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Table of Contents:

Comment Bloglines Pinakes Random Quote Feedback Internet Resources Newsletter by email News items of interest	A-Z New & Notable Web Sites Information and reviews of new and recent Web sites
Nice Web Site(s) This month: scenta	Press Releases National Library of the Netherlands and BioMed Central agree to open access archive Sentient DISCOVER Wins More Sites
Network News Athens BUBL EEVL SOSIG EDINA CHEST MIMAS PSIgate BIOME Netskills ELDIS BIZ/ed AHDS JISCmail UK Data Archive Chemical Database Service Academic Info RDN Humbul	Blogorama News of Weblogs, etc
Get a life! Leisure Time

COMMENT

Bloglines

What a lot of good use I've been making of the My Blogs feature on the Bloglines site. It really does seem to work very well as a way of easily scanning selected news feeds and weblogs. Like many other people, I use a number of different PCs connected to one or more networks, and using news feed readers such as FeedReader can be problematic in such cases.

The My Blogs feature on Bloglines gets round this problem. As it says on the site "Unlike other aggregators which require you to download and install software, Bloglines runs on our servers and requires no installation."

So - here is a step-by-step list of things to do if you want to try this out.

1. Go to the Bloglines site http://www.bloglines.com/

2. Click on the Register link http://www.bloglines.com/register on the Bloglines home page.

3. Supply the required information - your email address and a password, and click on Register (after you have read the Terms of Service, of course).

4. An email message will be sent to you to validate that the email address you registered with at Bloglines is correct. Follow the instructions in that email and you will complete the registration process.

5. Go to the My Blogs page http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs (you may need to enter your registration details), and now you can enter the URLs of some news feeds or blogs to 'subscribe' (get them included in your My Blogs profile).

6. For example, here are some that I have subscribed to, and you might want to cut and paste these in the URL box on your My Blogs page. If you don't like the results, its easy to unsubscribe from them:

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/rss/latest-news.rss
EEVL News - Latest News from EEVL: the Internet guide for Engineering, Mathematics and Computing.

http://www.resourceshelf.com/resourceshelf.xml
ResourceShelf - Resources and News for Information Professionals

http://www.philb.com/blog/philb_rss.xml
Phil Bradley's Blog - For librarians and people interested in search engines, searching the net, design issues and general whitterings and rants.

http://www.e4engineering.com/RSS/e4RssNews.asp
e4engineering.com news - The latest news from e4engineering.com, the leading online resource of the engineering industry.

http://www.meberle.com/cgi-bin/getrss.pl
Library Techlog - a weblog on the use of technology in libraries includes scripts, news, articles with a slight focus on the biomedical

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/technology/rss091.xml
BBC News | Technology | World Edition

http://www.libdex.com/rssify.php?url=http://xrefer.blogspot.com/
Peter Scott's Library Blog

http://zillman.blogspot.com/rss/zillman.xml
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker - Happenings and Events

There are thousands more to choose from - some are listed in the Blogorama section of this Newsletter and there are various directories elsewhere. You can find some through Bloglines' own search facility (though this seems to be incomplete). Once you have subscribed to a feed, you will see the headline and brief description in the right-hand frame of My Blogs, and you click on the headline to get the full story. Easy! You should be able to read these feeds from any networked computer by going to the Bloglines site and clicking on My Blogs.

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Pinakes

Pinakes: a subject gateway http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html is a useful site providing access to over 50 major, high-quality subject gateways on a wide range of academic subjects. You can use Pinakes to find gateways to useful Internet resources on most subjects. Pinakes is maintained here at Heriot Watt Library, and I hope you will find it useful.

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Random Quote

"Shopping online continues to grow in popularity. We are forecast to spend about £12 billion online this year - 6% of total retail spend and a 12-fold increase since 2000" The Sunday Times, 21 Sept 2003.

