New books in the Library

Here’s a list of new books added to the Library in the last week.

Ambient intelligence / edited by W. Weber, J.M. Rabaey and E. Aarts.   Springer, 2005.

Social theory at work / edited by Marek Korczynski, Randy Hodson and Paul K. Edwards.   OUP, 2006.

Prospects for monetary unions after the Euro / edited by Paul de Grauwe and Jacques Melitz.   MIT, 2005.

Mayson, French and Ryan on company law : 2006-2007 edition / by Stephen W. Mayson, Derek French and Christopher L. Ryan.  23rd ed.   OUP, 2007.

Mayson, French and Ryan on company law : 2006-2007 edition / by Stephen W. Mayson, Derek French and Christopher L. Ryan.  23rd ed.   OUP, 2007.

Fluvial processes in geomorphology / by Luna B. Leopold, M. Gordon Wolman and John P. Miller.   Dover, 1995.

Art forms in nature : the prints of Ernst Haeckel / by Ernst Haeckel.   Prestel, 1998.

Understanding comics / by Scott McCloud and others.   HarperPerennial, 1994.

Mastering unreal technology : the art of level design / by Jason Busby, Zak Parrish and Joel Van Eenwyk.   Sams, 2005.

For more details, go to http://hw.lib.ed.ac.uk/cgi-bin/newbooks.cgi

New in VISION - a toolkit for course developers

A LIBRARY VLE TOOLKIT is now available in VISION

Are you developing a course using VISION? Would you like advice on how to -  

• integrate library resources in your online learning materials
• stay within copyright regulations when using electronic materials 
• find ready made learning materials for re-use or re-purposing

plus more on -

• creating interactive content
• advice on making your online materials accessible to all?

If so, the Library VLE Toolkit is for you!   Find out more about it with the Toolkit leaflet

The Toolkit has been developed by library staff with the approval of EDU and has been set up as a VISION module. Login to VISION and find it in My Modules.

The library staff would welcome any feedback you have on the Toolkit.  If you have any comments, suggestions or improvements, please contact M.L.Kennedy@hw.ac.uk.

Marion Kennedy, Subject Librarian

How do you find information about the built environment?

If you’re looking for information (articles, facts, reports, journals, guidebooks, conference papers, standards, websites, etc) on any subject related to the built environment, one of the best places to start is my How To Find Out in the Built Environment guide.

I’ve recently updated this to include new types of information, such as blogs and digital repositories, and its now an extensive guide to sources of information in the built environment, with an emphasis on what is available to members of Heriot Watt University from the Library.  Its especially aimed at those doing literature searches or dissertations, but should be of use to anyone looking for information in the subjects covered.

It gives advice on making a literature search and taking references,  and will tell you the best databases and other sources to use to find all kinds of building, construction, planning and urban studies information.

This is one of a number of subject guides produced by the Subject Librarians to help members of the university find relevant information.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Expanded coverage for free technology search service - TechXtra

TechXtra is a completely free service which is widely used throughout the world by those looking for information in technology subjects (engineering, mathematics and computing).  It’s produced and maintained by staff in the ICBL and Library at Heriot Watt. 

A number of improvements have recently been made to the service, making it an  important source of information about articles, articles, technical reports, full text eprints, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical data, the latest research, thesis & dissertations, patents, teaching and learning resources, and more - in the subjects covered.

Now, it’s possible to search across 31 major collections (over 4 million items) from the TechXtra home page.

In addition, TechXtra has partnered with GlobalSpec to provide a free Patents and Standards search facility.

We’ve also increased the coverage of the OneStep Industry News and Job Announcement services by adding numerous new sources.

There are new, free, trade magazine subscriptions available, and we’ve also made some enhancements to the service which make it easier to use.

The new collections now covered by TechXtra’s cross-search are:

• Emerald - a well established publisher of academic and professional literature. TechXtra indexes a subset of Emerald Journals relevant to Engineering & Materials Science. Around 6,000 articles are indexed from approximately 15 Journals. Full text content is available to Emerald subscribers, or by pay-per-view.
• JORUM - a searchable repository of learning and teaching resources for academic and support staff in the UK. TechXtra indexes around 1,500 JORUM objects. An Athens username and password are required to access the actual resources.
• Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library. TechXtra indexes a sample subset file from the ICE Virtual Library of papers produced between 1836-1998. Over 5,500 papers are indexed (including the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers). Full text content is available by subscription, or by pay-per-view.

