New features in My UW will aid researchers

Monday, September 14, 2009

In addition, other campus service providers have worked with the My UW Service Team to launch other new modules:

  • Campus Chat Connections — Ask a Librarian. DoIT Help Desk LiveChat. Ask Bucky. Writing Center. These and other live chat services will be in one place, called Campus Chat Connections, and you’ll find it in the Services tab this fall.
  • WiscChat — Carry on a live chat at the click of a button. A new WiscChat module is being added to My UW on the MyPage tab. Affiliated with WiscMail, WiscChat lets you instantly chat with others, either with the Web client or through a desktop client that you can download (e.g., PSI, iChat, Pidgin). For details, see www.doit.wisc.edu/wiscchat

To learn how your department can add personalized content to the portal, see www.doit.wisc.edu/myuw

Researchers, students and others will soon have a new set of resources available in My UW-Madison. With the suite of new My UW modules, researchers can, for example:

  • get faster access to favorite electronic databases and journals
  • find specialized facilities and equipment for projects
  • identify a local expert well-versed in a specific field.
The new research modules in My UW-Madison are:
  • Favorite Library E-Resources — With this new module, you can collect and categorize direct links to your favorite periodicals and research journals, saving multiple clicks over a standard search.
  • Research Facilities and Tools — Resources for researchers are all across campus, waiting to be shared with others. Researchers looking for specialized facilities (such as the Biotron) or for other tools and services can now find them in this new module, located in the Services tab. Groups that offer facilities or services will also be able to publish a description of their resource right in this module.
  • Find Experts and Expertise — UW-Madison has a wealth of researchers and content experts, often willing and eager to share their knowledge with others through new collaborations or simple conversation. You will be able to search for those experts, by topic, through this new module.
A group of campus faculty and students sparked interest in creating these modules, envisioning a set of applications that could facilitate the work of researchers. The concept was also embraced by the Research Computing Executive Committee, an advisory group to the Office of the CIO. Though the suite of three modules has unique applications for researchers, many on campus, including students, will find them valuable.