Bioinformatics Resource Developed at HSLS Featured in Major Scientific Journals
In late 2005, the Health Sciences Library System (HSLS) introduced the Online Bioinformatics Resources Collection (OBRC) on its molecular Biology and Genetics Web portal <www.hsls.pitt.edu/guides/genetics/obrc/>. This unique resource, developed by HSLS information specialists and librarians, is designed to bridge the gap between the expanding information needs of bench biologists and the rapidly growing number of online bioinformatics databases and software tools.
OBRC provides brief descriptions with links to more than 1600 online bioinformatics databases and software tools in categories such as immunology, genomics, proteomics, and RNA. Far more than a simple list with links, HSLS has further equipped this gateway by implementing the Vivisimo Clustering Engine®. Vivisimo automatically organizes the search results into multiple categories created on-the-fly, based on the textual information from the retrieved search results.
OBRC is gaining recognition beyond the University of Pittsburgh research community. It was highlighted in the Science magazine Netwatch column in October 2006 <www.sciencemag.org/content/vol314/issue5798/netwatch.dtl>. Additionally, the January 2007 issue of the prestigious journal Nucleic Acids Research included an article by HSLS authors Yi-Bu Chen, information specialist in Molecular Biology, Ansuman Chattopadhyay, head of Molecular Biology, Information Services, Phillip Bergen, information architecture librarian, and Nancy Hrinya Tannery, associate director for Information Services titled “The Online Bioinformatics Resources Collection at the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System--a one-stop gateway to online bioinformatics databases and software tools” (Nucleic Acids Research. 2007 Jan, 35 (Database Issue): D780-5. Epub 2006 Nov 15).
--Ansuman Chattopadhyay and Yi-Bu Chen
