Friday, May 25, 2007

Capacity Builder: informing developments in community development and social policy

Capacity Builder is a community development and social policy information resource, which is updated daily to provide a one-stop source for local, regional and national information on affairs that affect communities throughout the UK. News updates, policy documents, briefing papers, statistical information, legislation, benefits information, parliamentary debates and questions are included. This resource can be used across a range of subject areas including: community health studies; community nursing; community development; community studies; education studies; housing studies; social policy; sociology; social work; youth studies and welfare studies.

Further details are available here.

What's new in the world of Geospatial services? Find out more by attending the GeoForum event on the 15th June

EDINA will be hosting the GeoForum event on the 15th June 2007 in the Parkinson Building, Leeds University.

The GeoForum is an ideal opportunity for support staff and site representatives in the Geospatial services area to be briefed and give feedback on the JISC's Geospatial Working Groups's proposed Vision and to find out "What's New" in
Geospatial services, such as Geology Digimap. There is also the opportunity for delegates to see an early preview of Marine Digimap, OS MasterMap as well as New Satellite Imagery and Geodata Services from the Satellite Image Data Service.

For further details, including the programme and how to get to the venue can be found on the EDINA web site at: http://edina.ac.uk/events/geoforum07.html

To book your place at this event, please complete the registration form which can be found at: http://edina.ac.uk/events/geoforum2007reg.html

Further details are available here.

New agreement between Thomson Gale and JISC Collections makes over 8,000 journals available to universities in the UK (HE only)

A new agreement between JISC Collections and Thomson Gale ensures that all staff, researchers and students in UK higher education institutions can have access to the latest articles from many of the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals and reference sources via an annual subscription – Academic OneFile.

Academic OneFile, which is published by Thomson Gale, is a popular source of information for teaching, learning and research. 8400 journal titles such as the New York Times, The Times and the Financial Times, are currently available, many of which are in full text. The majority of these titles are also peer-reviewed, which ensures that the content is of the highest quality. Updated daily, Academic OneFile includes millions of articles (which are available in both PDF and HTML full-text formats) from journals covering a wide variety of subject areas from the arts, humanities, science, engineering and technology disciplines to health, life sciences and the social sciences. A full list of journals is also available.

Further details are available here.

NESLi2 Licence - latest version is now available to view

The NESLi2 Licence for journals has been updated recently and the current version is now available to view on the NESLi2 website at http://www.nesli2.ac.uk/model.htm.

The main changes to the licence are outlined below:
  • the ‘Authorised User’ definition now includes ‘retired members of staff and any teacher who teaches Authorised Users in the United Kingdom’
  • the ‘Secure Authentication’ definition now includes reference to ‘UK Access Management Federation compliant technology’
  • 5.1.11 is a new clause regarding post cancellation access and the dark archives a publisher uses
  • 5.1.12 is a new clause relating to compliance with the Code of Practice of Project Transfer
JISC Collections' appointed Negotiation Agent, Content Complete Ltd shall be using this latest version in their negotiations with publishers for 2008 agreements.

To find out more about the NESLi2 initiative, please see the Guide to NESLi2.

Further details are available here.

Resolving the key issues and misconceptions in using copyrighted digital and online resources: JISC Collections launches a new interactive online copy

In March 2006, JISC Collections held a workshop for librarians, practitioners and teaching staff who use online content in their teaching. Participants were 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 key issues relating to the use of copyrighted digital and online resources in research, teaching and learning and the role of JISC Collections (and the JISC Model licence) in the provision of solutions to these issues. JISC Collections is pleased to announce that the online interactive copyright activity is now available.

This tool is targeted at teachers and lecturers in FE and HE. It will also be useful for curriculum managers, learning technologists, learning resources staff and any staff who deal with digital resources.

Further details are available here.

New JISC agreement makes over 2500 Wiley e-book titles available

Wiley InterScience OnlineBooks™ offers subscriptions to a collection of over 2500 authoritative book titles covering chemistry, computer science, earth and environmental science, engineering, mathematics and statistics, physics and astronomy, polymers and materials science, medicine, business and related areas, which fully integrate with other content on Wiley InterScience.

OnlineBooks are presented in familiar PDF format for easy downloading and printing, with chapter summaries in HTML. Subscriptions are available on a One-Time Fee option, providing ongoing access to titles or a Flexi-Subscription Fee, whereby an annual flat fee applies based on JISC banding. Both price options offer unlimited concurrent access across entire institutional networks.

Further details are available here.

Internet Archaeology: creating an Open Access success story

Internet Archaeology was established in 1996 with funding until July 2001 from the JISC eLib programme. Innovative since its inception, it was the first refereed online e-journal in Archaeology and has been very successful in gaining international recognition as a high-quality academic journal. In the UK it is fully recognised for RAE purposes and forms an integral part of archaeological teaching and research. Now in its 22nd volume, Internet Archaeology attracts a continuous stream of offers of high-quality research papers.

Internet Archaeology 2008-2009: Open Access for UK HE and FE

Two year funding from JISC Collections will help Internet Archaeology with the transition to Open Access. The funding for the period from 1st January 2007 to 31st December 2009 will allow free access, from January 2008, (to issues 22-25 of the journal) to the growing number of universities and colleges that teach Archaeology, as well as extending usage of the journal to a much wider range of disciplines (for example History, History of Art, Creative and Performing Arts, Geography, Biological and Earth Sciences). Internet Archaeology will also be of interest to those in Information Science and Librarianship disciplines and to users in the further education sector.

Internet Archaeology Archive 1996-2006

JISC Collections has also purchased the Internet Archaeology Archive 1996-2006 (which includes issues 1 to 21 inclusive) on behalf of UK higher and further education institutions, which means they can now have permanent access to ten years of rich multimedia scholarly content completely free of charge.

Further details are available here.

Monday, May 14, 2007

http://www.mimas.ac.uk/news/mof2007/

To reserve a place, please go to the Booking Form

The MIMAS Open Forum 2007 will be held at The University of Manchester on Thursday 5 July 2007. Registration and the morning plenary session take place at MANDEC, the Manchester Dental Education and Conference Centre; the afternoon workshops will be held at the Kilburn Building on Oxford Road. There will be the opportunity to talk to MIMAS staff during the day, and a training room will be available for informal demonstrations of MIMAS services.

This event is open to librarians, support staff, teachers, researchers and students at higher and further education colleges.



Friday, May 11, 2007

Summer changes to ISI

Thomson Scientific announce that from mid 2007 the ISI Web of Knowledge Service for UK Education will have a new interface.

Further details regarding this can be found at http://scientific.thomson.com/webofknowledge/newface
this web page also contains a link to the Thomson Scientific press release:

http://scientific.thomson.com/webofknowledge/media/newfacepress.pdf

Friday, May 04, 2007

Online Film and Sound Working Group meeting report

I went to a meeting of the Online Film and Sound Working Group on 30th April.

The following items were discussed:

1) Film and Sound Online
JISC have agreed to fund this for free for another 2 years. Over the past year, there has been a doubling of content, and new subscribers are still coming on board. The metadata is also now available to Google and other search engines. Google-based queries will be monitored in order to see if this leads to an increase in usage.

2) BBC Motion Gallery
It is hoped that students will be able to use the clips from BBC Motion Gallery in showreels which can be used in CVs and non-University work, meaning that this resource can be made available on open networks. There would also be unlimited concurrency. The licence will also hopefully allow material to be put into JORUM.

3) Newsfilm Online
The content of this will be from the early 19th C to the near present, and includes ITN and Reuters content that has been rights-cleared. It will be able to be used in either Media Player or Quick Time at 710 kilobitz per sec. There will also be downloadable thumbnails of stills for a storyboard. This material can also be kept and reused. It is hoped that there will be something to see by October.

Lisa