Database Trial: Polymer Library

19985223,192x192,r-2Our second trial this month will likely be of great interest to chemists and engineers.

The Polymer Library is the world’s largest abstracts database dedicated to plastics, rubber, polymer composites and adhesives. Compiled and written by an expert team, this database sources information from journals, conference proceedings, books and reports to give you a comprehensive look at the information in your field. Find out more about the database and what it can do for you.

To obtain the trial details please login with your University username and password at https://internal.lboro.ac.uk/diss/lb/uniwide/webpages/Trials.html

Access is valid to 19th June 2016.

We welcome feedback – good or bad – on this trial, please contact Steve Corn.

Calling All Geographers and Civil Engineers!

digimapIf you’re studying in the fields of Geography and Civil Engineering, you’ll be certain of finding Geology Digimap extremely useful!

Geology Digimap – http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/ – can provide UK geology maps showing areas with indications of flooding, maps of soil texture, rock units, maximum and minimum permeability, soil strengths – from the very strong to the very weak – vital for physical geography, building and civil engineering.

Geology Digimap can also show what is below superficial and artificial deposits, underneath landscaped ground, the location of faults, fossil horizons, mineral veins and landforms.

Geological photos are available and you can draw on maps and annotate them, use software such as GIS or CAD, as well as save and export maps.

How to register for free –  login to Digimap using your Athens username and Password.   Complete the online registration and click on submit.  An email will be sent to the email address you entered in the Enter Details screen containing a link to activate your account. The link will remain valid for 24 hours.

Why not take a look at the databases stablemates while you’re at it? Marine Digimap and Historical Digimap are also available at http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/

You also can find Digimap from the link in the Geography subject guide http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/subjectguides/geography/  and from the Select Databases tab in Library Catalogue Plus http://lcp.lboro.ac.uk/

Or just ask your Academic Librarian – http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/contact/academiclibrarians – for more information.

Calling All Ergonomics Students!

ergonomicsIf you need to find articles on universal design, assistive technology, cognitive ergonomics, user experience, driver vehicle ergonomics, health and safety, sporting equipment and lots, lots more – try Ergonomics Abstracts.

With nearly 200,000 online records covering more than 25 years of ergonomics research it also includes trade magazines for the latest trends, as well as books chapters and conference proceedings.

You can find Ergonomics Abstracts from the link in the Design School Subject Guidehttp://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/subjectguides/design/– or from the Select Databases tab in Library Catalogue Plus http://lcp.lboro.ac.uk/

Or just ask your Academic Librarian – http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/contact/academiclibrarians –  for more information.

British Science Week Resources – Library STEM Subject Guides

531843326_81c9b2cff2_zTo conclude our look at Library resources for British Science Week, we’d like to turn the microscope around and take a look at the bigger picture of available resources, and how to find them.

Finding the right sources of information for any subject can be tricky, given the vast amount of resources there are available to you via our own Library Catalogue Plus database. This is especially true of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (or STEM) disciplines. With that in mind, our Academic Librarians have created a set of online guides tailored to these subject areas.

You can find the complete A-Z list of all the guides by following this link:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/subjectguides/

Each link gives you a concise run-down of everything you need to know about finding information for your subject, including the contact details for the Academic Librarian responsible for the School/Department concerned.

Be sure to visit and bookmark the links for future reference – you’ll certainly find them useful!

Image by Philip Bond, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

British Science Week Resources – Compendex

Ei comp pngSearching for Engineering information? Why not expand your search and try Compendex?

Compendex is the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available in the world. It provides a truly holistic and global view of peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 17 million records from 73 countries across 190 engineering disciplines. Every record is carefully selected and indexed using the Engineering Index Thesaurus to ensure discovery and retrieval of engineering-specific literature that engineering students and professionals can rely on. By using Ei Compendex, engineers can be confident information is relevant, complete, accurate and of high quality

Useful for the following subject areas; Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics and many others, links to Compendex can be found from the relevant Subject Guides and from Library Catalogue Plus.

British Science Week Resources – Reaxys

reaxys

Next up in our look at useful resources for British Science Week is the multi-faceted scientific formula database Reaxys.

Reaxys is a unique web-based chemistry database consisting of deeply excerpted compounds and related factual properties, reaction and synthesis information as well as bibliographic data, navigated and displayed via an actionable interface. Offering a wealth of experimentally validated information, Reaxys brings a fresh look to synthetic chemistry with powerful functionality, combined content and relevant information.

Why not have browse?

http://www.reaxys.com/

British Science Week Resources – Science on BoB

bobAs part of British Science Week we’re to take the opportunity to highlight some of the fantastic science & technology resources you can access at the Library, starting with the very wonderful Box of Broadcasts (or just BoB for short!)

BoB is an off-air recording and media archive service. BoB is available to staff and students of member institutions of the British Universities Film & Video Council that hold an ERA+ license. This TV scheduling service allows you to record TV and radio programmes that are scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days as well as retrieving programmes from the last seven days from a selected list of recorded channels. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons access to BoB is not available from outside the UK.

Now as BoB, in theory, offers you everything, there’s a veritable gamut of science programmes you can catch up on, including the BBC World Service’s popular weekly science series The Science Hour, which highlights the top science and technology news of the week, as well as Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage, an irreverent look at the world of science through the eyes of Professor Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince, and classic archive science television like the ground breaking Horizon. Why not give it a browse and see what you can dig up?

British Science Week 11th-20th March

BSW2016RGBMID_BPINKThis weekend sees the start of British Science Week, a UK-wide programme of events and activities, aimed at people of all ages, celebrating science, technology, engineering and maths.

The University is marking the occasion with a special community day on campus tomorrow (12th March) beginning at 1pm, including stands and activities run by a number of academics from across our Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths  departments. These will be supported by a number of sessions from local schools as well as various ‘science busking’ demonstrations. The day is free to attend and designed to cater for all ages, with a wide variety of hands on activities and demonstrations throughout the day to ensure a fun but engaging environment for the whole family.

Over the coming week we’ll be highlighting some of the science resources that are available to you from the Library – be sure to look out for them.

Latest Release of IEEE Xplore Database Now Live

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The latest release of the IEEE Xplore Digital Library went live this week, and includes several enhancements, including the following new and improved features:

Author Name Disambiguation
With this release, disambiguated author names will be added to the system to improve precision and recall of searches on IEEE. Author disambiguation establishes authority files for authors and institutions by identifying all articles written by a given author, or from a given institution, while simultaneously distinguishing between different authors having the same name.

(Please note – if you have any saved searches for authors, those searches will need to be reset.)

For more information visit the New Features and Global Search help pages.

Altmetrics Stats now included on IEEE and IET articles
This release contains the inclusion of Altmetrics data for IEEE and IET journal articles (not conference proceedings or standards). These are metrics displayed on an abstract that indicate how much attention a recently published article has received via social media sites, so that users can easily determine the most relevant articles.

For more information on this topic, visit the New Features help page.

Please contact onlinesupport@ieee.org with any questions.

Pop Along to the Wolfson Pop-Up!

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The Wolfson Pop-up Library will be starting tomorrow and running every Thursday in term-time from 12.30pm – 1.30pm in the Wolfson cafe.

Come and ask your friendly neighbourhood Academic Librarian Becky Laing any engineering, science and mathematics questions you may have. She also knows lots about classic television series and knitting. What better way to spend a lunch time!