Book fund allocation for 2008/09 to be spent in Semester A

Our book fund for Semester A is as follows:

Computing - £17,102.00
Civil Engineering and Surveying - £8181.00
Electrical and Electronic Engineering - £4150

Please send your book orders to me quite soon

Library Research Support Day - Tuesday 3rd June 2008

I’d like to invite you to a Library Research Support day on Tuesday 3rd June. The day is aimed at postgraduate research students and members of academic staff and it’s an opportunity for us to showcase some of the services we provide to support our research community at UEL.
We will be running a series of short workshops throughout the day, covering a range of topics including e-books, e-journals, literature searching and alerting services through online databases, Boolean search techniques and Endnote.
The Subject Librarians will be offering sessions on databases specific to their assigned Schools and there will also be an opportunity to learn more about UEL’s institutional repository for research, ROAR.
The day’s events will take place in the Business School, in the main lecture theatre and in the Library’s Information Skills and ECDL training rooms.
I’d be very grateful if you could circulate this information to your postgraduate research students. I hope they will feel free to pop in for any or all of the sessions that appeal to them. I have emaile a flyer to all lecturers with more information.
It would be helpful if you could book in advance so that we can keep track of numbers. Please feel free to contact me for more details.

Freedom of Information website

A new website 'What Do They Know?' helps people put together Freedom of Information (Fol) requests to public bodies and publishes the responses in a searchable archive.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

The site isn't quite ready yet but sounds like an interesting resource.

New OS Access

The digital archive of Ordnance Survey (OS) maps - back to 1998 - can now be viewed in the UK's six deposit libraries - the British Library is closest to us - using new web-based software developed by Dotted Eyes.

The OSMasterMap allows precise recording of landscape changes over time. A limited number of customised A4 colour print-outs can be made for private use.

May 30th Deadline for book orders for this semester

Please send your book orders to your library reps ASAP so I can get them order before May 30th. If your department does not use a library rep, please send your orders directly to me. We will begin ordering again at the beginning of August, when we get the new budget.

Who needs Scientists?

My colleague, Nadine, has recorded the broadcast below and we will put it in stock. Apparently, there is a strong focus on Civil Engineering. It should also be available as a podcast from the Radio 4 site in the near future.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/pip/fouqv/?focuswin


Who Needs Scientists?
Monday 31 March 2008 11:00-11:30 (Radio 4 FM)
Research scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik challenges the conventional wisdom that more scientists are essential if Britain is to prosper. He questions the obsession with raising numbers and argues that Britain would be much better served if universities concentrated their efforts on fewer students, basing their strategy on quality rather than quantity.

GreenFILE database and EBSCO access

I would like to inform you that the complimentary database ‘GreenFILE’ has been added to our EBSCO host profile. The database page on the LLS website has been updated accordingly. It is a bibliographic database of information about environmental concerns and ’Green Info Online’ has made this database freely available.
GreenFILE indexes scholarly and general interest titles, as well as government documents and reports. This resource offers a unique perspective on the positive and negative ways humans affect the environment. Drawing on the connection between the environment and disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology, GreenFILE serves as an informative resource for anyone concerned about the issues facing our planet. The database contains nearly 300,000 records, full text for selected titles and searchable cited references for more than 200 titles as well.