Please be advised that scheduled maintenance of Web of Knowledge databases will take place beginning on Saturday, 27th April 2013 at 23:00 and ending by Monday, 29th April 2013 at 02:00.
Web of Knowledge databases may not be available during this period. This will affect:
- Web of Science (Citation databases and Conference Proceedings index)
- BIOSIS Citation Index
- Journal Citation Reports
MIMAS, the providers of the Historic Books service, ran a user survey from late 2012 to early 2013. 54% of the respondents were regular users of the resource, using either several times a week or once a week, and 61% said they would recommend it. The full results of the survey are now available on the MIMAS website.
Historic Books is a useful research resource for anyone interested in literature or history. It searches over 300,000 books published in English or in England before 1800 and 65,000 nineteenth century books. It includes the materials previously accessible via EEBO (Early English Books Online) and ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and also provides access to the British Library’s 19th Century book collection for the first time.
Anyone researching or studying History, Geography or Environmental Science may be interested in Historic Digimap, which provides access to Ordnance Survey mapping data from the period 1843 to 1996. It is part of the Digimap service, which allows registered users to view and create maps using OS map data. The Historic Digimap service allows you to see how an area has developed over time. It also contains land use maps. A short video tutorial is available from our user guide.
Anyone researching or studying medieval British history may be interested in a new resource from JISC – Manuscripts Online, which provides access to written materials from the period 1000 – 1500. The single search box searches manuscripts, early printed books, and historical documents from libraries, archives, publishers and universities. Some materials searched are freely available, others may require an additional login. Should you require further assistance accessing resources via Manuscripts Online please contact library@stir.ac.uk
The University Library currently spends hundreds of thousands of pounds every year subscribing to electronic resources for use by the University’s staff and students. However there is currently no coherent way of determining the level of usage of these resources, so, to remedy this, Information Services is implementing a tool called RAPTOR which will be able to provide summary data on the levels of usage of these resources. In order to enable RAPTOR to gather complete information on eResource usage, it will be necessary for on campus users of these resources to log on to the Portal before accessing them.
A large number of the electronic resources the library subscribes to are freely available to anyone accessing them from on campus without requiring them to enter a username or password. This is known as IP Authentication as the service uses the IP Address (i.e. the location) of the accessing computer to determine the user is accessing from a subscribing institution and is therefore entitled to gain access to the resource without entering a username and password.
In order to provide off campus access to IP Authenticated resources, the University uses a system called “EZProxy” which enables off campus users to log on to the Portal and, if they are recognised by the portal as a member of staff or a student from the University, EZProxy then requests access to the resource on the user’s behalf, and, as EZProxy is located on campus and has a Stirling IP Address, the service will permit the off campus user access to the service on this basis.
From the start of 2013 Information Services intends to start gathering data on the usage of the electronic resources the library subscribes to and intends to use log on requests passing through the EZProxy server as one means to achieve this. In order to get a more complete picture of usage, however, it will be necessary to ensure that both on campus and off campus users gain access to IP Protected resources via EZProxy. The upshot of this will be that on campus users will also be required to log on to the portal before gaining access to IP Authenticated resources.
Users who have already logged on to the Portal in the current browser session, before accessing any EZProxy protected resources, will not be required to re-enter their username and password. So, for example, on campus users who have already logged on to the Portal in order to access Succeed, will not be required to re-authenticate when accessing electronic resources from within Succeed.
It is expected that EZProxy authentication for on campus users will be switched on at some point during the week before Christmas 2012 in order to ensure that complete electronic resource usage data is being collected from the start of 2013 onwards.
Michael White
EZProxy Administrator
The Library currently has a free trial to the Manual of European Environmental Policy until the 15th November.
Access from: http://www.europeanenvironmentalpolicy.eu/
The Manual is the most reliable and comprehensive source on EU environmental policy and is a useful research tool for anyone working or researching in this field.
The Manual contains analysis of over 500 EU Directives, Decision and Regulations as well as information on forthcoming legislation and historic legislation. All areas of environmental policy are covered giving information on the purpose, substance and development of each item of legislation as well as an account of its implementation and enforcement across the EU.
Please send any feedback to: Lisa Haddow, l.j.haddow@stir.ac.uk
The Library has recently taken out a subscription to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. This is an extensive resource, which provides scholarly biographies of the people who have shaped British history and culture. It is particularly useful if you are studying History, but will also be relevant for other subjects with a historical slant.
You can access the ODNB from the A-Z list of Online Resources on the IS website.
Thanks to JISC, we now have free access to one series of 19th Century UK Periodicals Online.
From the JISC Collections website http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/
“This resource, subtitled New Readerships: Women’s, Children’s, Humour and Leisure/Sport, consists of almost 100 academically selected titles and approximately 1.2 million pages. It focuses on the birth of modern magazine publishing in the UK between 1800 and 1900.
Titles included cover the spectrum of women’s writing, from Hearth and Home to the suffragist The Vote via Women and Josephine Butler’s The Dawn, and also chart the rapid rise of children’s entertainment and education, with titles including Boys’ Own and Little Folks.
The explosion in popular sports and hobbies, from gardening and horse racing to cricket and cycling, is well covered, and there is a broad spread of satirical and comic titles such as Punch, Fun, Judy, and Figaro in London.
This collection presents primary source periodical content allowing full text searching in addition to an extensive library of newly captured images, including approximately 8,000 in colour.”
To access 19th Century UK Periodicals Online please use the A-Z list of Online Resources or see the Publishing Studies or History Subject Research Guides.
A word of caution: we do not have access to the ‘Empire’ series, despite what you see on the database’s home page.
12th May is International Nurses’ Day. This event provides an opportunity to highlight the library’s collections for nursing.
The Stirling, Highland and Western Isles Campus libraries have extensive collections of printed and electronic resources for anyone studying, teaching or researching nursing or healthcare. To check the availability and find the location of books in the library you should search the library catalogue. Here are some suggested classmarks:
| Subject/classmark | Stirling | Highland | Western Isles |
| Nursing Skills | Y 11 E | WY 100 | WY 100 |
| Health Promotion | Y 32 F | WA 590 | WA 590 |
| Community Nursing | Y 32 R | WY 106 | WY 106 |
| Nursing Ethics | AS 4.2 | WY 85 | WY 85 |
| Mental Health Nursing | B 22.302 | WM 100 | WM 100 |
| Learning Disabilities | DA 2.2 | WM 300 | WM 300 |
| Anatomy | XK 5.1 | QS 4 | QS 4 |
To locate journal articles for nursing we recommend searching CINAHL, Health Source, Web of Science and, for Mental Health Nursing, PsycINFO. All of these databases can be accessed from the A-Z list of online resources.
Other useful search tools for anyone studying or researching nursing include the Cochrane Library (a source of information on evidence based medicine) and the Knowledge Network from NHS Scotland. Links to these resources, and other recommended resources can be found on our subject research guides for Nursing or Mental Health Nursing.
The Library now provides access to a collection of 400 digitised books from the 15th to 17th centuries. The collection covers topics from anatomy and botany to witchcraft. This resource will be of interest to anyone teaching or researching European history, the history of medicine or the history of publishing. You can access the collection via the A-Z list of online resources.