Ex Libris: News from the Library
Upcoming Library Lunchtime Lecture
First Bilkent Librarianship Seminar
Anatolian Academic Libraries Consortium
Midterm time is upon us, students are very busy, and the Library is becoming very crowded! To help us provide a comfortable and productive environment for study and research for all our users, we would like to remind everyone of a few basic rules. First, let's keep the noise down: please talk as quietly as possible both inside and outside the reading rooms in order not to disturb other readers. Also, please do not occupy more than one sitting place, for example by putting your bags or clothing on a table or on an extra chair. Finally, please do not bring food and drink, except water, into the reading rooms: these items can be consumed in the cafe or outside. Librarians will be monitoring Main Campus Library over the next few weeks, and if a member of the library or security staff asks you to follow any of these rules, please respect the request and comply. We wish you good luck in your studies.
This will also be a busy week for Bilkent librarians in other ways. On November 14, the Library will hold the second Lunchtime Lecture for this semester. This week, our speaker will be Asst. Prof. Ali Güre (MBG), who will deliver a talk entitled "Altruism in Cancer Research: Curing the Patient (and Saving the Isolated Scientist)." In his talk, Dr. Güre will discuss recent advances in scientific communication and show how these developments have positively affected his own research on cancer. Scientists have long shared their data openly and freely, with journal purchase costs possibly being the only case where payment has been necessary. Recently, however, a revolution in biology has taken place: experiments no longer generate a few results, but millions at a time. Naturally, this large volume of data is analyzed by the scientists who generate it, but there is simply too much of it. Therefore, such scientists can now make this data available to the rest of the community over the web with no demands, except that they are acknowledged appropriately (in a publication that results from its use, for example). This short talk will explain how these large volumes of data are critical in designing experiments for scientists who otherwise might not be able to afford such large-scale experiments, and specifically how the analysis of this type of data is of the utmost importance in finding cures for cancer. The lecture will be delivered in English, and will take place on Wednesday this week, at 12:40 p.m. in the Art Gallery of Main Campus Library. Lunchtime refreshments will be provided.
A little later on the same day, the Library will organize the first Bilkent Librarianship Seminar for this academic year. At 2 p.m. in the Art Gallery, librarians, academics and publishers will give presentations about "discovery services" that are currently improving the way users can access library e-resources. The seminar will be in Turkish. For more details and registration information, please see our website. And, finally, on Friday and Saturday this week, the Library will host a meeting of the Anatolian Academic Libraries Consortium (ANKOS).