Thursday, March 29, 2007

Index to The Times consultation

EDINA would appreciate further responses to its consultation on the future of the Index to The Times service. Here is a recent message (29th March) from Andrew Bevan requesting feedback:

As you may be aware the current three-year subscription period for the EDINA Index to The Times service comes to an end later this year - on 31st October.We are currently assessing the demand for a renewed service, for a further three years, and are keen to hear from you as to whether your institution would resubscribe at broadly the same rates i.e. tiered between £55-716, outlined at http://edina.ac.uk/times-index/access/institutions.shtmlWe would also appreciate any other comments you may have on the service.
Regards,
Andrew Bevan
EDINA User Support
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EDINA URL: http://edina.ac.uk
Causewayside House Tel: 0131 650 3302158-162 Causewayside Fax: 0131 650 3308
EDINBURGH EH9 1PR Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Scopus: Meeting of the enhancement group, 26thApril

Next JIBS Scopus enhancement group meeting Thursday 26 April 2007

The second meeting of the JIBS Scopus enhancement group will be held 26th April 2007 at The University of Manchester The John Rylands University Library.

If you have queries or comments about Scopus that you would like to raise please contact m.tattersall@sheffield.ac.uk.

Have you set up the "SelectedSources" results tab for your users for example? Have you had feedback about coverage in particular subject areas? Are there new features you would like to see added?

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

JISC Collections consultations

JISC Collections consults with the further education, higher education and the research community about all new agreements and the renewal of existing agreements of online resources. Your feedback is essential as it determines whether we can move forward with negotiations, helps to ensure that all agreements are formulated in response to community demand, enables JISC Collections to negotiate the more favourable licensing terms and conditions and ensures the quality of the resource enriches the community's education and resource experience.

The following resources are participating in the spring 2007 round of consultations for new resources.

Books on ScienceDirect
British History Online (BHO) - Premium Content
Cairn (online collection of French language journals on the social sciences)
ProQuest CSA Early English Books Online (EEBO) MARC Records
ProQuest CSA History Study Centre
ResearchNow Full Access
Rock's Backpages
Social Theory
WellcomeFilm
ProQuest CSA KnowUK and NewsUK

Further details on these consultations can be found at http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/consultations

JORUM enhancement meeting

"The JORUM enhancement committee is meeting on Friday 23rd March.

"Service enhancements and developments are up for discussion, and if anybody has anything that they would like to comment on from a JIBS perspective, please contact Leo (l.appleton@west-cheshire.ac.uk). There is a page within the JORUM Web page detailing the JORUM enhancement committee membership, activities and developments:

Your licensing queries answered

JISC Collections has a plan of work to deal specifically with the non-standard licence issues associated with partner institutions, overseas campuses, franchised courses, etc. Meanwhile if your institution is trying to work through these issues, JISC Collections will help where it can. Please feel free to contact Liam Earney or Lorraine Estelle with your queries.

Further details are available here

JISC national e-books observatory project: deep log analysis study

JISC Collections, in association with UK Higher Education, have launched a significant e-book project that will assess impacts, observe behaviours and develop new models to stimulate the UK higher education e-books market. The national e-books observatory project aims to fund and license collections of e-books that are highly relevant to UK higher education taught course students in four disciplines and evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis. Knowledge acquired during the project will be shared with publishers, aggregators and libraries to help encourage an e-books market that has appropriate business and licensing models.

The deep log analysis study tender invites proposals to undertake a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the e-books made freely available to the UK higher education community as part of the project. Deep log analysis techniques should be used to monitor, analyse and evaluate the use of the e-books by students. The empirical data collected will be shared with the project partners to inform future e-book licensing, pricing and promotion strategies.

Further details are available here

Two centuries of civil engineering knowledge made available free to UK colleges and universities

Laying the virtual foundations of engineering research and practice

A new JISC Collections agreement makes the largest collection of full text civil engineering papers in the world available free of charge to all further and higher education institutions. Some of the most important articles on civil engineering are now available in perpetuity to those communities.

An agreement between JISC Collections and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) now makes ICE’s massive archive of some 18,000 illustrated papers and over 200,000 pages easily accessible to all further and higher education institutions. The Institution of Civil Engineers Virtual Library contains every peer-reviewed technical paper published by the ICE between 1836 and 2001.

The relevance of this collection goes far beyond civil engineering to subjects such as the architecture, the built environment, building and construction, environmental studies, land management, property management, planning, transportation and urban design.

The JISC Collections agreement, which contains works from almost every leading British or British-trained engineer ever published follows a successful consultation with librarians and academics and will save institutions the £12,000 each it would normally cost them to purchase this essential resource.

Further details on this resource are available here

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

British Standards News

There has been a further delay in the delivery to BSI of the new search software for British Standards On Line. BSI now expect to have something to show the enhancement group in mid May, user acceptance testing will then follow.

The enhancement group is still going to meet with BSI on the 22 March as BSI would like to discuss the way that we use British Standards On Line (BSOL) and also their digital archive project.

I would welcome comments on the way our community uses BSOL. Also comments on demand for withdrawn and superseded standards .

Roger Hines
Chair JIBS BSOL Enhancement Group

OvidSP new platform 2007

The new platform for Ovid/SilverPlatter is on schedule for release in the final quarter of 2007. The existing platforms will remain available into 2009 so that migration to OvidSP can be scheduled (managed) by customers to suit themselves e.g. before induction of new students, not part way through the academic year.

"the idea is to allow librarians to gain full familiarity with the new platform, and to develop materials, training programmes etc., and potentially go through a full cycle (i.e. up to the new intake in Sept./Oct. 2008) before libraries decide to withdraw access to the current platform(s) "

Monday, March 12, 2007

JISC Licensing Workshop: Copyright in the Digital Age

Licensing Workshop: Copyright in the digital age
Date: 30 March 2007; 11:00 hrs
Location: Brettenham House (south entrance), 5 Lancaster Place, London, WC2E 7EN
Cost: £75

The workshop will focus on digital copying and issues relating to sharing between collaborative institutions. Participants will be introduced to a new online interactive tool which demonstrates how online resources from JISC Collections can enable practitioners and institutions to resolve the common misconceptions and issues relating to the use of copyrighted digital and online resources in research, teaching and learning. The workshop will also present a series of scenarios of various legality and ask participants, formed in small groups, to come up with adequate solutions in accordance to rules of best practice for their institution. Then as a large group, discussions will take place around the scenarios and the issues that arose from the small group activity. Solutions will be provided that cover both further and higher education. Participants will leave being able to make judgements on the legal use of resources within their institution and solutions to common copyright and IPR infringement.

If you would like to attend, please complete the online registration form.
For further information see: http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/news_and_events/coll_licworkshop.aspx

Posted on behalf of Brian Mitchell, Marketing Manager, JISC Collections

EDINA has moved

... but the services and contacts remain the same. EDINA's new address is:

EDINA
Causewayside House
160, Causewayside
Edinburgh
EH9 1PR

JISC Mirror Service Closing

JISC has recently announced that the National Mirror Service is to close from July 31st 2007, at the end of the current contract with Eduserv. For full details please see the JISC press release:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2007/03/news_mirror.aspx

Lexis-Nexis User Group

Did you know that the Lexis-Nexis Butterworths Academic User Group meets each year in Spring and Autumn? On each occasion a meeting is held in London and a similar one in a Central or Northern location (e.g. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds) usually on consecutive days. The User Group web-site has, amongst other things, minutes of previous meetings and details of Lexis-Nexis contacts: http://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/academicusergroup/