Friday, December 15, 2006

JISC Collections Licensing Workshops

A short report summarising the main findings and recommendations gathered at these workshops is now available from JISC [Word document].

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

JIBS Scopus Enhancement Group

Minutes of 11 November 2006 meeting
Have been agreed and will be available on the JIBS web site shortly.

Useful information emerging at or since the meeting includes:

1 Customer support
UK free phone number now available Tel: 0800 357 384 37
Other contact points are Fax: +31 20 485 3432 , E-mail: nlinfo@scopus.com

2 Currency
JIBS had noted that Scopus coverage is often lagging behind PubMed. Elsevier’s response was that PubMed often leads the field in terms of currency because
i) it includes Articles in Press (AiP)
ii) it does not have to capture, index and match citation information.

Elsevier is examining ways to include articles in press (AiP) in a future Scopus release.

3 Scopus and Discovery Gate integration
DiscoveryGate customers are able to configure their own link options. For assistance with setting up links from DiscoveryGate, please contact support@mdl.com

4 Institutional repositories and Scopus Selected Sources tab
If you would like your institutional repository indexed by Scirus and available to display on the Selected Sources tab, please contact Elsevier.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

SUNCAT Newsletter

The latest issue of the SUNCAT newsletter is now available at http://www.suncat.ac.uk/news/newsletters.html

This issue includes news about
- New libraries on SUNCAT, bringing the total to 61 contributing libraries
- Z39.50 target information
- Links to library websites
- Update on downloading MARC records for contributing libraries.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Copac: trial of new interface

There is a new Copac interface available for testing. You can access this by selecting the Copac v3 link below the 'Enter Copac' button on the Home Page:
http://copac.ac.uk/

Note that the interface is still under development and not all the usual features are available. The colour of the interface will change before the live version is released.

Please send comments on the new interface to the Copac Helpdesk: copac@mimas.ac.uk
- tell us what you like and don't like about it. If you have any difficulties using the interface can you email us details of the problem, plus the name of the web browser you are using (and the version number if possible).

The new interface is accessing the new XML database. This database is still growing so may be slow at times as it is very active. You may find more record duplication than normal, this will disappear as the database is completed. Not all the usual library catalogues are available, the 'Libraries' list on the search screens shows the catalogues that are currently included on the new database. Libraries are being added to the list as their data is loaded.

All feedback appreciated.

JIBS meeting with Intute

At the JIBS USer Group Committee meeting on 16th November we met with Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk)
Caroline Williams, Executive Director of Intute and Jackie Wickham, Intute: Health & Life Sciences Manager gave an overview of past and present Intute activity and future plans. Specifically they described current services including the Intute harvester and embedding tools. Work on the Leeds University embedding case study was articulated by Jackie. In addition, Caroline highlighted the results of the Intute Survey of Academic Use of the Internet: a published account to the survey will be made available in due course.

JIBS expressed significant interest in: embedding Intute in library websites and portals, in the potential for cross-searching/federated search, in lessons that could be learnt from functionality available in Google Scholar e.g. openURL resolver, and including different materials and associated search functionality e.g. images. The Group raised a number of issues associated with the existing service: duplication of records, currency of records, ability to distinguish between free and subscription resources easily, potential to extend e-journal listings, repeated entries in the harvester, resources appearing in subject areas that might be unexpected, gaps in the subject coverage and uneven spread of resources across subject areas.

Intute welcomed this feedback and intends to use it to inform service development. JIBS and Intute are currently in discussion about setting up an Enhancement Group.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

JIBS Scopus enhancement group

The first meeting was 10 November 2006 in Manchester.

Scopus coverage
Will be extended considerably during 2007, with "5 million records from multiple publishers at no extra charge" and will include more social science material. JIBS pointed out the need to for better coverage of sociology, social psychology, nursing and allied health material and extended retrospective coverage of chemistry, earth sciences and oceanography.
Elsevier are working on improving currency. JIBS noted that Scopus often lags behind PubMed at present.

Searching
JIBS queried the value of the advanced search option and whether citation searching could be made more obvious. Agreed to discuss in more detail at a future meeting.

Reference management software
JIBS asked for improvements to the screens covering this. The inclusion of RefWorks direct export was welcomed. JIBS asked for other products eg Endnote web to be added in due course.

Support
A UK phone number to contact the Scopus helpdesk is now available, Elsevier will confirm details shortly.
Scopus Live Chat an online technical support service available 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday via the live chat button (towards the top right of the screen). This can be customised for local use.
Inside Scopus magazine for librarians is available from http://info.scopus.com/is/

Minutes of the meeting and a presentation from Elsevierwill be posted on the JIBS web site when available.

Next meeting scheduled for April 2007. There is a vacancy for an additional JIBS member.

JIBS BSOL Enhancement Group

BSI have just informed us that the delivery of a test version of the new British Standards Online software is now scheduled for mid-February 2007 and they expect to be doing testing throughout March. The main corporate website will be going live before that (hopefully December/Jan) which will give us a chance to see the Endeca search engine in action.

The enhancement group will be meeting with BSI at the end of February when I expect that we will get sight of the test version and make some immediate comments and also discuss how the academic community can get involved in the test process.

Roger Hines

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

British Library Sound Archive

The British Library, in association with JISC, is in the process of launching its Archival Sound Recordings service, which is free to members of the UK HE and FE community. Access will be via ATHENS ID, once the home institution has completed a licence agreement. For further information, please see: http://www.bl.uk/nsa and http://sounds.bl.uk/
Details may also be obtained from:

The British LibrarySound Archive
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB

Tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7676
Fax: +44 (0)20 7412 7441
Email: sound-archive@bl.uk

Monday, November 20, 2006

Researchers' use of discovery services

The RIN study on Researchers' use of discovery services has been published:

http://www.rin.ac.uk/researchers-discovery-services

A workshop is being held in London on the 18th December to present and explain the conclusions of the study; to consider the implications of its findings, from the point of view of librarians as well as researchers; and to discuss ideas about what steps might be taken next:

http://www.rin.ac.uk/discovery-services-workshop

Web of Science Enhancement Committee (WoSEC)

WoSEC met on 30th October.

There is a new Key Account Manager for the UK, Jon Stroll. Email: jon.stroll@thomson.com

JIBS requested an improvement in backup capacity for when hardware problems occur, as was the case in October. Capacity is "being worked on".

We welcomed the improvements to author searching which have already been made and noted the introduction of full author names in the Q3 upgrade. These will not be searchable until a sufficient body of data has accumulated.

JIBS tabled an updated version of the WoS wishlist. Outstanding requests include:

  • Reducing the list of ‘stopwords’ that cannot be searched
  • Standardizing journal abbreviations used in citation searching
  • Introducing a facility for export into RefWorks

There was also a discussion on the accuracy of the 'average' usage statistics, which are influenced by federated search engines.

Minutes of the meeting will be posted on the JIBS and MIMAS web sites when available.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

OvidSP enhancement meeting

OvidSP enhancement meeting at Waterloo Road, 3rd November

Gary Horrocks, Adrian, Mike King and Rowland Somers met with Ovid. A number of concerns had been raised by email and will be addressed by Ovid e.g. JISC had asked us to raise Shibboleth/Access Management Federation ...

Several issues can be resolved by local customization and Ovid will contact the customers concerned.

Ovid are working with Development Partners on the new common platform (engine to interface) for OvidSP for release in 2007. We have concerns about the time available to prepare training material for September 2007 but individuals, rather than institutions, may be able to choose when to migrate to the new platform (which means institutions may have to aggregate usage statistics for people using different interfaces?). Development Partners are bound by a No Disclosure clause; the databases already loaded are Medline, BIOSIS, INSPEC, PsycINFO and EMBase.

Databases are at present compressed - as they had to be when delivered on CD-ROM and this is no longer necessary (in fact constant decompression accounts for a significant load on processors) and the reload of databases for OvidSP will allow Ovid to remove this compression.

ClinicalResources@Ovid is available, ask for a quote or trial; this provides a federated search of Ovid's relevant resources within a "walled garden" - not yet customized for England (e.g. NICE Guidelines should be included?) but could be tailored for Wales, Ireland, Scotland etc.

