The Journal of the Dermatology Nurses’ Association and the Maternity and Infant Care Database from MIDIRS are freely accessible during the month of May in celebration of Nurses’ Week (which Ovid is turning into Nurses’ Month for the purpose of this promotion).

Access requires signup for each resource; click the links above or access the links via the Promotions tab on the Ovid site.

What this tool can do for you:

• Help you better understand how to determine the “fairness” of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code.
• Collect, organize & archive the information you might need to support a fair use evaluation.
• Provide you with a time-stamped, PDF document for your records [example], which could prove valuable, should you ever be asked by a copyright holder to provide your fair use evaluation and the data you used to support it. [why is this important?]
• Provide access to educational materials, external copyright resources, and contact information for copyright help at local & national levels.

Looks nifty! I don’t have a reason to use it now, but it’s a great tool to remember.

The host site, Copyright Advisory Network from the ALA Office of Information Technology Policy has more great tools and information about copyright and the use of copyrighted material.

(Source: twitter.com)

Welcome to the BEN portal, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Pathway for biological sciences education. The BEN Portal provides access to education resources from BEN Collaborators and is managed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Over 18,827 reviewed resources covering 77 biological sciences topics are available. BEN resources can help you engage student interest, shorten lesson preparation time, provide concept updates, and develop curricula that are in line with national standards for content, use of animals and humans, and student safety.

Materials can be browsed by subject, resource type, and audience (potential audiences covered include pretty much every age level you can think of). Not everything is free, but the majority seems to be.

This seems like an interesting resource, especially if you’re teaching science topics.

(Source: crln.acrl.org)

Last night we mentioned that Oxford University Press will provide free access in North and South America to the Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford Reference to celebrate National Library Week that begins on Sunday.

Today, ProQuest announced that they’re providing complimentary access to a bunch of resources and other materials in honor of National Library Week.

I don’t know that the selected materials will be much help for reference questions, but some of them are fun to poke around in. :)

Finding free quality images is a tedious task - mainly due to copyright issues, attribution requirements, or simply lack of quality. This inspired us to create Pixabay - a repository for outstanding public domain images.

You can freely use any image from this website in digital and printed format, for personal and commercial use, without attribution requirement to the original author.

(Source: twitter.com)

The Art Works Blog (from the National Endowment for the Arts Blog) offers a brief intro to the Public Art Archive database and talks with with Rachel J. Cain, the program manager of the Public Art Archive, and Anthony Radich, the executive director of WESTAF.

This looks like a neat resource for those interested in public art installations.

Let’s face it: Google is an academic resource. We all use it – students, researchers, and yes, even us librarians. I unashamedly include “Google literacy” in my library instruction – teaching students how to be better Googlers, how to link to the library from Google Scholar, and how to evaluate the sources they find on Google.

How good a Googler are you?  Did you know that you can use Google to…

(Source: twitter.com)

Here’s a resource that will help you amaze family and friends on Thursday (for those of you in the U.S.) with your knowledge of all things turkey.

The guide was last updated today.

From the Guide:

In celebration of Thanksgiving, the University of Chicago Library has created [a] research guide to provide a lighthearted, yet informative look at some of the many resources available about turkeys.

A little bit of informative fun for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. :)

From OCLC:

Work is currently underway to transition the ArchiveGrid database of archival collection descriptions from a subscription service to a free service on a new interface developed and managed by OCLC Research.

A beta version of the new interface developed by OCLC Research is available at no charge at http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/. This beta has been designed to support OCLC’s efforts to expand support for this type of data, engaging with the library/archive community as we work together to create more sustainable ways to grow the collection of data and represent it appropriately in WorldCat.

As one of the people at my library who usually ends up answering history-type questions, I’m having fun poking around the beta site. :)

Tells you when a movie/tv series/etc. will be released on video/DVD/etc, including format changes (e.g. movie only available on VHS coming out on DVD). You can also sign up for email updates about specific titles.

(Source: twitter.com)

NLM’s Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) compiled the information. The page has links to overviews, state-specific pages, cleanup and recovery information, mental health information, multi-language resources, social media information, apps and widgets, and more.

…

Direct to NLM’s Hurricane Sandy Health Related Info Page

I didn’t even know NLM had a disaster-related center, so this is doubly helpful. :)

However texting can only do so much. Right?  Wrong! I read an article yesterday about how people can leverage SMS texting to surf the Internet (Google), get email, even use Twitter and Facebook.   Doing this allows you to stay in touch with events without relying upon your phone needing a decent data stream from a cell tower.

Personally, I’ve set up my Twitter account so I can text to it, and I have Selective Tweets on Facebook so any tweets with #fb also post to Facebook—it’s easier than texting both places to say I’m okay. :)

The National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register has launched new interactive Electoral College maps on its official Electoral College website. The public can actively participate in the electoral process by predicting electoral votes for the upcoming Presidential election and sharing their prediction results through social media.

…

The new site allows users access to election information from previous Presidential elections. The Federal Register has data as far back as the 1964 election uploaded to the site and will gradually add data from the 1960 election and earlier. Users can see who the candidates were and who won each state and pull up information about the popular vote totals. For example, did you know that a third-party candidate received one electoral vote in 1972?.