JISC consultation on journal backfiles

Since August 2004 JISC has licensed the following journal archives on behalf of the higher and further education communities:
*Royal Society of Chemistry Journals Archive
*Institute of Physics Journal Archive 1874-1998
*Oxford Journals Complete Archive
The cost of acquiring such resources is beyond the means of most institutions, but JISC funding makes the content available to all UK higher and further education institutions free and in perpetuity. The availability of these online archives not only means that valuable library space can be freed, but that all students and staff can easily use previously inaccessible or rare material at the desk top.

In order to make sure that future procurement of journal archives is driven by the needs of institutions and their users JISC Collections would be grateful for your feedback on the following questions:

1. In your opinion does the continued licensing of journal archives represent a sensible investment of JISC Collection’s content procurement budget?
2. If yes, what are the journal archives currently available that you would like to see JISC Collections consider for procurement?
3. If no, what content do you feel JISC Collections should invest in?

Additional comments are welcome to all of the questions and the responses will be collated and made available to all respondents in the new year.

Please respond to Liam Earney, Collections Manager, L.Earney@jisc.ac.uk by 1st December.

Beilstein access changes

MIMAS have put up a web page outlining what will happen to Beilstein access from 1st November:

http://www.mimas.ac.uk/crossfire/new_xfire_service/

This seems to me to be pretty clear considering the many permutations they had to take into account.

"there is also a link to a list of the sites which we belive are intending to subscribe to the new agreement, and which method(s) of authentication they will be using."

Please notify: crossfire@mimas.ac.uk if there should be any corrections to the information on this list.

Scopus enhancement

As of 17th October, there has been an enhancement to the Scopus 'Source Browse' feature:

"In response to customer requests to increase the transparency of Scopus’ content coverage, major improvements have been made to Source Browse by displaying more information about each source’s coverage in Scopus"

"The additional information will be:

* active versus inactive titles
* title history, such as title changes
* latest issues covered by Scopus"

See: http://info.scopus.com/sourcebrowserelease/ for more details.

SilverPlatter SPIN-L

Subscribers to Ovid's email list for SilverPlatter will already know that the SPIN-L list will be switched off at the end of this month, October 31st.

British Standards On line User Group news

Zoë Cummings ,the on line project manager, for British Standards, has just informed us that from Monday the 18 October, they are adding UK drafts( the dc standards) as full text in BSOL(British Standards On Line) . They are only adding new drafts as and when published and have not retrospectively added all current UK Drafts. The european drafts were already there, the prEN standards.

The absence of the text of the draft standards was one of the issues raised at the first user group meeting. It is excellent that BSI have responded so quickly in this area.

Web of Knowledge Enhancement Committee

The next meeting of the Web of Knowledge Enhancement Committee will take place on Monday 30th October. Please let me know if there are any issues that you would like JIBS to raise, or if you have any suggestions for enhancing the service:

l.j.humphreys@bath.ac.uk

Taylor and Francis ebook agreement from JISC

Taken from the JISC weekly update, 12th October:

The Taylor & Francis Group has over 15,000 titles available in the Online eBook Library, providing a wealth of material for librarians, academics and students at all levels. Each ebook comes with five concurrent users, while the eBook library permits unlimited concurrent users. Institutions can subscribe to multiple copies of the same eBook in order to add more concurrent users.

A 5% discount will apply if the Sub-Licensee subscribes to 360 or more book titles from the Online eBook Library.

Subject coverage includes Business, Economics, Geography, Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, History, Archaeology, Medicine, Science and Technology.

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/coll_tandf_ebooks.aspx

New JISC Collections website

As you may be aware the JISC has recently launched its new web site. To coincide with this, JISC Collections has also launched new web site which can be found at www.jisc-collections.ac.uk. The new web site has a new structure that will hopefully make it easier to find everything you need to know about resources in the JISC Collections portfolio, licences and other relevant information.
Over the coming days and weeks we will be making further improvements to the web site and making sure that it is fully up to date.
In the mean time should you have any problems finding information please let me know and I will send you the relevant information.
Best wishes and kind regards,
Liam
Collections Manager
Joint Information Systems Committee
138-142 Strand
London WC2R 1HH
Tel: 020 7848 1716
Mobile: 07739 402774
Web: www.jisc.ac.uk/collections

EPSRC to stop funding the Chemical Database Service

EPSRC has today announced that the Chemical Database Service (CDS) is to close on 31 March 2007. The full announcement is on the EPSRC website:
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ResearchFunding/Programmes/Chemistry/NCS.htm

What does this mean for you, the user?
Until 31st March 2007 - all existing services will continue.
From 1st April 2007 -
If you use the
* Cambridge Structural Database
* Inorganic Chemistry Structural Database
* DETHERM, the thermo physical properties database
the EPSRC will continue to provide access until at least 2010. A procurement process is underway to provide such a service. Access to any other components of the CDS will not be available through a national service. CDS will be exploring the continuation of provision of other components, in particular the synthetic organic reaction databases, the Available Chemicals Directory and spectroscopy data. This may well involve a subscription only service after 1st April 2007. However it would require buy-in from a significant proportion of the community to be viable. We will be examining this option in detail in the very near future.

Questions or comments about the EPSRC decision should be addressed to: Carmine.Ruggiero@epsrc.ac.uk
Queries about specific data or components of the Service should be sent to CDS: cdsbb@dl.ac.uk

JIBS Scopus Enhancement Group

Have you been involved in promoting Scopus to end-users in your institution? Do you have feedback you would like to see discussed with Scopus product developers? if you have answered yes to one of these questions, how about
putting your name forward to join the new JIBS Scopus enhancement group which will meet for the first time on Friday 10 November 2006 in Manchester.

I have accepted an invitation to chair the group, and Lorraine Beard who is Faculty Librarian (Life Sciences) at John Rylands University Library Manchester has volunteered to be Secretary. We would like to recruit 1 or 2 more people to
join us to meet with Niels Weertman, Head of Scopus Product Development and Cameron Ross the Product Sales Manager for Scopus.
As usual with JIBS enhancement groups there will be 2 or 3 meetings a year, and travel expenses are reimbursed. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in joining the group and do not already belong to any other JIBS enhancement group:

Marion Tattersall
eCollections Librarian
Academic Services Group
Room 1.23, Arts Tower Floor 1
The University of Sheffield Library
Sheffield S10 2TN
phone: 0114 2227281
email: M.Tattersall@SHEFFIELD.AC.UK

BSOL developments

BSI intends to improve BSOL search/browser functions in the next 6 months by implementing a new search engine. These improvements, which will involve migration of the site, will be phased with plenty of warning for users and Athens access will not be effected. The new search engine will be provided by Endeca http://endeca.com/ - a guided search - so subject and key-word searches should be vastly improved. The BSOL shop will be separated from the standards collection which should allow clearer display of search results for subscribers when in the database. The search engine change will happen in the early part of 2007.
There will be no major development to the present interface and search engine but work is carrying forward to fix bugs.
Endeca software is used by a range of information providers including the Guardian and NCSU library
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/libraries.php?p=1998&more=1

Roger Hines
Adsetts Centre
Sheffield Hallam
0114 2254703