Fulltext developments include pre-patent disclosure information on INSPEC.

BIOSIS (Biological abstracts from 1926) and Zoological Record (from 1864) archives should be loaded for December 2006 and are offered in modules, or complete. Ask for pricing information.

Ovid loaded PsycCritiques in September and have developed deep portal linking for APA resources. This could be implemented locally at no cost.

Midwifery and Infant Care database is already on SilverPlatter (WebSPIRS 5.1) and will be loaded for Ovid Gateway users "from December".

GeoScience World (GSW) collection now has 39 journals (peer reviewed) from 22 societies.

CAB Abstracts Plus is a fulltext upgrade, available for Ovid and WebSPIRS.

EBMR enhancements for 2007: will include Cochrane CDSR PDFs (full text), Cochrane database of methodology reviews, Cochrane methodology register, HTA (Health Technology Assessment) database load & NHS EED (Economic Evaluation Database) load.

LWW journal archive available November 2006 - this is a one-time purchase on a site license basis. Only available complete, no pick and mix.

Drugline is one of this months free trial resources: http://www.ovid.com/site/products/resource_of_the_month.jsp?top=2&mid=5
look out for fulltext formulary and handbook information from AHFS http://www.ashp.org/ahfs/ with Drugline.

Monday, November 06, 2006

OVID and ICONDA building database

The ICONDA international construction database was loaded on Ovid in June with coverage from 1976. I understand the database now has input from RIBA so the architectural and aesthetics coverage is enhanced. ICONDA was already available on the SilverPlatter platform.

http://www.ovid.com/site/products/fieldguide/icon/About_ICONDA.jsp

http://www.ovid.com/site/products/fieldguide/icon/index.jsp?top=28&mid=30&bottom=56

Source publications are journals, theses, reports and conference proceedings.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

JIBS Scopus enhancement group meeting 10/11/06

The first meeting of the new JIBS Scopus enhancement group will be held Friday 10 November 2006. Scopus will be represented by Cameron Ross Sales Manager and Niels Weertman Head of Scopus Product Development. Please let me know if there are any issues that you would like JIBS to raise, or if you have any suggestions for enhancing the service.

m.tattersall@sheffield.ac.uk

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

JISC consultation on journal backfiles

Since August 2004 JISC has licensed the following journal archives on behalf of the higher and further education communities:
*Royal Society of Chemistry Journals Archive
*Institute of Physics Journal Archive 1874-1998
*Oxford Journals Complete Archive
The cost of acquiring such resources is beyond the means of most institutions, but JISC funding makes the content available to all UK higher and further education institutions free and in perpetuity. The availability of these online archives not only means that valuable library space can be freed, but that all students and staff can easily use previously inaccessible or rare material at the desk top.

In order to make sure that future procurement of journal archives is driven by the needs of institutions and their users JISC Collections would be grateful for your feedback on the following questions:

1. In your opinion does the continued licensing of journal archives represent a sensible investment of JISC Collection’s content procurement budget?
2. If yes, what are the journal archives currently available that you would like to see JISC Collections consider for procurement?
3. If no, what content do you feel JISC Collections should invest in?


Additional comments are welcome to all of the questions and the responses will be collated and made available to all respondents in the new year.

Please respond to Liam Earney, Collections Manager, L.Earney@jisc.ac.uk by 1st December.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Beilstein access changes

MIMAS have put up a web page outlining what will happen to Beilstein access from 1st November:

http://www.mimas.ac.uk/crossfire/new_xfire_service/

This seems to me to be pretty clear considering the many permutations they had to take into account.

"there is also a link to a list of the sites which we belive are intending to subscribe to the new agreement, and which method(s) of authentication they will be using."

Please notify: crossfire@mimas.ac.uk if there should be any corrections to the information on this list.

Scopus enhancement

As of 17th October, there has been an enhancement to the Scopus 'Source Browse' feature:

"In response to customer requests to increase the transparency of Scopus’ content coverage, major improvements have been made to Source Browse by displaying more information about each source’s coverage in Scopus"

"The additional information will be:

* active versus inactive titles
* title history, such as title changes
* latest issues covered by Scopus"

See: http://info.scopus.com/sourcebrowserelease/ for more details.

