ONIX for Licensing Terms project - call for participation in community consultation

Managing the terms and conditions associated with every licensed electronic resource is a key challenge to libraries. Over the last 18 months, JISC Collections has been working with the international standards body EDitEUR on the ONIX for Licensing Terms project. The aim is to meet the needs of librarians by developing the tools and formats to express the range and complexity of licensing terms in a structured machine-readable format that can be communicated between systems using a standard XML-based schema.

Find our more about this consultation.

Podcasts: JISC Collections AGM 2008 presentations

In addition to the formal part of our Annual General Meeting, we also include a conference element to this event, which is based around a central key, topical theme. This year the theme was on "Text Mining", which was presented by an expert panel of 4 speakers. Listen to the podcasts or view the slides of these presentations, which we hope you will find useful.

Find out more about the JISC Collections AGM.

Excellent response to new journal archive purchases

A total of 104 institutions have already signed up for access to one of more of the four new journal archives that have been purchased by JISC Collections as part of the UK National Academic Archive. The most popular database so far is Periodicals Archive Online with 97 institutional subscribers.

Find out more about the journal archives.

Developing sustainable business models for e-textbooks - contract awarded for new study

Establishing sustainable business models for online textbooks is an imperative for the UK academic community, as well as for publishers and aggregators. In view of this, JISC Collections has commissioned an important new study:
1. To explore the existing landscape in terms of the demand for and supply of e-textbooks, and the barriers to widespread provision.
2. To identify business models to trial involving a selected group of publishers, aggregators and higher education libraries.
3. To make recommendations about the most appropriate e-textbook business models in terms of overall sustainability, profitability and value for money.

Find out more about this study.

NESLIi2 SMP (Small to Medium Sized Publishers) Initiative - 19 publishers now participating and over 520 journals available

In response to institutional demand, the NESLi2 SMP initiative was launched last year to offer the UK academic community access to journals from a broader range of publishers. After a very successful first year, a further 7 publishers will participate from 2009, and over 150 additional journal titles will be available. This means that, in total, NESLi2 SMP offers a total of 520 journals from 19 publishers.

Find out more about these offers.

State Papers online from Cengage

For more information and to request a free trial please contact: emea.marketing@cengage.com

1509-1714 State Papers

Features
http://www.gale.cengage.co.uk/statepapers/features.aspx


Powerpoint: Download Resources
http://www.gale.cengage.co.uk/statepapers/download_resources.aspx
http://www.gale.cengage.co.uk/controls/library.aspx?fileID=670

Testimonials
http://www.gale.cengage.co.uk/statepapers/testimonials.aspx

"State Papers Online, 1509-1714, is a groundbreaking new online resource for the study of Early Modern Britain and Europe. By reuniting State Papers Domestic and Foreign with the Registers of the Privy Council and State Papers in the British Library, the collection creates a new backbone for research and teaching in politics, government, social economic and religious history. The project benefits from a close partnership with The National Archives, London ...

"State Papers Online, 1509-1714 reproduces the original historical manuscripts in facsimile linking each manuscript to its corresponding fully-searchable Calendar entry. By overcoming the challenge of matching an individual Calendar entry to the original Paper, State Papers Online 1509-1714 marks an enormous advance in historical research.

"State Papers Online will be published complete over the period 2008 - 2011 in four cross-searchable parts and will be available in libraries on subscription or by purchase. Part I is due for release in November 2008, followed by Part II in March 2009. An edition for more general use will be introduced when the full project is finished in 2011.

"Part I: The Tudors: Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, 1509-1603: State Papers Domestic
Containing 380,000 facsimile manuscript documents linked to fully-searchable Calendar entries, Part I delivers the complete collection of State Papers Domestic for this era. Every facet of early modern Government is detailed including social and economic affairs.


"Part II: The Tudors: Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, 1509 – 1603: State Papers Foreign
Containing around 560,000 facsimile manuscript documents linking to fully-searchable Calendar entries, Part II reunites Foreign, Scotland, Borders and Ireland papers for the 16th century together with the Registers ('Minutes') of the Privy Council.

IBSS Blog

There is a blog available for users of IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences) which can be found at IBSS Blog

How to compete with Google Powerpoints

Yesterday, JIBS hosted an event asking 'how can library services can compete with Google?' Speakers described research relating to user information seeking strategies and their experiences of information literacy education before attendees had a chance to see how institutions have applied new 'one-stop shop' library products: Primo, Aquabrowser, ELIN and Encore in their institutions.

All the powerpoint slideshows from the workshop are now available from the JIBS web pages for those who missed the session or want to review the information presented.

Scholarly Communications website - survey

Dear colleagues,

Work is now underway on the Discovery to Delivery project, creating a more coherent presentation of associated bibliographic resources by EDINA and Mimas.

One element of the project is to create a Scholarly Communications website, and a number of stakeholders have been interviewed as part of the needs-analysis process.We are now seeking input from the wider community.

The following short survey invites you to add your comments to those already gathered and should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Feel free to complete it yourself, as librarians supporting research, and/or to pass on to researchers directly.

Thanks in advance for your participation.

The comments will help the final shaping of website elements. We are aiming to have an initial version ready in January. Further work, including scoping a portal,will then take place up until next July.

The survey is live until 17th November at:https://www.survey.ed.ac.uk/scholcomms
The project site is:http://edina.ac.uk/projects/d2d/

Regards,

Andrew Bevan
EDINA User Support
----------------------
http://edina.ac.uk/
Causewayside House
158-162 Causewayside
EDINBURGH EH9 1PR
Tel: 0131 650 3302


Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

OvidSP Universal Search

You may be able to trial the new "Universal Search". Contact Ovid for details of trials and demos.

"Ovid Universal Search, a cross-platform search solution available to OvidSP users. The search system adds the ability to access up to 10 web connections selected by the customer". More channels if you pay more.

See Miriam Drake: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=51182

http://www.ovid.com/site/about/press_release_2008-10-08_us.jsp
"a new, premium cross-platform search solution now made available on OvidSP"

Dates of scheduled meetings: Product Update: Web of Knowledge, publications database and bibliometric services

Further to the recent notification that Thomson Reuters (Scientific) will be holding a series of meetings to announce updates in relation to Web of Knowledge, publications database and bibliometric services, the following meetings have been arranged:

Monday, 27 October: Institute of Education, London, 10 am - 1 pm Tuesday, 4 November: University of Glasgow, 10 am - 1 pm Thursday, 6 November: King's College London, 10 am - 1 pm

The main points covered will be:

- Provision of core bibliometric services from Thomson Reuters to support increasing reliance upon metrics

- Review of the JISC Licence to support the creation / maintenance of a Publications Database

- Development / individualisation of core services to ensure institutional requirements are met

- Inclusion of ISI Proceedings, Social Sciences within Web of Knowledge, to ensure full citation coverage of an institution / academic

The meeting format will be a presentation with some online examples, with the last hour set aside for questions.

