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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/