Friday, October 20, 2006

SilverPlatter SPIN-L

Subscribers to Ovid's email list for SilverPlatter will already know that the SPIN-L list will be switched off at the end of this month, October 31st.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

British Standards On line User Group news

Zoë Cummings ,the on line project manager, for British Standards, has just informed us that from Monday the 18 October, they are adding UK drafts( the dc standards) as full text in BSOL(British Standards On Line) . They are only adding new drafts as and when published and have not retrospectively added all current UK Drafts. The european drafts were already there, the prEN standards.

The absence of the text of the draft standards was one of the issues raised at the first user group meeting. It is excellent that BSI have responded so quickly in this area.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Web of Knowledge Enhancement Committee

The next meeting of the Web of Knowledge Enhancement Committee will take place on Monday 30th October. Please let me know if there are any issues that you would like JIBS to raise, or if you have any suggestions for enhancing the service:

l.j.humphreys@bath.ac.uk

Taylor and Francis ebook agreement from JISC

Taken from the JISC weekly update, 12th October:

The Taylor & Francis Group has over 15,000 titles available in the Online eBook Library, providing a wealth of material for librarians, academics and students at all levels. Each ebook comes with five concurrent users, while the eBook library permits unlimited concurrent users. Institutions can subscribe to multiple copies of the same eBook in order to add more concurrent users.

A 5% discount will apply if the Sub-Licensee subscribes to 360 or more book titles from the Online eBook Library.

Subject coverage includes Business, Economics, Geography, Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, History, Archaeology, Medicine, Science and Technology.

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/coll_tandf_ebooks.aspx

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

New JISC Collections website

As you may be aware the JISC has recently launched its new web site. To coincide with this, JISC Collections has also launched new web site which can be found at www.jisc-collections.ac.uk. The new web site has a new structure that will hopefully make it easier to find everything you need to know about resources in the JISC Collections portfolio, licences and other relevant information.
Over the coming days and weeks we will be making further improvements to the web site and making sure that it is fully up to date.
In the mean time should you have any problems finding information please let me know and I will send you the relevant information.
Best wishes and kind regards,
Liam
Collections Manager
Joint Information Systems Committee
138-142 Strand
London WC2R 1HH
Tel: 020 7848 1716
Mobile: 07739 402774
Web: www.jisc.ac.uk/collections

EPSRC to stop funding the Chemical Database Service

EPSRC has today announced that the Chemical Database Service (CDS) is to close on 31 March 2007. The full announcement is on the EPSRC website:
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ResearchFunding/Programmes/Chemistry/NCS.htm

What does this mean for you, the user?
Until 31st March 2007 - all existing services will continue.
From 1st April 2007 -
If you use the
* Cambridge Structural Database
* Inorganic Chemistry Structural Database
* DETHERM, the thermo physical properties database
the EPSRC will continue to provide access until at least 2010. A procurement process is underway to provide such a service. Access to any other components of the CDS will not be available through a national service. CDS will be exploring the continuation of provision of other components, in particular the synthetic organic reaction databases, the Available Chemicals Directory and spectroscopy data. This may well involve a subscription only service after 1st April 2007. However it would require buy-in from a significant proportion of the community to be viable. We will be examining this option in detail in the very near future.

Questions or comments about the EPSRC decision should be addressed to: Carmine.Ruggiero@epsrc.ac.uk
Queries about specific data or components of the Service should be sent to CDS: cdsbb@dl.ac.uk

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

JIBS Scopus Enhancement Group

Have you been involved in promoting Scopus to end-users in your institution? Do you have feedback you would like to see discussed with Scopus product developers? if you have answered yes to one of these questions, how about
putting your name forward to join the new JIBS Scopus enhancement group which will meet for the first time on Friday 10 November 2006 in Manchester.

