Cambridge University Press are presently experiencing intermittent access problems with Cambridge Journals Online. CUP are aware of the problem and are working to fix the issue as soon as possible.
In addition, there will be short outages to their service between 07:00 GMT and 13:00 GMT on Sunday, 20th March 2016, as a result of essential system upgrade work.
Cambridge University Press apologise for any inconvenience this issue is causing.
The Athens Username & Password system will be undergoing an upgrade starting tomorrow (23rd February) between 7am-9am. As a result, the system will be unavailable during this time, and may be considered at risk as further follow-up maintenance work is scheduled for the rest of the week.
We apologise for any inconvenience.
JSTOR, one of our online electronic journal platforms, is presently experiencing intermittent, site-wide problems with its service. Their engineers are working to resolve the problem and hope to have things running smoothly ASAP. In the mean time, you can check on the progress of the repairs by going to the JSTOR site here:
http://about.jstor.org/jstor-help-support/jstor-updates
We apologise for any inconvenience.
New to the wonderful world of academic study? Need to freshen your study skills after your summer break? Want some help and advice in searching for and handling information and in how to study more effectively for the year ahead? Then look no further than our autumn season of ‘Get the Know How’ workshops starting this month.
Ranging from handy tips on essay & report writing to revising more effectively, referencing & citations and bibliographic software, there’s something for every academic occasion that will stand you in good stead for the duration of your course.
New students will certainly find our ‘Getting the most out of your Library’ workshops especially useful next week – a perfect introduction to what the Library can offer you, even at this early stage in your degree.
New this year are practical workshops on Referencing software. These question and answer sessions are designed to deal with any problems students or researchers are experiencing using one of the popular referencing software packages – RefWorks, Mendeley or RefMe.
Each session runs for approximately 50 minutes, and they’re hosted mainly in Library Seminar Room 1 – some will be taking place at the Stewart Mason Building. However, as these courses have always proved extremely popular in the past, we are asking that people register for them first via Learn. To do that – and to look at exactly what courses are on offer and when – visit this link:
Finding the right sources of information for your subject can be tricky, given the vast amount of resources there are available to you via our own Library Catalogue Plus database. With that in mind, we’ve created a set of online guides tailored to every subject discipline… and a few more besides!
You can find the complete A-Z list of the guides by clicking 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!
One of our database providers, Elsevier, are currently experiencing technical difficulties which has resulted in rendering their services, including ScienceDirect and Scopus, temporarily unavailable. They are presently working to resolve this issue and hope to fix it ASAP.
We apologise for any inconvenience.
The British Library have just completed the digitisation of the classic feminist magazine Spare Rib and have just launched a dedicated site hosting 300 specially selected pages alongside articles written by former contributors and leading academics about the history of the magazine.
Spare Rib was an active part of the emerging women’s liberation movement in the late 20th century. Running from 1972 – 93, this now iconic magazine challenged the stereotyping and exploitation of women, while supporting collective, realistic solutions to the hurdles women faced. Spare Rib became the debating chamber of feminism in the UK, and it now provides a valuable insight into the lives of women in this period. Visitors to this site can explore selected highlights from the magazine; and examine how the magazine was run, why it was started and the issues it dealt with.
The full run of Spare Rib magazines can be accessed via Jisc: https://journalarchives.jisc.ac.uk/britishlibrary/sparerib
The Library is running a trial of BrowZine, a new application that allows you to browse, read and follow thousands of the library’s scholarly journals from your Android and iOS mobile devices. All in a format optimized for your tablet and smartphone! Built to accompany your searching needs, items found in BrowZine can easily be synced up with Zotero, Mendeley, RefWorks, Dropbox or other services to help keep all of your information together in one place.
With BrowZine, you can:
You will need to install and run open the University’s CISCO VPN to use Browzine – CISCO is available at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/it/off-campus/anyconnect.html
To learn more and start using BrowZine today, visit http://thirdiron.com/download/
Getting started is easy! From your Android or iOS device, find BrowZine in the Apple App, Google Play or Amazon App store and download it for free. When initially launching BrowZine, select Loughborough University from the drop down list. Enter your Loughborough username and password. Start exploring BrowZine!
(Users will also, at some point during the set up process, be presented with a screen to create a BrowZine Sync Account. This is entirely optional – the benefits of creating an account include the ability to synch their My Bookshelf collection of saved journals across all BrowZine devices. Further, the Sync Account will enable them to save this information for future recall in the event they delete and later reinstall the app. Without a Sync Account, all saved items would be lost when the app is deleted. More information about BrowZine Accounts may be found here: http://support.thirdiron.com/knowledgebase/articles/384735-browzine-account-faq)
The trial will run until April 20th. We welcome feedback – good or bad – on this trial, please contact Steve Corn with your comments.
Our range of e-journals is more popular than ever it seems, as our annual totting-up of the usage statistics have shown us that e-journal downloads have increased 16.75% during the 2013-14 academic year – up from 153812 the previous year to 1795835.
This reflects the fact that the number of e-journals available to search on Library Catalogue Plus has risen in the last academic year from 30940 to 36841. Many of our more popular journals recorded a rise in usage, with Palgrave journals rising by 80%, but the most stellar performer was the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) which recorded a massive 415% rise in usage – not bad considering they experienced some technical difficulties earlier in the year!
As today is National Pi Day, what better time to remind you of some the magnificent mathematical resources we have at the Library?
Aside from all the books and journals we have on the topic down on Level 1 and online, we have access to a host of mathematical databases, including MathWorld – the web’s most extensive mathematics resource – and PlanetMath, a collaborative virtual community which aims to help make mathematical knowledge more accessible.
If numbers aren’t quite your thing and you’d like a quirkier interpretation of the theme, why not pop up to our Leisure Reading Collection on Level 4 and borrow a copy of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize winning The Life of Pi?
Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point. As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. While only a handful of digits are needed for typical calculations, Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits.
To find out more, visit the Pi Day website here.
Pi image by T.J. Blackwell, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.
© Loughborough University