03.10.2008

Nikon Imaging Center
Photo: Elisabeth Fall

A new on-line database developed by the CTSI Virtual Home and Translational Technology Resources program will enable researchers to quickly search for equipment and services offered by research cores within the UCSF system.

The new "Core Search" website, which went live on February 22nd, allows researchers to search more than 90 cores at UCSF and to sort them by location (i.e., campus), resource category (e.g., bioinformatics, cell culture, or islet production), and service or equipment (e.g., breast imaging, antibody purification, ABI Voyager DE STR, MRI 2T, or hotplate analgesia).

This is a boon especially for researchers who want to do work in a new area, explains Georgianne Meade, director of research planning and communications at the School of Medicine's Office of Research. "Rather than spending a lot of money on a new instrument or a lot of time on finding out if anyone else has done similar work, they can now easily search the database."

The goal of the Virtual Home initiative is to create a centralized spot where translational and clinical researchers can learn about each other's work. The crux? That "home" isn't built with bricks and mortars but with networking technology.

"Our goal in setting up the Virtual Home was to create communities and processes that help people work together," explains Mini Kahlon, PhD, director of the Virtual Home. "We wanted to use technology to minimize the impact of geography as well as to imagine transformative uses of a digital environment that captured the expertise in this institution. And as we thought about how we could do that, developing a robust database of cores that allowed researchers to find equipment was the low-hanging fruit."

In the future, Kahlon envisions a digital environment that allows researchers to discover who has previously looked for equipment or collaborators, much like Amazon.com allows users to see how many people bought which book in a category.

The School of Medicine's Office of Research had a database previously, but the new one is far more easy to use, Meade says. "In addition to being able to search in many more ways, the vision is to allow core managers to update information about their cores themselves, as when there's a new director or when new equipment becomes available."

FaceBook Minus the Videos

Such "distributed publishing" is exciting for administrators, but finding a way to inspire researchers to update their own data can be challenging.

"Health science researchers haven't yet seen the value of interactive on-line media," Kahlon says. "People are working on this issue all across the country."

One model for such networking, she added, could be FaceBook — minus the videos of pets and the drunken ramblings of college students, of course — or Linked-In, which has a more professional foundation.

"We know that health science researchers aren't looking for social activity," Kahlon says. "But we also think that some social networking can add value as researchers look for collaborators and other kinds of professional connections."

The development of this resource was coordinated by Kathleen Cameron, playing a liaison role with the UCSF library. Robert Smith worked with core managers to facilitate the collection of information.

The cores search builds on the first-ever core managers retreat in November 2007, hosted by CTSI’s Translational Technology and Resources program.

Search Research Cores Resources at UCSF