I have accepted an invitation to chair the group, and Lorraine Beard who is Faculty Librarian (Life Sciences) at John Rylands University Library Manchester has volunteered to be Secretary. We would like to recruit 1 or 2 more people to
join us to meet with Niels Weertman, Head of Scopus Product Development and Cameron Ross the Product Sales Manager for Scopus.
As usual with JIBS enhancement groups there will be 2 or 3 meetings a year, and travel expenses are reimbursed. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in joining the group and do not already belong to any other JIBS enhancement group:

Marion Tattersall
eCollections Librarian
Academic Services Group
Room 1.23, Arts Tower Floor 1
The University of Sheffield Library
Sheffield S10 2TN
phone: 0114 2227281
email: M.Tattersall@SHEFFIELD.AC.UK

BSOL developments

BSI intends to improve BSOL search/browser functions in the next 6 months by implementing a new search engine. These improvements, which will involve migration of the site, will be phased with plenty of warning for users and Athens access will not be effected. The new search engine will be provided by Endeca http://endeca.com/ - a guided search - so subject and key-word searches should be vastly improved. The BSOL shop will be separated from the standards collection which should allow clearer display of search results for subscribers when in the database. The search engine change will happen in the early part of 2007.
There will be no major development to the present interface and search engine but work is carrying forward to fix bugs.
Endeca software is used by a range of information providers including the Guardian and NCSU library
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/libraries.php?p=1998&more=1

Roger Hines
Adsetts Centre
Sheffield Hallam
0114 2254703

Thursday, September 28, 2006

JIBS BSOL Enhancement Group


We had a very positive first meeting of the JIBS BSOL [British Standards Online] enhancement group.
Our impression was that BSI is very keen to work with the academic community and can see a value in our input to help them improve their services.


The highlights of the meeting were:-


- BSI has recognised the weaknesses in the current search engine and interface and has a programme in hand to address the issues that were of concern to JISC, both in the short term to fix bugs and in the long term at a more fundamental level. More news on this will follow very shortly.
- BSI will engage the academic community in user acceptance testing of any changes to interface and search engine software
- BSI are investigating extending electronic availability of withdrawn and superseded standards
- BSI are investigating extending electronic access to Drafts for Comment (DC) standards beyond the DC EN standards


We hope the minutes of this meeting will be available very shortly and they will give a fuller picture of developments at BSI. Our next meeting will be in late November, early December when we hope to review in more detail the BSI development plan.

Roger Hines chairs the group on behalf of JIBS and is happy to receive feedback and comments: R.Hines@shu.ac.uk

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

JISC Collections Academic Database Assessment Tool

A major new resource giving librarians access to a wealth of information on key academic resources is launched today. The free resource, developed by JISC Collections in association with Nick Andrews Consultancy, provides quick and easy comparisons of the major bibliographic and citation databases currently in use by the academic community, including Web of Science, Scopus, ABI Inform, British Humanities Index and many more.

With feedback from the library community regularly suggesting that the high cost, profusion and complexity of these databases make the task of evaluating them difficult and time-consuming, JISC Collections commissioned and funded the new resource, bringing together a national user panel of librarians and information professionals to guide its development.

The Academic Database Assessment Tool provides details of the journal titles in each database, their date coverage, currency, as well as their functionality, editorial policy, indexing and a great deal more, and allows direct comparisons to be made between the resources and the different platforms on which they are available. Information can be exported into spreadsheets, allowing up to date lists of titles to be created.

Initial testing of the resource – which will continue to be developed in response to feedback – has been extremely positive, with librarians and publishers already welcoming it as an important resource which for the first time allows comparisons of the most popular databases.

To access the new resource, please go to:
http://www.andrews-consultancy.com/jisc_database_assessment

For further information, please contact: Liam Earney on 020 7848 1716 or l.earney@jisc.ac.uk

Posted on behalf of Liam Earney

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

JIBS Federated Searching Conference

JIBS is pleased to announce a one day conference entitled:

“Federated Searching, what?, why? and how? : an introduction to federated searching technology and developments"

To be held at the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester, Wednesday 22nd November, 2006.

JIBS will host this one day conference aimed at library and information practitioners, within the higher and further education sectors. As electronic content and sources of information, provided by academic libraries, become greater and vaster, the need for federated searching technologies has increased. This conference will introduce delegates to the concepts of federated searching (also known as meta-searching) of library content, and will illustrate some of the current developments and initiatives within this field. Presentations will include experiences of implementing a federated search engine, and also the development of bespoke federated searching for specific institutions and for a specific sector. For those currently involved in federated searching, or even interested parties who are new to the concept, this conference will provide plenty of thought provoking examples of the current federated searching climate.

