data to assist in strategic planning, for research, and to share with University and external colleagues.
Regarding equipment:
In terms of platform, 91% have a Windows PC desktop or Windows laptop, 15% have a Mac desktop or Mac laptop, and 3% have a Unix or Linux computer.
62% say they would use wireless networking in their rooms, dorm common areas, and adjacent outdoor spaces if wireless were available in the residences.
Nearly 80% of students say they use their computers 11 hours a week or more, with 20% using their computers more than 30 hours a week.
Within five broad categories, the most common personal computer activities are, in order:
Sample comments:
"My computer is my second brain and third arm."
"Please get wireless! It would do wonders for groupwork and productivity. I'd love to be able to meet a group at the CoHo or in the dorm lounge and work on our projects. Even doing my work outside on a nice day would be a wonderful thing."
"[Wireless] would revolutionize the way I compute."
A large number of students complained about slow network speeds in the residences, where bandwidth to the commodity Internet is capped and traffic is prioritized according to academic priority.
In general:
The top five reasons for using the residence clusters are:
The top five suggested improvements to increase the usefulness of residence clusters are:
55% of respondents say they have used a central public computer cluster this year (in Meyer Library, the Tresidder Student Union, Green Library, or Sweet Hall). This figure doesn't account for remote use of multi-user Unix machines in Sweet Hall and the Meyer 24-hour study room. ITSS says that remote use accounts for 90% of Unix cluster machine usage.
Among central cluster users:
The top five reasons for using the central clusters are similar to those for the residence clusters above
The top five suggested improvements to increase usefulness of central clusters are:
For more information about the student survey, contact Rich Holeton, Head of Residential Computing, rich@rescomp.stanford.edu or 724-2792.
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) welcomes its new Academic Technology Specialist, Jeremy Sabol. Jeremy combines his doctoral studies in French and experience as a Teaching Fellow at Yale University with a background in mathematics and physics, extensive knowledge of multimedia and Web technology, and professional experience as a Web developer. Jeremy will be an extremely valuable resource to faculty and teaching assistants in their efforts to incorporate technology in the classroom based on sound teaching and learning practices.
Jeremy joins Marcelo Clerici-Arias, Associate Director for Social Sciences and Technology, as part of CTL's technology team. Marcelo teaches courses in the Department of Economics, and until June 2001 he was Associate Director of the Introductory Economics Center.
The Center for Teaching and Learning provides assistance to faculty in incorporating technology into their courses. Among other services, CTL offers:
Professors Doug Osheroff and Kam Moler, the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the Registrar's Office, and the Center for Teaching and Learning joined forces to install a system that allows instructors to ask multiple choice questions during class, and receive immediate student responses that are automatically processed, tabulated and displayed graphically in class. In this way, faculty can have real-time feedback from students on how well they are understanding major concepts. Faculty can use the Student Response System in the Teaching Center at the Science and Engineering Quad; four Physics professors have already used SRS in their courses.
With the initiative of Professor Donald Barr in the Department of Sociology, CTL is running a pilot test at Stanford of ERes, a system that allows you to create course readers online. ERes has some advantages over hard copy course readersone of them is that the cost to students can be as low as zero! Faculty can easily upload course readings from their computers or by fax, while students can read the material on their computers or print personal copies. Many Stanford courses are already using the Electronic Reserve System. Check ERes at http://eres.stanford.edu and contact Marcelo or Jeremy for more information on ERes and the Student Response System.
If you have any questions or needs regarding technology in teaching and learning, or if you want to know what is happening in this area, contact Marcelo Clerici-Arias at 725-0127 or by email at marcelo@stanford.edu, or Jeremy Sabol at 725-4164.You can also check their Web site at:
Ebrary, Knovel, and Books24x7 are three e-book services for which the Stanford University Libraries have recently implemented subscriptions. Links to these and other e-book services and information are on the Web at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/collect/e-books.html
The ebrary collection began with approximately 5,000 books in various subject areas, and the number of titles offered is expected to grow over the coming months. Full-text searching of all titles is allowed in ebrary and there are no restrictions on simultaneous users. Viewing of pages is usually unrestricted or may, in some cases, have a maximum per session, depending on the title. Printing and copy/paste actions require payment, typically 25 cents per page, for which users can set up individual accounts using credit card deposits.
InfoTools in ebrary allow users to mark text and retrieve additional information from external reference sources, based on selections customized for Stanford. For example, Stanford's subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary Online Edition (http://dictionary.oed.com/) offers the reader the option of going directly from a selected word in the ebrary environment to definitions in the OED. Also, the Stanford Libraries' Cataloging Services Department is working with ebrary (and other e-book providers) to implement direct links from Socrates records to the relevant electronic version.
Viewing ebrary's content requires downloading and installing a Web browser plug-in (instructions are provided on ebrary's Web site), which replaces the usual Adobe Acrobat Reader for PDF. Stanford Libraries' kiosk machines are adding the plug-in when updated disk images are installed.
Both of these e-book services offer a smaller number of titles focused on selected subject areas. Knovel offers full-text keyword and numeric searching for about 300 titles emphasizing engineering and scientific reference works (e.g., The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics). Books24x7 emphasizes computing, technology, and business. Simultaneous user levels increase library subscription costs for Books24x7 (and some other services) considerably, so the number of concurrent users is limited. See also "Online Books in Science and Technology" on page 9.
E-book services are continuously evolving in their content, features, and pricing models. The process of assessing and selecting services is likewise a continuing endeavor. User comments and suggestions are welcomed. You can send them either to the relevant subject specialist (see the directory at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/geninfo/subdir.html) or to Paul Zarins at pzarins@stanford.
Interested in scholarly digital resources? Then come to Green Library's Wednesday afternoon series of Scholars' Workshops, featuring electronic information resources in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
The workshops are designed for faculty and graduate students, as well as undergraduates with research interests, but are open to all the Stanford community. No registration is required.
All workshops are on Wednesdays from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the SSRC Multimedia Room, room 121A, located in the Social Sciences Resource Center on the first floor of the Bing Wing of Green Library.