If you wish to attend any of these meetings, please contact the Mimas helpdesk at wok@mimas.ac.uk

Alternatively, if you are willing for your institution to host one of these meetings, please get in touch with us at the Mimas helpdesk at wok@mimas.ac.uk

Date of next meeting with OVID

JIBS User Group Committee has an enhancement group which meets with Ovid (Wolters Kluwer Health) from time to time. Our next meeting with Ovid will be towards the end of November. If there are topics you wish the Group to raise with Ovid please contact me, a.smith at leeds.ac.uk

British Standards Online

The JIBS BSOL enhancement group met with BSI in June. At that meeting BSI indicated that it was working with a new software company to develop and enhance BSOL and that it hoped that from September it would be able to start a series of releases to enhance the service, especially in the usability area. It was hoped that the enhancements suggested by the JIBS group and others would gradually be rolled out in an iterative manner, with users seeing frequent smaller releases rather than fewer larger releases.
Unfortunately a review of the fundamental architecture of the current database suggests that it may be more difficult than was envisaged to make frequent changes to the system without risking service interruptions. BSI is now reviewing technical options for the delivery of a series of regular releases and in particular is looking at ways that the enhancements to usability can be made.

BSI has promised to keep the group informed of development and consult with us. We are planning to have another formal meeting in January 2009, when we hope there will have been some progress, and we will have a clearer idea of the way that the database interface can be improved.

JISC Collections agreements for four free journal archives

Supporting teaching and research with free access to online journal archives:

Over 800,000 journal articles made freely available to universities, research councils and colleges in the UK

Following an open procurement process JISC Collections is making four journal archives freely available, to all colleges, universities and research councils in the UK. These archives from the American Chemical Society, Brill Academic Publishers, ProQuest, and Taylor & Francis include 230 peer reviewed journals with some of the most important articles in the arts, built environment, humanities, life sciences, physical sciences and the social sciences.

JISC Collections’ purchase of these archives means that researchers, teaching staff and students can now have free access to more than 150 years of content and over 800,000 fully searchable articles.

Read the full article

JIBS Workshop: How to compete with Google

The next JIBS User Group workshop will be:

How to compete with Google: Simple Resource Discovery Systems for Libraries

November 13, 2008 at the Diskus Conference Centre in London.

The idea for this workshop was sparked by a recent discussion on the 'lis-infoliteracy' list: is information literacy training essential for students to get the best out of their library resources or should we just be making our resource discovery systems easier to use? The debate will be summarised by one of its protagonists, Mark Hepworth of University of Loughborough. Maggie Fieldhouse will provide an insight into the information seeking behaviour of students and researchers. We will then look at some new 'one-stop shop' library products: Primo, Aquabrowser, ELIN and Encore, which are beginning to be introduced into HE libraries in the UK.

The intended audience for this workshop is librarians from UK HE and FE institutions. Priority bookings will be allocated accordingly but we welcome applications from other interested parties.

For a full programme and booking form please visit the JIBS website:
http://www.jibs.ac.uk/events/workshops/simplerds/

a-n The Artist Information Company renewal

a-n Resources provides online access to a variety of publications, an image bank, a platform for creative writing, research papers, and artist blogs. It also contains a knowledge bank providing advice on career development and includes 40 practical guides, and professional development tools with customisable interactive guides to contracts and artists' fees.

The publications included are a-n Magazine, a-n Collections, Future Forecast, Good Practice, Artists' Toolkits, Compass (HE publication), Signpost (HE publication) and NAN publications. Subscribers also receive two copies of a-n Magazine when published, and two copies of printed a-n supplements.

The breadth and depth of the content makes it suitable for a wide range of subject and curriculum areas at all study and career levels including: art and design; fine art; applied art and craft; art history, cultural policy, curatorial practice and social policy.

Read the full article

New JISC Collections agreement for Who's Who and Who Was Who

Who’s Who provides a fascinating insight into the private lives of public figures by providing information on over 32,000 influential people in British public life today. Detailed information on each person is provided, which includes birthdays, families, education, titles, career, publications and creative works, personal interests, clubs and contact details. Key international figures are also included in this resource, eg Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Venus Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Cruise, Bill Clinton and Woody Allen. It will be updated throughout the year, eg if subjects die, their death dates will be added. The information is gathered from the individuals themselves, from the Prime Minister down, and is carefully checked and standardised. It is, therefore, an essential reference which provides entries on people in government, business, professional and cultural institutions, education and charities.

You can extend your subscription to include Who Was Who, which collects together the entries of more than 100,000 people who were included in the register but have died since 1897.

Read the full article

New JISC Collections agreement for the Encyclopedia of Popular Music

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music is a comprehensive reference work devoted exclusively to popular music, and is now available online. It covers popular music of all genres from 1990 to the present, which include jazz, country, folk, rap, reggae, techno, musicals and world music along with thousands of additional entries covering popular music genres, trends, styles, record labels, venues, and music festivals.

Read the full article

New Chinese and Russian modules added along with pronunciation software to Oxford Language Dictionaries Online

Oxford Language Dictionaries Online is an online bilingual resource offering translations from and into English for over 4 million words, phrases and translations in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and now Chinese and Russian. New pronunciation software, which enables users to hear how words sound has also been added for all six language modules.

Read the full article

Collexis Expert Profiling - personalised biomedical research management system

This online resource enables users to quickly identify experts within their institution as well as identify, locate and collaborate with other experts from around the world. Using the Collexis system, subscribing institutions can create expert profiles of investigators, researchers and departments to disseminate ground-breaking research and biomedical advances.

Read the full article

JSTOR launches Ireland Collection

Participation fees waived for universities, colleges and research councils in the UK and Ireland

JSTOR has launched the Ireland Collection, a new multidisciplinary collection devoted entirely to material from and about Ireland.

Read the full article

OvidSP next release date announced

There will be a further release for OvidSP on Thursday, 31st July. Contact them for details.

Important updates and new features include:

Search Tab Additions and Enhancements – A new Multi-Field Search tab provides multiple search boxes for assigning specific fields that allow for a more targeted and specific search experience. Plus, we’ve streamlined the main search screen with a sleeker and more intuitive user design.


New and Improved User Workflow Tools – Flexibility and speed are crucial to research workflow. On July 31st, you’ll find new collapsible Search Aids, Results Manager, and Search History (also moveable); browser support for adjusting font sizes; enhanced annotations; and more. Plus, we’ve expanded email capabilities to ease collaboration between users and their colleagues.


My Projects Workspace Area – This new feature is a direct result of our customer feedback. My Projects provides a workspace for assembling and organizing research findings, so you can manage them in a way that works for you. Linkable from every page in the application, you can upload saved searches, results, images, and more.