For programme details and a booking form please see the JIBS web page:
http://www.jibs.ac.uk/meetings/federated.htm

JISC Collections Licensing Workshops


Institutions are changing and evolving to meet the diverse needs of their users; overseas campuses are being opened, new commercial activities and spin out companies are being developed and franchised courses are being offered in partner institutions.

JISC Collections would like to invite you to attend the licensing workshops in November. The workshops will provide the opportunity to learn more about the new and updated Model Licence, to share experiences and to help JISC Collections create new models for non-standard licensing. Further details on these workshops can be found at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/coll_events.html

Posted on behalf of Brian Mitchell,
JISC Collections Promotion Manager

Friday, September 01, 2006

MIMAS Newsletter

The September edition of the MIMAS newsletter "Focus on MIMAS" is now available at: http://www.mimas.ac.uk/focus/

Contents:
* A report on the MIMAS Open Forum
* UK Online Biomedical Research Archive to be Hosted by MIMAS
* Introducing Intute
* WoK News
* Zetoc News for NHS England
* New Contributions to Jorum: REHASH Medical Resources and Hairdressing Training Worksheets
* Satellite Image of the Month Feature
* Nobel Prize Winner Praises ESDS International
* Archives, Archivists and Users
* Conferences
* MIMAS Courses

Thursday, August 24, 2006

OVID meeting in November

Our next meeting with Ovid/SilverPlatter is pencilled in for 3rd November.

Any concerns and issues, please contact Adrian Smith 0113 3435531 so that we can take them forward.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

JISC Collections

Welcome to the fifth weekly update from JISC Collections. In response to your feedback, JISC Collections is now consolidating as much information as possible into a single weekly email covering ongoing negotiations, consultations, new resources and other important updates. This weekly update is also available on the JISC Collections web site at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/coll_weekly_update.html.

This is the last issue for August with the next update resuming in September.

You can either go direct to the web version of the newsletter
(http://www.jisc.ac.uk/coll_weekly_update.html) and browse the items from there or register to obtain your own direct alert (via an HTML email) by mailing JISC Collections at mailto:collections@jisc.ac.uk.

A PDF version http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISC%20Collections%20weekly%20update%20issue%205.pdf and text only version
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/coll_week_update_text.html of this newsletter are also available.


Brian Mitchell
JISC Collections

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Annual General Meeting (AGM)

The AGM is pencilled in for Wednesday 22nd November 2006, in Manchester (John Rylands Library). To be confirmed.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Ovid SilverPlatter work in progress

Ovid released the Mustang version of OvidSP in April 2006. Its purpose was to begin exposing the new search platform to a small, specially selected group of customers in order to share with them [the] design direction and to receive ... feedback on design questions.

The next stage is the mid-Summer availability of Corvette.
This pre-release version targets the librarian/info manager user community in the academic sector. Nottingham University (Wendy Stanton) expressed an interest in working with Ovid on this.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006


EDINA Web Pages

EDINA are looking at ways of improving their web site. They have created a survey which reflects some of their current thinking, and would value your feedback.

The survey is available via the link below, and should be completed by 18th August.

http://edina.ac.uk/edinawebsitesurvey.html

Thursday, August 03, 2006


Intute Seminars

To celebrate the launch, Intute are offering the following seminar events free of charge to UK lecturers, researchers or librarians:

Internet for Business and Tourism, Bristol, Weds, 13th Sept 2006
Internet for Social Research, Birmingham, Weds, 20th Sept 2006
Internet for Health, Nottingham, Mon, 18th Sept 2006

These seminars are for university or college staff interested in improving their own use of the Internet for research, or in teaching Internet research skills to students.

Posted on behalf of Jenny Hall, Intute.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006




JISC Content Procurement Company

This is a reminder that institutions need to join the JISC Content Procurement Company:

JISC Collections will be a mutual trading company and as such it can only trade with its members. In order to provide institutions with sub-licence agreements and to process their subscription fees the institutions must become members of the company.