For more information, contact Malgorzata Schaefer at (650) 723-9275 or mschaefe@stanford.edu. Watch for the new schedule of workshops on the Web at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/green/scholars_workshops.html
As with online journals, having access to a number of online books can be immensely useful. You can search through the text of multiple books to find specific data and examine book contents without leaving your office. The Stanford University Libraries subscribe to a number of packages offering the full text of books online, ready to be searched, downloaded or printed out. Two of the more interesting packages are knovel, and Books24x7.
knovel offers more than 270 books, primarily in chemical engineering and materials science. Some of the well-known reference titles on offer include: the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, the Marks Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook ,and the Dictionary of Substances and Their Effects.
In addition to searching through the complete text of the books, the knovel interface allows you to search through data tables and download entire tables (or portions of tables) to a spreadsheet where you can manipulate them as you desire.
Books24x7 offers over 1800 books. They focus on practical books covering business and computer related areas. Some popular examples are books on TCP/IP, Oracle, Java or Entrepreneurship. Books24x7 can be used to search for specific information, to brush up on a topic, or to learn a new skill. Interested users can create their own personal bookshelf of frequently used titles.
Stanford subscribes to several more interesting book packages for science and technology, but many of the books available through these packages do not yet show up in the Stanford Libraries' online catalog, Socrates. The best way to discover what is available, and to access the books themselves, is to go to the Stanford University Libraries Science & Engineering Electronic Texts page, located on the Web at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/serg/collect/SciEngETexts.html
The Science and Engineering Libraries are continuing their Science and Engineering Information Skills Workshop Series this quarter. Intended for faculty and graduate students, this workshop series encompasses a range of topics designed to cover what's needed to get the best out of their library resources. Some of the topics covered include secrets of searching Socrates, advanced database searching, and using Endnote effectively. Other topics will cover particular information resources, such as patent literature or resources in bioengineering.
Workshops will be held on a weekly basis, starting the week of April 15. For more information, please contact Karen Clay at 725-1012. The complete workshop schedule is on the Web at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/eng/serg_workshops.pdf
As an experiment, the Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library is spearheading a "do-it-yourself" document delivery service for PDF versions of patents from MicroPatent's Standard Patent collection. The service is limited to Stanford students, faculty, and staff. You can place requests by entering a patent number. Orders are processed in 1-2 minutes. Detailed instructions are on the Web at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/swain/2001/libservices2001/docdel.html
If you need to locate a patent number or to search the patent literature, Stanford has site-licensed access to an excellent patent database, called Derwent Innovations Index. On the Web at http://dii.derwent.com/, this database is international in scope and covers 1963-present.
You can find out on the Web. Just click the Search button on the Stanford Libraries' Web site (http://www-sul.stanford.edu) then use the Google search engine to look for "green shelving locations". The first page you see listed will be titled "Green Library Shelving Locations":
http://www-sul.stanford.edu /guides/grshel.html
Click that link to go to a page that maps call numbers to Green locations.
See how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and new statistical methods can help you visualize and analyze spatial data in your research and instruction. Join the Social Sciences Data Service (SSDS), Statistical Software Support (SSS), and Branner GIS staff, to learn about this exciting research tool.
The workshop takes place on Wednesday May 1, 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the SSRC Multimedia Room (room 121A), located in the Social Sciences Resource Center, Green Library Bing Wing. Agenda items include:
Welcome and introduction:
Uses for data analysis:
Tour of the GIS resources in the SocialSciences Resource Center (SSRC)
This GIS workshop, part of Green Library's Scholars' Workshops Program, is open to the Stanford community; there is no need to register ahead. For more information about the Scholars' Workshops see "Scholars' Workshops for Spring" on page 8 or visit the Web site at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/green/scholars_workshops.html
The Humanities Digital Information Service (HDIS) collects, prepares and delivers online text and image collections to Stanford researchers. HDIS is part of the Humanities and Area Studies Resource Group of the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources.
You can access the HDIS electronic text library at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/hdis/text.html. It is, with a few exceptions, restricted to members of the Stanford community. The selection of searchable literary texts is growing regularly; new additions can be found at this URL, as can an online tutorial and links to other resources of interest to students and scholars in the humanities.
HDIS also offers a number of online image collections; most are available to the general public. Current offerings include a major collection of the manuscript correspondence of seventeenth-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, a unique teaching collection of the work of Chicana artists, and an image database of Dime Novel and Penny Dreadful covers. Please visit these collections at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/hdis/image.html, where you will also find links to other image databases .
HDIS maintains a public presence in the Lane Room, on the second floor of Green Library's Bing Wing. There, HDIS provides walk-in services related to its own programs, focusing on the online text and image library, and support for other electronic resources delivered in the Lane Room. These services include:
For more information visit the HDIS Web site at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/hdis/ or contact Glen Worthey at 725-5647, glenw@sulmail.stanford.edu.
SSDS staff and SSS consultants work together to support the acquisition and analysis of social science data, and are co-located in The Velma Denning Room of the Green Library Bing Wing. Visit their respective Web sites for more information about services:
SSDS: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/ssds/
SSS: http://www.stanford.edu/group/consult-stat/
SSDS and SSS staff provide consultations during open hours in The Velma Denning Room or by appointment via email:
SSDS: consult-ssds@lists.stanford.edu
SSS: consult-stat@leland.stanford.edu
The Web of Science contains Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Many users are unable to access the Web of Science because the Stanford University Libraries is only licensed for three simultaneous users for the entire campus. Why is this? Because the Libraries have unlimited access to the same three citation indexes via the Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL).
All three indexes are listed on the Databases page (http://www-sul.stanford .edu/catdb/alldata.html) of the Stanford University Libraries. Here's the URL for each index:
While the Web of Science brand name is recognized widely, the Libraries choose to go with the LANL version of these files for several reasons.
Even though EndNote has the ability to connect directly to the Web of Science, the EndNote search interface is very limited. Instead, it is much more efficient to do a search using the LANL interface and use the EndNote filter created by LANL to import search results into an EndNote Library. Using the EndNote search interface will often result in getting many citations outside a search topic that have to be sorted through manually. It is important to note that many databases available to Stanford users are not available via a direct connection in EndNote.
