Wednesday 19 December 2012

Rare book now on display



A history of the birds of Europe including all the species inhabiting the Western Palaearctic region, by Henry E. Dresser. Volume 7. London: Published by the author; 1871-1887.

Balfour Library shelf mark: qKZ.4 (1)

The book is open at: Plate 484, Lagopus albus, Lagopus mutus, “willow-ptarmigan” in winter plumage. This plate is a hand coloured lithograph produced by J. G. Keulemans, a renowned ornithological illustrator, and depicts the two ptarmigans in a snowy and mountainous scene. Although the dominant colour in this plate is white, the feathers of the birds, especially on the legs and feet, are extremely finely detailed. The hand colouring has been expertly done, especially in the eyes, and this helps to really animate the birds on the page.

Henry Eeles Dresser (1838-1915) was born in Thirsk. After his schooling in Bromley, Kent and at a German school near Hamburg he entered his father’s timber-merchant business and travelled extensively in northern Europe from 1834 to 1862. From his time at school in Germany he began to systematically collect the eggs and bird skins of Palaearctic birds. He deposited some 12,000 items at the Manchester Museum from 1899 onwards.

Dresser left England with a cargo for Texas in 1863 and spent over a year collecting there. Shortly after his return to England he published his first scientific paper, Notes on the birds of southern Texas, in Ibis in 1865. He continued to contribute to Ibis from then until 1909; and also joined the British Ornithologist’s Union in the same year. He was also a member and fellow of the Linnean Society and Zoological Society of London, and was an honorary fellow of the American Ornithologist’s Union. He was an authority on the birds of Europe and the author of several important works, including A history of the birds of Europe. Eight quarto volumes of this were published between 1871 and 1881, which were illustrated with 633 hand coloured plates, mainly prepared from drawings by Joseph Wolf, J. G. Keulemans and E. Neale.

After returning from Texas, Dresser started work in the iron trade in London but continued to travel extensively throughout the whole of his life.

John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912) provided the plate on display here. He was a Dutch bird illustrator who worked in London from 1868 and regularly provided illustrations for Ibis and The Proceedings of the Zoological Society, and many important bird books such as A history of the birds of Europe. His illustrations were produced through traditional lithography [a method for printing using a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface], allowing for a finished product that depicts a vivid, life-like figure through depth and tone.

Professor Alfred Newton subscribed to A History of the Birds of Europe as it was published in its parts. He has made a note inside the first volume of the number of subscribers (374), the top three of whom are “His Majesty the King of Italy, H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh K.G., H. H. Duleep Singh, Elveden Hall, Thetford”, in that order. Interestingly, the Newton family lived on the Elveden Estate on the Norfolk-Suffolk border until Newton’s father died in 1863.

Lagopus muta (rock ptarmigan) is found in alpine and arctic tundra regions of Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Finland, Greenland, etc. Winter habitat is usually brushy slopes near the timberline, where vegetation pokes through snow. All ptarmigans have feathered feet, which act as snowshoes. The feathers may also increase insulation.

Sources:


Dresser’s obituary in Ibis 58 (2) 340:342 (April 1916).


Wikipedia John Gerrard Keulemans’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gerrard_Keulemans

Wikipedia ‘Lithography’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography


Thursday 6 December 2012

Trial access to the Data Citation Index via the Web of Knowledge




The University Library has arranged a trial of the Data Citation Index which will run until 14th December 2012.

How to access the Data Citation Index:


Data Citation Index can be used to discover research data sets from a wide range of international data repositories and connect them with the scientific literature to track data citation:

  • Discover international repositories and their deposited data studies, data sets, using the Thomson Reuters value add indexing.
  • Navigate between related records within a repository.
  • Link to the repository record to access the deposited data.
  • See how data connects to scientific literature published in journals, books and conference proceedings.
  • Coverage of social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences and arts and humanities.

More information about the Data Citation Index is available at: http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/dci/

A video presentation about the product can be found here: http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/dci/dci-vid2.html

Please send your feedback on the trial to eresources@lib.cam.ac.uk.

Monday 26 November 2012

Christmas Vacation borrowing and other useful information, to help you get through the festive period


A special Christmas package of information, just for you!

Michaelmas Term 2012 ends on Friday 30th November. All books on loan from the Balfour Library must be returned by this date, or can be renewed for further periods unless they have been requested by another borrower.


Saturday morning opening has now finished until next term. 

Vacation borrowing for undergraduates 

This is permitted for the whole of the Christmas vacation. 

You can take a maximum of two books away from Cambridge which must be returned by midnight on the first day of the Lent Term 2013 (15th January). This applies to Overnight Loan books and Open Shelf books.

You can borrow books for the vacation period from 09:00 on Thursday 29th November. This is on a strictly first come, first served basis. You may not reserve books before borrowing them.

