Friday 21 November 2008

Mobile phone rule change


The Library Committee has approved an amendment to the rule that mobile phones should be switched off before entering the library.

The rule now reads:

“Readers may bring a mobile telephone into the library provided it is set to silent mode. However, mobile telephone conversations are NOT permitted. To prevent disturbance to other readers, calls must be answered outside of the library. Readers should not run to the library exit or speak on the telephone until they are outside. Text messaging is allowed.”

Library staff will be monitoring this amendment to the rule closely and may request that the Library Committee reviews it if they find that it has caused more disturbance to readers than before.

Thank you for your cooperation in helping us to keep the library a desirable place to work in.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

New ejournal in JSTOR

Daedalus

Dædalus was founded in 1955 as the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It continues the Academy's Proceedings, which ceased publication with Volume 85. Dædalus draws on the intellectual capacity of the American Academy, whose Fellows are among the nation's most prominent thinkers in the arts, sciences, and humanities, as well as the full range of professions and public life. Each issue addresses a theme with original authoritative essays. Cambridge users previously only had access to this ejournal from 1988 onwards.

Vol. 1 (May, 1846/1848) – Vol. 85, No. 4 (May, 1958) of Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [1846-1958] are available from http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=procameracadarts

Vol. 86, No. 1 (May, 1955) – Vol. 131, No. 4 (Fall, 2002) of Dædalus are available from http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=daedalus

JSTOR includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials. Access to the JSTOR archive at http://www.jstor.org/ is available on-campus without passwords and off-campus via Raven passwords.

Making Visible Embryos

A virtual exhibition has been created by staff at the University's Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Making Visible Embryos at http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/visibleembryos/ It features images taken from some of our rare books.

Images of human embryos

Images of human embryos are everywhere. We see them in newspapers, clinics, classrooms, laboratories, family albums and on the internet. Debates about abortion, assisted conception, cloning and Darwinism have sometimes made these images hugely controversial, but they are also routine. We tend to take them for granted today. Yet 250 years ago human development was still nowhere to be seen.

Developing embryos were first drawn in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Modern medicine and biology exploited technical innovations as pictures and models communicated new attitudes to childbirth, evolution and reproduction. In the twentieth century they became the dominant representations of pregnancy and prominent symbols of hope and fear. Wherever we stand in today’s debates, it should enrich and may challenge our understandings to explore how these icons have been made.

Exhibition

Eight sections are arranged in roughly chronological order. Each focuses on an era and an issue. By contextualizing images that have become iconic or were especially widely distributed in their own time, the exhibition aims to illuminate key questions and concerns. By depicting imaging technologies and people engaged in image production, it emphasizes the work of making visible embryos.

Each page consists of a main section and a ‘box’ on the right, highlighting an important issue, person or object. Click on a thumbnail for a larger image and the full caption. The ‘Resources’ buttons offer suggestions for exploring further.

Attention student book-collectors

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize

Your chance to win £500 and the possibility of a further prize of $2500 presented at a ceremony in the USA.

You can enter any type of collection provided it is solely owned by you and has been collected by you. The books do not have to be especially valuable - a collection of paperbacks, put together with imagination, is equally eligible. The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Cambridge.

The closing date for entries is the first day of Lent Full Term Tuesday 13 January 2009.

Full details of how to enter are given on the University Library website at
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookprize.html

Thursday 13 November 2008

Important eresources access news

Here are two items of important news regarding access to electronic resources.

1) The earlier problem with logging on to eresources off-campus via the "Alternative login" route has now been resolved.

2) We have received the following message from Elsevier:

"On Saturday, 15 November, Scopus and ScienceDirect will be unavailable for scheduled upgrades during the following periods:

Scopus: For eight hours - 1:00 p.m until 9:00 p.m. GMT

ScienceDirect : For nine hours - 1:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. GMT

We apologize for the inconvenience,

Regards,

The Elsevier Team."

Tuesday 11 November 2008

Database news

Conference Proceedings Citation Index

ISI Proceedings is now the Conference Proceedings Citation Index – an integrated index within Web of Science, which means you can use cited reference searching to dig even deeper into proceedings coverage.