(http://flashpoint.lanl.gov/)This relatively new service offered by LANL enables users to search the Citation Indexes, as well as in-depth subject indexes, all at one time. While the Citation Indexes offer cover-to-cover indexing of a core list of journals, more types of materials and more journals are covered in subject-specific indexes (e.g. Biosis, Engineering Index, Inspec, MathSciNet). See also "MathSciNet Now Available for Searching via LANL" on this page. Relying only on the Citation Indexes to find information may cause you to miss important research papers. Flashpoint allows you to search all files of interest at one time and when importing results into EndNote you can eliminate duplicate records.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has recently added the MathSciNet database to its FlashPoint search tool. However, since MathSciNet is not a database that is provided via LANL, there are a few caveats (taken from the LANL help screen):
For example, search "wavelets" in the Title/Subject/Abstract field for all databases and restrict the year to 1999-2000. You'll see that MathSciNet is listed as "MathSciNet (No ending date restriction)". Opening MathSciNet results in a new window, you'll see that there are papers from 2001 listed. You can search MathSciNet via LANL on the Web at: http://flashpoint.lanl.gov/
If you use any of the FirstSearch databases World Catalog, ERIC, Medline, Article First, the MLA Bibliography and many others you'll now find it easy to move from a citation for a book, article, or other item directly to the most current information about Stanford's own holdings. What makes this possible is a link on the long display of FirstSearch records that lets you connect to Stanford's library catalog, Socrates.
For example, you might do a search in the WorldCat database for the keywords women renaissance florence and see several items that are marked Stanford Univ Libr, meaning that they can be found in the Stanford Libraries. Clicking the title of any of these items takes you to the long display where you will see a link that says Search the catalog at your library. Click that link and you'll be taken to the Socrates record for the item, which will show you the Stanford call number and location as well as the current status whether the item is checked out or is likely to be available.
Even more convenient are links from article citations to journals for which Stanford provides electronic access. For example, in the Article First database, you might do a search for the keywords proust barthes. You'll find a citation for a recent article on this subject. Following the link to the long display and, from there, to Socrates, you'll see that the Stanford record has a link to the journal that contains this article. That final link will take you to the online journal site where you can read the article in its entirety.
Some hints for using this new FirstSearch feature:
See also the related article, "Exporting from FirstSearch into EndNote" on page 13.
Some of your favorite databases have been taking on a new look and adding new functions.
OCLC's FirstSearch is adding a number of features, including icons to help you spot the format of items in your search results. In World Cat, you can select a link "to show document type limit options," then you can click the icon(s) for the type(s) of materials you wish.
Even more important are the links to Socrates that you will find in other OCLC databases. For example, if you do a search in PsycInfo, in the results you will see a library/book icon followed by STANFORD UNIV LIBR which indicates that this item is at Stanford. Go to the long display by clicking on the title and just above the author, you will find a link to "Search the catalog at your library."
After getting the results from Socrates, you can easily return to FirstSearch by selecting the arrow button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Another important feature are the links to full-text that you'll find throughout FirstSearch.
RLG's Eureka is also getting a facelift in the form of a new search screen with "more functionality and a simpler interface." Select one of the RLG databases such as Anthropological Literature, and you are invited to try the new version of Eureka by selecting links on the right side of the page.
In the new interface, choices and examples are displayed, and for those of you who still prefer the command mode, that option is much clearer in this new version. In addition, a help opens in a separate window to show you the indexes for every conceivable search type in the command mode.
The OCLC FirstSearch service includes many databases available on the Web to Stanford users. For a current list, connect to FirstSearch (via SUL/AIR's databases page at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/catdb/alldata.html) and under Databases, choose the List All links. When you have completed your search, don't forget to close your FirstSearch session by choosing Exit.
This article explains how to download references from any of the FirstSearch databases directly into EndNote.
The first step is to create one or more EndNote libraries into which you will load your references. The EndNote manual explains how to create libraries.
To download references from OCLC into EndNote you need the latest versions of the EndNote filters for the databases you want to use. Go to this URL to find the necessary filter files:
http://www.endnote.com/support/enfilters.asp
These instructions are also available online, with graphics, at http://www-sul.stanford.edu/webhelp/oclc_en/.
See also, "Getting Here from There: Links from FirstSearch to Socrates" on page 12.
This is an autonomously generated digital library and citation index of the scientific literature, primarily in computer science. Developed by the NEC Research Institute, ResearchIndex indexes over 500,000 Postscript and PDF research articles on the Web and over 5 million citations; it is continuously updated.
Search terms are displayed in context of the citing document(s), and links to the full text are included when freely available online. You can download a current or a cached copy, usually in PDF or PostScript formats. Like SciSearch, you can do a cited search, where you can see who has cited a paper of interest. It also links to author Web pages and the page from which the paper is available. You can also rate the article, and similar to Amazon.com, it also lists "Users who viewed this document also viewed".
Unlike many popular search engines, you can't just type your search terms in random order. So typing "robot motion" finds fewer citations than using "robot and motion". The best way to search is to use Boolean syntax; separate your terms with "and" or "or". Also, when searching for an author, use the last name only or list all variants found in citations separated with "or", e.g., "john c mitchell or j mitchell or j c mitchell".
(http://www.columbiagazetteer.org/) This gazetteer is worldwide in scope. The publisher defines it as an "encyclopedia of geographical places and features." While the database has only 165,000 places listed for the world and 40,000 for the United States, its descriptions have the most depth. Entries include demography, physical geography, latitude and longitude, political boundaries, historical information, elevation, pronunciation, official place names, and variant spelling. A search for Mount Etna returns the expected information about its location, but also includes a short history of its eruptions, the type of vegetation at different altitudes, and the location of an observatory near the top of the volcano.
The Columbia Gazetteer can be searched in three ways: Type of Place Search (cave, scientific station, village, city), Place-Name Search (free text), and Word Search (searches for every instance of the word(s) selected). The Type of Place Search includes pull-down menus in order to refine the search by entering further criteria such as elevation and population.