Please see the library website at: http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/booksborrow.html for more information on how to borrow, return and renew books on loan from the Balfour Library.

You may be interested to know that the University Library and the Central Science Library (on this site) also offer vacation borrowing for undergraduates, please see their websites at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=380 and http://centralsciencelibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/vacation-borrowing.html respectively.


How to access online resources when you are away from Cambridge

The recommended route for accessing e-journals provided by the University remotely is as follows:


  • Go to the ejournals@cambridge website at: http://camsfx.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/cambridge/az
  • Enter the title of the journal you need (if it does not appear then there is no online subscription to it)
  • Click on the 'find journals by title' button
  • Click on the link for the journal title as appropriate for the particular year of publication of the article that you need
  • The Raven login box should appear
  • Enter your Raven userid and password and click on the 'Submit' button
  • You should then be taken to the host page for that journal and you can find the article(s) you need from there
  • (You only need to enter the Raven login once per session so you won't have to keep logging in and out each time you need a different journal)

Away from Cambridge, you will not be able to get the full text of e-journal articles through searching PubMed or Google / GoogleScholar, or directly from the journal's homepage for example, as you will not be recognised as being a valid member of the University of Cambridge and will not be allowed to download them. The recommended route as above should guarantee you the access to the content you are entitled to.

It is strongly recommended that you check the ejournals@cambridge website as above to see whether you will actually be able to access particular online journals remotely BEFORE you leave Cambridge. 


See also the eresources@cambridge website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/ for access to particular citation databases, such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge. See the 'Access Route' link next to the journal or database title to check this.
Troubleshooting e-journals access

Finally, if you are having trouble accessing e-journals and e-resources remotely using your Raven password please see the guidance provided on the Central Science Library's 'Raven FAQs' website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/CSL/ravenqanda.htm

E-books

Don’t fancy taking all those heavy books home over the vacation? Then you might be interested in using e-books from home instead. 


Not everything is available as an e-book however so you will need to check that the e-books you need are actually available BEFORE you leave Cambridge.


The simplest way to find and access e-books is through the online library catalogue LibrarySearch at http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/. If you perform a catalogue search for a book and there is an electronic book version of it available, you will retrieve a record for it which will contain a direct link to that e-book. To access e-books off-campus you will need your Raven password.

There is also an up-to-date list of all e-books available that you can browse by subject here http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/ebooks_coll.html.

There are even more collections of free e-books available to you that won’t be found through LibrarySearch however. Please see the ebooks@cambridge website for further information on all the e-books available in the university, how to use them, and how to download them onto your e-reader or other mobile device, at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/.


Library Christmas and New Year closing dates 


The Balfour Library will be closed from 17:00 on Monday 24th December and will re-open at 08:30 on Wednesday 2nd January 2013.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Clair & Jane

Thursday 22 November 2012

£500 on offer to student book collectors


Rose Book-Collecting Prize 2012-2013

Cambridge University Library is offering students the chance to win £500 by building their own book collections.

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize was endowed in 2006 and is believed to be the first of its kind offered by any European university. As well as the £500 prize money, the winner will be offered 10 years’ free membership of the Friends of Cambridge University Library.

The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University registered for a Cambridge degree.

For more information please visit this website http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookprize/index.html

Tuesday 20 November 2012

New acquisitions


The following books and theses have been purchased or donated recently.

Books purchased:

Crawdad: a CD-ROM lab manual for neurophysiology, by Robert A. Wyttenbach, Bruce R. Johnson and Ronald R. Hoy. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates,, Inc.; [2000]. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (233) [Kept in Library Office].

Mixed effects models and extensions with R, by Alain F. Zuur ... [et al.]. New York, NY: Springer; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: EBB (92).

Scientist's guide to poster presentations, by Peter J. Gosling. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers; 1999. Balfour Library shelfmark: D.14 (37).

Vertebrate life, 9th ed., by F. Harvey Pough, Christine M. Janis and John B. Heiser. [Boston, MA]: Pearson; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: UU (17i1).

Books donated by Cambridge University Press:

From clone to bone: the synergy of morphological and molecular tools in palaeobiology, edited by Robert J. Asher and Johannes Mueller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: GJ (43).

New theses:

The evolution of defensive egg signatures in African warblers (Cisticolidae) and weaver birds (Ploceidae), by Eleanor M. Caves. [M.Phil.]. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (520).

Factors affecting adult sex ratios in bird populations, by Joanne Ceri Venables. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (519).

Investigating the role of specialised tip cells during morphogenesis of the Drosophila renal system, by Helen Marilyn Alice Weavers. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (521).

Structural and functional plasticity in the Drosophila larval locomotor circuit, by Maarten F. Zwart. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (518).

