InfoBites

Just a brief reminder that InfoBites information skills sessions begin this week.

This year we have a number of sessions at both Harrison and Walsall Learning Centres throughout the next few weeks as well as drop in sessions to answer any enquiries. If you can’t make the scheduled session but are interested, please come to one of the drop in sessions and we’ll try to help you.

You can see the current timetable on the InfoBites website.

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials

The Science and Technology of Advanced Materials journal has now become open access which means it is freely available to read.

Taken from the website:

Science and Technology of Advanced Materials (STAM) provides an international forum for refereed original contributions, reviews and focus issues covering all aspects of materials science, including theoretical analysis, synthesis and processing, phase and structure analyses, characterization, properties, engineering and applications. The journal covers advances in research on solids, liquids and colloids, with emphasis on the interdisciplinary nature of materials science and issues at the forefront of the field, such as nano-, bio- and ecomaterials…

The journal is now published as an open-access model, with all content completely free to read. There is no publication charge, as the costs of publication will be covered by the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS).

Off campus access to extra resources

We now have off campus access to extra resources including IEEE Computer Society Digital Library. When you click on the links from the Databases A-Z page you will be prompted to log in using your IT account. For more information see Off-campus access with EZProxy. 

ticTOCs – where researchers keep up-to-date

ticTOCs

ticTOCs is a great new resource which can help you keep up-to-date in your area of research.

It has been designed specifically for researchers and academics, and currently contains tables of contents (TOCs) from 7,742 journals. Registration is free and you can then choose which journals you are interested in. When a new issue is published, you will receive details of the tables of contents in your ticTOCs account.

Many journals also have RSS feeds you may wish to subscribe to if you use an RSS reader, and you can often register to receive e-mail updates.

Please ask at your nearest Learning Centre to receive more information about keeping up-to-date with current research.

Image databases

The Gothic Conservatory

We have recently subscribed to some new image databases which may be useful, particularly for those interested in architecture.

The first is ARTstor, which has around 700,000 images of art, architecture, the humanities and social sciences. You can print and save them, and organise them into shared folders. In order to gain full access you will need to authenticate using Athens before visiting the database.

The second is Bridgeman Art Library which presents the visual culture of every civilization from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica and every period from prehistoric times to the present. It has excellent quality images and good metadata (captions and keywords), as well as the legal right to use the images within the university. Access to Bridgement Art Library is via a username and password which can be found on the Electronic Databases A-Z page.

Access to Internet Archaeology

We’ve access now to the Internet Archaeology archive  – the premier e-journal for archaeology.

Access comes thanks to a JISC deal which gives us free access to the site.  We get access to the journal’s content from 1996 to 2006 (issues 1-21).

Online Interlibrary Loan Forms

We now have online forms for requesting interlibrary loans on our LIS web pages – you can see them at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/interloan .

Current UK copyright laws mean that we still have to have a form signed by the requester before we can send interlibrary loan requests, so although the form can be filled in online, it will still have to be printed off for the signature. We’re planning to introduce a full online requesting service as soon as the legal position on electronic signatures is clear, but in the meantime please feel free to use our online forms which you can complete from anywhere and then print (and sign!) to bring your request to the nearest Learning Centre.

RSS Day

Today is RSS Awareness Day so I thought it would be useful to celebrate this by sharing some information on RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

Some of you may already be familiar with RSS feeds and even use the RSS feed on the SEBE blog. For those that aren’t, RSS is a simple way of subscribing to your favourite web content. You can use a desktop RSS reader (Outlook 2007 and ThunderBird have RSS feeds integrated to their e-mail applications), or you may prefer to use a web-based RSS reader. Bloglines and Google Reader are both popular RSS readers which you may want to try. Once you’ve got your RSS reader sorted you can subscribe to any RSS feed (usually an orange button like the one on the left column). BBC News website has RSS feeds you may be interested in, and almost all blogs have an RSS feed to subscribe to. You can also set up RSS alerts for searches from some of our databases.

There’s a great video demonstrating the basics of RSS from YouTube:

E-books for SEBE students

The University subscribes to a number of electronic books for SEBE students. The books can be viewed both on campus and off campus giving you the flexibility to be able to access useful resources from home (or anywhere else you choose to study!).

As shown before, e-books can be found by searching on the OPAC catalogue (a simple keyword search for engineering gives 743 different e-books, give your own subject of interest a try). If you want to access them off campus, remember to authenticate your PC first (using your usual IT username and password).

You may also go directly to the e-books from the e-book page on our website. For example, if your lecturer has told you a particular book is available on the Knovel Interactive Library you can go directly to Knovel from the e-book page.

Engineering Calculations with Calculator Edge

Just thought I’d share a great online calculator for engineers – it’s free to use and can work out all sorts of calculations for you – air flow, pressure, stress, strain, and a whole load of other calculations which go way beyond my engineering knowledge!

It has sections for Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and more.

Found via Internet Resources Newsletter.