This is a preliminary set of details about the webinar.
I am Peter Cooper.
Rana Morris will be presenting this.
Any questions we get with the answers will be available after the webinar, the link to
the webinars page.
They will also be in the materials directory on the ftp site.
The shortcut link there, go.USA.gov/xnZ2B.
So with that I will turn this over to Rana.
Hello guys and thank you for joining us today.
Today's talk will be about Keeping Current and Getting Help with NCBI Resources .
In the short webinar you will learn several ways that can help you keep up-to-date with
changes and updates that are happening at NCBI on the website and with the data.
And also where to look and ways to find help using NCBI resources .
As a US government agency and part of the national laboratory of medicine we are always
keeping in mind we are here to serve you.
We have a specific mission to perform computational data analysis research, gather data from all
of the globe, create systems for you to access and use the data, and help you figure out
how to use it.
As part of this mission we are not only putting on this webinar today but have created various
mechanisms to communicate with you About the cool things going on at NCBI and how to use
them . And how to provide help for you to use them.
To recap what you may already know, we have lots and lots of databases with lots of different
kinds of data.
Currently there are over 40 different databases available on the NCBI website.
We also create lots of tools to help you access and analyze the data in the databases.
We are updating existing and creating new resources all the time .
Within those databases there are huge amount of data which is constantly being added to.
Some databases updated every day and some updated regularly, such as GenBank.
With specific periodic releases.
For those of you who have visited our website over the years you may have noticed some of
the pages still looks similar to how they did when they were first released.
We are in the process of updating the pages to provide an easier to read and use layout
of our data.
This is a new initiative and you will see some major changes coming up in the next couple
of years.
For example for the db SNP pages which have been around for a decade, we are now testing
a new design that will help dbSNP users find what they need more easily.
We have a Feedback button, that's the green button on the left, we also want to hear what
you think about these pages, what you like and what works well for you.
As well as what we might change to make it better .
In addition to creating better webpages we are also looking at what is under the hood
to improve what you see back after you do a search.
An example here is the new PubMed labs project, which is testing a new search algorithm to
help with how literature restlts are found.
In the process we are testing new modern displays and adding cool new functionality.
PubMed labs is a sandbox to test this out.
The things we find here will be really good and helpful and the ones that people like
and can use we will eventually add and improve the interfaces.
This is a lot of stuff.
And a lot of stuff going on at NCBI.
New data every day, updated functionality, updated web page layouts, new resources and
cool new things coming online all the time.
How can you keep up with it all?
We have a lot of channels to help you with this.
There are many ways to find out what is new at NCBI and many different tutorial and help
documents to help you use the resources.
We even put online recently a NCBI support center to help you find answers to your questions,
to assist sending messages to the helpdesk to get your specific questions answered.
Don't worry about the icons now, we will go through them all.
I have a cheat sheet at the end of the presentation which summarizes pretty succinctly everything
you need to know.
And we'll tell you how to get a copy of this cheat sheet yourself.
So amongst the vastness, where is a good place to learn what is new?
Here is the NCBI homepage.
I will show you how to access a lot of the things from a single page.
I will recommend that you start at the NCBI Learn site which will connect you to everything
we will talk about today pretty much on a single page.
Click on learn to get to this page.
You may have seen this page before but if you have not it's worthwhile.
This is where we announce at all of the webinars like the one you are looking at today.
Click on the webinars and courses box and it will take you to a list of teaching events
and what we are doing.
Here is the webinar you are in today.
Here is where you did or you could have registered to participate.
While most of you probably heard about this webinar on Twitter or Facebook, there is a
reason to come to this webinar and courses page.
Here is where we put links to the materials for the webinar as soon as it is done.
We put up the PowerPoint slides you are actually seeing, the Q&A documents answering questions
that we did not get to live, and for this particular webinar I have a cheat sheet in
there that I will tell you about later on.
Finally we will put a link to the video made in this webinar that will be put on YouTube
in a couple of days.
While many of you may just watch the video on YouTube I know several of you might like
the PowerPoint from the webinar presentation, to use to update yourself or to use with your
colleagues.
Back to the main learn page on the right-hand side, you may notice something that looks
a lot like what was on the main NCBI webpage also . The NCBI News and Blog section with
titles and links.
This is the same, and we also have another place where you can get to the NCBI insights
blog on the bottom.
Here's where we make major and minor announcements, provide answers for frequently asked questions
and to basically let people know what's going on here at NCBI and on the website .
For example, last week we did another one of these NCBI minute webinars to let people
who write scripts and code know about a new tool, an API key.
We are making it available to help access the servers.
This is a WordPress style blog.
so you can set up to get email alerts or RSS feeds on the new posts that come out.
We also created several other social media accounts and link them here to provide this
information if you don't have a WordPress account.
Or prefer to use Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn instead.
You don't have to go through the NCBI insights blog to get to the social media accounts.
Back on the Learn page again, there are two or three different spots to get into the feeds,
channels and sites for your favorite social media platform.
You're welcome to sign up to follow us on any of the social media sites.
Where we have showcase pages where we segregate notifications into pertinent areas of genomes,
genes, chemicals, and health related subjects.
Keep in mind everything that goes on the NCBI blog is also announced on each of these other
social media platforms . You don't need to worry that you will miss anything.
You can pick one that you are most comfortable with and it will be able to let you know what's
going on.
We also have a NCBI-announce email listserv for those people who prefer to be notified
in their email.
And RSS feeds.
Just to let you know, while we often announce our participation in various conferences on
all of the social media sites.
Sometimes we will tweet more about it to let those people who are attending know and also
want to include hashtags for the event.
For the most part you won't miss any of our news or announcements regardless of whatever
social media site you participate in.
You don't need to follow them all.
Now that you found out how to be notified of goings-on at NCBI , news and other announcements.
How can you figure out how to use the cool new things you have learned about back on
the NCBI Learn page.
First there are the webinars like the one coming up about Quick-BLASTP . You might want
to sign up for it.
And the blog, sometimes we post showing you how to find gene symbols and their aliases,
or how to use the Genome Data Viewer, for example.
We also have written and video tutorials and help documents to help you figure out how
to do something.
We also try to fully use the YouTube channel.
Not just to show the short webinars but also we have short 1 to 3 minute videos showing
you how to do something very specific on our site as well.
We have a lot of different videos and even a lot of different playlist.
Many of these are actually linked directly from our pages.
Others are often viewed after a simple web search.
For very specific help using a particular resource, say a database or tool, we recommend
you look at the actual homepage of that resource.
The developers for those resources will often put helpful links on the left-hand side of
the page to assist you in learning how to use their baby.
Most of the time on the website there is a help link in the upper right hand corner of
the page which will take you to the main help documentation for that page or particular
resource.
Here is the gene database homepage which has those help links on the left.
And some quick search terms at the bottom.
It also has that main help link in the upper right hand corner.
Our blast homepage also has a help link in the upper right.
Both on the home page and it is still there when you go to any particular blast page as
well.
More complex tools have their own documentation.
Sometimes a simple help and sometimes more.
Here is a picture of the variation viewer which again in the upper right hand corner
has help, and also an FAQ link to answer frequently asked questions.
It also has a direct link to helpful videos on the YouTube channel as well.
Those links that were on the left-hand side of the home pages, they often go to help manuals
and FAQ chapters on the NCBI Bookshelf.
There's a lot of help there that you can either get to from the resource or you can go to
the Books database and search.
We really recommend the NCBI handbook , which has chapters for each major database and tool,
and describes pretty technical aspects of the resources like history, where the data
that come from, access and related tools and resources.
For more specific and practical help on how to use a resource, there are a lot of different
help manuals designed just to do that.
To show you how to use the resource practically.
Finally if you need specific help to answer a question, we have a brand-new resource for
you.
It can be accessed from virtually any footer at in NCBI.
On the bottom right hand corner, you will see the link to the NCBI support Center . The
NCBI support Center is a place where you can find discrete answers to important questions.
Some of the questions are, can I get a subscription to access the journals in PubMed?
How do I cite blast in my manuscript.
How can I find all the protein sequences that belong to a certain protein family.
How can I find a genome for my organism of interest.
And a whole lot of other questions as well.
If you still can't quite figure out the answer to your question, there is a link to write
to the helpdesk on the top of the page, which will create a help ticket for the member of
the helpdesk to answer.
We will do our best to answer the question and get back to you within two working days.
Often you will get a response quicker than that.
Please note that we do not answer user help request on the social media platforms, such
as Facebook, as the space limitations prevent us from being able to help as much as we need
to.
Also we don't have the personnel to be able to monitor all of the channels.
So we really go through directly through the helpdesk link here.
And yes those of you familiar with it can still use the old NCBI helpdesk email address,
which is funneled to the new system . That email address is still info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
That is a lot of stuff and a lot of resources and sites to remember.
Here is my cheat sheet.
It really summarizes pretty much what I talked about.
Hopefully in a helpful and succinct way.
I have created a JPEG version of the slide.
I have actually put it in the webinars materials directory, which you can find on the webinars
page.
I hope this image that you are welcome to print out, use and distribute can make you
find it easier to keep up with what's going on at NCBI and how to find help.
We will also send you a direct link for this particular graphic in a follow-up email after
the webinar.
Thank you for your attention.
I am happy to take any questions you might have.
Thank you Rana.
There are no questions in the questions pod at the moment.
If you have any, please enter them.
We will leave the webinar open a couple of minutes to see if you have any questions.
Okay, I think that is it for today.
Thanks everyone for coming.
We will see you next time.