Time to simplify academic referencing styles?

There’s a very interesting article in the THE entitled There are 3,000 ways to cite source material – why not make it one? by Alec Gill, an academic tutor with the Study Advice Service, University of Hull.

He writes: “It is time to change. Academic styles of referencing must be reformed, unified and simplified.” and “The reform of academic referencing styles is long overdue. A pragmatic approach is needed to declutter the Victoriana that has been inherited within our bibliographic styles.”

There’s also a full-length version of the article available on his blog which is also well worth reading.

There are various books in the Library on referencing, and slides from The Cite is Right, one of the Library Workshop seminars, are also available.  

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Organizational research methods, marketing strategies, play in early childhood – and other new books in the Library

Added to the library recently were books on organizational research methods, marketing strategies, play in early childhood and several other topics.

For the full list of new books, go to the New Books section of the Catalogue.

Selected titles added to the Edinburgh campus library at Riccarton include acopy of Organizational research methods: a guide for students and researchers, by Paul M. Brewerton and Lynne J. Millward, and another copy of Marketing strategies: a twenty-first century approach, by Ashok Ranchhod.

Added to the library at Galashiels was another copy of Psychology for childhood studies, by Teena Kamen.

Information on how to place a reservation for a book is available.

Information on suggesting books for the library is also available, or you can let the Subject Librarians know if you have any suggestions for new titles.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Artificial Intelligence – free online content in July and August

The Springer Computer Science Reading Room offers free access to books and journals in all areas of Computer Science:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Graphics, Vision, and Imaging
• Database Management
• Foundations of Computing
• Information Security and Cryptology
• Software Engineering and Programming
• Human-Computer Interaction

New content is added to the Reading Room ever other month, focussing on one of these subject areas – this July and August the  focus is on Artificial Intelligence.

Inside the Computer Science Reading Room you will find free content from Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series and a wide array of Springer journals.  Using the functionality offered by SpringerLink, the content is accessible via PDF or HTML files, which you can download and print.

Registration is free.

Congratulations to all our graduates!

Congratulations to all students who are graduating this week. We hope you enjoy the ceremony – and the strawberries!

We’d particularly like to congratulate Rory Swinson-Reid who worked as a Student Shelver in the Library, and who graduates this week. Well done Rory!

Gill McDonald
Deputy Librarian

Major improvements to TechXtra search service for engineering, maths and computing

TechXtra, one of the Ten science search engines I mentioned a while back on this blog, has recently been improved.

TechXtra is a free service provided by the ICBL and Library at Heriot-Watt University.  Using TechXtra you can find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, theses & dissertations, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing.  TechXtra searches over 4 million items from 31 collections in technology, and provides several additional services.

For full details of the improvements, please see the TechXtra News Blog.  Changes include:

• New full text indicators on search results pages, which show the likely availability of full text.
• Faster searching of the Arrow and CISTI databases, where you can find Australian and Canadian research.
• Updated RAM (Recent Advances in Manufacturing) database.
• Over 100 new sources of job announcements and industry news in the OneStep Jobs and OneStep Industry News services.
• A new TechXtra SRU service.
• More free magazine subscriptions.

Further collections will be added to TechXtra in the future.  Details will be announced on the  TechXtra News Blog.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Newspapers

I read an interesting article the other day in the Business & Media section of The Observer, entitled Will Philadelphia be the place where the American newspaper dies?  Several cities in the US are in danger of losing their newspapers, and the article suggests that the same may well happen in the UK – “This is the dying world of newspapers…”

Readers have moved to the Internet for news, and so the circulation of many print papers has declined, and profits have reduced or disappeared.  Most newspapers have an online equivalent, but can online newspapers make a profit in the long-run? No-one knows.

There’s a number of interesting websites that can help you keep up-to-date with the news and newspapers.  Here are just a few:

Chipwrapper is a tool for easy searching of UK newspapers.  
NewsLink provides links to numerous newspapers, as does onlinenewspapers.com. 
Newsroom, available to members of Heriot-Watt University, covers the leading newspapers, as well as business magazines and newswires from all regions of the world. 
And Newser aggregates headlines from numerous titles.

The Internet may have taken away many reasons for newspapers to exist, but there’s nothing actually like spending a half-hour, or so, flicking through a real, print, newspaper.  In Riccarton Library, a number of daily newspapers are available on Level 2, near the Library Cafe.  These include:

Daily Telegraph

Financial Times

Guardian

Herald

Observer – term-time only

Scotland on Sunday – term-time only

Scotsman

Times

The Library at Galashiels buys several British newspapers and magazines:

• Border Telegraph (local paper for Galashiels area)
• Financial Times
• Guardian
• Scotsman
• Southern Reporter (local paper for Scottish Borders)  

More information is available about newspapers in the Library.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

New search engine from Microsoft – Bing

Microsoft recently made available a new search engine called Bing.  It’s been getting mixed reports in the media.  Two of the sources I rely on for expert and impartial reviews of search engines were not very positive at all.  Phil Bradley reported: It’s awful, and Karen Blakeman said: Don’t bother.  Elsewhere, some reviews have been more positive.

About.com has a helpful screenshot walk-through, which is a useful way of getting an overview.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

International economics, chemistry, how fashion works – and other new books in the Library

Added to the library recently were books on international economics, chemistry, fashion and several other topics.

For the full list of new books, go to the New Books section of the Catalogue.

    

Selected titles added to the Edinburgh campus library at Riccarton include more copies of the 8th edition of International economics: theory and policy, by Paul R. Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld, and another copy of the 5th edition of Chemistry, by John E. McMurry and Robert C. Fay.

 

Added to the library at Galashiels was a copy of How fashion works: couture, ready-to-wear and mass production, by Gavin Waddell

Information on how to place a reservation for a book is available.

Information on suggesting books for the library is also available, or you can let the Subject Librarians know if you have any suggestions for new titles.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Top 20 Countries in Engineering

ScienceWatch.com, a weekly behind-the-scenes look at the scientists, journals, institutions, nations, and papers selected by Essential Science Indicators^SM from Thomson Reuters and other products of the Research Services Group, has released a listing of the top 20 countries which, as of the latest bimonthly update of Essential Science Indicators^SM, attracted the highest total citations to their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals of Engineering over an 11-year period, (1998-December 31, 2008). These countries are of a pool of 96 countries comprising the top 50% ranked by total citation count in this field.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Internet news, new websites, blogs, tweets, etc

The June 2009 issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter is now available.

If you’re interested in new and noteworthy websites of relevance to students, academics and researchers, or news from the scholarly publishing industry, or new academic and library blogs, Twitter, and much more, then check out this newsletter.

The newsletter is edited by Marion Kennedy, Catherine Ure and myself. It’s monthly, and its free!

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian