Report on skills agenda for engineering and physical sciences

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) Engineering Subject Centre, in partnership with the Subject Centres for Physical Science and Materials has just published a report entitled "Facilitating dialogue between employers and engineering, physical sicences and materials academics in Higher Education", otherwise known as the "Engage" project.

The report describes the outcome of the one year project which discusses the skills agenda and makes recommendations and observations about the employer engagement agenda with links to relevant resources.

The report can be downloaded from: http://www.engsc.ac.uk/engage/
Or can be obtained by emailing enquiries@engsc.ac.uk

ISI proceedings..... gone missing?

Looking for ISI Proceedings?

Look no further. It is now searchable from within Web of Science as the Conference Proceedings Citation Index.

Web of Science is the world’s leading citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of over 10,000 high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international proceedings coverage for over 120,000 conferences. Powerful tools include cited reference searching, Citation Maps, and the Analyze Tool.

Locate Web of Science using the 'Find Database' option within our the Elibrary Gateway.

New tutorial for searching images on the Internet

"Internet for Image Searching" is a new, free online tutorial to help staff
and students in universities and colleges to find digital images for their
learning and teaching:
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/imagesearching/

The emphasis of the tutorial is on finding copyright cleared images which
are available free; facilitating quick, hassle-free access to a vast range
of online photographs and other visual resources.

This tutorial has been created by TASI - the JISC Advisory Service for
digital media, and Intute as part of the Virtual Training Suite, with
funding from the Higher Education Academy/JISC Collaboration Initiative.

An image resource that may be particularly useful for engineers is the "CAL visual for construction image database", created by Loughborough University http://www.engsc.ac.uk/resources/calvisual/index.asp

Also available for Bioscientists is the "Centre for bioscience image bank" http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/imagebank/

For medical images, you could use "Anatomy TV" http://www.anatomy.tv/home.aspx "Images MD" http://www.images.md/ or the "Welcome Library" http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/

The tutorial will introduce you to many other image sites.

You may also find the TASI pages on "Finding Scientific Images" useful http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/using/finding_science.html

UK chemists warn of funding crisis

Senior researchers have warned that a sharp drop in the number of research grants awarded this year risks damaging UK chemistry. Young chemists applying for first-time grants have suffered most under widespread changes to the funding strategy of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).........

Click the link below for more information:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/October/20100801.asp

The Big Science Read 24-26 October 2008. Manchester

Are you heading to Manchester this weekend? If so you are in luck:

Its the big science read weekend
24-26 October 2008
http://www.bigscienceread.org/

The Big Science Read campaign invites you to explore, re-discover and get excited about science-themed books and hopes to stimulate public debate of current issues relating to scientific and technological advances. A reading list of contemporary popular science and fiction titles has been put together and is available from the link above to get you started.

Come on - pull yourself away from the computer and pick up a book again! :~)

Ten Science Search Engines

A great blog post, put up by Heriot-Watt University Library. So good I thought I would snaffel it and give credit!

http://hwlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/science-search-engines/

Several very good science/technology search engines are listed here. These will usually give much more focussed search results than Google.

Athens .... changes afoot

All Athens accounts are lapsing as the system for authentication is changing. Moving forward we will not be routinely renewing any Athens usernames or passwords and access to resources will be effected via:

1. An alternative log-in. When presented with an Athens 'login box' or authentication screen, click on the link to "alternative log-in" (see small print located immediately under the login box), select the University of Nottingham from the drop-down list of institutions (a cookie will be set on your machine so you should only have to do this once unless you change computers), follow the link to the University of Nottingham log-in page and put in when prompted your usual university computer username and password.

2. An institutional or Shibboleth log-in. Some resources will take you directly to their home page and invite you to log in with an Institutional or Federated or Shibboleth username. You will need to identfy yourself as a member of Nottingham University by selecting our university from the list provided and entering, when prompted your university username and password.

We are currently in a 'hand-over' or transition period but heading to a simpler clearer future as in the long run you will only have one username/password to remember!

Borrowing has just got easier

Information Services have just launched a new intersite loans service, allowing you to pick up books from a preferred library location, no matter where it resides on campus. Simply request the item on UNLOC and select your preferred pickup library from the drop-down menu. This service applies to ordinary loan books which may also be returned to any library.

Welcome from the new Faculty Team Leader

I just wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Library Team Leader for Science and Engineering. I am temporarily replacing Chris Middleton whilst Chris is covering the post of Head of Academic Services, based at Kings Meadow. This agreement is in place until Christmas in the first instance and I am based in Chris' old office on floor C of the George Green Library.

Just to give you a little bit of background. I actually started my career here at Nottingham as Senior Library Assistant in the George Green Library, in what was then the engineering team, about 8 years ago. I then moved over to the Greenfield Medical Library, before moving to the James Cameron Gifford Library as Team Leader for Biosciences and Veterinary Science. So, I have experience in working in many of the subject areas offered within the Science and Engineering Faculty. Most recently, I have been based in the Hallward Library.

Other team members remain the same but I outline below the different subject specialities that each team member looks after:

Engineering: Jenny Coombs and Shona Pullen
Chemistry, pharmacy, biology, environmental science: Dinah Northall and Alison Johnson (job-share)
Maths, physics and psychology: Liz Day and Jane Maltby (job-share)
Biosciences and veterinary medicine and science (based at Sutton Bonington): Suzanna Rogers (part-time)

Staff members can be contacted directly or we have 3 team email contacts as follows:
library-engineering-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk
library-science-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk
library-biosciences-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk

Please do contact us and I hope that you enjoy and find this blog useful.