(http://geonames.usgs.gov/gnishome.html) Developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, this site includes two search engines, one for the United States and its Territories, and one for Antarctica. Two million physical and cultural geographic features are included in the database for the United States. The results of a search include elevation, population, brief historical notes, the state and county, latitude and longitude, and the USGS 7.5 minute quadrangle that covers the requested area. A nice added feature is a link to Terraserver, which immediately pulls up a USGS digital orthophoto quadrangle, a black and white aerial photographic image map of the selected area. Searches can also be done to pull in a range of information; for example, a search for populated places over 11,000 feet returned 15 place names, eight of which were classed as "historical." Presumably, they were no longer populated.
Searching is done by filling in fields such as feature name, state or territory, county name, feature type, topographic map name, and elevation and population ranges. GNIS allows the user to input a wild card (%) in order to broaden the search.
(http://164.214.2.59/gns/html/index.html) This database accesses the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) database of foreign geographic feature names. It has worldwide coverage but excludes the United States and Antarctica, as they are covered by GNIS. This is by far the largest database with 3.81 million features and 5.24 million names. It is also the most complex to use. There are a myriad of search options including searching by name, country, or a specific feature in a "feature class" such as administrative region, vegetation, hydrographic, undersea, and spot features. The user may choose an output format rather than simply displaying the information on a Web page. The formats include tab delimited, html preview, and Excel spreadsheet.
When searching this database using the Name: data entry box, note the pulldown menu to the right. The default is Starts With. If this is not altered to Exact Match, the results will include all words beginning with the name typed. For example, typing Paris and selecting Starts With returns 173 results ranging from Paris to Parisvan and Parisangaha Wewa. Surprisingly, while latitude and longitude are included in the results, country is not. Using an Exact Match search for Paris returns 31 items. As country is not included in the results, it is difficult to identify a desired place, be it Paris, France or Paris, Texas. This problem is overcome by typing in the name of the place and then choosing a Country Code.
(http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/index.html) Developed by the Getty Research Institute to create a controlled vocabulary of geographic names, this gazetteer's focus is specifically on art, architecture, and material culture. Worldwide in scope, it includes a million names, both modern and historical. The emphasis is on places important for art and architecture. Searching is done using one entry field. Results include the place name, latitude and longitude, hierarchical position (inhabited place, county, state, nation, continent), variant names, and the source of the gazetteer information. Occasionally, brief historical information is included.
Online gazetteers also exist for specific countries and about a variety of topics, such as Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust. If you are looking for a specific type of gazetteer, contact Julie Sweetkind-Singer (sweetkind@stanford.edu) or Jane Ingalls (jingalls@stanford.edu). They will do their best to find it for you. Links to a variety of online gazetteers can be found on the Map Collections home page at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/branner/brief_map.html
Last quarter's Online Resources in Computer Science workshop, included a handout of selected electronic resources related to Computer Science.
Here are some highlights from the handout:
http://www.dbs.cdlib.org/?CSdb=comp
The Computer Articles database, available from the California Digital Library, indexes articles from popular computer trade journals, including PC World, MacWorld, Computerworld, and Computer Shopper. Some articles in full text are available.
A good place to look for computer hardware and software reviews, as well as general articles on computer-related topics.
http://inspec.lanl.gov/stanford/
INSPEC is the premier database in the world that indexes the literature of physics, electronics, and computing. Coverage online is available from 1969 to the present.
The database is hyperlinked across records and indexes, as well as to full-text journals of IOP, AIP, APS, and others.
This service enables searching across all databases available through the Los Alamos National Lab, including INSPEC, EI, MathSciNet, SciSearch, BIOSIS, Social Sciences Index, and the LANL e-print arXiv. While the results displayed are not a combined list of citations from all indexes searched, one can see which database has the most hits for a given search strategy.
This site provides searchable and browsable access to many ACM journals and transactions beginning with volume 1 and conference proceedings as far back as 1982, as well as many Special Interest Group (SIG) publications. Many papers appear online before the print issue is available in the library. The site also includes access to the Online Guide to Computing Literature and the Online Computer Reviews Service.
Journal articles, conference proceedings, and standards published by the IEEE and IEE are available from as far back as 1988 to the present via the IEEE Xplore interface. Currently, the print equivalent is sometimes available in the library before it is available online, and some material is only available in print.
http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/tocs.htm
Selected volumes, mostly conference proceedings, from the Lecture Notes in Computer Science and Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series (published by Springer) are available online. Links are also available in Socrates records.
http://www.lib.umd.edu/UMCP/ENGIN/TechReports/Virtual-TechReports.html
This metasite lists institutions that provide either full-text reports or searchable extended abstracts of technical reports on the World Wide Web and contains links to technical reports, preprints, reprints, dissertations, theses, and research reports of all kinds. However, it does not include links to many corporate technical report sites.
The complete handout is on the Web at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/mathcs/SERGWorkshopHandout.html
The Science and Engineering Libraries are continuing their workshop series this quarter. See also, "Spring Workshops on Scientific and Engineering Information" on page 9.
Practical Guide to Teaching Tools at the Stanford University Medical Center, is a three-hour class designed to orient faculty and staff to some of the teaching tools and resources available at Stanford's Medical Center. Topics will include: advanced features of PowerPoint; video applications in the classroom; introduction to scanning and scanners; creation of Web-based course materials; an overview of the networking capabilities of the classroom; and brief demos of several graphical applications.
The class is offered twice per quarter. Please check the Lane Medical Library class schedule for more information:
http://lane.stanford.edu/class.html
The PC version of the Cambridge Structual Database (CSD) can now be downloaded to your desktop. The CSD contains more than 250,000 x-ray crustal structures for organic and organometallic compounds. About 20,000 new structures are added annually. New versions of the CSD are released every six months. The CSD is also loaded on most PCs in the Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library. For more information or to get a copy of the CSD go to:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/swain/csd.html
Falconer Biology Library has added a subscription to the Web version of the Current Protocols series published by Wiley Interscience. The publications, which describe standard research methods in biomedical sciences, are available from any networked computer at Stanford.
