Monday 26 November 2012

Christmas Vacation borrowing and other useful information, to help you get through the festive period


A special Christmas package of information, just for you!

Michaelmas Term 2012 ends on Friday 30th November. All books on loan from the Balfour Library must be returned by this date, or can be renewed for further periods unless they have been requested by another borrower.


Saturday morning opening has now finished until next term. 

Vacation borrowing for undergraduates 

This is permitted for the whole of the Christmas vacation. 

You can take a maximum of two books away from Cambridge which must be returned by midnight on the first day of the Lent Term 2013 (15th January). This applies to Overnight Loan books and Open Shelf books.

You can borrow books for the vacation period from 09:00 on Thursday 29th November. This is on a strictly first come, first served basis. You may not reserve books before borrowing them.

Please see the library website at: http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/booksborrow.html for more information on how to borrow, return and renew books on loan from the Balfour Library.

You may be interested to know that the University Library and the Central Science Library (on this site) also offer vacation borrowing for undergraduates, please see their websites at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=380 and http://centralsciencelibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/vacation-borrowing.html respectively.


How to access online resources when you are away from Cambridge

The recommended route for accessing e-journals provided by the University remotely is as follows:


  • Go to the ejournals@cambridge website at: http://camsfx.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/cambridge/az
  • Enter the title of the journal you need (if it does not appear then there is no online subscription to it)
  • Click on the 'find journals by title' button
  • Click on the link for the journal title as appropriate for the particular year of publication of the article that you need
  • The Raven login box should appear
  • Enter your Raven userid and password and click on the 'Submit' button
  • You should then be taken to the host page for that journal and you can find the article(s) you need from there
  • (You only need to enter the Raven login once per session so you won't have to keep logging in and out each time you need a different journal)

Away from Cambridge, you will not be able to get the full text of e-journal articles through searching PubMed or Google / GoogleScholar, or directly from the journal's homepage for example, as you will not be recognised as being a valid member of the University of Cambridge and will not be allowed to download them. The recommended route as above should guarantee you the access to the content you are entitled to.

It is strongly recommended that you check the ejournals@cambridge website as above to see whether you will actually be able to access particular online journals remotely BEFORE you leave Cambridge. 


See also the eresources@cambridge website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/ for access to particular citation databases, such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge. See the 'Access Route' link next to the journal or database title to check this.
Troubleshooting e-journals access

Finally, if you are having trouble accessing e-journals and e-resources remotely using your Raven password please see the guidance provided on the Central Science Library's 'Raven FAQs' website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/CSL/ravenqanda.htm

E-books

Don’t fancy taking all those heavy books home over the vacation? Then you might be interested in using e-books from home instead. 


Not everything is available as an e-book however so you will need to check that the e-books you need are actually available BEFORE you leave Cambridge.


The simplest way to find and access e-books is through the online library catalogue LibrarySearch at http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/. If you perform a catalogue search for a book and there is an electronic book version of it available, you will retrieve a record for it which will contain a direct link to that e-book. To access e-books off-campus you will need your Raven password.

There is also an up-to-date list of all e-books available that you can browse by subject here http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/ebooks_coll.html.

There are even more collections of free e-books available to you that won’t be found through LibrarySearch however. Please see the ebooks@cambridge website for further information on all the e-books available in the university, how to use them, and how to download them onto your e-reader or other mobile device, at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/.


Library Christmas and New Year closing dates 


The Balfour Library will be closed from 17:00 on Monday 24th December and will re-open at 08:30 on Wednesday 2nd January 2013.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Clair & Jane

Thursday 22 November 2012

£500 on offer to student book collectors


Rose Book-Collecting Prize 2012-2013

Cambridge University Library is offering students the chance to win £500 by building their own book collections.

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize was endowed in 2006 and is believed to be the first of its kind offered by any European university. As well as the £500 prize money, the winner will be offered 10 years’ free membership of the Friends of Cambridge University Library.

The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University registered for a Cambridge degree.

For more information please visit this website http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookprize/index.html

Tuesday 20 November 2012

New acquisitions


The following books and theses have been purchased or donated recently.

Books purchased:

Crawdad: a CD-ROM lab manual for neurophysiology, by Robert A. Wyttenbach, Bruce R. Johnson and Ronald R. Hoy. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates,, Inc.; [2000]. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (233) [Kept in Library Office].

Mixed effects models and extensions with R, by Alain F. Zuur ... [et al.]. New York, NY: Springer; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: EBB (92).

Scientist's guide to poster presentations, by Peter J. Gosling. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers; 1999. Balfour Library shelfmark: D.14 (37).

Vertebrate life, 9th ed., by F. Harvey Pough, Christine M. Janis and John B. Heiser. [Boston, MA]: Pearson; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: UU (17i1).

Books donated by Cambridge University Press:

From clone to bone: the synergy of morphological and molecular tools in palaeobiology, edited by Robert J. Asher and Johannes Mueller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: GJ (43).

New theses:

The evolution of defensive egg signatures in African warblers (Cisticolidae) and weaver birds (Ploceidae), by Eleanor M. Caves. [M.Phil.]. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (520).

