http://dl.begellhouse.com

Until April 8th, MMU has a free trial of Begell Digital Library’s Engineering Research and Biological Sciences Research Collections. The Engineering Research Collection consists of academic, research, and applied work in the field of thermal and fluids engineering. Data are categorized by the area of interest. Retrievable electronic files of data end information allow subscribers access to a wide selection of scientific and engineering research from Begell House journals and reference works. The Biomedical Sciences Journals Collection is a collection of online data of academic, research, and clinical work in the field of biomedical sciences. All information is delivered online in the full-text journal articles and other full text peer-reviewed research data.

The trial is available on-campus only and no password is required. Please let us know if this would be a useful addition to MMU’s electronic library by sending your comments to David Jenkins – d.jenkins@mmu.ac.uk

http://auctioncatalogs.jstor.org/

“JSTOR is collaborating with the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a pilot project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to understand how auction catalogs can be best preserved for the long-term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. Auction catalogs are vital for provenance research as well as for the study of art markets and the history of collecting. This prototype site is open to the public through June 2010. If you are interested in this content and the importance to art research, we encourage you to try the site and take the brief survey … In June, we will evaluate use of the content and the feedback we have received in order to help determine the future of the resource.”

http://cts.vresp.com/c/?AlexanderStreetPress/aab84cd6bd/bb6b7bd04c/0366a948b8

To celebrate Women’s History Month, Alexander Press is offering free access throughout March to this collection which is “organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000 … [and] … seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. history generally at the same time that it makes the insights of women’s history accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools. The collection currently includes 91 document projects and archives with more than 3,600 documents and 150,000 pages of additional full-text documents, and more than 2,060 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools”. [Source: email from Alexander Street Press, 02-03-10]

Ex Libris, providers of Find It!, have developed a new product: an article recommender service called bX. It’s currently in beta mode and I’ve just set up a trial for MMU. The trial will end about the 15th of March and your feedback is welcome.

What does bX do? Well, you’re probably already familiar with commercial recommender services on sites such as Amazon. On Amazon, you see recommendations for books and other items sold on the site. The bX service from Ex Libris provides recommendations for scholarly journal articles. For example, if you search — using the Find it! Article Finder or an SFX-enabled database such as Scopus — for the article “Walking with worms: Coral-associated epifaunal nematodes” you’ll receive the following recommendations from the bX service:

Users interested in this article also expressed an interest in the following:
1. Sundberg, P. “Global diversity of nemerteans (Nemertea) in freshwater.” Hydrobiologia
595.1 (2008): 61-78.
2. Vanreusel, A. “Post-embryonic morphology in Epsilonematidae, with a discussion on the variability of caudal gland outlets.” Journal of nematology 38.1 (2006): 97-118.
3. Gad, G. “Diversity and assumed origin of the Epsilonematidae (Nematoda) of the plateau of the Great Meteor Seamount.” Archive of fishery and marine research 51.1-3 (2004): 30-
4. Abebe, E. “Nematode communities of Lake Tana and other inland water bodies of Ethiopia.” Hydrobiologia 462.1-3 (2001): 41-73.
5. Fonseca, G. “Species richness of the genus Molgolaimus (Nematoda) from local to ocean scale along continental slopes.” Marine ecology 28.4 (2007): 446-459.

These recommendations appear when you follow the “Find it! at MMU” link within the individual bibliographic record in a database or, if you’ve used the Find It! Article Finder, the recommendations will appear on the Find It! screen which is displayed when you press the Submit button. You’ll see the usual information about the availability or non-availability of the article electronically at MMU - but at the bottom of the Find It! screen will appear the list of recommended articles.

By clicking on an article title on this list, you’ll be redirected to a Find It! screen with links to suppliers of an electronic copy of the article (if available at MMU). By clicking on the little box to the left of the article record (not shown in the paragaph above), and then following the S link (This is the default SFX button which, were we to subscribe to the service, would be replaced with our more familiar “Find It! at MMU” button), you’ll be taken to the more comprehensive information screen where you may link to the article if available electronically, but can also link to the library catalogoue, download the permanent URL, etc.

As with any resource, there are pros and cons:

The main advantage is quick discovery of additional articles relevant to your research.

