Friday 16 October 2009

Mendeley - organize, share and discover research papers

What is Mendeley?

Mendeley is a free, award-winning, desktop and web solution designed for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online.

It combines Mendeley Desktop, a PDF and reference management application (available for Windows, Mac and Linux) with Mendeley Web, an online research paper management tool and social network for researchers.

Feature highlights
  • Create your personal bibliographic database using Mendeley's automatic extraction of document details (author, title, journal, keywords, etc.) and cited references from PDFs, as well as automatic retrieval of additional information from CrossRef, PubMed, ArXiv, etc.
  • Read, full-text search, annotate, and highlight your PDF research papers in Mendeley's integrated PDF viewer.
  • Synchronize your bibliographic database across multiple machines, share it with colleagues, manage it online, or embed bibliographies on blogs and websites.
  • Quickly cite your papers in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer and create bibliographies with a single click.
  • Capture citations from websites using Mendeley's crossbrowser Web Importer or via synchronization with CiteULike.
Mendeley is for:
  • Researchers
  • Scholars and educators
  • Graduate and undergraduate students
  • Information management professionals
  • Librarians
I went to a demo of this recently and was quite impressed. It's a young start-up business, founded by three Germans, but Cambridge University is now the third largest user of Mendeley in the world (after two large and prestigious US universities). They are willing to give demonstrations to researchers, just contact them. They also invite input on how to improve Mendeley. They have several developments in the pipeline, especially for the social networking aspect of the software.

To find out more and to register with Mendeley for free visit http://www.mendeley.com/

Wednesday 14 October 2009

I'm an e-book!

Balfour Library printed books that are also available as e-books now have yellow fluorescent stickers on their front cover saying “I’m an e-book!”. Hopefully this will make you more aware of e-book availability, and encourage you to use them. Click on the photo to see the new stickers.

The Balfour Library contributes funds to e-books@cambridge every year and more and more of the books on students' reading lists are being purchased on a monthly basis.

The ebooks@cambridge collections comprise hundreds of the books most used by Cambridge students and they are available online 24/7 through Newton, the online library catalogue, at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newton/


There may be many more e-books relevant to you that we don’t have in printed format so for a full list of ALL the e-books available see http://www.sel.cam.ac.uk/ebooks@cambridge/09_05%20All%20titles%20available.pdf and the printouts on the top of the Overnight Loan shelves in the library.


Tuesday 13 October 2009

New books purchased by the Balfour Library

New books added to the Overnight Loan shelves:

Bad science, by Ben Goldacre. London: Fourth Estate; 2008. Balfour Library shelfmark: D.7 (39i-iii)

Behavioral genetics, 5th ed., by Robert Plomin ... [et al.]. New York: Worth Publishers; 2008. Balfour Library shelfmark: ENY (44ei)

Biochemistry and molecular biology, 4th ed., by William H. Elliott and Daphne C. Elliott. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: EH (58d)

Brain damage, brain repair, by James W. Fawcett, Anne E. Rosser and Stephen B. Dunnett. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2001. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (228)

The cell: a molecular approach, 5th ed., by Geoffrey M. Cooper, Robert E. Hausman. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: qEC (23e)

The developing brain, by Michael Brown, Roger Keynes. Andrew Lumsden. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2005. Balfour Library shelfmark: GFE (58)

Ecological developmental biology: integrating epigenetics, medicine, and evolution, by Scott F. Gilbert and David Epel. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: EEB (74i-ii)

Evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters, by Donald R. Prothero. New York: Columbia University Press; 2007. Balfour Library shelfmark: GJ (38i-ii)

From neuroscience to neurology: neuroscience, molecular medicine, and the therapeutic transformation of neurology, edited by Stephen Waxman. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press; 2005. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (224)

How humans evolved, 5th ed., by Robert Boyd. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark : EO (278ei-ii)

Injured brains of medical minds: views from within, compiled and edited by Narinder Kapur. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1997. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (227)

