Free Our Data

The Guardian has been campaigning for free online access to UK data.

Latest news item concerns Ireland which is "making a group of datasets for boreholes around the country available online so that professional users - in particular those engaging in major construction or infrastructure planning - will be able to visualise subterranean structures."

"Ordnance Survey, is due within the next month to launch its OpenSpace project which will - after 13 months' delay - allow web developers to create mashups of data directly from OS maps online."

(C) * Charles Arthur * The Guardian * Thursday November 29 2007

Silver Platter databases

"OvidSP offers virtually all of the content available on both Ovid Gateway and our database-only SilverPlatter WebSPIRS platforms. That means you can offer users quick, easy access to nearly 30 databases—focusing on everything from religion and politics to agriculture and life sciences—that were formerly available only on SilverPlatter!"

viz these databases:

Agricultural Economics Database
Animal Production Database
A-V ONLINE (educational audiovisual materials)
Derwent Biotechnology Abstracts
Crop Science Database
EMBASE Alert
EMBASE: Nephrology
EMBASE: Neurosciences
EMBASE: Pollution & Toxicology
EMBASE: Rehabilitation & Physical Medicine
Environmental Science Database
FLUIDEX (fluid engineering)
Forest Science Database
FRANCIS (humanities and social sciences abstracts in French and English)
GEOBASE (geology and geosciences)
GEOBASE GEOGRAPHY
GPO on SilverPlatter (produced by the U.S. Government Printing Office)
Horticulture Science Database
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
Inpharma Database
International Political Science Abstracts
Marquis Who's Who (general reference covering finance, industry, technology, science, education, and the arts)
Parasitology Database
PEST-BANK (databank of registered pesticides)
Plant Genetics and Breeding Database
Plant Protection Database
Reactions Database (coverage of adverse drug reactions)
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
Soils Science Database
TRANSPORT (produced by the world’s leading transportation research organizations)
TROPAG & RURAL (covers social and economic development in tropical and rural areas)
Veterinary Science Database
World Textiles

"If you have questions or feedback on the new platform, or if you’d like more information on subscribing to one of these databases, please contact your Ovid Account Representative or email: support@ovid.com.

"Regards,

"Wolters Kluwer Health - Ovid

American Medical News (AMA)

"American Medical News is a weekly newspaper for physicians, published by the American Medical Association

"No other single publication covers the same spectrum of medical news

"Directed to physicians in private practice and physicians on hospital and managed care staffs, in military service and on medical faculties

"Non-physician readers include health regulators; legislators and their staffs; staffs of state, county and specialty medical societies; administrators of health programs; and journalists

"Timely and accurate political/regulatory coverage and information on the medical profession, public health, the medical marketplace and practice management. Regular coverage includes such topics as ethics, practice trends and legal issues

"Subscribers to JAMA and the 9 Archives journals can receive AMNews at no additional cost (offer good through year end 2007)

Source: Ovid - Wolters Kluwer

OvidSP Quick reference Card

Here is a link to a PDF version of the quick reference guide.
http://resourcecenter.ovidsp.com/docs/qrc_merged_HQ.pdf

Six pages.

Books at Ovid

Ovid Expands Partnership with Oxford University Press to Increase eBook Offerings


Ovid Now Offers more than 300 OUP Titles for Subscription and Purchase on Books@Ovid.

New York, NY (July 16, 2007) – Ovid Technologies, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health and a global leader in electronic medical, scientific, and academic information research solutions, is pleased to announce that it has expanded its agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP) to provide over 300 OUP medical and health science e-books, including over 80 new titles, for subscription and purchase on the Books@Ovid platform.

DataSalon's Database tool for JISC

If you need to know which ebook platform is searchable by Dewey, or whether any ebook platforms are authenticated by Native Shibboleth this tool gives you, straight from the horse's mouth, the supplier's view of their product, viz

EBL - Ebook Library(EBL)
MyiLibrary
NetLibrary (OCLC)
dawsonERA(Dawsons)
ebrary


the JISC ADAT system is now live
at: Academic Database Assessment Tool

"Free database comparison tool aims to make it easier for university librarians to make informed decisions when subscribing to online resources "

"JISC Collections in partnership with DataSalon Ltd have launched a free online database comparison tool "

Bibliographic databases:
BIOSIS Previews (1969 - present)
British Education Index
British Humanities Index (BHI)
Compendex
EconLit
EMBASE
GEOBASE
Inspec
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
ISI Web of Science
MLA International Bibliography
Scopus
Sociological Abstracts

Full Text Databases:
ABI/INFORM
Business Source Premier

Compare before you buy: updated and improved free database comparison tool launches today

Free database comparison tool aims to make it easier for university librarians to make informed decisions when subscribing to online resources

JISC Collections in partnership with DataSalon Ltd have launched a free online database comparison tool today, which aims to help libraries make informed decisions about future subscriptions to online resources – the Academic Database Assessment Tool.

With so many products offering a huge diversity and wealth of information, it can be difficult for librarians to know what resources they should be investing in. The Academic Database Assessment Tool provides access to detailed information and title lists for major bibliographic and full text databases. It also delivers key service information for database and eBook content platforms. This enables librarians to quickly compare and contrast key items to assist in the purchase decision process. These include: a list of titles included in each database; search features available; linking methods e.g. full text linking; metadata standards and methods of access provided to these resources e.g. IP access, Athens or Shibboleth.

Further details can be found here.

The importance of linking electronic resources and their licence terms: a project to implement ONIX for Licensing Terms for UK academic institutions

This article from Liam Earney from JISC Collections and Brian Green from Book Industry Communication looks at the issues facing libraries as they seek to manage and communicate rights negotiated in an ever increasing number of licences for online resources. It addresses the work that JISC Collections and EDItEUR have been engaged in to develop machine-readable licence expressions of JISC Collections licences that are suitable for import into library systems. The article explores the potential benefits such work offers to the UK academic community, as well as the issues and challenges JISC Collections has faced in this work.

Further details can be found here.

The E-books UK Roadshow: invitation to attend

In January and February 2008 JISC Collections is running 11 workshops across the UK as part of the JISC national e-books observatory project.

It is no secret that the multiplicity of models, pricing options and access routes to e-books is over complicated and confusing. Not only is it difficult to decide what pricing model and access route is best suited to your institution, but it is also difficult to understand why the publisher places such a high value on an e-book and at the same demands licensing that restricts the real value from being achieved.

The 11 workshops will provide an update on the national e-books observatory and use examples from the project to show how publishers valued their e-books. Attendees will then have the opportunity to discuss what they consider the value of e-books to be in terms of pricing, impact on teaching and learning, what they consider good value and what pricing models would reflect this value. The afternoon session of the workshop will focus on addressing the question of what would need to happen for libraries to give up reliance on print texts and adopt e-books.

Further details can be found here.

A century of parliamentary papers made available online: 18th Century Parliamentary Papers

Public and private sector partnership makes a massive record of 18th century parliament free to UK colleges, universities and research councils

Through an innovative public/private cooperative publishing model, ProQuest has partnered with JISC, The British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service (BOPCRIS) at the University of Southampton, the British Library, and the University of Cambridge to make available the Eighteenth Century Parliamentary Papers free of charge to universities, colleges and research councils in the UK.

Staff, students and researchers will have access to content from 1688-1834. Through an initial grant from the JISC, the Eighteenth Century Parliamentary Papers has been digitised by BOPCRIS. ProQuest through this partnership, will provide an interface for this content and make this important dataset completely cross-searchable with their 19th and 20th Century Parliamentary Papers- a detailed primary source for the past two centuries for Britain, its colonies and the wider world.

Further details can be found here.

Tracing Britain's history with British History Online: premium content

JISC Collections is pleased to announce that following a highly successful consultation with the community, an agreement for British History Online: premium content is now available.

Built by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust, the subscription-based premium content is offered in addition to the wealth of free content already available from British History Online. By subscribing to the premium content, institutions can benefit from access to the 122 titles of the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Scotland and Ireland. The calendars are a critical primary source for historians of early modern Britain, for the study of central government and administration, and are a rich resource for the social, cultural, and economic history of the period.

Further details can be found here.

Hold the front page - 19th century newspapers resource launched

New resource offers one million pages from forty-six 19th century newspapers to unlock a rich seam of hidden treasures

JISC and the British Library, in partnership with Gale/Cengage Learning, have launched their 19th century British Library Newspapers website. The UK’s Further and Higher Education communities can now enjoy free online access to a cross section of 19th century national and regional titles, greatly enhancing research into the society, culture and history of the UK between 1800-1900. HE and FE lecturers will be able to download material from the website and use it for teaching purposes.

For the first time, iconic historical events that shaped our present will be fully searchable online. Vital newspaper reports on the Congress of Vienna, the Slavery Abolition Act and the opening of the Suez Canal will become accessible from researchers’ desktops. Users will be able to read and repurpose the factual reporting of the Battle of Trafalgar in the Examiner and the gory details of the Whitechapel murders in the melodramatic Illustrated Police News. Some of the most famous authors of the 19th century are represented, including Dickens and Thackeray.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections

JISC's Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) will be available from 20th November allowing comparison of ebook platforms:
Ebrary, NetLibrary (OCLC), MyiLibrary, Ebook Library (EBL) and Dawsonera

The new site at: http://www.jisc-adat.com/adat