The collection includes Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, Current Protocols in Neuroscience, and other useful publications in the series. For a complete list, see the Current Protocols Web site at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/c_p/index.htm
Researchers will find the Web version of Current Protocols much more useful than the printed version. The Web version is more up-to-date, it is delivered to the lab or office, and it makes it no longer necessary to photocopy protocols from thick binders.
The Current Protocols series is a significant addition to Web resources at Stanford for research methods in the life sciences. MethodsFinder (http://www.methodsfinder.org), an index to research protocols developed by BIOSIS, has been available for some time. Unlike Current Protocols, in most cases, MethodsFinder does not offer full protocols. However, it indexes a large number of methods that are not available in Current Protocols and it is being enhanced with links to full protocols. v
Stanford users now have access to BioOne, a unique aggregation of high-impact bioscience research journals. BioOne provides Web access to a collection of 40 interrelated journals focused on biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. Included in the collection are Evolution, BioScience, Radiation Research, the Journal of Mammalogy, Paleobiology, and other frequently-used titles. All 40 titles can be searched at once through the BioOne Web site at:
The BioOne collection is complemented by the botany and ecology journals available through JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org). JSTOR specializes in digitizing older volumes of journals.
For several journals, BioOne offers the latest issues while JSTOR covers older volumes, resulting in complete coverage. For example, for the American Midland Naturalist, JSTOR provides PDF versions of all articles from volume 1 (1909) through 1998, while BioOne offers both PDF and HTML versions of all articles from 1998 to the present. The result is electronic access to all volumes of this title.
To find the journals offered by BioOne, visit the BioOne Web site, search Socrates (http://www-sul.stanford.edu/search/socii/), or view the Stanford University Library's list of electronic journals at:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/collect/ejourns.html
In February, Stanford implemented a new anti-virus system that catches infected email attachments before they reach your computer. The system comes not a moment too soon. The frequency of email-based virus attacks around the nation is growing by leaps and bounds. In the past few years, Stanford has been hit by a variety of serious viruses, such as Code Red, Sircam, Goner, ILOVEYOU, Nimda, and others. A measure of virus protection had been provided by static filtering rules on the Leland email gateways, but many viruses slipped through as the people who created them got more devious.
The new system scans incoming and outgoing email attachments for viruses before they are delivered. This applies only to mail sent to @stanford.edu addresses, or sent out from the central email servers (smtp.stanford.edu). The system also scans mail forwarded from @stanford.edu addresses to servers not managed by ITSS.
If the anti-virus system finds an infected email attachment, it tries to clean it. If it can't, it separates the attachment from the email and deletes the attachment. This prevents the virus from ever being downloaded onto someone's desktop.
The email is still delivered to its intended recipient, but a "virus warning" is added just above the message text. This note describes the virus, provides the name of the attachment, and tells the recipient that the infected attachment was deleted. The anti-virus system also generates an automatic warning to the sender, stating that the infected attachment was not delivered to the recipient.
In its first ten days, the anti-virus system cleaned or deleted more than 6,200 attachments containing viruses. That's about 600 viruses per day. They were coming in from more than 1000 different email addresses, both on-campus and off. Since then, the pace has slowed. Stanford people are no longer passing so many viruses around to other members of the Stanford community, and the system is stopping most off-campus viruses before they get through the door.
No one should forget, however, that the Leland email gateway's new anti-virus system is NOT intended to replace desktop anti-virus software. Everyone should keep their anti-virus software up to date and running as a last line of defense against computer viruses. For more information about Norton Anti-Virus software, which is available at no charge to the campus community, go to the Essential Stanford Software page at http://www.stanford.edu/group/itss/ess.
For more information about the new anti-virus system, go to:
http://email.stanford.edu/virus.html
If you have problems with or questions about these new anti-virus procedures, send a help request to HelpSU at:
This quarter, Academic Computing offers student and staff workshops weekday afternoons in the Multimedia Studio on the second floor of Meyer Library. Topics include:
For a student/staff workshop schedule and link to an online registration form, see the Web at:
http://acomp.stanford.edu/studio/sched.html
Faculty, instructors and TA's are encouraged to set up appointments with Academic Technology Lab staff to arrange for consulting and training support. Appointments can be arranged by sending a request to acomp-consult@lists.stanford.edu.
For more information about the Academic Technology Lab, see "Academic Technology Lab: A Resource for Faculty and TAs" on page 5 or contact Kim Hayworth at kimhwrth@stanford.edu or 725-5522.
The method most Stanford employees use to report the time they've worked and leave taken is changing. Over the next few months, a Web-based system, created by a Massachusetts company called Kronos, Incorporated, will replace most paper time sheets, as well as the Prism Leave system, throughout the University. "Kronos will become the University's system of record for timekeeping and leave reporting and will feed data into PeopleSoft HRMS," said Valerie Beeman, campus readiness manager for the Persona Project.
The Kronos system, a Web-based system, makes it possible for employees to use a browser to enter information such as hours worked and hours of leave, vacation and personal time. After the information is entered into the system, employees designated as Kronos administrators will send the data to the Payroll Office. With the new system, the number of hours worked or the number of hours of leave taken will have to be recorded each pay period, rather than monthly.
The system is being implemented in stages. Some employees including those in Business Affairs are already using the new system. Staff as well as temporary and casual workers will begin using the new system over the next several months; students who are university employees will begin using the system at the beginning of academic year 2002/2003.
Each school and department is determining how employees in their unit will use the system. Some areas may have employees record their own hours worked or leave taken directly into the Web system themselves. (A feature that allows supervisors to approve employees' entries is available.) Other areas may continue using paper time sheets and will have a Kronos administrator enter the data into the system. It's also possible that some departments may wish to use timeclocks for employee time reporting.
Employee training on the new system is underway, including hour-long demonstrations for employees who will be entering their own hours worked or hours of leave taken. Employees can find out how their units will use the new system from their Human Resources Officer.