Introducing Ovid Universal Search – A new, premium search offering! Ovid Universal Search is breakthrough technology that delivers cross-platform content searching - all within the OvidSP interface. Available as an add-on solution, Universal Search provides unlimited potential for searching full text wherever it resides. Plus, Ovid Universal Search allows you to use many of the great search tools from Ovid like saved searches, annotations, and now My Projects!

The July 31st release also will include multi-lingual support for French-, German-, and Spanish-language interfaces.


"... the OvidSP Resource Center continues to be your source for information and news on the upcoming release. Over the next 5 weeks, we’ll add new training schedules and tutorials, screen shots, and new and revised marketing materials you can use when promoting the release to your users. "

Summer 2008 edition of the Chemical Database Service Newsletter

From the Chemical Database Service - Daresbury


The Summer 2008 edition of the CDS Newsletter is now available and has been added to the online Newsletter Archive:

http://cds.dl.ac.uk/newsletters

You can also see a link to this Archive from the "General Information" link on the CDS Homepage top menu.

This edition of the Newsletter features articles giving further details about the current state of the Service and what has changed over the past 6 months.

In particular there are significant new developments with the ACD/I-Lab and Detherm systems. Both are now available via web browser interfaces.

The Newsletter also includes some details of the recent User Survey relating to loss of the Organic Synthesis components. In response to user concerns here we have set up some trial Suppliers Catalogue and Screening compound database. These are also web browser systems.

All the new browser systems are accessible via the "Red Square" on the CDS Homepage.

===========================================================
Our Homepage is at: http://cds.dl.ac.uk
Check there for additional News and other Information

Send any queries and comments to cdsbb@dl.ac.uk

e-Journal Archiving Solutions final report is now available

Although there are many obvious benefits that accrue from publishing and accessing academic papers through the internet, there are costs and challenges associated with long term preservation and access which urgently need to be addressed. Finding solutions to these is the shared responsibility of all in the information chain, including authors, publishers, repository managers, librarians, subscription agents and aggregators.

Read the full report

Forthcoming changes to the JISC Collections Subscriptions Helpdesk

From 1st August Content Complete Limited will provide the JISC Collections subscriptions and help desk service.

Please note that from 1st June all invoices for the resources you subscribe to will be issued on JISC Collections’ invoices and and not Swets invoices. These invoices will still be sent to you by Swets. Payment will need to be made to JISC Collections bank account, details of which will be on the invoices. If you have any questions up to the period of July 31st, please contact Swets Information Services as usual.

We would be grateful if you could set up your systems to accept and process invoices from JISC Collections from 1st June. From 1st August, invoices will continue to be in the name of JISC Collections, but will then be sent to you by Content Complete Ltd.

Read the full article

JISC Collections' Consultations

JISC Collections is currently running consultations on the following:

• ACLS Humanities E-Book


• Additional datasets for Historic Digimap


• PathCAL

Dates for your diaries

JISC Collections will be attending a number of events this Summer. On the 20th November 2008, we will be hosting our second AGM in London. We look forward to meeting you there!

• JISC RSC South West 2008 Summer Conference, 19th June, Bridgwater


• 3rd International Plagiarism Conference, 23rd-25th June, Newcastle


• JISC RSC East Midlands e-Fair, 24th June, Leicester


• Higher Education Academy Annual Conference 2008, 1st-3rd July, Harrogate


• JISC RSC Eastern Independent Learning; e-Fair, 4th July, Luton


• JISC RSC North West Annual Conference, 4th July, Liverpool


• Advance notice: JISC Collections AGM 2008, 20th November, London

Download the interactive PDF versions of the latest JISC Collections catalogue of online resources

This catalogue highlights the range of online resources JISC Collections has licensed for the UK further and higher education sectors and in some instances research councils. You can download the complete version of the catalogue in PDF format or if you are interested in a particular subject area you can download and view the appropriate sections.

Read the full article

Your chance to win £200 in British Library gift vouchers by taking part in their survey on how people manage their “digital lives”

Take part in the survey on the pathfinding research project that is setting out to understand how individuals retain and manage their personal collections of computerised information.

Read the full article

Eighteenth Century Collections Online renewal - hosting fees

In 2005 JISC Collections made a significant investment on behalf of the academic community of the UK in licensing the content of Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), a vast collection of more than 135,000 18th Century monographs. All higher and further education institutions qualify to access this unique data set, and can do so upon signing a license agreement with the Publisher (Gale/Cengage Learning) and upon payment of an annual hosting fee detailed in the Publisher Hosting Agreement with JISC.

The JISC ECCO Publisher Hosting Agreement, set to terminate on 31 July 2008, has now been extended until 2010. The table on the JISC Collections web site illustrates the maximum fees per Institution for ECCO. These fees will be reviewed regularly and may decrease, should the number of subscribing institutions increase significantly.

Read the full article

Oxford Reference Online renewal

A new 3 year agreement for Oxford Reference Online is now available. Oxford Reference Online: Premium Collection contains over 1.3 million entries from over 185 titles, and is updated regularly with an expanding range of key titles from the acclaimed titles in the Oxford Companions and Oxford Dictionaries series with authoritative quick-reference coverage of the full subject spectrum.

Subject coverage includes: art & architecture; classics; English language; English literature; history; mythology & folklore; performing arts; and religion & philosophy, computing, earth & environmental sciences, physical sciences & mathematics, maps ,biological sciences, food and drink, medicine and science, economics & business, law, military history, politics & social sciences.

Read the full article

A new agreement for Historic Digimap is now available

A new 3 year sub-licence agreement for Historic Digimap, which allows users to explore both the historic and geographic environment of the UK, is now available. The new licence will start on 1st August 2008 and end on 31st July 2011.

Read the full article

OUP adds new Music Collection to Oxford Scholarship Online

A new subject module in Music has been added to Oxford Scholarship Online, as well as 159 new titles as part of the May 2008 content update. This takes the total number of titles online to 2,125 and the total number of subject modules to 14. New COUNTER-compliant statistics are now available via Subscriber Services, following the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works.

Read the full article

JSTOR launches Arts & Sciences VI Collection

JSTOR has recently launched their Arts & Sciences VI Collection, which will include a minimum of one hundred twenty (120) titles to be completed by 2010. This collection extends JSTOR's coverage in disciplines across the social sciences, with clusters focused in economics, education, linguistics, political science, and area studies. Pricing for the JISC community is now available.

Many of the journals in this collection will add more international depth to disciplines extensively covered in other Arts & Sciences collections. This collection will also contain over 30 titles from the Business II Collection that are not found in Arts & Sciences IV or the Arts & Sciences Complement. These titles include the publications of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and diversify JSTOR's coverage of areas such as business ethics, advertising, and risk management.

Read the full article

e-books: taking your ideas forward

Are you wondering what happened to all the data gathered from the E-books Roadshow? Interested in experimenting with new models for e-books? Still thinking about MARC records? Read about how the e-books working group is working to take forward your ideas.