Molecular biology, 3rd ed., by Phil Turner. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group; 2005. Balfour Library shelfmark: EM (82ci-ii)

The new brain sciences: perils and prospects, edited by Dai Rees and Steven Rose. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2004. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (226i-ii)

Only a theory: evolution and the battle for America's soul, by Kenenth R. Miller. New York: Penguin Books; 2008. Balfour Library shelfmark: EO (318i-ii)

Principles of population genetics, 4th ed., by Daniel L. Hartl and Andrew G. Clark. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.; 2007. Balfour Library shelfmark: ENY (42di-ii)

The student's guide to cognitive neuroscience, by Jamie Ward. Hove: Psychology Press; 2006. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (225)

Textbook of neural repair and rehabilitation. Volume 1: Neural repair and stability, edited by Michael E. Seltzer ... [et al.]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2006. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (229)

Vertebrates: comparative anatomy, function, evolution, 5th ed., by Kenneth V. Kardong. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill Higher Education; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: UU (26ei-iii)

Books added to the Open Shelves:

Biometry: the principles and practice of statistics in biological research, 3rd ed., by Robert R. Sokal and F. James Rohlf. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co.; 1995. Balfour Library shelfmark: EBB (21ciii)

New e-books

The following e-books have now been added to the ebooks@cambridge collections. They are available from the Newton online catalogue at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newton/ and ebooks@cambridge at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/ebooks.php

They may be on your reading list!

Dixon - How to get a first, Taylor & Francis, 2004
Kappeler - Cooperation in primates and humans, Springer, 2006
Miller - Eat or be eaten, CUP, 2002
Schutkowski - Human ecology, Springer, 2006
Schaik & Janson - Infanticide by males and its implications, CUP, 2000
Boyd - The origin and evolution of cultures, OUP, 2005
Fleagle, Janson & Reed - Primate communities, CUP, 1999

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Welcome to our new students, and some useful library pointers

Welcome to all the new Zoology Department undergraduate and postgraduate students!

Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the library services available to you in Cambridge? Then it's a good idea to take advantage of the Research Skills Programme that is run by the University Library. In particular they offer regular "Orientation Tours" of the University Library lasting 30mins, "QuickStart for Part II" which is a 1 hour orientation and e-resource session for Part II students, as well as "Information skills and e-resources" - 1 hour sessions for everyone, including "Getting the most from web resources", "Finding journal and newspaper articles". There are also "Hands-on practical sessions" on topics such as "How to find things on your reading list". See this website for the full programme http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Courses/index.html

Is there a book you think that would be useful or the Balfour Library to purchase? You may be pleased to hear that the Balfour Library welcomes book recommendations from its readers, just email the details to me at library@zoo.cam.ac.uk, along with a short reason why it would be useful and how many people it would be of use to.

Can't find the article or book you're looking for in Cambridge? We also offer an Inter-Library Loans service (for a small fee) whereby we can request items from the British Library to be loaned or copied for our readers. Requests are satisfied within 3-5 working days. See our website for more information http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/ills.html

We look forward to seeing you all in the Balfour Library soon, when you register your University Card with us so you can borrow books, purchase a photocopying card and printing credit, and come on an on-demand tour.

Clair & Jane

International Open Access Week at Cambridge

The Open Access movement worldwide has been gathering pace as top-tier universities embrace the effort to provide free online access to research literature and data. To support understanding of Open Access, the University Library is organising a number of events in October during the International Open Access Week. The events are built around DSpace@Cambridge, the University's institutional Open Access repository. For more information on events during the Open Access week contact Barbara Bultmann bb342@cam.ac.uk and visit:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/create_change/events.html

Conference: Open Access Cambridge

This half-day conference will explore different perspectives on Open Access by bringing together representatives from the research community, the publishing sector and from a learned society.

Speakers will include Dr Tim Hubbard, Head of Informatics Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute; Dr James Milne, Editorial Director from the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing; representatives from BioMed Central and Plos Public Library of Science and DSpace@Cambridge.