A schedule of classes is on the Web at:
http://persona.stanford.edu/training.html
More information about the system is available at:
http://persona.stanford.edu/kronos.html
In an ongoing effort to support the diverse multilingual computing needs of Stanford instructors and students, the Stanford Digital Language Lab has created a new full-featured Web site at:
Now that language instructors are delivering more and more content online, the role of the Language Lab has changed significantly. Gone are the days of tape recorders and stand-alone computer applications. With the advent of fast networks, streaming media, and near ubiquitous computing resources the Language Lab can now, quite literally, go to the instructor and student.
Not just an online storefront for a physical space, the new Language Lab Web site brings the lab to the user by providing a rich array of easy to find resources.
The Instructor Services section of the Web site features an online permissions request form for obtaining permission from publishers to digitize and stream audio and video resources, an online acquisition request form, procedures for streaming video and audio through Communication Services, training schedules, and an online room reservation system.
In an effort to more broadly publicize innovative language teaching at Stanford, the new Web site also includes an Instructor Showcase section. The featured instructor will offer their thoughts on effective teaching and provide links to samples of their work. Finally, there are examples of effective ways of integrating technology into foreign language teaching . These examples are organized by language task: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
For students, the new site serves as a portal to the Lab's digital media collection. The wired student can access password-protected audio and video content from anywhere on the network. Instructors can seamlessly incorporate Language Lab media into their own Web sites or into CourseWork sites without the inconvenience of managing such ungainly multimedia files. (See also "CourseWork Debuts at Stanford" on page 2.) Students can also find "Quick Guides" to multilingual computing on the site, which cover such topics as installing foreign fonts on PCs, typing accented vowels into word processors, and tips for audio recording.
Stop by http://thelab.stanford.edu and let the Language Lab come to you. v
Advanced Dreamweaver: Hands-On (ITS 243). Topics include: behaviors, customizing Dreamweaver, managing a large site, browser checking, inserting and playing media (plug-ins, Flash, etc.).
Macromedia Fireworks, Level 1 (ITS 251). Includes creating/optimizing graphics, working with vector/ bitmap graphics, creating image maps, adding graphical text to Web-based images.
MS Office: Techniques for Power Users (ITS 306). Will show innovative ways to combine the power of your Microsoft Office applications, e.g., create mailing labels in Word from an Excel spreadsheet, link a Word document to an Access database, and link an Excel chart to a PowerPoint presentation.
MS Excel PivotTables and PivotCharts (ITS 337). For intermediate users who want to learn techniques for creating and formatting reports.
Advanced FileMaker Pro: The Power of Calculations (ITS 474). Topics include using calculation fields, review of basic calculations, summary functions, importing without creating duplicates, text functions, date functions, logical functions, and calculation solutions.
Basic Relational Database Theory and Design (ITS 475). For people working with MS Access, FileMaker Pro, or other databases, this lecture course teaches the fundamentals of good database design and creating/relating tables.
Protecting Documents on the Web (ITS 227). Learn how to protect confidential documents using Stanford Web Authentication Services (WebAuth), standard password protection schemes, and one for any group of users (e.g., collaborators at other universities).
For more information, see the Educational & Training Opportunites guide or the IP Web site (http://computertraining.stanford.edu).
TTBBs (Thursday Technology Brown Bags). Offered weekly during the noon hour; no-cost, drop-in lectures on technical topics. Many TTBBs will be about new administration systems, like Axess 2000, Persona, and Delphi. http://ttbb.stanford.edu
TGIFs (Time to Get Information Fast). On Friday afternoons (2:00-3:30 PM); informal, interactive clinics on computer-related topics of interest to the Stanford community. http://tgif.stanford.edu.
cbt.stanford (http://cbt.stanford.edu ). Leads to My SmartForce which offers 300 online computer training courses, mentoring (for staff and faculty), technology chats, and online seminars (Windows only) available 24/7 at no cost to users with a regular SUNet ID.
For more information about the ITSS Instructional Program, go to the Web at;
http://computertraining.stanford.edu
You can also call them at 723-4391.
In February, ITSS deployed a new and improved version of Stanford Webmail. Compared to the previous version, you will find it is...
If you are not familiar with Webmail, it lets you use a Web browser to read and send email from your @stanford.edu email account. And since it is Web-based, you can use it to get to your account from anywhere with an Internet connection. This makes it a great tool for getting to email when you're away from your normal computerwhether you're across campus or across the country.
Keep in mind that Webmail only displays messages that are still on the University email serversif you don't keep email on the Leland servers or if you download messages to your desktop with Eudora or Outlook, you won't be able to read them via Webmail.
You can access the new Webmail at:
Did you know that you can have Google search your Web site for free without installing any special software on your Web server? As a courtesy to the university community, Google has configured its search engine to accept search requests from university Web sites. Web developers must construct a simple Web form and use the following form action:
<form name="gs" method="get" action="http://www.google.com/univ/stanford">
Next, to limit the request within a subdomain or directory, place the following hidden form element in your search form:
<input type=hidden name=hq value="inurl:yourserver .stanford.edu/yourDirectory">
To view a working example of this search form, navigate to the following page and view the document source:
Find the <form> tag in the HTML used to search Speaking of Computers. For another example, see the URL associated with the related Google article on page 26.
To sign up for this service, go to:
http://services.google.com/googleuniv/login
During Winter Quarter, the Academic Technology Specialists Program (ATSP), which is sponsored and managed by Academic Computing, continued to support faculty use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. In addition the program welcomed a new staff member in the Disability Resource Center.
Matthew Jockers, the Academic Technology Specialist for the Department of English, has continued to focus on educating the department about sound pedagogical applications of technology. Last quarter, he assisted several members of the department in developing digital materials for their classes, and his collaborations with faculty ranged in complexity from simple image scanning projects to the conversion of analog audio and video to streaming digital files. Matthew has also worked with departmental faculty to explore the ways that technology can assist with literary research, and he helped several faculty and graduate students to employ technological tools in their scholarly work.
