April in the Libraries means an encore of many of our most popular IAP sessions! Pre-registration is required for some, but not all classes – see below for details.

Patent searching fundamentals
Mon April 6, 4:00 – 5:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Anne Graham, grahama@mit.edu

This session will enable you to successfully find patent references from all over the world, and obtain patent text and diagrams. This hands-on session will help de-mystify the patent literature and show key resources for finding patents.

Connect the clues! Exploring personal digital archives – Register
Fri April 10, 3:00 – 4:30 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Jessica Venlet, jvenlet@mit.edu

Imagine that it’s the year 2025 and you’ve recently begun preserving your family history. While sorting through photo albums and books, you’ve discovered a USB drive belonging to a distant relative. Now what?! Join us for this hands-on workshop to explore the files on this intriguing USB drive and learn about how archivists evaluate and manage personal archives of digital content!

3D printing for fun and science? A conversation about digital fabrication, the library, and you – Register
Tue Apr 14, 3:00pm – 4:30pm, Room: 66-168
Contact: Andrew Chen, achen0@mit.edu

This session, led by MIT Libraries Web Developer Matthew Bernhardt, will discuss the range of fabrication technologies now available, as well as those available at MIT, for sale, for rent, and (for a limited time, experimentally) through the Libraries-as part of this session, the Libraries have acquired a MakerBot Replicator 2 that is capable of producing objects in PLA plastic!

Research data management: 101 – Register
Thu April 16, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Christine Malinowski, cmalin@mit.edu

Do you manage research data here at MIT? This workshop will provide you with basic strategies for: best practices for retention and archiving; effective directory structures and naming conventions; good file formats for long-term access; data security and backup options; and metadata, tagging, and citation options.

Business information for engineers and scientists – Register
Thu April 16, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Howard Silver, hsliver@mit.edu

This session will introduce engineers and scientists to business information resources that will help you understand the commercial potential for your ideas, how to find partners, and sources for financial support. We will use realistic examples and hands-on exercises with key resources to demonstrate how to match your ideas and discoveries with the opportunities and realities of the marketplace.

Manage your PDFs and citations: Zotero and Mendeley – Register
Thu April 16, 2:00 – 3:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Jennie Murack, murack@mit.edu

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references or PDFs is common and important in today’s academic world. These tools will help you to save citations from your favorite databases and websites, store related PDFs or attachments, and quickly build a bibliography for your papers and publications. We’ll review Zotero and Mendeley and show how to use them together to help your manage your PDF’s and citations.

Tips and tricks for advanced SciFinder users – Register
Fri April 17, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: – Erja Kajosalo, kajosalo@mit.edu
Presenter: Cindy Tingle (CAS)

This workshop will cover the following areas:

Part I. Research topic searching – Learn how to ask a question, and export analysis results for reports, share answer sets, combine answer sets using list logic, set Keep Me Posted alerts, and tag related references

Part II. Substance searching – Learn about importing and exporting structures or searching from ChemBioDraw v14; limiting or expanding your search, refining by property data and exporting property data for reports, similarity vs substructure searching, creating User-defined templates, and analyzing/exporting chemical catalog data

Part III. Reaction searching – Learn how to designate non-participating functional groups, access experimental procedures, and utilize SciPlanner for retrosynthetic planning

Registration required. Lunch will be served!

Take charge of your stuff – Register
Wed April 22, 5:30 – 6:30 pm, online
Contact: Stacey Snyder, ssnyder@mit.edu

Personal content management tools help you get organized so you can work more efficiently and save yourself time. Some tools help you organize all sorts of information (notes, pdfs, documents, etc.) and work more efficiently. Others let you annotate, cite, and/or share your content. In this session we’ll show you tools for doing this while working solo or in a group.

Sign up to receive further instructions about how to join the session.

Citation searching: a technique to find articles and other literature besides just using keywords or names
Thu April 23, 12:00 – 1:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Michael M Noga, mnoga@mit.edu

Do you usually look for articles by searching keywords and authors? Try tracking ideas back and forth through time by searching citations to and from articles, reports and other scholarly literature. Citation searching started with the Science Citation Index (Web of Science) and now is part of several other information sources such as Scopus, e-journal collections, and Google Scholar. We will look at several places where you can find scholarly literature through citations and the different results you can get.

Ingenuity Pathway Analysis training – Register
Thu April 23, 3:30 – 5:30 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Courtney Crummett, crummett@mit.edu

Learn how to use Ingenuity Pathways Analysis (IPA) for the analysis of your ‘omics data. Build complete regulatory pictures and gain a better understanding of the biology underlying a gene expression, discover signaling cascades from predicted upstream regulators in your dataset, predict the effect of your gene expression changes on downstream biological processes and diseases, and more!

Funder open access requirements: DOD, DOE, NSF, NASA, & more – Register
Mon April 27, 10:00 – 11:00 am, 14N-132
Contact: Katherine McNeill, mcneillh@mit.edu

Got federal research funding? Come learn about new federal requirements for open access to publications and data from major government funding agencies, including DOD, DOE, NSF, and NASA. You’ll also learn how the Libraries can help you meet those requirements.

Make a map in minutes – Register
Tue April 28, 12:30 – 2:00 pm, 14N-132
Contact: Jennie Murack, murack@mit.edu

Learn how to make a basic, digital map that you can include in publications, papers, or host on a website. We’ll discuss a variety of tools for creating maps, such as CartoDB and ArcGIS Online, and then you will have a chance to use the tools on your own.

Overview of citation analysis – Register
Thu Apr 30, 12:30pm – 2:30pm, 32-144
Contact: Andrew Chen, achen0@mit.edu

In this two-hour workshop, we will provide an overview of citation analysis, including: sources of data for citation analysis, common impact measures, and freely available software. Attendees of the class will be eligible for an individual consultation session to explore individual projects and questions.