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Feedback

I received the following comment from one reader concerning the dissertationsandtheses.com site which was included in last month's newsletter: "The details on the home page show that it provides ample opportunities for plagiarism and for providing tailor-made papers if you are rich enough to buy them. Perhaps a 'health warning' might be in order?". So...you have been warned.

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Internet Resources Newsletter by email

Over 18,000 people now subscribe to the free email version of this Newsletter. The number of subscribers has been increasing over the past few months, and very many thanks go to Willco who distribute the email version. To subscribe, at no cost, go to http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.html

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Text version

A text only version of the Internet Resources Newsletter is available at: http://www.hw.ac.uk/cgi-bin/parser.pl/0304/www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.html

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Here is this month's selection of news items of interest

IEEE articles and papers indexed in Google
The IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers) has made its content available via the Google search engine. Google searches will link users directly to the brief abstract. Subscribers will then be able to link on to the full text.
http://www.biblio-tech.com/uksg/SI_PD.cfm?AC=1040&PID=10&ZID=849
From UKSG Serials-eNews

CSA Launch Biocomplexity Thesaurus
CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) and the NBII (National Biological Information Infrastructure, US Geological Survey, US Dept. of the Interior) have launched the Biocomplexity Thesaurus. This free, Web-based thesaurus is a new resource for the biocomplexity and bioinformatics communities and for the public-at-large.
http://www.biblio-tech.com/uksg/SI_PD.cfm?AC=1956&PID=10&ZID=867
From UKSG Serials-eNews

IBM’s WebFountain Launched–The Next Big Thing?
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030922-1.shtml
From Information Today

New educational content portal
RedDot Solutions and the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education are working together to create a portal which sets new standards for usability and accessibility.
http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=1907
From: Managing Information News

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A-Z NEW & NOTABLE WEB SITES

0Spam.com

http://www.0spam.com/

Details of this site were sent to IRN, but I must admit that I haven't tried it yet. "0Spam.com is a free, virtually 100% effective anti-spam service designed for POP E-mail accounts. Unlike other anti-spam services that use filters which don't filter out all the spam and even filter out non-spam, 0Spam.com uses a whitelisting technique that safely removes spam from one or more inboxes."

1Up Info - Encyclopedia and Reference Resource

http://www.1upinfo.com/

Browse articles in all areas of topics within Earth & Environment, History, Literature & Arts, Health & Medicine, People, Philosophy & Religion, Places, Plants & Animals, Science & Technology, Social Science, Law, Sports, Everyday Life, and more. Includes Country Studies and North America Gazetteer.

6dof.com

http://www.6dof.com/

This site is about Finite Element Method and numerical simulation. It is managed by a group of voluntary persons coming from the FEA world. The site is independent and non-commercial.

About Medway

http://www.aboutmedway.info/

About Medway is a partnership of over 500 organisations offering information and advice to the public.

"About Medway represents a partnership of local, regional and national organisations providing information services to the public and is part of the larger seamlessUK project enabling people to find the information they need from public sector organisations, including local government, voluntary and community groups together with information from government at all levels."

Medway Council is one of the largest unitary authorities in the south-east of the UK with over 250,000 people living within its boundaries.

Acumen Journal of Sciences

http://acumenjournal.com/

Life sciences journal which has been much in the news recently.

Addaction

http://www.addaction.org.uk/

Addaction is a leading UK charity working solely in the field of drug and alcohol treatment.

ALPSP Learned Journals Collection

http://www.alpsp-collection.org/

The ALPSP Learned Journals Collection is an initiative whereby smaller ALPSP member publishers work together, through Swets Blackwell, to sell a combined package of their journals to consortia and other large customers.

Assembly Net

http://www.assembly-net.org/

The prime aim of the Assembly Net Thematic Network is to establish a well co-ordinated and effective support infrastructure throughout Europe in order to share and exchange the latest developments in Assembly System Applications and Design.