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Use of e-books survey



Thank you so much to those of you who completed my recent survey on your use of e-books!

The survey was sent to NST 1B Animal Biology, Cell & Developmental Biology, and Ecology students, and Part II Zoology, Neuroscience and BBS students. I received a brilliant 92 responses and students’ comments have been very interesting and useful to read.  I thought you might like a summary of the results, please find this below.

I feel that the survey results demonstrate an interest among students in using e-books, and in some cases a preference. However, there is a long way to go in making e-books easier to use, and promoting them and the benefits of using them to students.

To help you use e-books, remember that there is now the opportunity to attend a lunchtime e-books drop in session, which I emailed you all about via CamTools last week, please see also here http://www.balfourlibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/ebooks-lunchtime-drop-in-sessions.html. Additional sessions will probably be advertised in future.

To find out more about the e-books available to you please visit the ebooks@cambridge website here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/. In the Zoology Library we put bright yellow stickers on the cover of printed books that are also available as e-books. Alternatively, one of the easiest ways to see if a book you are interested in is available as an e-book, is to search for it on the library catalogues (Newton or LibrarySearch). If there is an e-book available, you will automatically see in your list of results an entry for the book with the phrase [electronic resource] next to it. Follow the links provided from there to access the e-book.

Along with actually purchasing e-books, I hope that this all goes some way to addressing some of the issues raised in comments in the survey results.

Many thanks again.

How often do you use e-books?

Never 40%
Rarely 17%
Sometimes 23%
Often 16%
Always 3%

Do you think the Zoology Library should continue to use e-books?

Yes, it’s nice to have the choice but printed books should take priority 64%
Yes, I prefer to use e-books rather than printed ones 16%
No, I prefer to use printed books only 9%
Other – please specify 8%
N/A 3%

Do you use any of the following devices to read e-books on-screen? (Click on all that apply)

Desktop computer 17%
Laptop computer 67%
Kindle or other e-reader 7%
iPad or other tablet 8%
Smartphone 12%
I don’t usually read e-books on screen, I prefer to print off what I read 10%
I don’t use any of these to read e-books 5%
N/A 20%

Summary of comments received about why students use or don’t use e-books, and whether the Zoology Library should be purchasing them:

Many students don’t appear to be aware of the existence of the e-books available to them in the university.

Students appreciate the convenience of e-books – the ability to search e-books, the fact that they are available away from the library and Cambridge, and when printed copies aren’t available in the library, as well as the fact that they don’t need to physically go to the library or carry heavy books, and there are no loan periods as such.

Many students dislike reading on-screen and prefer to print off what they need and read that, e.g. an e-book chapter, as they find it easier to read than printed ones which they prefer to read for longer periods of time.

Some students find e-books inconvenient – not easy to use in terms of bookmarking, navigating between chapters or screens when using Word for example, screen size restrictions, causing of eye strain, being distracted by the web while using e-books (!), finding it difficult or being unable to use several e-books at once.

Some students commented that the books they need aren’t available as e-books.

One dyslexic student felt that e-books were difficult to navigate text and read them generally.

One visually impaired student appreciated the ability with e-books to increase font size.

Some students like the idea of using Kindles to read e-books but don’t always know how.

The Zoology Library should buy e-books, but the purchase of printed books should take priority.

E-books are an invaluable resource for the library to have, especially for access away from Cambridge or immediately after a lecture when everybody needs the same book(s) at the same time.

Monday 12 November 2012

New neurophysiology ebook available



The Zoology Library and PDN library have jointly purchased a new e-book!
It is available via the online library catalogue, LibrarySearch.
 
Neurophysiology : a conceptual approach / R. H. S. Carpenter and Benjamin Reddi. 5th ed, 2012. http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|eresources|83530

There is also a sticker on the front of the printed versions of the books to tell you that there is also an e-copy and how to access it - just like in the photo above!
 
For more information on ebooks please visit the ebooks@cambridge website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/

Ebooks lunchtime drop-in sessions

Ebooks@cambridge has organised two lunchtime drop-in sessions, aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students, academic staff and librarians.  

Do you need to know how to find ebooks, or how to download ebooks to various mobile devices? Do you want to have a go at downloading ebooks onto an iPad or a Smart phone? 

Come along to the Engineering Library on Trumpington Street on Wednesday 14th November, or to the History Faculty (Seminar Room 5, 2nd floor) on the Sidgwick Site off West Road on Wednesday 21st November.  

Members of the ebooks@cambridge team will be there to answer your questions in an informal setting. Bring your own iPad, ereader or Smart phone if you have one. You will be able to look at ebooks on any subject.

There will probably be more sessions in future, and a bit closer to home.

To find out more about ebooks in general please visit the ebooks website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/

Thursday 25 October 2012

New e-books purchased in Zoology



The Balfour Library has purchased some new e-books! 

They are available via the online library catalogue, LibrarySearch at: http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/. Alternatively, I have provided direct URLs by the title of each book:

Evolution and belief: confessions of a religious paleontologist, by Robert J. Asher. Cambridge University Press; 2012. http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|eresources|83158

Gaining ground, 2nd ed., by Jennifer A. Clack. Indiana University Press; 2012. http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|eresources|83190

Wild hope, by Andrew Balmford. University of Chicago Press; 2012. http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|eresources|83191

There is also a sticker on the front of the printed versions of the books to tell you that there is also an e-copy and how to access it - just like in the photo above!

New acquisitions


New books purchased:

Partridges: countryside barometer, by G. R. Potts. London: Collins New Naturalist; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark:  KK (18).

Vision and brain: how we perceive the world, by James V. Stone. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: GFS (41i-iii).

Donations from Cambridge University Press:

The ethics of species: an introduction, by Ronald Sandler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: GGW (222).

Socioeconomic and environmental impacts of biofuels: evidence from developing nations, edited by Alexandros Gasparatos and Per Stromberg. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: GGW (223).


Friday 12 October 2012

Extensive collection of specimens and Alfred Russel Wallace papers appear together for first time in online project

You may be interested to read this Guardian piece on Wallace Online, a web project directed by John van Wyhe, the historian behind Darwin Online. You can find the article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/27/recognition-alfred-russel-wallace-darwin.

Wallace's work on the theory of evolution through natural selection, along with major insights into biodiversity, are described in thousands of pages of books, articles, drawings and paintings, which have now been made available via Wallace Online http://wallace-online.org/.

Paper in Ibis on Professor Alfred Newton's contribution to ornithology


Professor Tim Birkhead and Peter Gallivan, from the University of Sheffield, have published a paper, Alfred Newton's contribution to ornithology: a conservative quest for facts rather than grand theories, in Ibis (2012), 154, 887-905.

Alfred Newton (1829-1907), Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, was a founder of the Balfour & Newton Libraries in the Department. He bequeathed his collection of rare books (dating from the 15th century) and his archive to the Department.

This essay gives a fascinating insight into Newton's personality and highlights his considerable achievements in the field of ornithology. It covers his life, his role as one of the founders of the British Ornithological Union (BOU), his Dictionary of Birds, and his other interests such as extinct birds (the solitaire and dodo), migration, the cuckoo, conservation, and William Yarrell's History of British Birds, and his connections with Charles Darwin. The paper really does place Newton in context in the history of ornithology.

Find out more about Newton and his collections on the library's Special Collections website here: http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/newton.html.

The Ibis article can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2012.01274.x/abstract.

Thursday 11 October 2012

LibrarySearch+



The University Library is currently piloting a new search service called LibrarySearch+.  It offers a single search box for finding full text and citations from the whole of the University's online (and print) resources content. You can even search for the title of individual journal articles, and much of the content is provided by databases such as the Web of Knowledge.

The pilot lasts until the end of December, please send any comments via the ‘Feedback’ link in the top right hand corner of your search results page.

[The following text has been adapted from a post on the University Library's eResources etc. blog here: https://eresources.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?m=201207].

What is LibrarySearch+?

It’s a single search box for finding the full text and citations for the majority of the University’s extensive online subscriptions. This includes:
  • Online articles from scholarly journals, covering the vast majority of the University’s subscriptions (JSTOR, Science Direct, OUP, CUP etc.
  • Newspaper content.
  • Major academic databases (incl. Web of Knowledge).

 It also contains data currently in LibrarySearch: 
  • Over six million catalogue records from Newton.
  • Digital collections in the DSpace repository.
  • Using the interface, users can easily email and export references to a wide variety of citation management tools. Advanced search options are available, including the ability to search across a single journal title.

 How is it different?

Traditionally, libraries have put different kinds of scholarly material into different interfaces. This meant that you had to look in one place for books and printed journals, another for e-journals, and yet others for full-text journal articles and news reports.

Now you can search all these formats together and get a big picture overview of work in your field. LibrarySearch+ will even search inside the full text of books for your keywords.

How can I manage my search results?

You do get a lot of search results but the idea is that you then refine them in various ways, for example by content (e.g. book, e-book, journal article, thesis), or only review results from peer-reviewed journals or with full text online, or by publication date.

You can use the ‘save to list’ feature which allows you to export or email your saved items to EndNote or RefWorks  or BibTex and in your preferred citation format.

You can access LibrarySearch+ in three ways:

Go to the libraries@cambridge Service Developments blog post to download a user guide https://libcamdev.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=859.