Matthew spent considerable time developing instructional resources to guide faculty and students in the use of the EndNote Bibliographic Citation software. He recently negotiated with ISI Research Company in Berkeley to make EndNote demonstration software available in Meyer Library. In addition, he offered several EndNote workshops during Winter Quarter. His Endnote documentation (a self-paced, online tutorial) is available to the Stanford community on his web site at
http://www.stanford.edu/~mjockers/limited/Pages/endnote.htm
Matthew is presently developing additional connection files that will allow direct access to other online databases. Once complete, these files will also be made available on his Web site. See also, "Exporting References from FirstSearch Directly into EndNote" on page 13 and "Getting Here from There: Links from FirstSearch to Socrates" on page 12.
With the assistance of Natalie Calvert, an Academic Technology Lab multimedia consultant, Joseph Kautz, the Academic Technology Specialist for the Language Center, has reinvented the Web presence for the Digital Language Lab. This new site is much more than an online storefront for the lab. It is a full-featured Web site, which brings the lab to the user by providing a rich array of easy to find resources. See the article, "Language Lab's New Web Site" on page 18 to find out more about how faculty and students will benefit from the new Web pages.
Allan Chen joined the Disability Resource Center (DRC) in mid-December as their Technology Projects Manager. He works closely with Shelley Haven, the Academic Technology Specialist for the Disability Resource Center, forming the DRC's technology team.
As the DRC's Technology Projects Manager, Allan oversees a number of programs and is responsible for everything from initial design to final implementation. In addition to managing the overall operations of the DRC's Assistive Learning & Technology Center (ALTeC), he is the technical lead on the Liberated Learning Project, which aims to augment a student's class experience with real-time lecture transcripts using the latest speech-recognition technologies. Allan is also responsible for the Alternative Format Production Facility, which aims to provide eligible students with course materials, such as texts, exams, and notes, in needed alternative formats (Braille, e-text, etc). On all of these projects, Allan works very closely with the entire DRC staff as well as with several students and faculty.
Before coming to the DRC, Allan was the Business Manager for Academic Computing. In that role, he developed and implemented a wide range of programs directed towards leveraging existing expertise and systems as revenue streams. These included summer conference support, hosting of the 2001 ResNet Symposium, and development of the Academy for New Media, a summer multimedia program. Allan's experiences at Stanford go back farther, to 1996, but as an undergraduate rather than as staff. He received his degree in History in June of 2000. This range of experiences provides a valuable perspective on the community, the university, and Allan's work. (See also, "Different Strokes for Different Folks" on page 24.)
For more information about Academic Computing's Academic Technology Specialist Program, see the Web at:
http://acomp.stanford.edu/atsp/index.html
With the arrival of Jeremy Sabol as the Academic Technology Specialist for the Center for Teaching and Learning, the ATS staff in the Office of the Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) is at long last complete. Jeremy joins the other ATS newcomers, Kiran Kang (kkang@stanford.edu) in the Undergraduate Advising Center and Adam Christensen (adamc@stanford.edu) in the Central Office in rounding out the program staff.
As usual with this unusual group, the new ATS's are an eclectic bunch who bring both disciplinary or teaching expertise to their technical skills. Jeremy comes to us from Yale, where he is completing a Ph.D. in French, taught courses utilizing advanced multimedia, and co-founded a startup company called Affordabletranslations.com. While an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, Jeremy also gained experience as a calculus TA and physics tutor. (For more information on the CTL and its technology initiative, see "Center for Teaching and Learning: What's New" on page 7.)
Kiran Kang, a Stanford Political Science major who worked in the Undergraduate Advising Center as a Peer Advisor, returns to her Stanford roots as an experienced database administrator and Web developer. In her work with E-Solutions Consulting, KPMG Consulting, Sybase, and Oracle she developed extensive experience not only in technical areas, but also in translating various client's amorphous ideas into fully-realized database solutions. Acting as a mentor to other project team members and consulting with a diverse clientele have prepared Kiran to take on with aplomb the dual roles of technologist and advisor as she begins to explore how to enhance the advising experience with online tools and resources.
Adam Christensen also has a Stanford background, returning to help the VPUE implement its Web and database projects that will integrate information from across various units and departments, enhance student services online, and help streamline the distribution of new student information. He introduced himself to the ATS group as follows: "Upon graduating with my Bachelors of Fine Art in Painting and Photography I spent a couple years as a substitute teacher. When I could no longer handle the stress :) I ended up at the Stanford Center for Professional Development as a Web developer and Marketing Communications Manager (Web). After a stint out in the corporate Internet world as a User Interface / Web Developer for Web-based applications, I find myself back here at Stanford."
The VPUE ATS group welcomes its latest members, and, along with Academic Computing's Academic Technology Specialist Program, looks forward to, and is planning actively towards, enhanced collaboration across departments and functional units in the University. (See also "Academic Technology Specialists Continue Their Work" on page 20.) They all look forward to building programs and creating opportunities for faculty and students to take advantage of teaching and learning with technology, both inside and outside the classroom. With media literacy becoming a necessity in all facets of undergraduate educationfrom curriculum, to pedagogy, to research, to knowledge-production itself the VPUE Academic Technology Specialists look forward to collaborating with their partners in Academic Computing and all across campus to enable its fruition.
Mac users who've been waiting to move to OS X now have one less reason to delayMacLeland 2.0 is now in beta, and fully supports native OS X users. While the software is still in betathat is to say ITSS is not ready to say that it is "done" and available for widespread distributionextensive testing has shown that it is fully functional and extremely stable.
(ITSS is not ready to officially release MacLeland 2.0 yet because they're waiting for MIT to officially release a final version of their new Kerberos for Macintosh codeone of the main underpinnings of MacLeland.)
The beta version of MacLeland 2.0 is not yet distributed at the Essential Stanford Software site (http://ess.stanford.edu). But if you'd like to get a copy, you can sign up to participate in the beta program at:
Residential Computing, in projects led by software developer Sindy Lee, has developed two new online systems that promise to be widely useful at Stanford.
SunAppSys, the online staff selection system, stands for "Stanford University Application System" and was developed to create a central Web application through which students could apply for various university jobs or programs. Originally initiated by the Overseas Studies Program (OSP) because of its need for an online application system, this year's version was developed to support the selection processes for filling residential staff positions, such as Resident Assistants (RAs)/College Assistants (CAs) and Resident Computer Coordinators (RCCs), as well as for OSP applications.