Auchinleck Manuscript

http://www.nls.uk/auchinleck/

The Auchinleck Manuscript (NLS Adv MS 19.2.1) is one of the National Library of Scotland's greatest treasures. Produced in London in the 1330s, it provides a unique insight into the English language and literature that Chaucer and his generation grew up with and were influenced by.

Blogwise

http://www.blogwise.com/

Blogwise is.a new site bringing you a collection of categorised blogs from around the world.

Canadian Architect and Builder

http://collections.ic.gc.ca/architect/

"The Canadian Architect and Builder (CAB) was published between 1888 and 1908 and is the only professional architectural journal published in Canada before World War I. Beautifully filled with photographs, drawings, advertisements and valuable articles, CAB provides a wealth of information on the state of architecture and building in Canada during the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

Canadian Inventory of Digital Initiatives

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/initiatives/erella.htm

The Canadian Inventory of Digital Initiatives provides descriptions of Canadian information resources created for the Web, including general digital collections, resources centred around a particular theme, and reference sources and databases.

CanCore

http://www.cancore.org/

This site is the official home for documents, presentations and other resources related to the the Canadian Core Learning Object Metadata Application Profile. The CanCore Profile is intended to facilitate the interchange of records describing educational resources and the discovery of these resources both in Canada and beyond its borders.

Capitale Sociale.it

http://digilander.libero.it/socialcapital/eng-index.htm

These webpages contain useful resources for researchers interested in social capital and in its relationship with economic development.

Coalition Provisional Authority

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/

From the provisional government in Iraq.

Conference Alerts

http://www.conferencealerts.com/

Includes a searchable database of upcoming academic conferences and a free alerting service.

Conference on Open Access to the Data and Results of the Sciences and Humanities

http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/index.html

20 - 22 Oct 2003, Berlin.

Coordinating digitisation in Europe

http://www.minervaeurope.org/publications/globalreport.htm

Progress report of the National Representatives Group: coordination mechanisms for digitisation policies and programmes 2002. European Commission: The Information Society Directorate-General, 2003.

Corante

http://www.corante.com/

Corante is a leading news service on technology that's read by many of the sector's top entrepreneurs, executives, funders, followers and thinkers.

Digital Look

http://www.digitallook.com/

"Digital Look is a leading online financial news and information business delivering comprehensive company and market information to investors and corporates. The business is based on the combination of comprehensive, accurate and timely news and financial content with intelligent technology tools to create unique and market leading products. "

Distributed Digital Library of Mathematical Monographs Search

http://mathbooks.library.cornell.edu:8085/Dienst/UIMATH/2.0/Search

This is part of the Cornell University Library: Historical Mathematics Monographs site. The Cornell University Library Historical Mathematics Monographs is a collection of selected monographs with expired copyrights chosen from the mathematics field.

ECSITE-UK

http://www.ecsite-uk.net/index.php

ECSITE-UK's purpose is to raise the profile of science centres, and to establish their role as a forum for dialogue between science specialists and the public and as an informal learning resource for learners of all ages.

'eCulture'

ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/ist/docs/digicult/september2003.doc

The latest issue of 'eCulture' is available. This issue includes outcomes of the First IST Call. (It's a European Commission thing).

EduResources Portal

http://sage.eou.edu/SPT/

A Gateway to Higher Education Instructional Resources.

ElsevierMathematics

http://www.elseviermathematics.com/

The new address for this service.

Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/

Unusual site, but looks relevant if you need to check for contacts in publishing. Second Edition, August 2003.

Face 2 Interface Web Development

http://face2interface.com/

Face 2 Interface is dedicated to making the web work for you and your customers, by providing high quality solutions to your business needs.

This site contains many articles of information regarding a wide range of web related topics including articles contributed by guest authors. The "Master Your Domain" series may be of special interest.

Focus on MIMAS - Issue 17

http://www.mimas.ac.uk/focus/03sep/

The electronic newsletter from Manchester InforMation and Associated Services.

Free News Alerts

http://www.llrx.com/columns/notes61.htm

An article by Cindy Carlson, in LLRX.com

gapyear.com

http://www.gapyear.com/

A guide to taking time out.

Global Access to UK Research: Removing the barriers

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=event_reseach_1103

20 November 2003, Universities UK, Woburn House, London.

"The JISC wishes to invite individuals in the further and higher education sectors who are interested in the dissemination of the results of UK research to attend a one-day seminar at Universities UK, Woburn Place, London on Thursday 20 November."

Guardian Unlimited Books

http://books.guardian.co.uk/

The book section from the newspaper The Guardian.

IdeaExplore

http://www.ideaexplore.net/

The goal of this website is to help connect ideas and people who can use them. There is a $100 Monthly Award for the best use of an idea.

Ideal World

http://www.idealworldproductions.com/

Ideal World is Scotland's largest independent television production company with offices in Glasgow and London.

IDEAS

http://ideas.repec.org/

A bibliographic database dedicated to Economics. Over 200,000 items of research can be browsed or searched, and over 100,000 can be downloaded in full text. IDEAS uses the RePEc database. RePEc stands for "Research Papers in Economics" and is an internal name for a group working on the provision of electronic working papers.

Info Aggregator

http://rss.blogstreet.com/asp-rssbin/auth_rss

Info Aggregator is an RSS-to-IMAP service. It lets you receive and read RSS feeds in your favourite mail client. It delivers all the latest news and blog posts directly to your mailbox.

Information for Scotland 10

http://www.slainte.org.uk/Eventsca/0311/03110500.htm

5 Nov 2003, Edinburgh University Library, Edinburgh.

Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

http://www.ilt.ac.uk/

The Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education is the professional body for all who teach and support learning in higher education in the UK.

Integrity in Science Internet Database

http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/database.html

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has launched the Integrity in Science Internet Database to provide information about the corporate ties of scientists, academics, and non-profit organizations in the fields of nutrition, environment, toxicology, and medicine. The aim of the database is to encourage transparency in the conduct, oversight, and reporting of science and to make information available to the public.

Interactions.org

http://www.interactions.org/cms/

Interactions.org is designed to serve as a central resource for communicators of particle physics.

International Conference for Sustainability Engineering and Science

http://www.nzsses.org.nz/conference/CoP.cfm

Auckland, New Zealand, 7th - 9th July 2004. Call for papers.

International Student Retention Conference

http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/graduate_school/access/news/news4.html

The European Access Network and the Institute for Access Studies, Staffordshire University, Amsterdam, 5th - 7th November 2003.

Internet Hoaxes

http://www.internethoaxes.info/

This site is designed to educate you about the latest happenings in all areas of Anti-Virus, Hoax, Myth, Fraud, Chain Letter and Anti-Spam occurring on the Internet.

KenRadio

KenRadio

"KenRadio is news and information for the New Economy. Founded by Webcasting-Pioneer, Ken Rutkowski, KenRadio keeps its audience connected with a fresh approach to the news and top stories, delivering "Tech News With Attitude" every day. "

KnowItAll Academic

http://www.knowitall.com/academic/welcome.html

"With the Academic Edition of KnowItAll, you can have it all and know it all - draw structures, perform IR and Raman functional group analysis, access a multi-technique spectral database with cross-references, and generate high-quality reports. And best of all, this set of tools resides in one common interface, so it's easy to learn and easy to transfer data from application to application."

Law Scout

http://lawscout.uakron.edu/

Provides subject access to all the pathfinders and guides of over 130 law schools and other institutions.

Local Authorities Research & Intelligence Association: LARIA

http://www.laria.gov.uk/

LARIA (the Local Authorities Research & Intelligence Association) was established in 1974 to promote the role and practice of research within the field of local government and provide a supportive network for those conducting or commissioning research.

Local Authority Research Council Initiative: LARCI

http://www.larci.org.uk/

LARCI, the Local Authorities Research Council Initiative, was established in 1997 to bring local authorities and the research councils into closer partnership.

