Featured Resource: National Center for Biotechnology Information
Posted on Mon, Oct 24, 2011
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is a division of the National Library of Medicine. Since its founding in 1988, the Center has performed important biomedical research, collected information, and published educational materials. It holds a huge amount biotechnical information in dozens of databases that are all accessible with various search tools. Some of these may already be familiar to Article One Researchers, such as PubMed, PubMed Central, and LinkOut.
Standout Resources
One of the most impressive aspects of NCBI is the wealth of assistance available for those using its resources. It offers “how-to” guides ranging from the basics (“how to obtain full text of an article”) to usage walkthroughs for sifting and comparing highly advanced genetic data. These guides come in the form of on-page help, as well as the many short video clips hosted on the NCBI YouTube channel.
Another great feature is the MyNCBI portal. MyNCBI is a free service that it allows researchers to save searches, create filters, and get email alerts about specific subjects.
Education Offerings
Beyond “how-to” tutorials, NCBI offers general education in the form of workshops, conferences, videos, and webinars. The Center is active on Facebook and Twitter, announcing the frequent updates and additions to its offerings. Through these Social Media, NCBI’s passionate online community of users engages in active discussion to improve the database experience.
One NCBI database of special note for Researchers looking for non-patent literature is the Bookshelf, which holds about 900 titles. Some of the books are written by the NCBI, but most are published books in a variety of subfields of biotechnology. These books can be a great research complement to the scholarly papers that are found in the Center’s other databases.
NCBI is an outstanding resource for any Researcher who is looking to get into biomedical and biotech research for prior art. Its wide range of offerings will satisfy professionals in the industry and those with little experience alike.