Read the full article

JIBS Walk-in Users workshop

The presentations from the recent JIBS user group event are now available on the JIBS Web page http://www.jibs.ac.uk/events/workshops/walkinusers-2008/intro.html
WALK-IN USERS - TIME FOR A STEP CHANGE?
This workshop examined the issues around providing access for a number of different categories of walk-in user. Speakers were Sally Curry (Research Information Network), Maureen Wade (WAM 25 project), Christine Urquhart (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) and Catherine John (JISC's Additional Authorised Users project).

Feedback form for Beilstein CrossFire

There is a new feedback form on the Mimas CrossFire website, so that you can comment on all aspects of the service and also suggest any improvements. The form can be found at: http://www.mimas.ac.uk/crossfire/feedback.html

All enhancement requests relating to the CrossFire Commander software and the Beilstein and Gmelin databases will be passed on to the JIBS-MDL Enhancement Group for consideration. For further information about the JIBS-MDL Enhancement Group, please see: http://www.jibs.ac.uk/resources/MDL/

Problems with CrossFire can also be reported via the feedback form, or as usual via email to: crossfire@mimas.ac.uk

Posted on behalf of Jo Lampard, MIMAS

International initiative licenses resources across four European countries

International partnership will deliver savings as well as new business models to European education and research communities.

A partnership of four national ICT bodies today announced the names of the publishers that will take part in a project which for the first time will see online resources licensed for use across national borders.

The Knowledge Exchange - made up of bodies from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK – announced that the next stage of the project, launched in February last year, will be the offering of a range of resources to education and research communities in the four countries provided by the following publishers: Multi-Science, ALPSP, BioOne, ScientificWorldJournal, and Wiley-Blackwell.

The resources offered through the project were selected by a joint tender process run by the Knowledge Exchange through the EU competitive tender process. With 22 publishers submitting initial bids, the five selected have been chosen through consideration of quality, national procurement strategies, innovation and value for money.

Further details can be found here.

Web SciFinder (SFW) from CAS

View the web version of SciFinder!

"SciFinder provides scientists with web access to the most comprehensive scientific information available:

SFWeb

Accessing the Web Version of SciFinder
Recommended web browsers:

Microsoft Internet Explorer, Versions 6.x and 7.x
Mozilla Firefox, Version 2.x
Apple SafariTM 3
JavaScriptTM, JavaTM, and cookies must be enabled. Java runtime environment (JRE) is needed for structure drawing.

British Education Index (BEI)

"The British Education Index (BEI) is designed to aid the identification of appropriate literature by people investigating aspects of education or training."

About BEI

"The Index provides details about the contents of various literature sources: over 300 education and training journals published in the British Isles, similar report and conference literature, and texts in the Education-line collection."

"...description of the subject content of literature [is] by use of a consistent vocabulary (the British Education Thesaurus) designed specifically for this purpose. This attention to detail distinguishes the Index from similar discovery tools."

I understand BEI may hold an event for stakeholders in the autumn, considering the delivery of BEI to the HE/FE sectors and addressing whether there is a model of the BEI as a "public good".

BEI homepage

mailto: bei at leeds ac uk

Libraries Unleashed

"The Guardian" has a feature, Tuesday 22nd April "Libraries Unleashed", "Colleges, universities and the digital challenge".

http://education.guardian.co.uk/librariesunleashed/

http://www.guardian.co.uk

http://education.guardian.co.uk/librariesunleashed/story/0,,2274788,00.html

http://education.guardian.co.uk/librariesunleashed/story/0,,2274796,00.html

Forthcoming changes to the JISC Collections Subscriptions Helpdesk

From 1st August Content Complete Limited will provide the JISC Collections subscriptions and help desk service.

Please note that from 1st June all invoices for the resources you subscribe to will be issued on JISC Collections’ invoices and not Swets invoices. We would be grateful if you could set up your systems to accept and process invoices from JISC Collections from 1st June.

Please note that from 1st August the contact details for the JISC Collections subscription and help desk will be changing.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections catalogue of online resources 2008-2009

JISC Collections is pleased to announce that the latest printed version of the catalogue of online resources is now available. This catalogue highlights the range of online resources JISC Collections has licensed for the UK further and higher education sectors, and in research councils.

The catalogue is conveniently arranged into subject sections (Arts and Humanities; Science, Engineering & Technology; Health and Life Sciences; Social Sciences), free of charge & subscription based online resources. To order copies of this catalogue, please complete the JISC Collections Publications Order form, which can be found at www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/puborderform.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Heritage Collections of Digital Archives catalogue 2008

Continuing its mission to provide high-quality digital material that might otherwise be difficult to access, JISC Collections offers fifteen resources that together make up its Heritage Collections. The collections cover archaeology, the arts, cartography, chemistry, engineering, history, law, literature, medicine, physics, politics, social sciences and much more, and include documents ranging from 1473 to 2006. The cost of acquiring such resources such as the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers is beyond the means of most institutions but JISC funding makes the content free and in perpetuity.*

Further details on these digital archives can be found in our latest version of the JISC Heritage Collections of Digital Archives 2008 brochure. You can either download the PDF file or order printed copies by completing the JISC Collections Publications Order form, which can be found at www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/puborderform.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections Consultation - PathCAL

JISC Collections is consulting with the community regarding the renewal of the licence agreement for PathCAL. PathCAL is a set of 140 web-based tutorials (with more in development all the time) on a variety of subjects designed to help students understand the basic pathological principles of disease. These tutorials are intended to guide students on how to approach the study of pathology and medicine, apply general pathological principles to body systems, recognise certain abnormalities, understand the meaning of certain question types and use correct terminology.

It is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on medicine, dental surgery, veterinary medicine, biology, pharmacology, nursing and other healthcare and biomedical sciences related subjects. We seek your views and comments on this resource in order to gauge its usefulness. Please complete our online response form at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/pathcal/ if you want to take part in this consultation.

Further details can be found here.

Assessing the value of the NESLi2 deals: new report is now available

Many university, college and research libraries already take advantage of the NESLi2 deals and find that they offer good value for money compared to the time and cost involved in setting up individual subscriptions. The report Assessing the value of the NESLi2 deals is aimed particularly at medium and small libraries in JISC Bands C-J and is intended to help libraries to:

i recognise the overall value of the NESLi2 deals

ii assess the value of a deal before making a decision to subscribe

iii further assess value after a period of usage to aid renewal decisions and to demonstrate the way the deal is being used.

Further details can be found here.

Call for Berg Fashion Library Board Members

In 2010 Berg Publishers will launch The Berg Fashion Library, an online subscription-based resource consisting of the 3.6 million word Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (the equivalent of 10 volumes in print, with 3000 images), a taxonomy/A&I and other aggregated IP. They are looking for engaged librarians willing to serve on their advisory board. As this project looks at dress across the world and not just fashion, we seek board members from a range of institutions, not only the fashion colleges.

Further details can be found here.

JISC national e-books observatory project: findings from the first User Survey is now available

Higher Education (HE) libraries want to provide their students with online access to their course texts, free at the point of use. Such equality of access is deemed to be a responsibility of the library, particularly in light of widening participation agendas, increasing student numbers and the expectations of staff and students. The JISC national e-books observatory project aims to stimulate the provision of course texts online through the library by making freely available course texts online in four subject areas (business and management studies, engineering, medicine and media studies) and gathering much needed evidence.

JISC has funded CIBER to gather all this evidence through a Deep Log Analysis (DLA) Study. The DLA study not only analyses the log data to identify real time patterns of discovery and use for the 36 course texts JISC has made freely available, but gathers quantitative data from users through surveys and case studies.

This first user survey provides an initial benchmark against which to measure changes as the JISC national e-books observatory project progresses.

Further details can be found here.

Take part in the JISC Collections survey on Additional Authorised Users

Just a reminder that JISC Collections would like to invite you to take part in a survey on extending access to online resources for non-traditional user groups not currently provided for within the JISC Model Licence. We've called this the Additional Authorised User Initiative.

This survey is being conducted in order to:

1. gain feedback on whether or not you are aware of the Additional Authorised User Initiative

2. determine whether the Additional Authorised User Licences currently meet your needs

3. obtain your help in widening access to new user groups

If you would like to take part in the survey, please complete the online response form at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/aau by Wednesday 30th April.

If you have any queries please email Catherine John at c.john@jisc.ac.uk

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections Consultation - Britannica Online for higher education

JISC Collections is considering a licensing agreement for Britannica Online for higher education. Subscribers to Britannica Online receive access to the complete encyclopedia, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, Britannica Student Encyclopedia, and the Britannica Book of the Year. Britannica Online also includes more than 300,000 links to websites selected, rated and reviewed by Britannica editors.

We seek your views and comments on this resource in order to gauge its usefulness. Please complete our online response form at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/bo if you want to take part in this consultation.

Further details can be found here.

New Scopus® agreement is now available

Updated daily, Scopus® is an abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources. It includes the abstracts and cited references of 15,000 peer reviewed journals from more than 4,000 international publishers. In addition it offers its users more than 386 million relevant web pages and 21 million patents on top of a large number of additional titles from conference proceedings to trade journals.

A wealth of archive material is provided with author abstracts going back to 1869, and author references since 1996, which enables citation navigation and searching in over ten years of records. Subject areas covered by this resource include: chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering; biological, agricultural and environmental sciences; and general sciences.

Further details cane be found here.

Personalisation for the Information Environment

This JISC study will scope how the JISC Information Environment (IE) may make use (or should be developed to make use) of adaptive personalisation in order to enhance the user experience. It will specifically consider the ways in which infrastructure established to support the UK Access Management Federation (the UK Federation) could support adaptive personalisation of JISC services, and the potential privacy and legal barriers to such use.

The study is being carried out by Curtis+Cartwright Consulting Ltd

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/resourcediscovery/Personalisation.aspx

RefWorks Introduces New Current Awareness Service

Katherine Jones from CSA/RefWorks would welcome comments from JIBS members on this new product:

"RefWorks is pleased to announce the public debut of RefAware, an online personal research assistant and monitoring service that enables members of the academic community and other researchers to stay abreast of the latest publications and research in their field instantly. This simple-to-use service allows researchers to be alerted when new articles are available -- most within hours of publication and many even pre-publication. With the ability to create separate search queries, researchers can now use RefAware to keep them informed of "up-to-the-minute" information based on their unique research interests. Providing one source, for a variety of research data, RefAware constantly scours the internet for the latest information and automatically delivers newly found data through an alerting service. Harnessing the speed and accessibility of the Internet, RefAware provides a comprehensive, real-time picture of today's global research.

A preview of RefAware can be seen at: http://www.refaware.com/RefAwarePreview/RefAware%20Preview.htm

Product Overview
* Providing coverage from over 8,000 peer-reviewed journals and other non-referred sources of information.
* Discipline specific coverage includes the Life Sciences, Biology, and Medicine; Physical Sciences; Engineering; Social Sciences; Arts & Humanities; and Business.
* Leading scholarly journals with high impact factors within specific disciplines are scanned for inclusion.
* Search through tens of thousands of online source material.
* Constantly crawls the Web searching for newly available references and information.
* Saves time by providing one source for a variety of research data.
* Receive immediate notification of new references through email alerts.
* Links to full-text, seamless exports to bibliographic management programs and online usage reports.
* Pricing. For a limited time, a special "introductory" license offer is available."

For further information on RefAware or to arrange for an organization-wide trial, please go to www.refaware.com or contact Katherine Jones
kmjones@CSA.com

Take part in the JISC National E-textbook debate

JISC National E-textbook Debate - asking big questions

14th April 2008, 5.30 – 7pm, Birmingham

http://www.jiscebooksproject.org/events/national-e-textbook-debate

To attend as a member of the audience please complete the registration form by Tuesday 8th April 2008 .

Over the last two months JISC Collections has been running workshops up and down the country looking at the state of the e-books market, asking librarians what their vision for the future of e-textbooks is and thinking about how we can all, libraries, publishers and JISC Collections get there. Well having heard the librarians’ point of view, we decided that it would be a good idea to hear from publishers as well. On the 14th April JISC Collections will be holding the National E-textbook Debate to let both sides air the arguments in an open and informal setting. So if you would like to come and join the live audience, please complete the online registration form.

Further details can be found here.

National Research Council, Canada

Available from Ovid - NRC Research Press journals

This collection comprises 15 peer reviewed titles encompassing a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines including Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fisheries, Genetics, Aquatic Sciences and Genomics.

NRC Canada

Ovid

OvidSP next ... new features in April

"...many users prefer to use a system that offers native language interface support. In fact, SilverPlatter customers have enjoyed this feature for some time. With the 1.1 release, French, Spanish, and German customers will have the option to view OvidSP in their native language."

"...the following enhancements will also be included in the early April release:

* After performing a search, the OvidSP screen will remain at the search field rather than “jump” down to the results. While initially our research indicated that our customers would prefer to be brought immediately to their results, subsequent feedback has indicated otherwise.

* Improvements to the Results Manager and the abstracts display.

* Improved functionality of RSS feeds in Internet Explorer 6, which has some known issues with standard RSS feeds.

* Exporting of annotations to EndNote, RefWorks, and other standard citation managers.