Factors affecting adult sex ratios in bird populations, by Joanne Ceri Venables. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (519).

Investigating the role of specialised tip cells during morphogenesis of the Drosophila renal system, by Helen Marilyn Alice Weavers. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (521).

Structural and functional plasticity in the Drosophila larval locomotor circuit, by Maarten F. Zwart. Cambridge; 2012. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (518).

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Use of e-books survey



Thank you so much to those of you who completed my recent survey on your use of e-books!

The survey was sent to NST 1B Animal Biology, Cell & Developmental Biology, and Ecology students, and Part II Zoology, Neuroscience and BBS students. I received a brilliant 92 responses and students’ comments have been very interesting and useful to read.  I thought you might like a summary of the results, please find this below.

I feel that the survey results demonstrate an interest among students in using e-books, and in some cases a preference. However, there is a long way to go in making e-books easier to use, and promoting them and the benefits of using them to students.

To help you use e-books, remember that there is now the opportunity to attend a lunchtime e-books drop in session, which I emailed you all about via CamTools last week, please see also here http://www.balfourlibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/ebooks-lunchtime-drop-in-sessions.html. Additional sessions will probably be advertised in future.

To find out more about the e-books available to you please visit the ebooks@cambridge website here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/. In the Zoology Library we put bright yellow stickers on the cover of printed books that are also available as e-books. Alternatively, one of the easiest ways to see if a book you are interested in is available as an e-book, is to search for it on the library catalogues (Newton or LibrarySearch). If there is an e-book available, you will automatically see in your list of results an entry for the book with the phrase [electronic resource] next to it. Follow the links provided from there to access the e-book.

Along with actually purchasing e-books, I hope that this all goes some way to addressing some of the issues raised in comments in the survey results.

Many thanks again.

How often do you use e-books?

Never 40%
Rarely 17%
Sometimes 23%
Often 16%
Always 3%

Do you think the Zoology Library should continue to use e-books?

Yes, it’s nice to have the choice but printed books should take priority 64%
Yes, I prefer to use e-books rather than printed ones 16%
No, I prefer to use printed books only 9%
Other – please specify 8%
N/A 3%

Do you use any of the following devices to read e-books on-screen? (Click on all that apply)

Desktop computer 17%
Laptop computer 67%
Kindle or other e-reader 7%
iPad or other tablet 8%
Smartphone 12%
I don’t usually read e-books on screen, I prefer to print off what I read 10%
I don’t use any of these to read e-books 5%
N/A 20%

Summary of comments received about why students use or don’t use e-books, and whether the Zoology Library should be purchasing them:

Many students don’t appear to be aware of the existence of the e-books available to them in the university.

Students appreciate the convenience of e-books – the ability to search e-books, the fact that they are available away from the library and Cambridge, and when printed copies aren’t available in the library, as well as the fact that they don’t need to physically go to the library or carry heavy books, and there are no loan periods as such.

Many students dislike reading on-screen and prefer to print off what they need and read that, e.g. an e-book chapter, as they find it easier to read than printed ones which they prefer to read for longer periods of time.

Some students find e-books inconvenient – not easy to use in terms of bookmarking, navigating between chapters or screens when using Word for example, screen size restrictions, causing of eye strain, being distracted by the web while using e-books (!), finding it difficult or being unable to use several e-books at once.

Some students commented that the books they need aren’t available as e-books.

One dyslexic student felt that e-books were difficult to navigate text and read them generally.

One visually impaired student appreciated the ability with e-books to increase font size.

Some students like the idea of using Kindles to read e-books but don’t always know how.

The Zoology Library should buy e-books, but the purchase of printed books should take priority.

E-books are an invaluable resource for the library to have, especially for access away from Cambridge or immediately after a lecture when everybody needs the same book(s) at the same time.

Monday 12 November 2012

New neurophysiology ebook available



The Zoology Library and PDN library have jointly purchased a new e-book!
It is available via the online library catalogue, LibrarySearch.
 
Neurophysiology : a conceptual approach / R. H. S. Carpenter and Benjamin Reddi. 5th ed, 2012. http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|eresources|83530

There is also a sticker on the front of the printed versions of the books to tell you that there is also an e-copy and how to access it - just like in the photo above!
 
For more information on ebooks please visit the ebooks@cambridge website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/

Ebooks lunchtime drop-in sessions

Ebooks@cambridge has organised two lunchtime drop-in sessions, aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students, academic staff and librarians.  

Do you need to know how to find ebooks, or how to download ebooks to various mobile devices? Do you want to have a go at downloading ebooks onto an iPad or a Smart phone? 

Come along to the Engineering Library on Trumpington Street on Wednesday 14th November, or to the History Faculty (Seminar Room 5, 2nd floor) on the Sidgwick Site off West Road on Wednesday 21st November.  

Members of the ebooks@cambridge team will be there to answer your questions in an informal setting. Bring your own iPad, ereader or Smart phone if you have one. You will be able to look at ebooks on any subject.

There will probably be more sessions in future, and a bit closer to home.

To find out more about ebooks in general please visit the ebooks website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/