New eBooks in the Library - 6th August

A number of new eBooks are available from the Library:

Managing with Microsoft Project 2002, by Lisa A. Bucki and Gary Chefetz 

Language interrupted: signs of non-native acquisition in standard language grammars, by John McWhorter 

The changing languages of Europe, by Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva.

Expression in speech: analysis and synthesis, by Mark Tatham and Katherine Morton

Constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language, by Adele E. Goldberg.

The multilingual Internet: language, culture, and communication online, edited by Brenda Danet and Susan C. Herring

Mind as machine: a history of cognitive science, by Margaret A. Boden

Fighting over words: language and civil law cases, by Roger W. Shuy

For on and off campus access to these titles an Athens username and password is required.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian 

New books in the Library - 9th May

Added to the library recently were books on cryptography, climate change, stochastic processes integration and several other topics.

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

Selected new titles in Riccarton Library include Geometry and billiards, by Serge Tabachnikov, and Mathematics for physics and physicists, by Walter Appel.  Both are on standard loan.

A copy of Mechanistic modeling of gas-liquid two-phase flow in pipes, by Ovadia Shoh has been added to the Petroleum Engineering Library.

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

Welcome - new Subject Librarian for MACS & engineering

We are delighted to welcome Sarah Kelly, who joined us during the vacation. Sarah is our new Subject Librarian for the School of Mathematical & Computer Sciences, and also for Civil, Chemical and Mechanical Engineering.

Sarah will be providing an expert advisory service in these subjects to help you identify, locate and use information resources to support your learning, teaching and research - feel free to contact her at any time if you have a question. She is also available to give lectures, seminars etc. to groups of students or staff on any aspect of information services and resources in these subjects. She will be working with staff in these subjects to ensure that the Library is kept informed about, and purchases the books, journals and other resources needed to support the academic work in those subjects. Along with the other Subject Librarians, Sarah will also be providing our general Enquiry Service and delivering general induction sessions to new students at the beginning of the academic year. If you’re studying, researching or teaching in any of Sarah’s subjects, why not get in touch and see how Sarah can help. Contact her at S.Kelly@hw.ac.uk or by phone on 3574.

Gill McDonald
Reader Services Manager

Free trade magazines

TechXtra, the resource discovery tool for engineering, mathematics, and computing, which is based in Heriot-Watt University, operates an affiliation scheme with an organisation called Tradepub through which free magazines are available to qualifying professionals.

Here are some of the most popular titles:

EE Times Europe provides news, analysis, product and design information.

FibreSystems Europe delivers coverage of the technology and business issues affecting the specification, purchase and deployment of optical equipment, networks and services across Europe.

LBS Insider is focused news on the design, deployment, and use of location-based services (LBS) technologies around the world.

eWeek provides information for builders of e-business.

NASA Tech Briefs - a monthly magazine featuring exclusive reports of innovations developed by NASA and its industry partners/contractors that can be applied to develop new/improved products and solve engineering or manufacturing problems.

Baseline - a practical guide to planning, costing and managing the implementation of next generation IT solutions to baseline results.

PipeLine and Gas Technology provides information on: engineering, construction, storage, transmission, etc

Hydrocarbon Processing provides job-help information to technical and management personnel in petroleum refining, gas processing, petrochemical/chemical and engineer/constructor companies throughout the world.

Chemical Processing is a magazine that focuses on chemical manufacturing and its complexities.

Many more are listed in the A-Z.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Report from workshop looking into libraries and institutional portals

In May of last year, the Library and the ICBL were represented at a workshop looking into the role of libraries in institutional portals. A Report from the workshop has now been published by the JISC-funded CREE (Contextual Resource Evaluation Environment) project.

The CREE project was based on the premise that for the vast majority of search tools available on the Web, users have to visit the website of the search tool, where they are often presented with a bewildering range of interfaces with which to interact, which can be discouraging. Anyone who has used even a few of the databases and other electronic resources available to this library will no doubt be able relate to that scenario.