Looking at content through RSS colored glasses

http://www.librarystuff.net/presentations/CIL3132003.ppt

A Powerpoint presentation about RSS.

mathcentre

http://www.mathcentre.ac.uk/

"mathcentre provides support to students making the transition from school to university and offers all universities resources to establish or enhance their local mathematics support provision.

mathcentre offers students and university staff free-standing help leaflets on basic topics which are known to cause problems. For a more in-depth treatment there are also teach-yourself workbooks with plenty of worked examples, explanations and exercises."

Metadata

http://radio.weblogs.com/0128764/categories/metadata/

A blog.

Metadata Demystified

http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Metadata_Demystified.pdf

This is subtitled 'A guide for publishers'

MyST Technology Partners

http://myst-technology.com/

"Maker of MySmartChannels and the MyST Web Services Platform

MySmartChannels is a Weblog Application Server that lets anyone quickly and easily publish, organize, and reuse information in a secure Web environment. Beneath the easy-to-use MySmartChannels interface lies a powerful Web services platform that provides a solid foundation for knowledge management (KM), enterprise collaboration (EC), or electronic business community building initiatives."

Nano-World

http://www.nano-world.org/en

A Swiss virtual campus project.

National Atomic Museum

http://www.atomicmuseum.com/

"The National Atomic Museum is the nation's only congressionally chartered museum of nuclear science and history. The museum was established in 1969 as an intriguing place to learn the story of the Atomic Age, from early research of nuclear development through today's peaceful uses of nuclear technology."

New Outlooks In Science & Engineering: NOISE

http://www.noisenet.ws/

NOISE (New Outlooks In Science & Engineering) is a new UK-wide campaign funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

NOISE aims to raise awareness of science & engineering among 16-19 year olds by making these subjects more relevant and accessible.

nutch

http://www.nutch.org/

"Nutch is a nascent effort to implement an open-source web search engine.

Web search is a basic requirement for internet navigation, yet the number of web search engines is decreasing. Today's oligopoly could soon be a monopoly, with a single company controlling nearly all web search for its commercial gain. That would not be good for users of the internet."

PhDweblogs.net

http://phdweblogs.net/

PhDweblogs.net is a non-profit initiative to bring together PhD students' weblogs from all around the world. If you are preparing a PhD, and have a blog about your research interests, you can register it here.

Phil Bradley's Blog

http://www.philb.com/blog/blogger.html

For librarians and people interested in search engines, searching the net, design issues and general whitterings and rants.

PLANetizen

http://www.planetizen.com/

A site for planning-related news, etc.

Plus

http://www.plus.maths.org/

Plus is an internet magazine which aims to introduce readers to the beauty and the practical applications of mathematics.

PolicyNet

http://www.raeng.co.uk/policynet/

A network of individuals working in science, engineering, and technology (SET) policy.

Real Estate Sources on the Web

http://www.freepint.com/issues/180903.htm#feature

An article from Free Pint, by Alison D'Urso.

Red Earth Software

http://www.redearthsoftware.com/

Red Earth Software specializes in the development of policy enforcement software for messaging systems.

Renaissance News

Renaissance News

From re:source, the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries.

The first issue of Renaissance News, a quarterly newsletter, brings you reports about the Renaissance in the Regions initiative. It is intended to update you on what's been happening so far and our plans for the next few months.

Reveal - the database of accessible resources

http://www.revealweb.org.uk/

This web site brings together information about services and resources for visually impaired people from organisations across the United Kingdom.

RSS Utilities: A Tutorial

http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javaserverpages/rss_utilities/

By Rodrigo Oliveira.

RSSJobs

http://www.rssjobs.com/rssjobs/index.jsp

RSSJobs allows you to create and save searches for Monster, Dice, HotJobs,and more in one location, then delivers the results to your favorite RSS Reader.