These collections join arXiv, CISTI, CiteSeer, DOAJ, Inderscience, IoP, NASA Technical Reports, and many more in the TechXtra cross-search. A full list of the collections covered by TechXtra is available.

TechXtra’s subject focus makes it an ideal finding tool for technology and technology-related materials.

In the majority of cases, the full text of items found through TechXtra is freely available. This includes the 8,000 Australian theses, nearly half a million articles in computer and information science from CiteSeer, items found via ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World), thousands of eprints from arXiv in mathematics and computer science, 300 earthquake engineering technical reports from Caltech Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory Technical Reports, many articles from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), theses and dissertations from NDLTD, learning resources from the National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS), and more.

For more information about TechXtra, contact:
Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian
Heriot-Watt University Library
Edinburgh
0131 451 3576
r.a.macleod@hw.ac.uk

Latest issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter is now available

The latest issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter is now available.  This newsletter is edited by Marion Kennedy, Catherine Ure and myself, and is full of information about new and notable websites of interest to academics, news about blogs, and news about anything else which has caught the eye of the editors.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Taylor & Francis journals now available through Informaworld

 

Taylor & Francis and Routledge have set up a new interface for their e-journals, Informaworld. Up to now, the Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals which Heriot-Watt University subscribes to have been available through Metapress, which is still the default interface.

Access via Informaworld is available to all members of the University: follow the link to  http://www.informaworld.com. Off-campus users should access the site through the University’s Virtual Private Network (VPN). The Informaworld interface allows users to set up alerts, bookmark content and save searches.

Among the journals we subscribe to are

• Accounting Education,
• Regional Studies, 
• Urban Studies,
• Journal of Property Studies,
• European Planning Studies,
• Journal of Environmental Planning and Management,
• International Planning Studies,
• Planning Practice and Research,
• Housing Studies,
• Local Economy,
• Urban Water Journal,
• The International Journal of Human Resource Management,
• Journal of Sports Sciences.

For assistance, contact Libhelp

Arnold Myers
Senior Information Scientist

ScienceDirect service unavailable Saturday 20th January

ScienceDirect, the subscription-based information service available to members of Heriot Watt University, will be  unavailable for approximately 6 hours on Saturday 20th January, starting at 19.30 GMT.

The reason for the system downtime is that the search functionality of the service is being upgraded. 

ScienceDirect is one of the most popular information services used by staff, researchers and students at Heriot Watt.  It contains the full text of more than 1,000 Elsevier Science journals in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences.  It provides a good starting point for literature searches, and is one of the most comprehensive database of primary literature in the sciences.

More information is available from the Library about ScienceDirect.

For help and advise on using ScienceDirect, contact your Subject Librarian.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Free access to 64 Palgrave Macmillan journals until 14th February

Here’s an offer which should interest staff and students of various Schools at Heriot Watt. 

Palgrave Macmillan are offering free online access to their complete journals portfolio from 15th January until the 14th of February, 2007. Palgrave Macmillan publish high quality, scholarly journals across the core disciplines of business and management, social sciences and the humanities.

Subject areas covered by this publisher include:

• Bioscience Business |
• Business & Management |
• Economics |
• Education |
• Finance |
• Information Systems & Technology |
• Marketing |
• Office for National Statistics |
• Political Science & International Studies |
• Social & Cultural Studies |
• Urban Design, Real Estate & Construction |

To whet your appetite, titles include:

Journal of Asset Management

Risk Management

Comparative Economic Studies

There is also a full Journals A-Z list of titles available in this offer.

We currently subscribe to the following titles from Palgrave Macmillan:

Economic & Labour Market Review
Economic Trends
Journal of International Business Studies
Labour Market Trends
Monthly Digest of Statistics
United Kingdom Economic Accounts
URBAN DESIGN International

For a full list of electronic journals available to members of Heriot Watt University, see the A-Z list of Electronic Journals.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Tell us what you think about the Library

This message is addressed to all members of Heriot Watt University.

How well does the University Library meet your needs?  How could we improve? Are there other services we could provide which would help you to learn, teach or do your research? 

We want to know what you think!

Please help us improve Library services by completing our short survey form.

Thank you.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Free access to UK research in biomedicine and life sciences

A new free digital archive of biomedical and life science journal articles (UK PubMed Central- UKPMC) was launched on 8th January 2007. This new resource, based on the US based PubMed Central (PMC) will grow to provide a major resource for the UKs biomedical research output.  Major UK based research organisations (including the Wellcome Trust) have committed to making their funded research available in UKPMC.

 Visit UKPMC