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

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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