Students - Win a $1500 Scholarship or an iPod Shuffle

This was sent to us from Knovel (we subscribe to their online handbooks):

Knovel has a technical contest for students. This year's winners will receive a $1500 scholarship or 1 of 8 iPod Shuffles.

Now in its third season, the University Challenge is open to students of hard sciences, mathematics and technology-related courses of study at all universities with access to Knovel Library (that's us) or Knovel K-Essentials. Exclusive tools like the Unit Converter, Equation Plotter and Interactive Tables are integrated into the questions to illustrate powerful search and discovery.

Participate in the contest by visiting
http://www.info.knovel.com/challenge/

System Down Time - UofC stuff

I'm not sure if these service interruptions have anything to do with what happened this morning, but here it is:

There will be an interruption to Information Technologies NFS Services Thursday March 15 at 23:00 until Friday March 16 at 02:00 for system maintenance. The following services will be unavailable during this time:

Linux Login servers C1/C2/C9(MSF1)
Webmail Services
Webdisk Services
Webware Services
Web Content Management Services
www.ucalgary.ca Web Services
Web Applications
Haskayne Web Services
DSPACE Web services.

Users of Blackboard Services may experience a brief interruption to services between the hours of Thursday March 15 at 23:00 and Friday March 16 at 02:00.

PSA for Friday

I got this Calgary Public Library video from a professional newsletter, so I'm passing it along as a PSA to all U of Calgary staff, students and faculty.

If you've got a valid UofC ID card (hopefully yours), you can go to the MacKimmie Library Circulation Desk (ground floor) and get a "TAL" card. TAL stands for The Alberta Library. With that card you can take out up to 5 CPL books. What sorts of books? Well, watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQZk0CKgkIg

BioMedCentral Has New Chem and BMC Blogs

This was forward to me from a library licensing email list:

BioMed Central is pleased to announce a new series of blogs to go with the BioMed Central website.

BioMed Central's own blog is:
http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/bmcblog/
and covers all the latest news from BioMed Central, as well as analysis and comment on the latest developments in open access publishing.

Recent posts include:

* A discussion of three things Google could do to make scientific research more accessible

* A cost comparison showing the benefit of open access compared to traditional publication, in terms of cost-per-article download.

* A downloadable version of the presentation given by BioMed Central at the recent European Commission Conference on scientific publishing, "Access, Dissemination and Preservation in the Digital Age."

* Information on the winners of the recently announced BioMed Central Research Awards

BioMed Central's sister sites, Chemistry Central and PhysMath
Central, have also launched their own new blogs:

Chemistry Central blog:
http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/ccblog/

PhysMath Central blog:
http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/pmcblog/

If you have any questions concerning any of these new blogs, please email us at blog@biomedcentral.com