University staff can create application forms, schedule interviews, and more. Students can then login, create one central profile that includes information needed for many selection processes, such as their name, university ID, contact information, and then apply for available selection processes. University staff can then review the students' submissions (online or through a printed version of the online information).
SunAppSys helps enable paperless selection processes and reduces redundancy. For example, in previous years, students had to fill out a paper application form for each overseas center at which they wanted to study. This year, they only needed to fill out one online application form, which could be used for any or all of the overseas centers. Additionally, this central Web application aims to eliminate the need to build customized online systems for selection processes (such as the previously used systems for RA/CA and RCC selection), thereby saving valuable development resources.
The yet unnamed online survey system, a revamp of Residental Computing's survey system, replaces the old desktop Java application with a Web-based one and utilizes a more robust Oracle database backend. The new survey system is available online. Administrators in the system can create, edit and deploy online surveys to anyone with a valid SUNetID and password. The survey system supports multiple-choice, select all that apply, and text response questions. For building questions, the system includes a list of predefined answer choices to use (such as a list of campus residences) or an administrator can create a custom list of choices. Additionally, the system also supports branching on survey takers' responses, presenting different sections to complete based on their responses. For example, this year's residence evaluation (conducted by Residential Education) had students select their residence, and based on that response, presented the students with survey sections that coincided with each type of residential staff member working at their particular residences.
The new system allows survey takers to respond on the Web. After launching a survey, administrators can view real-time results through the system's reporting tool, which offers a breakdown of people's responses, as well as a spreadsheet of those responses to download.
Both the online staff selection system and the new online survey system will be made available to other departments for a fee. Fees will be based upon the complexity of the project and the number of users. For more information, contact Sindy Lee at sindy@rescomp .stanford.edu.
What do you do if your computer crashes and that document that you've been working on all week won't open any more? What if your research data from the last ten years suddenly disappears? We all know that we should routinely back up our files, but who actually does?
BaRS (Backup and Recovery Service), a new service from ITSS, will automatically back up your critical computer files for you. Backups are performed remotely via SUNet, and are normally scheduled once a day, Monday through Friday. Backups are stored in a secure facility on campus, and a copy is also sent each day to a secure, off-campus site.
If you accidentally overwrite or delete a file, you can recover the file yourself using the BaRS desktop software. File recovery is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. BaRS is available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux desktops/laptops, as well as Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and Linux servers.
You can subscribe to the Backup and Recovery Service in one of three ways:
Note: This quarter, the ITSS Instructional Program offers support staff a new class "BaRS: Installation and Administration" (ITS 801). For details, see the Internet and Networking section of the Instructional Program Web site at http://www.stanford.edu /group/itss-customer/ip/.
More information about the Backup and Recovery Service is on the Web at:
There are more than machines in Stanford's Unix clusters. The Sweet Hall and Meyer Library clusters give you access to software. Useful, common, weird, arcane, surprising software that does exactly what you want, or things you never dreamed of. From Matlab, a major computation and visualization environment package, to Chef, a program that rewrites English text so it sounds like it came from a Swedish cook (a la Sesame Street), the Leland Unix clusters give you access to all kinds of software that you can use for FREE.
In the past there were so many kinds of software on the Leland Systems computers that it was hard to keep track of them all. Fortunately, that difficulty is past. The Leland Systems staff is pleased to announce that full documentation for Leland's Unix software is now available on the Web at:
http://lelandsystems.stanford.edu /services/pubsw/
Just click on the Installed software link and look for software by category, or use the "Find on this page option" in your Web browser to locate what you want.
This site lists all installed software packages, information about each package (what it is, its current support status, etc.), plus any upcoming plans for the package. It will partially replace the Leland Systems: Selected Software document at http://lelanddocs.stanford.edu/selsoft.html because:
The support priorities listed for each software package are not completely set in stone: if a package that you use regularly seems to have a lower priority than you think it should, please let the people at action-software@stanford.edu know. Software that's directly used as part of the academic mission of the university receives the highest support priorities.
In the future, the new documentation will include a separate index of frequently-used commands (instead of just indexes that list package names). Leland Systems staff is still working on it.
If you have any questions or comments about this documentation, send them to action-software@stanford.edu.
The ITSS projects to implement PeopleSoft's Student Administration and Human Resources Management systems at Stanford are nearing completion. The Axess 2000 Project, charged with replacing the old mainframe-based NSI system with PeopleSoft Student Administration, officially wrapped up on March 1. The Persona Project, responsible for implementing PeopleSoft's HRMS to replace the old CHRIS system, is scheduled to finish up on April 30.
The Axess 2000 Project put PeopleSoft in place as Stanford's system-of-record for all aspects of academic administration. Course catalog, student records, student financials, financial aid, and student admissions data is now all stored and maintained in PeopleSoft. The Axess Web site used by students to enroll in classes, check grades, see their tuition charges, etc., was updated as part of the project. In addition, faculty can now connect to Axess to view information about their classes and advisees, and to enter grades online.
The Persona Project has been moving Stanford's Human Resources, Payroll, and Benefits administration to PeopleSoft. New features in the project's final phase include support for faculty information, a new job applicant tracking process, salary setting, and enhanced customer support.
ITSS has established a new organization to provide ongoing support for these new administrative applications. The Application Support group within Administrative Systems is responsible for ongoing maintenance and support of all administrative systems at Stanford. The AS group will ensure that the PeopleSoft systems continue to fulfill the business needs of the University. Application Support will also continue to provide user training and help desk assistance, supporting use of PeopleSoft Student Administration, Human Resources Management, and the Axess Web site.
Users seeking assistance with any of these applications may call the ITSS Help Desk at 725-8181, or submit a request via the Web at http://helpsu.stanford.edu.
For more information about the Axess 2000 or Persona projects, please see the project Web sites:
Axess 2000: http://axess2000.stanford.edu/
Persona: http://persona.stanford.edu/