Wednesday, 21st October, 2.00 - 5.00, Isaac Newton Institute for
Mathematical Sciences, 20 Clarkson Road, Cambridge

Workshop: How to get published - Author workshop held by BioMed Central and PLoS Public Library of Science

This Author workshop is aimed at young scientists and provides guidelines on how to write a 4* research paper with these Open Access publishers.

Wednesday, 21st October, 10.00 - 12.30, University Centre. Please notify the organizers <mailto:bb342@cam.ac.uk>of your attendance.

Presentation: Open Access: E-theses

The DSpace@Cambridge <http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/> team will talk about Open Access and its implications for the scholarly communication process. The team will also introduce the new electronic PhD thesis deposit scheme starting in Michaelmas Term 2009.

Monday, 19th October, 2.30 - 4.00, University Library, Morison Room (Part of the Research Skills Programme)

Discussion: Open Access Table at the Departments

Drop by to talk to pick up information, learn about the public access policies of the UK funding councils, and talk to Librarians and Repository staff about your publishing questions.

Tuesday 20th October, 10.00 - 14.00 - Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (outside the Level 7 Lounge)

Tuesday 20th October, 14.00 - 16.00 - Medical School (Foyer)

Friday 23rd October, 10.00 - 12.30 - Computer Laboratory

More to be scheduled. If you wish us to attend your department/faculty, please email us.

DSpace@Cambridge unveils e-thesis depositing

The DSpace@Cambridge team is pleased to announce that from October 1st 2009 it will be possible to deposit theses in electronic form in DSpace@Cambridge, the institutional repository of the University. The theses will be disseminated online via the DSpace@Cambridge interface, allowing interested readers from all over the world to access them.

Each University faculty or department will have its own e-thesis collection where students, staff and alumni will be able to deposit their theses. The goal is to build a complete digital collection of theses from the University, ensuring continued access to this valuable material for future generations.

The deposit process is simple. The University Library is collaborating with the Board of Graduate Studies on the scheme, and all students submitting their thesis for examination will receive offers to deposit their thesis in DSpace@Cambridge. Deposits are made on a voluntary basis. Librarians from the University Library will verify that all details are correct before the thesis is made available for online access.

It will also be possible for University staff and alumni to make their theses available in DSpace@Cambridge. Further information about e-thesis deposit for current staff and alumni will be distributed to all University departments throughout the autumn. Interested parties can also contact the DSpace@Cambridge team at support@repository.cam.ac.uk

Further information about the scheme is available at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/repository/theses/

Early career researchers author workshop

On 19 October 2009, Elsevier will be hosting a lecuture aimed at early career researchers on 'How to write a world class paper'. There will be 2 sessions one at 10.30 and one at 2.00 on the Addenbrookes site.

During the presentation, the audience will gain insights in the way publishers, editors and reviewers look at their manuscripts, which may help them to submit better papers.

The lecture will cover those aspects, relevant when preparing and submitting a manuscript for a scientific journal e.g. originality, Hot Topics, format of the article, selection of the journal, language, building blocks, ethical and copyright issues.

Dr Riaz Agha, Managing and Executive Editor of International Journal of Surgery (and Junior Doctor at Addenbrooke's!) will present the workshop and share his experiences with the audience and answer questions.

We believe that these sessions will be oversubscribed (indeed the afternoon session is nearly full just from being advertised on the Medical Library website) and so booking is essential. Bookings can be made via the Medical library website at

Access to electronic resources off-campus: important changes from 1 August

The University completed the transition from ATHENS access to locally authenticated access via Shibboleth on the 1st August. Users will no longer be able to access a resource via the ATHENS alternative login route.

The recommended access route for electronic resources is via eresources@cambridge or, in the case of ejournals, ejournals@cambridge, which include the correct links.

Users off-campus should log in using the links provided by publishers on their web sites marked "Institutional login", "Log in via your home institution" or "Shibboleth".

Further information on this change and contact details for enquiries can be found at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/shibboleth.php