Friday 23 May 2008

Wiley-Blackwell Library Newsletter: May 2008

Keep abreast with the latest Wiley-Blackwell News (May 2008)
Life Science Medicine & Health Environmental SciencePsychiatry Business & Economics Literature
- Journals - First issues of new journals now online
- Journal Backfiles - Blackwell backfiles reach 5.3 million pages
- Online Books - Spotlight on Life Science and Earth Science
- Reference Works - New works and sample content
*
Platform Update - July 1, 2008.
All journal content on Blackwell Synergy merges into Wiley InterScience:
As of July 1, 2008, all Blackwell journal content—including all full-text HTML and PDF versions of articles from current issues, backfiles, and issues published online before print—will be incorporated into Wiley InterScience.
Over the weekend of June 28th and 29th, 2008, there will be a period when both Blackwell Synergy and Wiley InterScience will be unavailable while we transition and re-index data.
After July 1, 2008, Blackwell Synergy will no longer be available online.
Some important things to remember:
Subscriptions for Blackwell journals on Synergy will migrate to Wiley InterScience, with the terms of all existing licenses honored
- These access options will continue to function seamlessly:
• IP authentication
• Athens authentication
• Username and password access
- These access options will not be supported by Wiley InterScience in 2008 (support for these is in development for 2009):
• Shibboleth
• Third-party federated access management systems
From August 2008 onwards, usage data for Blackwell journals will be available on Wiley InterScience, presented in a separate report but in the same format as that offered for Wiley journals.
For complete details, go to: interscience.wiley.com/transition
The Newsletter is AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:
www.wiley.com/go/wiley-blackwell/librarynews
* Conference Schedule - For the Americas, Europe, and Asia

Thursday 22 May 2008

Get started with Social Networking in your Library

"Five Weeks to a Social Library" is the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. It was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software.
I have found this post through the Social Networking Librarian blog.

About Five Weeks to a Social Library




Five Weeks to a Social Library is the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. It was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software.

 blog it

OvidSP New Interface: Now @ UJ


Finally we have the new Ovid/SilverPlatter (OvidSP) interface.
The following Bibliographic databases are available on OvidSP platform:
- Analytical Abstracts (1 user at the time), Coverage: 1980 - 2008
- Parasitology (1 user at the time), Coverage: 1973 - 2008
- The Philosopher's Index, Coverage: 1940 to June 2007
- Wison Index to Legal Periodicals, Coverage: 1983 - 2008
- Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, Coverage: 1985 - 2008
Access is available through the UJ Library Databases
Interface characteristics:
* Basic Search:
OvidSP's Basic Search is a natural language search. Enter your search terms and click the Search button. OvidSP posts results to your
search history. In addition, OvidSP's Basic Search tab makes it easy for you to apply limit criteria to your searches.
* Advanced Search:
When you select the Advanced Ovid Search tab, keyword searching is the default search type of the command line. The Advanced Ovid Search tab offers these search types: Keyword Author Title Journal
* Find Citation:
OvidSP's Find Citation tab lets you submit fielded data to retrieve specific journal article citations.
* Search Fields:
From the Search Fields tab, you can view all indexed fields of a database. You can also browse for other fields to search in the index display. OvidSP displays the fielded index with the term you entered.
* Search Tools:
OvidSP provides tools that let you discover more about the relationship between terms and subjects within the context of the database in which you are searching.
* Search History
Under each search option, there is an Search History tab. It keeps you aware of all searches you have done during that session.
* Saved Searches/Alerts
You need to create your personal account
* Help Options:
You have three options to learn more about the databases:
- Help (if you are, for example on the Basic Search screen and have problem, click on Help for instructions)
- Database Field Guide - provide information on the database you currently search
- Display Knowledge - a list of 347 available answers (RSS feed programs compatible with OvidSP; Is there a way to enter multiple email addresses for eTOC email alerts?; Setting up eTOCs for other users, etc.)
* Log off - don't forget to "log off" each time you finish your search. Keep in mind that we have an 1 users licence.

Thursday 8 May 2008

Open Source PDF Creator

PDF Creator: Instead of paying for a program that can generate PDF files: use this convenient tool instead. It easily creates PDFs from any Windows program ( Power Points, Publisher, Word, etc.)
I have found this Open Source PDF Creator on Monday and decided to download it. I always have the need to convert documents in PDF and every time I run to our IT for assistance. But, now I can do it myself and it is very convenient to have it.
To download starts with the following steps:
* Click on the "green" Download PDF Creator
* Scroll down the page and Click on: Download (PDF Creator - Dec 2007 release)
* Then select the file to download from the Table

Once downloaded the PDF Creator will appear as a PRINT option. Once you click on PRINT (the original document), select "PDF Creator" option to convert the document in PDF. It will ask you to save the new document and then the conversion will start. It tooks seconds for the document to be converted. It is very easily done and will save you a lot of memory space, if your document is originally big.
I hope this will be a good solution to those who do not have PDF option on their computers.

Lumifi Research Widget

Search Lumifi on any research topic

Open Source Software in Education

Interesting article on Open Source Software in Education was introduced in "iLibrarian" blog (7/5/08)
Shaheen E. Lakhan and Kavita Jhunjhunwala write about open source software in online learning for the April-June 2008 issue of Educause Quarterly. They discuss the history of open source, its implementations in the educational sector including virtual universities and education portals, and its impact on learning.

8 Top Alternative Search Engines

"iLibrarian" blog posted on 7th of May information on 8 alternative Search Engine:
Looking to go beyond Google for Web search? If so, you’ll want to check out these eight search engines listed by Web Worker Daily as viable alternatives to the search heavyweight including interfaces which allow you to search web forums, video, images, and people. Here are their suggestions:
* Addict-o-matic
* Redzee
* Omgili
* Dogpile
* Truveo
* Blinkx
* QnA search
* ZabaSearch

Saturday 3 May 2008

RSS Awareness Day

1st of May has been named RSS Awareness Day. A good initiative, as many people still don't know "What is RSS" and "How to use the RSS feeds" to keep up with the latest information, such as news feeds, journals' table of content, newsletters feeds, websites of interest, etc.
What is RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favorite websites without having to visit them. Once you subscribe to a particular RSS feed, you will automatically receive updates from the website that publishes the feed, whenever they release new content.
To read more CLICK on the TITLE of this post.