Sorry about the prolonged silence — it’s been a busy holiday season here, as I imagine it has been for you as well.  Three trips in three months and I’m more than ready to stay put for awhile.

In the spirit of getting back into things, here are some sites that might be useful to you.

The first is SciTechNet, a blog dedicated to news about social networking and Web 2.0 resources in the science and technology fields.  It’s a good blog to keep up with, just to see what’s out there.  In illustration, here are some recent highlights:

SciBog is a social networking site for scientists, allowing members to create their own pages, manage discussion groups, create news feeds, and share photos and videos.  There is also a large discussion forum hosted by the site.

Epernicus is a social networking site specifically for professionals in the Health and Life Sciences fields.  Epernicus facilitates connections among members based on institution and research interests.

KnowledgeMesh from Hershey Center for Applied Research is a social networking and mapping utility for the Life Sciences.  It has many of the same features as SciBog, but also marks the location of individuals and research projects on the map, so that you can see at a glance the kind of work that is being done in your community.

The Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management (http://icwdm.org) is pleased to announce that it has finished scanning and posting the first 16 volumes of the Vertebrate Pest Conference Proceedings, spanning 32 years, to its Digital Commons site  http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/icwdm/

The Vertebrate Pest Conference is the longest running animal damage control conference in North America. These proceedings contain valuable information on the management of a variety of animal species that have had negative impacts on human health and safety. It is a veritable gold mine of information for researchers and practitioners.

BioMed Central Launches Biology Image Library Online Resource for Biological Images will aid in Research and Education

BioMed Central today announced the launch of Biology Image Library, an online resource that provides access to over 11,000 carefully selected biology-related images. This is the latest service from BioMed Central, part of the Science Navigation Group of companies which was also responsible for the creation of images.MD, a popular medical image resource.

The Library is a new subscription-based service offering access to an annotated selection of high-quality biological images, movies, illustrations and animations. Subscribers may make royalty-free use of images in the collection for research and educational purposes, while commercial usage rights will be available for an additional fee.

“Biology Image Library will be an invaluable resource for biological researchers and educators” said Matthew Cockerill, Publisher, BioMed Central. “Researchers often maintain their own collections of useful images, but until now there has been no easy way for others to find them. By annotating the best images, making them searchable and accessible, and licensing them to allow convenient reuse, Biology Image Library will help academics and other biologists to illustrate their work and to create eye-catching presentations and course material.”

Biology Image Library gives researchers, teachers and students an easy way to find and download high-quality visual material. All content comes from sources that are peer-reviewed by academic editors prior to publication online, so researchers can be sure that the images are scientifically reliable. Subjects covered include developmental biology, histology & pathology, immunology, microbiology & parasitology, molecular & cellular biology, neuroscience and plant biology.

The Biology Image Library is continuously working to expand its collection of images. Potential contributors should email:
info@biologyimagelibrary.com or see
http://www.biologyimagelibrary.com/contribute for more information.

To view Biology Image Library and register for a free trial, visit http://www.biologyimagelibrary.com.

The National Chemistry Week Blog is live. Check it out for lots of chemistry-related information.

From GCN:

“A new portal that crosses both international and database boundaries was launched recently for people interested in scientific sources that are unavailable through commercial search engines such as Google.

WorldWideScience.org was developed by the Energy Department and the British Library, along with science and technology organizations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. It employs federated search technology — a search method that simultaneously executes a query against an array of databases, then aggregates and ranks the results — and gives users a single entry point for searching far-flung science portals in parallel with only one query.

“Scientific research results are archived globally in a plethora of sources, many unknown and unreachable through [the] usual search engines,” said Raymond Orbach, Energy’s undersecretary for science. “This international partnership will open up this vast reservoir of knowledge in a rapid and convenient manner, something that will add great value to our existing knowledge.”

WorldWideScience.org follows the model of Science.gov, the searchable portal for science databases of federal science agencies. WorldWideScience.org was developed and is maintained by Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information, which also played a central role in the development of Science.gov. The participating countries contributed databases that can be searched through the portal.”