JISC Collections partners with ProQuest to make another century of House of Commons Parliamentary Papers freely available to universities and colleges

ProQuest's digital House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1901-2004 will be available free of charge to all staff and students in colleges and universities in the UK through funding from JISC Collections. The online resource, comprising 187,809 individual papers containing over 9.5 million pages, is among the richest and most detailed primary sources for the history of the 20th century and is considered vital to an understanding of the UK's modern development. This agreement extends the partnership between JISC Collections and ProQuest, which began in 2006, to make the 19th century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers available to the UK academic community.

Further details can be found here.

OvidSP

Some highlights from our JIBS enhancement group meeting with Ovid in February 2008:

The "Ovid Syntax" tab has been changed already, to "Advanced Ovid Search". Customers can select whether "Basic" or "Advanced" should be their institution's default option on opening OvidSP.

We expect some further improvements, an incremental release, to address workflow concerns after Easter 2008. There may also be a more significant release, later in 2008.

There will be more eBooks from Springer, Humana and Oxford University Press. A few Medical Schools have not taken up the free titles available from Ovid through the JISC Observatory project.

New journals in 2008 will include titles from the LWW/AHA "Circulation" stable.

Available only with Ovid - Ovid Nursing Full Text PLUS is a comprehensive and cost-effective single source of premier current journal content from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, combined with a powerful bibliographic tool from the National Library of Medicine.

"Midwifery Digest" is awaiting archival material; it complements "Maternity and infant care". MIDIRS "Informed Choice" leaflets for patients and professionals will also be available.

The Patient (ADIS) is a new holistic, patient-centred magazine.

WAO Journal from the World Allergy Organization will be published online only.

Update on the Knowledge Exchange Multinational Licensing Tender

This briefing is intended as a guide to the Knowledge Exchange multinational licensing tender for the Knowledge Exchange partner organisations; the members of the Knowledge Exchange Group; the national licensing tender working group; and partner press contacts in anticipation of any press queries resulting from the tender.

The purpose of the joint Knowledge Exchange licensing tender

The purpose of the tender is to determine whether, by working together, the Knowledge Exchange partners can leverage greater economies of scale and promote greater transparency in licence agreements. The Knowledge Exchange partners hope to stimulate the market to offer new content packages to support education and research and to promote innovative business models. The tender focuses specifically on bids in the areas of journals, databases, and multimedia content.

Strategic goals: the future of publishing

These goals form an integral part of the Knowledge Exchange vision: to explore new developments in the future of publishing, including working with publishers to find new licensing models and platforms for the output of research. In this context, the four partner organisations are exploring the possibilities and opportunities that might be gained through collaborative licensing arrangements.

The Knowledge Exchange vision can be found at the following url: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=92

Further details can be found here.

JIBS Committee - new members

There have been some changes to the JIBS Committee following the AGM in November 2007.

Here is a list of the current committee members:


Sue Cumberpatch (Chair)
Roger Hines (Vice Chair)
Ian Mayfield (Treasurer)
Liz Stevenson (Secretary)
Joan Bird (Membership Officer)
Leo Appleton (FE issues)
Fiona Bowtell (Marketing and Publicity Officer)
Mark Clowes
June Hedges
Maureen Richardson
Chris Roberts (Web Officer)
Adrian Smith
John Smith
Malcolm Taggart
Marion Tattersall

JISC Collections Consultation - World Biographical Information System Online

JISC Collections is considering a licensing agreement for World Biographical Information System Online. K. G. Saur's World Biographical Information System Online (WBIS Online) is a comprehensive and extensive biographical library published online.

The database contains a wealth of biographical information drawn from original sources, covering men and women of all classes and professions from around the world, ranging from the 4th millennium BC to the present. These factors combine to give WBIS Online a social, geographic and historical scope that makes it unique. The strength of the biographical archives lies in the diversity of the biographies that they contain, which ranging from the world of science to politics, culture and business. This is an interdisciplinary resource, but is particularly relevant to history, biographical research, and genealogical research.

Once you have had an opportunity to review the information below and trial the resource JISC Collections would be very grateful if you could complete the online response form at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/wbis.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections appoints new partner to administer online resources agreements

Since 2001 JISC, and more recently JISC Collections, has outsourced the back office subscriptions and helpdesk administration of the agreements it negotiates on behalf of the UK academic community to a third party. This allows the negotiation team to concentrate fully on the task of negotiating the best possible financial conditions and compliance with the JISC licence, knowing that the post-agreement helpdesk and administration is in the hands of customer service specialists.

For 7 years, this supporting role has been provided by Swets, and institutions will be familiar with working with staff at Swets and with making their payments for particular resources to Swets on behalf of JISC Collections.

Following a tender exercise undertaken at the end of 2007, JISC Collections has awarded the new contract to provide this service to Content Complete Limited (CCL), who will be well known to many institutions from their work as the NESLi2 Negotiation Agent. In addition to their role as the Negotiation Agent, CCL provides a dedicated helpdesk relating to NESLi2 matters and for the last two years has been administering the NESLi2 Closed Consortium/Single Payment model, whereby a single payment is made to selected NESLi2 publishers on behalf of subscribing institutions.

In making the decision to change the existing arrangement, Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, is keen to express her gratitude to Swets for the excellent work they have done in fulfilling this role since 2001.

Further details can be found here.

British Standards On line Enhancement Group February 2008 Meeting

The JIBS BSOL enhancement group met with BSI on the 5 February 2008.
Below I have summarised the major issues that the group wished to raise with BSI. More detail will be found in the minutes of the meeting which will be made available in due course from the JIBS web site; - http://www.jibs.ac.uk/

There was agreement that the new search engine was an improvement on the previous engine and that users had a far greater chance of locating relevant standards higher up in their results list. However the group had a number of concerns that they raised with BSI.

The change over process to the new software had not gone as smoothly as had been hoped. Many users of Athens and Athens DA had faced authentication problems. Some users had moved to proxy authentication to work around this issue. BSI is working with Eduserv to overcome the problems and it appears that there are now no longer problems with Athens authentication. There continues to be a problem with 2 Athens DA users and work continues on resolving this issue.

The other issue raised by many universities was the "landing page".
Users log in and then have to click on the BSOL link, and this has caused some confusion. Proxy users were now logging and going directly to the BSOL search page. Some Athens users were not able to go directly the BSOL service. BSI is still pursuing this issue.

During the first week of the new service there had been an unforeseen major hardware problem and this had impacted badly on the service which as a result had been unreliable. The customer help line had also failed to cope with the level of demand; this was due to 3 of the 5 staff being signed of on long term sick leave. BSI had taken steps to provide back up but it took a number of weeks to reduce the backlog and to bring the team's response levels back within their service level agreement. The enhancement group had received some positive feedback on customer help within recent weeks.

The group raised a number of issues relating to the design of the search screens and the functionality of the advanced search facility. BSI confirmed that there would be a new release of the software mid 2008 and again towards the end of 2008. They noted the feedback from the group and welcomed our suggestions. The commonest issue raised was the default to number searching and the necessity to make clearer to users how to do a keyword search. This would have a high priority for the next release.

