Wednesday 16 November 2011

Royal Society's historical journal archive - free to access

The Royal Society's historical journal archive is now permanently free to access http://royalsocietypublishing.org/search The archive includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal. Around 60,000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive with papers published more than 70 years ago now becoming freely available.


The archive includes Isaac Newton’s first published scientific paper,and geological work by a young Charles Darwin

EThos - UK E-Theses Online Service

EThOs is the UK's Electronic theses Online Service. Over 52,000 full-text theses are now available for free download, and 300,000 records of UK doctoral theses available for searching. EThOs is available at http://ethos.bl.uk/ You do need to register if you want to download or order a thesis - follow the link on the site to Login/Register.

You can also follow links to a free open access copy available direct from the awarding institution; order a digital copy of a paper thesis or contact the awarding institution’s library to find out how to view a copy.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

British Library events

The British Library is hosting a series of free events for first year PhD students. These events are specially tailored free days of talks, workshops and networking opportunities at the Library, focusing on specific subjects: History, English and Social Sciences.

Each day includes a general introduction to relevant research sources, curator talks and workshops, and details on how to get a Reader Pass. Students from outside London may apply for a limited number of travel bursaries.

More details, including an online booking facility are available at: http://www.bl.uk/HEtrainingdays

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Research training

The Library is offering a range of training for all researchers this semester, details below. All sessions are in the Headington Library Training Room between 12.00 - 13.00. There is no need to book. If you have any queries about the sessions please contact: libraryenquiries@brookes.ac.uk

Information at your desktop: finding your way around the Electronic Library. This session provides details of the range of electronic resources available at your desktop, including journals, journal collections, databases and reference resources:
Friday 14 October and Tuesday 1 November

Keeping up-to-date: Keep abreast of new research and development in your subject area: find out how to keep up-to-date with new publications in journals, books, conferences and more;
track your research using the Web of Science citation indexes:
Thursday 20 October and Monday 7 November

EndNote reference management software - we are offering two different sessions:
Introduction to the key features of EndNote X3: Monday 14 November

Endnote drop-in sessions: Tuesday 22 November and Thursday 1 December
These sessions will help you with your EndNote (desktop or Web) questions and problems. Bring along any queries you have and a copy of your EndNote library and associated Word documents. There will be an opportunity to do some practical work.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

New electronic resources

The Library now provides access to the following JISC platforms which bring together a range of resources: JISC Historic Books, JISC Media Hub and JISC Journal Archives.

JISC Historic Books consists of Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and 19th Century books from the British Library collection. You can search across all the collection or a selection.

JISC MediaHub is a multimedia platform offering a wealth of digital image, film and sound resources available for use in learning, teaching and research. The service includes a wide range of subjects but is particularly strong for news coverage.

JISC Journal Archives enables you to cross-search over 450 journals in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, medicine, law, engineering, from a number of collections including: Brill Journal Archive Online ; Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library Archive ; Institute of Physics (IOP) Journal Archive ; Oxford Journals Archive ; Periodical Archive Online.

Thursday 28 July 2011

Wellcome Arabic Manuscripts Online

The Arabic manuscripts collection of the Wellcome Library (London) consists of around 1000 manuscript books and fragments relating to the history of medicine. A substantial proportion of this collection is now available online at http://wamcp.bibalex.org/ with high-quality digital images of entire manuscripts. You can search the entire collection or browse by date. Manuscripts go back to the eight century.

Thursday 30 June 2011

Web of Knowledge update - new features and enhancements

Web of Knowledge version 5.3 will be launched on 17 July. This updated version will provide a number of new features and enhancements to the service. For example: there will be no stop words; you will be able to use the 'near' operator to search for words in close proximity to each other and thus focus your search; all results will be returned with no record limits.

The Web of Knowledge website: http://thenewwok.com/ provides details of all the new features as well as a range of support documentation.

The library webpages at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/research/wosguide.html provide a basic guide to searching and details of features which are particularly useful for researchers.

Connected Histories - new online resource

Connected Histories is a new website which provides access to a number of digital resources related to early modern and nineteenth century Britain: http://www.connectedhistories.org/

You can search across all resources by keyword, person or place. If you select 'more search options' you can combine your searches. You can also refine your search by material type or by the source.

Connected Histories includes the following sources: British History Online, Charles Booth Online, London Lives, Old Bailey Online,Parliamentary Papers, British Newspapers 1600-1900.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

VADS - the online resource for visual arts

VADS (Visual Arts Data Service) is a UK organisation that provides a huge range of digital images and other visual arts resources free and copyright cleared for use in UK higher and further education. You can search the indiviual collections that make up the service or search by keyword. The collections include material from a wide variety of sources, such as textiles, fashion, arts and craft but also contain the Women's Library suffrage collection and art and posters from the Imperial War Museum.
You can view the collections at http://www.vads.ac.uk/

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Calling all researchers: what are your views on open access?

RADAR (Research Archive and Digital Asset Repository) is conducting a survey to find out what you think about Open Access and how you use the Research Archive part of the repository.

Within the publicly available Research Archive, we aim to make available information about your publications and also the full text of the articles. This means that your research will be available on open access and visible to the everyone who is interested in it (this is subject to publishers' permissions).
Several universities throughout the UK are conducting the same survey, the results are to be collated by the Repositories Support Project to gain a better understanding of attitudes to Open Access within the United Kingdom.

The survey is anonymous and will take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.You can complete the survey now by clicking on the link below:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/brookes.ac.uk/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHZRV3F0ZGNycUVBcEdlMGQtbGd4b0E6MQ

For more information go to: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/go/radar. Thank you for your support

Thursday 12 May 2011

ARTstor - new image database

The library has subscribed to ARTstor a new image database. ARTstor offers more than one million images covering a wide variety of subject areas, including art, architecture, history, religion, anthropology and literature. The database is particularly good for works in US collections. The images are high quality and may be viewed, printed or downloaded for reproduction in coursework, for classroom presentation, or in Brookes Virtual.

There are no restrictions about on campus access but off campus use is only possible after registering on campus. Further instructions on how to do this are given on the database web page - from the Library home page at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/ select Databases and select ARTstor from the A-Z list.

Vacation Loans

From Thursday 12th May both one and two week loans for research students (MPhil and Phd) and staff will be issued until Friday 23rd September. If another user reserves a book you have borrowed you will receive a recall for the item and the loan period will be reduced to 2 weeks from the date of the recall.

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Special Collections Showcase - Thursday 31 March

The Library is hosting a lunchtime event to publicise our range of Special Collections. You are warmly invited to come along and sample some of the delights of our collections. Our Collections are great for researchers and excellent as a teaching resource.

There will be short presentations about each of the themes our Collections cover, from Food and Drink, Publishing and Literary Prizes to Architecture, Brookes Archive, Welfare and Health. There will also be lots of items on display and the opportunity to explore our Collections further after the presentations.

Light bites, soft drinks, tea and coffee will be available from 12.15 pm.
Date: Thursday 31 MarchTime: 12.15 - 13.45
Location: BG05, Buckley Building, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane.

Please reply to Helen Whittaker (hkwhittaker@brookes.ac.uk) to confirm that you will be attending.

Monday 21 March 2011

Getting Published - powerpoint of session

We have made available the powerpoint slides from the Getting Published session which we ran recently. You can view the slides on RADAR at: http://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/1933d71b-b74a-3325-69c9-7646b0cfd531/1/
You will need to log in initially with your student or staff number and password.


RADAR, Research Archive and Digital Asset Repository, is the university's multi-purpose archive of research and teaching materials. Further details about RADAR including access is available from our web pages at http://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/access/home.do

Friday 25 February 2011

Getting Published - New session for all researchers Friday 4 March, 12.00 - 13.00 BG11 (Buckley Building)

Getting Published - New session for all researchers Friday 4 March, 12.00 - 13.00 BG11 (Buckley Building). Booking not required, just turn up!

Now that you have produced some research, how do you go about telling others and why? This is part of the Graduate School’s training events, and is aimed at all researchers at whatever stage they are at.

Helen Whittaker and Rowena Rouse from the Library will be giving this introductory talk which will cover :
  • the publishing process, (from talking to your supervisor to publishing in a peer reviewed journal)
  • the reasons for publishing
  • how to make your research more visible.

Please contact Helen Whittaker hkwhittaker@brookes.ac.uk if you have any queries about the session.

Cambridge journals digital archive (full text) - a new addition to our eresources collection

Cambridge journals digital archive (full text) is a developing service consisting of full text articles from 171 journals published by Cambridge University Press, stretching back from 1827 through to approximately 1996. Titles are being added over time and some will not be available until August 2011.

New features on JSTOR - excellent for researchers

As many of you will be aware the library subscribes to JSTOR which consists of a huge range of journals, many full text, from the humanities, social sciences and sciences. JSTOR also contains 19th Century British Pamphlets, including Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection and Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection.
There are some new features on JSTOR which will help you keep up to date with your research. All you need to do is register for a MyJSTOR account - connect to JSTOR and select the MyJSTOR option. You can then:

  • Set up an alert and receive emails when new content is added to the database which matches your saved search terms

  • Set up Table of Contents (eTOC) email alerts - when viewing a journal article or list of volumes and issues, you have the option to track future additions to the journal contents in JSTOR with an "eTOC" (electronic table of contents) alert

  • Track citations - check the box next to the citation you want to track. You will receive an email message if another article cites the article you are tracking and is added to the JSTOR archive.

JSTOR is available from anywhere (Athens account needed for off campus access) from our list of databases at http://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Training sessions for researchers

The library is running a range of training sessions this semester specifically for researchers, details below. All sessions are held in the Headington Library Training Room from 12.00 - 13.00. There is no need to book. Any queries, please contact hkwhittaker@brookes.ac.uk


Information at your desktop : finding your way around the Electronic Library. Overview of the range of electronic resources available at your desktop, including journals, journal collections, databases and reference resources: Friday 18 February and Monday 7 March.

Keeping up to date : keep abreast of new research and development in your subject area: find out how to keep up-to-date with new publications in journals, books, conferences and more; track your research using the Web of Science citation indexes: Tuesday 1 March and Thursday 17 March.

Introduction to EndNote X3 : an introduction to the key features of this software, which helps you manage and use your references: Tuesday 8 March.

EndNote drop-in session : to help you with your EndNote (desktop or Web) questions and problems. Bring along any queries you have and a copy of your EndNote library and associated Word documents: Monday 21 March and Friday 1 April.

Friday 21 January 2011

Northern Ireland Stormont papers now freely available

The Stormont papers website, http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/stormontpapers/index.html offers access to the Parliamentary Debates of the devolved government of Northern Ireland from June 7 1921 to the dissolution of Parliament in March 28 1972.

These papers provide valuable insight into the development of the Province. The 92,000 printed pages of Parliamentary Debates document parliamentary discussion on a wide range of issues.

Users are able to search the site in a number of ways: by specific keywords, eg prisons, drunkenness; by browsing particular debates; by viewing individual volumes which are arranged by year.

EndNote Web training sessions in Semester 2

EndNote Web is a piece of software which helps you manage and use your references. You can use EndNote Web to store and organise your references, transfer references from many databases and library catalogues directly into your EndNote library and automatically create bibliographies or reference lists for your research, formatted to the style of your choice.

The Library is offering training sessions for Brookes students and staff which will cover the basics of getting started with EndNote Web. Booking is not required.

Sessions take place on the following dates in the Headington Library Training Room at 12.00. They will last for 1 hour with some (optional) extra time for hands-on practice:

Thursday 10 February
Tuesday 15 February
Thursday 3 March
Wednesday 16 March
Monday 4 April