How old are you? Twenty-one again? Some of us (ahem) have been twenty-one twice over, with a few years added on…

Would it sound any better if I told you that I am 16,544 days old? Or 22,823,360 minutes, perhaps? While I’m not sure that I feel any better, if you would like to see how old you are in days or minutes, click the link below:

http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html

And here’s a website that I DO like – it tells you how old you would be in days and years if you lived on any of the given planets in the Universe… If I lived on Mars for example, I would be a mere twenty-four years old - and if I lived on Jupiter I’d have just turned three! All I have to do now is get there. TARDIS, anyone?

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/edu/age.htm

Yes folks, it’s not long now… but don’t listen to me! Click on the link below to find out exactly how many days, hours, minutes and seconds you’ve got left.

http://www.santaclaus.com/christmas-countdown.php

And if that’s put you into a panic, fear not. The aptly named Santa’s Sleigh website gives you great gift ideas for children, for him, for her, for grandparents, and even for pets! So now you’ve got no excuse. Happy Shopping… I mean, Christmas.

http://www.santaclaus.com/christmas-countdown.php

Cyberfraud.org.uk is a public service dedicated to protecting the consumer from becoming a victim of Internet fraud and Identity theft. This is the only site in the UK to provide a central platform covering all aspects of cyber crime.

Access to both databases has now been restored.

However, you may find that you’re still unable to access the associated PILOTS database on the same platform as the BHI and ASSIA – we’ll let you know when this last bug is resolved.

ASSIA provides abstracts and index of academic and trade publications in the social sciences from 1987 onwards. The BHI contains abstracts and index of academic and trade publications, including over 400 daily newspapers, weekly magazines and academic journals from 1962 onwards. Both are available on the CSA Illumina platform.

• Lincoln:
  • GCW University Library (Brayford Pool)
  • Riseholme Learning Resources Centre (Riseholme Park)
• Hull Learning Resources Centre
• Holbeach Learning Resources Centre

These documents cover the whole of the vacation period between Saturday, 19th December, 2009 – Monday, 4th January, 2010. Normal opening hours resume on Monday, 4th January.

Also…

Don’t forget! The GCW University Library will be staying open 24 hours a day on weekdays for the two weeks before the Christmas break…

I’m giving a lightning talk in the morning covering the work we’ve done on using RefWorks to create new-book RSS feeds; I’ll also be trying to raise interest around Joss’s and my project to develop Wordpress MU as a platform for a devolved union catalogue.

You can follow Monday’s discussions on Twitter, if you’re so inclined (hashtag #middlemash).

The library survey is still underway, and we’d love to hear your views! You have until Monday 30th November to fill in the survey and be in with a chance of winning a £50 Amazon voucher. So far we’ve had 134 responses from Chemistry students, which is great, but we’d like to get more!

There’s more information about the survey on the library website, or you can just go straight to the survey itself.

And continuing our theme of excellence this week, words almost fail at this (a non-video for a change!)

http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/menace/

If any readers have created awesome projects like this, please let us know.

When Tim Burton wrote The Nightmare Before Christmas little did he know what a hit it would be. It tells the story of Jack Skeleton, the pumpkin king of Halloween who becomes disillusioned with the revelry of Halloween and, whilst out walking, stumbles upon Christmas Town. So enamoured with the festivities and bright lights of Christmas, he decides to take it over and make Christmas his own.

Tim Burton brings the story alive with stop-motion animation at a time when CGI was taking off with the release of Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993) and the ballroom scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991). It may have failed but it didn’t. The story is cleverly written and the use of catchy, moving songs (thanks to Danny Elfman) brings it to life. Each character is well developed and it’s quite surprising to discover that Jack is actually a kind-hearted man who just wants to enjoy Christmas and make children happy. Sally, the ragdoll; Zero, Jack’s faithful dog along with trick-or-treaters Lock, Shock and Barrell and the dastardly Oogie Boogie bring depth and the storylines surrounding all these characters are packed into a relatively short film (76 minutes).

The great thing about The Nightmare Before Christmas is that it has aged well. Sixteen years after its release it still looks as good as it did in the early nineties and is really quite appealing. In 2006 the film was digitally altered so it could be broadcast in 3D illustrating its timeless qualities.

You can borrow the original 2D version from the University Library. You’ll find it in the DVD collection on the ground floor at 791.4372 nig.

Q. What is Tim Burton’s trademark opener to the beginning credits and name a film that he does this in?

Student introduction to Library Services: 7th December, 2pm

How to find an ejournal: 10th December, 11am

Finding information in Religious Studies: 17th December, 10am

Finding Journal Impact Factors for Business and Management: 22nd December, 10:45am

Please register for these online sessions by going to the Library Information Literacy Area of the VLE. On this website you will also find the learning outcomes for these sessions, a link to training on the interface and you will be able to check if you have the right software to access Elluminate.

Moving away from yesterday’s listening but keeping with the rhythm, here is some more excellence on show:

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_moschen_juggles_rhythm_and_motion.html

Judge for yourself: developing critical reading skills
Introduction to Harvard referencing
Introduction to RefWorks
Overcoming your fear of presenting
Finding journal articles
Using the internt for academic research
Effective use of grammar and punctuation in your assignment
Assistive software – how to use the Inspiration software (for mind-mapping )and TextHelp (a text-to-speech application)
Encoding your essay – advice on how to structure an essay

You can book your place from the Library’s workshop page  or by texting the relevant code to 07972 455457.

Click here for a list of workshops and dates.

And after yesterday’s video on sound, this one on ‘listening’ shows both some stunning skill and reminds us that we’re probably not even beginners at listening:

http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html

(it’s a longer video but worth the time)

The latest web version of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is now online!

What’s new?

Now reflecting the content of the 90th print edition, the new web version adds tables covering 11 new topics:
• Structures and functions of common drugs
• Chemical constituents of human blood
• Proton nmr shifts for solvents
• Apparent Equilibrium Constants for Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions
• Phase Transitions in the Solid Elements at Atmospheric Pressure
• Thermoelectric Properties of Metals and Semiconductors
• Thermophysical Properties of Stainless Steel 310
• Description of the IUPAC chemical identifier (InChI)
• International recommendations on the expression of uncertainty of measurements
• Major world earthquakes, 850AD to 2008
• Nobel prize winners in Physics and Chemistry

And some of the most heavily used tables have been extensively revised and updated:
• Nuclear moments for nmr spectroscopy
• Mass spectral peaks for organic solvents
• Properties of refrigerants
• Interstellar molecules
• Aqueous Solubility and Henry’s Law Constants of Organic Compounds
• Properties of the Solar System
• Satellites of the Planets
• Threshold Limits for Airborne Contaminants
• Speed of Sound in Dry Air

MATLAB for Research and Teaching
2pm – 5pm, Wednesday 25th November 2009
Clore Lecture Theatre, Huxley Building

Simulink for Research and Teaching
2pm – 5pm, Wednesday 9th December 2009
Clore Lecture Theatre, Huxley Building

The purpose of this seminar series is to provide staff and post graduates at Imperial College with the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into MATLAB and Simulink technology which is available on campus.
These events will consider applications highlighting many of the latest features and capabilities. Presentations will be delivered by The MathWorks engineers with many years of experience in applying methods and tools in industry and academia.

Our Facebook page is regularly updated and includes photos of the Library before and during the early stages of the building work - this will be added to as the project progresses. There are also lots of useful links and a feed from our project blog: http://newlibrary.wordpress.stir.ac.uk/blogs/

To find us on Facebook, search for ‘University of Stirling New Library Project’ or follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/University-of-Stirling-New-Library-Project/52701324641

Information Services

http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/newlibrary/index.php

Titles in the collection include:

- Biomarkers in Medicine
- Immunotherapy
- Nanomedicine
- Personalised Medicine
- Pharmacogenomics
- Regenerative Medicine

Click on the links above for further information on any of these titles, including
the aims & scope and Editorial Board.

Would you like a trial to this or purchase it, then comment on this blog or email me

• The tabs giving access Limits, Preview/Index, History, and Details have been removed and are now available through the Advanced Search option or on the right hand side
• The drop down Send to menu has been reorganised and moved on the screen.

You can get more information about the changes here. If you have any problems using the new interface, please contact the Science Team for help & advice.

To access this list go to Social Work Subject Site and look at Library Info. The off-air collection is growing all the time and now numbers more than 450 items, all searchable through the library catalogue.

The Social Science Research Network has released a free iPhone application. This allows iPhone and iPhone Touch users to search and view full text papers from the database. The application is available from the iTunes store.

The Social Science Research Network contains working papers in economics, accounting, entrepreneurship, finance and management.

Watch out for further blogs and information in the LLR centres.

In the meantime if you want to keep your past inter-library loan history please ensure you have printed it off/saved it by the 7th December 2009! It will be unavailable after this date. Any Inter-library loan applications on the new system will be retained.

Watch out for further blogs and information in the LLR centres.

Here’s an example of excellence in presentation, as well as interesting content:

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_the_4_ways_sound_affects_us.html

(Thanks to joro for yesterday’s Thing and the above)

This must have taken some practice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b36Yi-Pb1wM

Here is a list of new books and maps (Word file) recently added to the Earth Science & Engineering collection in the Central Library.

Don’t forget to email me (lawrence.jones@imperial.ac.uk) if you have any new book or map suggestions.

To do this:

• Log in to the portal, go to the A-Z List of Online Resources and choose HeinOnline.
• Click on Law Journal Library, and then click on the Search tab.
• Choose field search from the menu at the left of the screen and enter your keywords in the search boxes. 
•  Tick the “Run as Faceted Search” option next to the search button, and then click on search.

Using faceted search displays a list of options alongside your results. One of these new options is “Country Published”. If you click on the link for Scotland HeinOnline will only list articles from journals based in Scotland. (You might have to click on “more” under the list of countries to see the option for Scotland.)

Using this new feature will exclude articles about Scots law if they have been published in other jurisdictions. It will hide the useful articles outlining Scots law topics that often published by American university law reviews, and any Scots law articles from journals based in England, but it will be useful if you are struggling to locate Scottish material.

Kirsty Thomson

Subject Librarian

As of November 17th 2009, new SciFinder enhancements are available via your web browser. Reflecting CAS’ commitment to continuous improvement of SciFinder performance, this release includes several performance and usability enhancements, such as:

• Improved navigation and search speed for faster retrieval of answers
• Increased ease-of-use when switching between reaction and substance structure search types within the drawing editor
• Improved access to the structure drawing editor, via Java 1.5 or earlier versions*

If you have any questions, please contact CAS at help@cas.org

*Java versions prior to 1.6 are no longer supported by Sun Microsystems or CAS.

A number of the journals searched are freely available on Open Access. For others, access to the full text of search results will depend on institutional or personal subscriptions.

You can also save the results of searches as RSS feeds.

TechJournalContents ingests Tables of Contents RSS feeds provided by numerous journal publishers such as Springer, Emerald, Inderscience, Wiley Interscience, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, IEEE, Sage, AIP, IMechE, etc, and then uses the journalTOCs API, produced by the journalTOCs Project, to deliver results to the TechJournalContents service
TechJournalContents is a new service from TechXtra, the service which helps you find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, thesis & dissertations, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing.
TechXtra is produced by the ICBL, Heriot-Watt

TechJournalContents and TechXtra are unfunded services, so we rely on word-of-mouth to spread the word.

Over 1800 students are now qualified to win a Kindle, Nintendo Wiis, new iPod Nanos and gift cards because they answered 3 questions correctly using Knovel. There’s plenty of room for winning even more prizes so don’t miss your chance!

In addition to the prizes listed above, all universities with at least 100 correct entries are guaranteed their own iPod prize for a student at their school!

So far, Colorado School of Mines, Georgia Tech, Nanyang Technological University, and University of Cincinnati have qualified for extra prizes but so many more universities are at the halfway mark or closer!Let’s see if we can get a UK University on the list.

In these last few days, make up some ground and…

Once you’ve entered, don’t forget to share with your friends to increase your chances.

 Good Luck!

Lynne

Many thanks to all those who helped this project reach completion, especially Phil, Alice and Cherie. The next phase would be to stream the many hundreds of DVDs onto the network, although this is dependent on the University’s server capacity being increased.

The email service that has been causing a problem for the last few days has now been resolved. We do not anticipate any further issues but if you have local concerns resulting from this problem please contact the IT Service Desk on 6500

 

ICT apologise for the inconvenience caused by the partial failure of the email system