The group will meet again with BSI in late April or early July.

Roger Hines
Chair JIBS BSOL Enhancement Group

Delivering greater savings on online journals

JISC Collections extends the NESLi2 initiative to include online journal content from small and medium sized publishers

A new initiative, launched today by JISC Collections, facilitates access for staff and students in universities, colleges and research councils in the UK to a wider range of online journals: NESLi2 SMP.

JISC Collections is a brand familiar to the university, college and research communities, bringing online information resources from a range of eminent publishers to staff and students in a highly cost-effective way.

NESLi2 is one of the most successful strands of JISC Collections activity. In 2007 NESLi2 negotiations for online journals generated savings of £3.9 million. Based on the success of these negotiations, JISC Collections is extending the range of publishers and journal titles covered by the NESLi2 initiative by launching the new initiative – NESLi2 SMP (NESLi2 for Small and Medium sized Publishers).

The process began last year, when publishers who were interested in participating in the initiative, were invited to submit proposals. These proposals were required to meet some key licensing requirements such as the use of the NESLi2 Model Licence, COUNTER compliance and to provide demonstrable savings to the UK academic community.

A number of publishers submitted proposals, which were reviewed by a panel of library experts. 15 proposals have been accepted and offers from the following publishers are already available to the UK academic community, which are compliant with the Model NESLi2 Licence: American Accounting Association; Berg Publishers; Duke University Press; Future Drugs Ltd; Future Medicine Publishing; Informa Healthcare; IOS Press; Multi-Science Publishing; Now Publishers Inc; Berkeley Electronic Press (Research Now); Royal Society of Medicine Press; and University of California Press.

Further details can be found here.

Local options for OvidSP

Many features of the new platform OvidSP can be tailored to local requirements. You can ask your usual site contact, or Ovid Technical Support. For example the Search History can be "collapsed" or "expanded" as your local setting.

Mauro Castillo Garcia-Maurino (Mauro) has been with Ovid for some years and in 2007 moved to the UK. Optimization of your local implementation is part of his remit.

Personalisation for the Information Environment

There's a basic webpage at the
JISC website

JISC is considering ways by which services could be "personalised" to meet the needs of individual users.

This could be by means of:
* customisation - where a user can explicitly choose some behaviour of the service they are using
* adaptive personalisation -whereby the service tailors its output without user input. This can be either:
- based On Data held elsewhere - for example by the user's institution (APOD)
- by observing User Activity (APUA)

there are questions about if and how personalisation should be realised, and whether it is better handled by the data services, or by (for example) a portal at a user's institution.

* is there a demand for personalised services? What good examples already exist?

What further use-cases are there?
* to what degree institutions have personalised their internal services?
* how would institutions feel about supporting a personalisation infrastructure which may require transfer of personal information outside an institution?

This project is being carried out for JISC by

Max Hammond
___________________________________

Curtis+Cartwright Consulting Ltd.
Main Office:
Surrey Technology Centre
Surrey Research Park
Guildford
Surrey GU2 7YG

A SAGE investment for the wise librarian

New JISC Collections agreement for SAGE eReference is now available for colleges and universities in the UK

A new agreement announced today between JISC Collections and SAGE, the world’s leading independent academic and professional publisher will allow staff, students and researchers in universities and colleges in the UK access to SAGE’s eReference collection.

SAGE eReference is an online collection of over 60 encyclopedias covering a diverse range of subjects, from arts and humanities to health, science and the social sciences. Key titles include the SAGE Sourcebook of Modern Biomedical Devices; Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media; Encyclopedia of Law and Society; Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society; Encyclopedia of Governance and the Encyclopedia of Social Psychology.

Institutions have the opportunity to purchase the titles on a perpetual basis for a one-off fee.

Further details can be found here.

The perfect online companion for the arts and humanities

New JISC Collections agreement for Cambridge Companions Online is now available

Cambridge Companions Online is the electronic version of the Cambridge Companions series, covering literature, philosophy, classics, religion and cultural studies. Over 270 titles are included which provide introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. Institutions can subscribe to the complete collection, or to either of two sub-collections: literature and classics and philosophy, religion and culture. There is also the option to upgrade subscriptions to include Shakespeare Survey Online. This is the online version of Shakespeare Survey, which is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections Consultation - The Encyclopedia of Popular Music

JISC Collections is considering a licensing agreement for The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music is a comprehensive reference work devoted exclusively to popular music, and is now available online.

With a broad musical scope covering popular music of all genres and periods from 1900 to the present, this resource also offers thousands of additional entries covering popular music genres, trends, styles, record labels, venues, and music festivals.

Suitable for all academic levels, this resource is useful for music, cultural studies, and media studies.

We seek your views and comments on this resource in order to gauge its usefulness. Please complete our online response form if you want to take part in this consultation.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections Consultation - Who's Who

JISC Collections is considering a licensing agreement for Who's Who. From 2008, Who’s Who will be published online by Oxford University Press, and will be updated throughout the year. Who Was Who, which is the archive of Who's Who, is also be available online and can be subscribed to at an additional cost.

Who's Who contains information on over 32,000 people, detailing birthdays, families, education, titles, career, publications and creative works, personal interests, clubs, and addresses. This resource can be used across all subject areas.

We seek your views and comments on this resource in order to gauge its usefulness. Please complete our online response form if you want to take part in this consultation.

Further details can be found here.

JISC Collections Consultation - VetMed

JISC Collections is considering a licensing agreement for VetMed. VetMed is an online resource which is designed for all levels of veterinary science and related subjects. It includes: a database with abstracts from over 3000 journals, books and conference proceedings; coverage of all aspects of veterinary medicine from 1972 to the present; 800 CABI-published and peer-reviewed scientific reviews; links to full text papers from major conferences; news items and an international drug database.

Subject areas covered by VetMed includes animal behaviour; animal welfare; animal management; animal science; equine studies; applied animal science; animal production science veterinary science; veterinary nursing; veterinary public health and zoonotic diseases. Therefore this resource is useful for students and practicing veterinarians, nurses, and technicians. Once you have had an opportunity to review the information below and trial the resource JISC Collections would be very grateful if you could complete the online response form.

Further details can be found here.

Digimap Goes to Sea: new resource provides marine and coastal zone data

A major new online resource which makes available marine and coastal zone digital data from SeaZone Solutions Ltd is now available. The maps and data Marine Digimap delivers provide a fascinating insight into the broad range of factors that make up the marine and coastal environment and influence its exploitation.

The new resource, made available by JISC Collections through EDINA’s Digimap platform, is very timely. The Marine Bill White Paper published last year and a forthcoming Climate Change Bill demonstrate the ever increasing concern over flooding and rising sea level which makes access to quality information about marine and coastal environments more important than ever.