There is no fee for membership and liability is limited to £1. The institutional members will be represented on the JISC Board by two Institutional Directors. Member institutions will be able to nominate and vote for these representatives.

To check if your institution is a member, and for joining instructions, please see:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=coll_jiscreg

Posted on behalf of Lorraine Estelle
JISC Collections Team Manager

Tuesday, August 01, 2006


Suncat

Suncat becomes a full service at Edina from today. It is a freely-available union catalogue of journals and other publications of a continuing nature, both print and online:

http://www.suncat.ac.uk

Records are derived from approximately 50 participating libraries including the British Library, National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, plus selected university and specialist libraries including RIBA, the Natural History Museum and Wellcome libraries.

Searches may be limited to a particular region or library.

Closure of Biosis service at EDINA

The Biosis service at Edina closed yesterday. JIBS wishes to thank Edina for successfully hosting the database and in particular for their excellent customer support.

BIOSIS Previews continues under a JISC license via the Ovid and ISI Web of Knowledge platforms. JIBS liaises closely with both of these providers and would be pleased to pass on your feedback on the 'new' interfaces to BIOSIS. Just click on the 'comments' link below, or email:
l.j.humphreys@bath.ac.uk (ISI)
a.smith@leeds.ac.uk (Ovid)

JISC subscription information can be found at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=coll_biosis_previews&src=alpha
JISC Collections weekly updates

JISC Collections is now consolidating as much information as possible into a single weekly email covering ongoing negotiations, consultations, new resources and other important updates.

This weekly update is available on the JISC Collections web site at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/coll_weekly_update.html.

You can either go direct to the web version of the newsletter and browse the items from there or register to obtain your own direct alert (via an HTML email) by mailing JISC Collections at collections@jisc.ac.uk.

A PDF version and text only version of this newsletter are also available.

Posted on behalf of Brian Mitchell
JISC Collections Promotion Manager

RDN becomes:

The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) was relaunched as Intute on 13th July. This means that the 8 RDN hubs (SOSIG, EEVL, Humbul, BIOME, Artifact, PSIgate, GeSource, Altis) no longer exist. Instead, there are 4 subject categories:

  • Science and Technology
  • Arts and Humanities
  • Social Sciences
  • Health and Life Sciences
The RDN Virtual Training Suite has also moved to Intute.

JIBS are meeting with Intute representatives in November to provide feedback on the new service, and would welcome your views. Please click on the 'comments' button below this news item to add your feedback on Intute.

The Intute home page is at: http://www.intute.ac.uk/

CrossFire Renewal

The JISC licence for the Beilstein CrossFire service expires on 31st October. Renewal information was sent yesterday to those who responded to the JISC consultation. If you are intending to renew CrossFire or to take up the DiscoveryGate offer but have not received this information please contact Liam Earney: l.earney@jisc.ac.uk

Friday, July 28, 2006


EBSCO Enhancement Group

After discussion at recent committee meetings and liaison with EBSCO, the JIBS User Group is to set up an Enhancement Group for EBSCOhost databases.

JIBS are looking for volunteers to form the new JIBS-EBSCO Enhancement Group. Ideally we are looking for an even spread of experience across the range of EBSCOhost databases. Volunteers should have be prepared to attend 2-3 meetings per year. Further details available on request.

Please let me know by 19th August if you would like to be a member of this Group. In the unlikely event of us receiving too many applicants, it would be useful if you could give me some idea of your role and experience of using EBSCOhost databases.

Graham Stone
Serials and Electronic Developments Manager
University of Bolton
G.Stone@bolton.ac.uk

Friday, July 14, 2006





JISC Database Evaluation

On behalf of JISC, Nick Andrews Consultancy are carrying out "A Study Evaluating Bibliographic and Citation Databases in use by the UK Higher Education Community". Phase 1 of this project was to draw up a shortlist of key bibliographic and citation services to be included in the study. These 20 databases are:

1 Scopus
2 WoS
3 PsycInfo
4 Lexis Nexis
5 Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
6 PubMed
7 Westlaw
8 British Education Index
9 International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
10 Inspec
11 British Humanities Index
12 COMPENDEX
13 MLA International Bibliographies
14 BIOSIS
15 EconLit
16 ABI Inform / ProQuest
17 Sociological Abstracts
18 EMBASE
19 Lawtel
20 Geobase

Phase 2 will be to produce an online comparison website. Nick Andrews Consultancy has put together a Library panel to advise on this project, including representation from JIBS.

Thursday, July 13, 2006




British Standards Online
- enhancement group

Further to problems with BSOL which were discussed on the lis-scitech list, JISC have asked the JIBS User Group to set up an Enhancement Group for British Standards Online. BSI are very interested in taking this forward.

JIBS are looking for volunteers to form the new JIBS-BSOL Enhancement Group. Volunteers should have a good knowledge of BSOL and be prepared to attend 2-3 meetings per year. Further details available on request.

Please contact me if you would like to be a member of this Group. In the unlikely event of us receiving too many applicants, it would be useful if you could give me some idea of your role and experience of using BSOL.

Web of Knowledge quarterly update 16/07/06

JIBS have been asking for some time for an improvement to author searching on Web of Science so we were very pleased to see the MIMAS news concerning Sunday's upgrade:

"Author Finder -
You will be able to distinguish between authors of similar names, helping you to find the author you are looking for faster."

Note also the announcement regarding phrase searching. Thomson are adopting the Google approach. A search for 'needle exchange' used to retrieve the exact phrase 'needle exchange'. It will now retrieve 'needle AND exchange'. For an exact phrase search you will have to use quotes: "needle exchange"

The full announcement is at:
http://wok.mimas.ac.uk/news/2006/20060713.html

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

OCLC Date of Birth; Date of Demise RSS feed

For information:
www.oclc.org/rss/feeds/authorityrecords/

Closed Dates in Authority Records

The Library of Congress recently announced a change in policy about adding death dates to personal name heading and a revision to the LCRI for AACR2 rule 22.17 that allows the option for catalogers to add death dates to personal name headings with open dates (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcri22_17imp.html)

Both the Library of Congress and OCLC are aware that many libraries will be very interested in incorporating these changes into their catalogs. Libraries that use authority control services for ongoing processing will receive these changes as part of their normal workflows but, for other libraries, OCLC is providing this service to announce headings to which death dates have been added.

Lists for each week since the new policy went into effect on February 1 are available as an RSS feed. Instructions for subscribing to RSS feeds can be found on OCLC website > RSS Feeds and Podcasts.

A list of newly changed headings will be added once each week in the future.

NOTE: Some entries require the ALA BT Courier font to display properly. Please use Internet Explorer for best results when viewing this font.

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Thursday, June 29, 2006

Research Information Network (RIN)

Yesterday I was at a presentation organised by RIN
http://www.rin.ac.uk/

Handling the scientific data deluge…
Making research data more freely available…
Interoperating between heterogeneous Web databases…
Exploiting the potential of the Semantic Web and Web 2.0…

http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-webs
... data webs and semantic web developments; there were even more acronyms than usual but David Karger from MIT was talking about Piggy Bank (a Firefox plugin) and their Haystack Project http://simile.mit.edu/ http://simile.mit.edu/about.html
http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/

RDF seemed to be the key acronym, but SPARQL SOAP FOAF were also flung around.
- the presentations should appear on the RIN website

Also mentioned "Haskell" http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell functional programming language

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Met a woman called Sabine who probably runs "3D Metrics" http://www.3dmetrics.co.uk/

Visual Data Intelligence exists as a software prototype that demonstrates new mathematical methods for -

interpolation creating new ‘datascape visuals’
extrapolation allowing not only forecasting but also ‘back casting’
layering multi-dimensional data allowing for new visual comparisons.

"Visual Data Intelligence is currently used as the engine for a prototype web service producing financial forecasts with exceptional accuracy. See http://www.blogger.com/www.3dmetrics.net. This service is provided by my company 3D Metrics Ltd. "
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Friday, June 23, 2006

Welcome

Welcome to the JIBS User Group weblog. JIBS aims to use this blog to bring you the latest news and developments affecting bibliographic databases and related resources available to the UK HE community.