The disadvantages relate primarily to expectations:
1. Not all articles will have the other recommendations feature. This is partially because the service is new and, as it uses data collected from the activity of subscribing institutions, the pool of data is still relatively small. As time goes by, the data will grow and so will the number of recommendations but there will still be articles with no recommendations attached to them.
2. Again, just because an article is listed in the recommendations does not mean that MMU has electronic access to it. This is the main misunderstanding with the Find it! service: many people think that because there is a link, the article is available. A Find It! link is a quick way of establishing whether or not an article is available at MMU - and if not, then offers alternatives such as a search of the MMU library catalogue to locate print copies, information about inter-library loans and a link to Google Scholar. But it is not a guarantee that the article is available at MMU.

Why not try bX out for yourself?

Go to the Find It! Article Finder and input the following information:
Article Title: Walking with worms: Coral-associated epifaunal nematodes
Journal Title: Journal of Biogeography
Year of Publication: 2008
and click on Submit.

or go to Scopus and run quick keyword search for “epifaunal nematodes”. Click on the Find It! at MMU links in the resulting list of articles to see if any other articles are recommended.

If you have any questions or comments about bX, please get in touch: m.harrison@mmu.ac.uk

Provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), OECD iLibrary is OECD’s Online Library for Books, Papers and Statistics and the gateway to OECD’s analysis and data. OECD iLibrary users are able to conduct searches, retrieve listings of publications meeting the search criteria, and choose to download selected titles in various formats, or selected statistical data in spreadsheet format. Access is available for titles published from January 1998 onwards.

Ask at any MMU Library Enquiry Desk for the web address and login details. Please send your comments and feedback to David Jenkins: d.jenkins@mmu.ac.uk Many thanks!

Play Index may be used to “find citations to some 31,000 plays published individually or in collections from 1949 to the present. It will also search over 600 monologues. You may limit results to plays with a specific number of male and/or female roles, or size of total cast and search for plays appropriate for different age ranges. A descriptive annotation summarizes the plot and indicates any musical requirements: chorus, singing, dancing etc., and indicates number of sets, noting whether scenery requirements are interior or exterior. The service covers a wide range of plays written in or translated into English, including one-act plays, pageants, plays in verse, radio and television plays, and classic drama”.

The trial runs until 28 February 2010 and is accessible at http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml
Ask at any MMU library enquiry desk for the username and password. And, as always, I’d ask you to send your feedback to our trials manager, David Jenkins: d.jenkins@mmu.ac.uk Many thanks!

http://apps.brepolis.net/bbih/search.cfm

Until this year, the online RHS Bibliography of British and Irish History was available on a cost-free basis. Unlike many publishers who are turning to Open Access models of publication, the publishers of the RHS Bibliography have now opted for a subscription-based model – for reasons including a secure future and further developmental work. The Bibliography of “provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present”. MMU has a free on-campus only trial until 27 Feb, so please have a look and send your comments to David Jenkins: d.jenkins@mmu.ac.uk For information, the annual subscription fee quoted to us is £795 plus Vat and would include both on- and off-campus access.

http://www.travelwriting.amdigital.co.uk/

Until February 15th 2010, MMU has a free trial of this resource which “ brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Sources cover a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war. A variety of forms of travel writing are included, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes a slideshow with hundreds of items of visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs”.

Ask at any MMU library enquiry desk for the username and password. The trial is available both on- and off-campus. And, as always, I’d ask you to send your feedback to David Jenkins – d.jenkins@mmu.ac.uk Let David know if this resource would be a useful addition to our electronic library.

Until February 18th, MMU has an on-campus trial of this collection of full-text documents relating to the American Civil War and the period 1840 to 1877. It includes newspapers, government documents and rare printed materials.

Please, if you do use the resource, send your views to my colleague, David Jenkins – D.Jenkins@mmu.ac.uk. David maintains a database of comments about all of our e-trials, and these are used to inform decision-making about which new resources are priorities for purchase. Many thanks!

http://www.ukpressonline.co.uk

Until the 20th of December, MMU has a free trial of this service which provides full-text access to:
–Daily Mirror Archive 1903 - current
–Daily Express Archive 1900 - current
–Sunday Express Archive 2000 - current
–Daily Star Archive 2000 - current
–Daily Star Sunday Archive 2002 - current
“Every page is available in thumbnail, small preview, full-size view and ready-to-print PDF with live text, and page-by-page browse of editions. You can search the archives by date, topic or keyword.”

Access is available on-campus via IP Address recognition and off-campus via Shibboleth (ie, your MMU network username and password).

Please send your comments to David Jenkins, d.jenkins@mmu.ac.uk