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.

For the public record: new JISC Collections agreement for collection of current parliamentary papers is available

Public Information Online is a complete collection of parliamentary papers available to download as pdf files, which is updated daily. Beginning with the 2006-2007 parliamentary session onwards, the collection includes: House of Commons Bills; House of Commons Explanatory Notes; House of Lords Papers; House of Lords Bills; House of Lords Explanatory Notes; Command Papers; Public Bill and Standing Committee Debates.

Public Information Online is suitable for a wide range of subjects including: agriculture, business studies, international studies, defence studies, education studies, employment relations and studies, environmental studies, healthcare and health studies, history, management, public and social policy.

Further details can be found here.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: new JISC Collections agreement is available

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography enables users to explore the lives of over 55,000 people worldwide who have shaped the British past over the last 2,400 years – from the 4th-century BC Greek explorer Pytheas to the Queen Mother, and from the founding fathers of America to the Nawabs of Bengal. It offers over 50,000 biographies, 60 million words, and 10,000 portrait illustrations; the full text of the 60-volume new print edition plus the full text of the original 33-volume print edition.

This resource is useful for a range of subject areas including history, history of art, politics, science and the sociology.

Further details can be found here.

European Sources Online: service is now fully launched

JISC Collections is pleased to announce that the full service for European Sources Online is now available. As you will be aware, the service from July 2007 to January 2008 was a beta version, but did include virtually full content, search and browse functionality. Revised and further content, as well as additional functionality has been added over this period so that a full service has been made available from 1st January 2008.

European Sources Online (formerly Know Europe) is a single source of full text information on Europe with a primary focus on the European Union. Socio-political information on fifty European countries as well as the work of a diverse number of international organisations operating within Europe, creates an invaluable resource for a range of subject areas including area studies, business studies, earth sciences, economics, environmental management and science, European studies, history, international business, international relations and politics.

Please note that institutions that have signed the Sub-Licence Agreement to European Sources Online will be charged from 1st January 2008 but will continue to have access to the beta service free of charge until then.

Further details can be found here.

Oxford Scholarship Online: new agreement and new subject modules are available

Oxford Scholarship Online is a cross-searchable library containing the full text of Oxford University Press' books. In addition to titles covering economics and finance, philosophy, politics and religion, institutions can now access titles covering biology, business and management, classics, history, linguistics, literature, mathematics, physics and psychology in the new JISC Collections agreement. The complete collection of 13 subject modules now includes over 1,800 titles, which are worth more than £75,000 in print.

All institutions are eligible for a discount when they subscribe to more than one subject module.

Further details can be found here.

Access the BBC's rich archive of moving images with the BBC Motion Gallery

For the first time the BBC's archive of moving images is available online from the BBC Motion Gallery. Over 30,000 clips are available, spanning 70 years, which are ready for download for educational use.

This resource is useful for a variety of subject and course areas including agriculuture, area studies, biology, business studies, built environment, chemistry, cultural studies, defence studies, earth science, education studies, engineering, environmental science, health sciences, history, journalism, leisure and tourism, media production, media studies, medicine, natural history, physical sciences, politics, sociology, sports studies, technology, visual arts, war and zoology.

Further details can be found here.

Exploring Islamic Studies - new online resource is available

Oxford Islamic Studies Online is an resource which brings together the best current scholarship in the field, and promotes accurate and informed understanding of the Islamic world. It contains more than 3,000 reference articles, and covers subjects such as global Islamic history, people, politics, faith, concepts, tenets and practices, and culture. This is a reference resource covering all aspects of Islamic Studies and is suitable for both further and higher education.

Further details can be found here.

Capturing key events of the 19th century

Purchase of the 19th Century UK Periodicals Online, Series 1 content by JISC brings material from the 19th century to the widest possible audience in UK further and higher education, as institutions will not have to invest in the content themselves but can gain access to the content via the publisher’s servers by paying an annual hosting fee. This will allow them to take advantage of the search interface developed for the 19th Century UK Periodicals Online, Series 1.

19th Century Periodicals Online, Series 1 captures an important period of British history as it focuses on the birth of modern magazine publishing in the United Kingdom between 1800 and 1900; the rise of children’s entertainment and education; and increasing interest in popular sports and hobbies, with nearly 100 titles and 1.2 million pages selected by an academic editorial board.

This is an invaluable resource for history academics and students studying social change in Britain and its effect around the world. Those studying and researching in the fields of literature, historical geography, philosophy, religion, cultural studies, economic and legal history, history of art and the history of science, medicine and technology will also find the resource of value.

Further details can be found here.

Internet Archaeology: creating an Open Access success story

New JISC Collections agreement makes the current issues of Internet Archaeology free of charge to universities and colleges in the UK

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 enables 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. Institutions will need to complete a sub-licence in order to access the journal.

Further details can be found here.

JIBS/Ebsco enhancement group

The minutes of the first JIBS/Ebsco enhancement group are now available on the JIBS web site at http://www.jibs.ac.uk/resources/EBSCO/

Ovid Gateway transfer date

http://resourcecenter.ovidsp.com/

The OvidSP Resource Center is your destination for all supporting materials and information.


To ensure that customers in every global region will have access to OvidSP on the morning of Monday, February 4th, 2008, all Ovid Gateway customers will be automatically directed to OvidSP on Sunday, February 3, 2008 at 3:30pm EST (8:30pm GMT).

The timing was selected after evaluating worldwide system usage to identify a specific time that minimizes the impact to user workflow and ensures that all users and administrators will be transitioned to the new platform by the morning of Monday, February 4, 2008

After transition, Ovid Web Gateway will no longer be accessible.

OvidSP stats are currently available at https://ovidspstats.ovid.com. You will continue to have access to historical Gateway usage stats at http://ovid-admin.ovid.com/stats2/ after the transition.

Transfer date to OvidSP

"To ensure that customers in every global region will have access to OvidSP on the morning of Monday, February 4th, 2008, all Ovid Gateway customers will be automatically directed to OvidSP on Sunday, February 3, 2008 at 3:30pm EST (8:30pm GMT). "

"The timing was selected after evaluating worldwide system usage to identify a specific time that minimizes the impact to user workflow and ensures that all users and administrators will be transitioned to the new platform by the morning of Monday, February 4, 2008 "

"After transition, Ovid Web Gateway will no longer be accessible. All user settings, jumpstarts, and alerts will remain intact and be fully functional in the new platform (Ovid Web Gateway Jumpstart URLs will automatically re-direct to OvidSP). Please be sure to update your bookmarks to include: http://ovidsp.ovid.com"

"The OvidSP Resource Center is your destination for all supporting materials and information."

"OvidSP stats are currently available at https://ovidspstats.ovid.com. You will continue to have access to historical Gateway usage stats at http://ovid-admin.ovid.com/stats2/ after the transition."