The purpose of the workshop was to involve a number of people from different universities who had been working on embedding search tools in portals, Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and local library websites. Heriot-Watt University was invited because of the work done on the PerX project, and in particular a pilot to embed PerX within the Blackboard VLE at Heriot-Watt, for which a separate report is available.

Outputs from the PerX project are being used in the TechXtra service, which enables anyone to search over 4 million items from 31 top sources in engineering, mathematics and computing. TechXtra is an initiative of the ICBL and the Library, and is made freely available because of the need to be able to cross-search databases and other information services on a subject basis.

The Gold Dust project, with which the Library and the ICBL is also involved, is being lead by Hull University Library where the CREE project is based.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

New books in the Library - 6 March

Added to the library recently were books on operating systems, percolation, environment and climate change, sewers in Scotland and several other topics.

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

Some selected titles include The design of future things, by Donald A. Norman, and a further copy of the 3rd edition of Property investment appraisal, by Andrew Baum and Neil Crosby. There’s more information about Property investment appraisal at the publisher’s website.

A copy of Foundations of F#, by Robert Pickering, was also added. There’s a preview of this book (table of contents, selected pages, etc) at Google Book Search.

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

Access to newspapers

Heriot-Watt staff and students have access to a service called Newsroom via a Library subscription. NewsRoom is comprised of 11,000 abstracts and full text records from the world’s important trade, business and scholastic journals, local newspapers, regional business publications, national and international business newspapers, industry newsletters, broadcast transcripts, and corporate news releases. Because of this range of sources, Newsroom is potentially relevant to every discipline.

The full text of major UK broadsheets are available, such as the:

• Financial Times
• Daily Telegraph
• Independent
• Herald
• Scotsman
• Times

Sources in other languages are also covered extensively in Newsroom, some examples of the newspapers available are:

• El Pais
• Die Welt
• Der Spiegel
• Le Monde

Search results can be saved in various formats, including RTF, PDF or HTML. Don’t be alarmed if you see a message about “Estimated Costs” in US dollars when you log out: the Library is paying a subscription for the service, and these charges don’t apply!

Newsroom is accessible from the list of databases on the Library website. If you would like more information about Newsroom, please get in touch.

More information about access to newspapers for Heriot-Watt staff and students is available on the Library website

Catherine Ure
Subject Librarian

Scientific Computing World

In a previous post, I wrote about the Research Information magazine.  The June/July issue is now available, and in it are articles about digital rights issues, new open access physics and maths journals from PhysMath Central, plus news about the German resolution in support of open access and publishers. 

Scientific Computing World is a sister publication to Research Information.  It’s dedicated to the computing and information technology needs of professionals working in science, technology, engineering, and medicine, and much of the content is available at the website.

The publishers of Scientific Computing World also produce SCNewsline,  a free monthly e-mailed newsletter that includes breaking news and events in technology, research, and the business world as it affects scientific computing.  In the most recent issue was news about the HPC cluster at the University of Surrey, and a review of Mathematica 6.  

Also newly available is an Education blog, which is intended as way for students and those interested in education to exchange ideas and information about how computing can make learning about science and technology easier, faster and more rewarding.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Useful new service for finding sci-tech papers and patents

Scitopia.org is a useful new service if you’re looking for scientific and technical papers, patents and data.

Its a free service which searches for publications from a number of professional societies: Acoustical Society of America, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Vacuum Society, The Electrochemical Society, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Institute of Physics Publishing, Optical Society of America, Society of Automotive Engineers, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, SPIE.

The service has been much in the news over the past few days, and as there’s no point me reiterating what has been written elsewhere, if you want to know more you can either read the FAQ, or what some other bloggers have said, for example:

• SciTech Library Question
• Science @ UCD Library
• Really Simple Sidi

Similar search services, which cover mostly different content, include: Scirus,  Scitation and our own TechXtra. For more places to find scholarly content, see our How To Find Out guides, or contact the Subject Librarians.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian