Greater access to core texts for your students!

Are your students always complaining that the stuff they need is never in the Library?  Do you need a large number of students to read the same printed book chapter or journal article at the same time?  Well, we may have the answer!

Under the CLA digitisation licence, we are able to scan most UK or US book chapters and journal articles and link them to your reading lists.  Just submit the details of the chapter or article via the Reading List system (http://bookworm.lboro.ac.uk/) in the usual way, adding a note that you want it as an “Electronic Reserve” item.  We will do the rest.

Under the terms of the licence, items may only be linked to Reading Lists, not listed on the LIbrary OPAC, and whilst they can be viewed by all students, they should only be printed by students registered on the module for which they are requested.  Notices are attached to each item to this effect.  It is important, therefore, that you add the item to all the relevant module Reading Lists.

Any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Research Support webpages

The Library has just launched its ‘Research Support’ webpages, which detail all of the support and resources on offer to researchers across the University. The link is permanently on the Library homepage or can be accessed from:

http://lboro.ac.uk/library/services/Research%20Support.html

If you would like any further advice about how the Library can support your research, please contact your Academic Librarian.

Free trial of Factiva available

A trial of Factiva.com is available until September 9th. Access is via IP address and is available on-campus only. Factiva.com covers business, economic, and industry information – including all the major engineering industries.It provides full-text access to thousands of journals, newspapers from around the world with content delivered in 22 languages and Factiva Intelligent Linking providing the technology to seamlessly search across content types. To access the trial please go to:Factiva Trial

A comprehensive user guide is available at: http://www.proquest.co.uk/pqtraining/docs/factiva_inside_out_user_guide.pdf Please remember to logout (using the link at the top right of the screen) after use.We welcome feedback – good or bad – on this trial, please contact Steve Corn s.c.corn@lboro.ac.uk with your comments.

“Have your Say” report now available!

Many thanks to the 91 members of the Engineering Faculty that responded to our recent “Have your Say!” survey.  The full report is now available at http://broadcastengineering.wordpress.com/report-of-the-have-your-say-survey/

As we act on your recommendations, we will be advertising developments via the Blog.

Finding DOIs for RAE submissions

We have had some requests for help in finding DOIs, (Digital Object Identifier), for the RAE. A typical DOI looks like this: doi:10.1006/jcph.1998.5920 and most journals published electronically will have one. Many publishers  include the DOI with the table of contents or abstract to each article.

How to find a DOI:
Use CrossRef’s DOI lookup tool: http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/ This should succeed if you input sufficient bibliographic detail but it does need: author surname and first name or initials, journal title, article title, year of publication, first page number, volume number.
If this fails to return the DOI, try searching an appropriate database in MetaLib and link to the full text using SFX or search the e-journal.
To test that the DOI works use the DOI resolver at: http://dx.doi.org/

If you can’t find a DOI
The HEFCE RAE team has estimated that only 80% of journal articles currently have a DOI so there will be a number of articles submitted that don’t have one, these are likely to be articles published in 2001 when DOIs were less commonly used..
For the 20% of articles that don’t have a DOI, a PDF file or if that is not available, a hard copy, will be required instead, this will be requested from you by the Research Office towards the end of 2007/early 2008.

If you need any help just contact your Academic Librarian.

Have your say!

Now’s your chance to give the Library Engineering Team a piece of your mind!  How?  By filling in our short online survey which asks if we can do anything better to help you.  We are always working to improve the services we offer the Engineering Faculty, and need to understand what you want before we can deliver.

So, please take five minutes to fill it in. There is a link from our “Blogroll” on the right hand side of the screen or you can go direct to http://picture-box.lboro.ac.uk/Public/UCCASS/survey.php?sid=44

Results will be reported in future Blog posts.  Thank you!