Discover which proceedings are the most influential, who is citing proceedings findings and how proceedings and conferences fit into the overall research picture. You can:

• Search backward and forward in time to discover past influences and subsequent developments on book-based proceedings as well as journal literature
• Track the influence and impact of individual proceedings papers
• Discover where the top researchers in your field are presenting papers
• See how conferences influence work in related disciplines

Access to Conference Proceedings Citation Index and Web of Science is available via Raven passwords from http://wok.mimas.ac.uk/

Friday 7 November 2008

New library books and theses acquisitions

New books:

Ecology: the experimental analysis of distribution and abundance, 6th ed., by Charles J. Krebs. San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings; 2009. Balfour Library shelf mark: GG (88fi) (Overnight Loan shelves)

Ecology of social evolution, edited by Judith Korb, Jurgen Heinze. Berlin: Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 2008. Balfour Library shelf mark: GFU (326i-ii) (Overnight Loan shelves)

Meerkat manor: Flower of the Kalahari, by Tim Clutton-Brock. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson; 2007. Balfour Library shelf mark: YP (4)

Model selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach, 2nd ed., by Kenneth P. Burnham, David R. Anderson. Berlin: Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 2002. Balfour Library shelf mark: EBC (15bii)

Vertebrate life, 8th ed., by F. Harvey Pough, Christine M. Janis, John B. Heiser. San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings; 2009. Balfour Library shelf mark: UU (17hi-ii) (Overnight Loan shelves)

New theses:

The development of motor coordination in Drosophila, by Sarah Crisp. Cambridge; 2007. Balfour Library shelf mark: Thesis (451)

MHC variation and disease susceptibility in grey seals (Halichoerus grypus), by Kristina Cammen. (M.Phil.) Cambridge; 2008. Balfour Library shelf mark: Thesis (449)

Renal tubule morphogenesis in Drosophila, by Stephanie Marie Bunt. Cambridge; 2008. Balfour Library shelf mark: Thesis (450)

Tuesday 4 November 2008

University wide access to agcensus (hosted by EDINA)

The Agricultural Census is conducted in June each year by the government departments dealing with Agriculture and Rural Affairs for Scotland, England, and Wales (i.e. The Scottish Government: Agriculture, DEFRA and the Welsh Assembly Government Department for Environment, Planning and Countryside ). Each farmer declares the agricultural activity on the land via a postal questionnaire. The respective government departments collect the 150 items of data and publish information relating to farm holdings for recognised geographies.

The Edinburgh University Data Library has developed algorithms which convert the data for recognised geographies, obtained from the government departments, into grid square estimates. The key to transforming the raw data into grid square data is the definition of each geography (e.g. parish, in the case of Scotland) in terms of 1km squares. Agricultural Census items are distributed over those 1km grid squares with the land use category suitable for the census item in question. The categories are defined by the Landuse Framework, a 7-fold land-use classification of the same 1km grid squares (the seven land-use categories are agricultural land, upland, woodland, restricted agriculture - natural, restricted agriculture - artificial, urban, and inland water). Agricultural Census grid square estimates can be used:
  • to increase the value of other environmental data.
  • to assess how agricultural activity might affect a related proposal or project.
  • to help maximise market potential.
  • Data can be supplied in value added formats; for example, by including the application of yield factors to the data, (e.g. kilograms per hectare), to calculate market potential for a variety of agricultural related activities.

Quick start guides, reference guides, and demo screen cams are available for the resource.

Login via 'UK federation' access using your Raven password at http://edina.ac.uk/agcensus/

Monday 3 November 2008

Lapwing wireless service now available in the Library

The Lapwing wireless service is now fully operational throughout the Library.

For University Staff and Students access is via Raven password logon. Please see the Library Facilities web page at http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/facilities.html for instructions on how to use Lapwing.

See the Raven authentication website at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/docs/faq/n5.html for more information on Raven.

There is important information about the Lapwing service particularly regarding security at http://www.lapwing.cam.ac.uk/help.py

There are several sockets for laptops in the Library. Unless your laptop is relatively new, please make sure that your laptop has been PAT tested for electrical safety before using it in the Library. Ask the Librarian for more details.