Scenta

http://www.scenta.co.uk/

"By working with partners, scenta will provide news, events listings, lesson plans, careers advice - and much more - for professionals, schoolchildren and students, the media, teachers and academics interested in science, engineering and technology."

Scottish Storytelling Centre

http://www.scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk/

This site is about how you can get involved in the Scottish Storytelling Network, find out about stories, events, festivals, tours, John Knox House and much more.

Searching Free Design Databases on the Web"

http://www.freepint.com/issues/040903.htm#tips

An article in a recent issue of the popular newsletter Free Pint, by Steve Van Dulken.

Simputer

http://www.simputer.org/

The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man. It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer.

Slashdot

http://slashdot.org/

A blog for 'nerds' (so it says at the site).

Smithsonian Education

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/

"The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies provides leadership in education at the Smithsonian and produces a variety of programs, services, and resources for the education and museum communities. The Center studies education at the Institution and builds consensus on standards for strengthening its educational programs, publications, and websites.

This website is a collective effort by staff of the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies. "

St Andrews Eprints

http://eprints.st-andrews.ac.uk/

St Andrews eprints is an institutional archive for the academic community of St Andrews University.

Superconductivity Papers Database

http://www.aist.go.jp/RIODB/sprcnd_etl/DB013_eng_top_n.html

This database is being constructed by three Research Units of AIST and ISTEC in Japan for the purpose of supporting researchers concerned with Superconductivity.

Technology at Harvard Law: RSS 2.0

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

Information about RSS ("Really Simple Syndication"), a web content syndication format.

Telintell

http://www.telintell.com/

Telintell is run from London in the UK by a small team of information professionals who specialise in researching the telecommunications industry.

" Telintell has a searchable database of links to market information on the telecoms industry. We are adding to this database every week. Telintell also offers a browsing facility where users can click on regions of our global map to find telecoms information relevant to those areas. We also offer an RSS feed listing new additions to our database which is updated daily."

The power of the grid

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/05/35OPreality_1.html

A recent article in InfoWorld, by Ephraim Schwartz.

UCL Centre for Cosmic Chemistry & Physics

http://www.chem.ucl.ac.uk/cosmicdust/

The purpose of the Centre is to apply research to fundamental chemical processes which are believed to occur throughout the universe. Using a unique combination of theoretical and experimental techniques, such processes are investigated in the laboratory.

Unit for Transport & Society at the University of the West of England, Bristol

http://www.transport.uwe.ac.uk/

The Unit for Transport and Society (UTS) formally came into existence in September 2002. It represents the focus of a commitment by the University of the West of England and, specifically, by its Faculty of the Built Environment to develop a centre of excellence for teaching and research in transport.

Urban Plans Collection

http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/urbanplanning/

The Urban Plan Collection is a database of reports and plans for urban and rural areas from all provinces of Canada dating from the late '50's to the present time.

Vocational Learning Support Programme: National Resource Databank

http://www.vocationallearning.org.uk/databank/

"The Learning and Skills Development Agency is a strategic national resource concentrating on development of policy and practice in post-16 education and training. The Agency was previously known as the Further Education Development Agency (FEDA).

The National Resource Databank is a resource containing downloadable staff development materials and teaching and learning materials. If offers a one-stop facility with all materials meeting the agency benchmark criteria."

Wales on the Web

http://www.walesontheweb.org/

CAYW- Wales on the Web/Cymru ar y We

This site was mentioned in issue 99 of this newsletter. Its a subject gateway to material of Welsh interest.

The project has received additional money to continue with Wales on the Web for the next 3 years.

Wayback Machine

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

What great fun this site is. Browse and search through 10 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.

Webmaster Toolkit

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/

A collection of free online tools for webmasters and web designers

What User Studies Tell Us

http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA317670

An article by Carol Tenopir, in Library Journal.

Whatsonwhen

http://www.whatsonwhen.com/

An award-winning company, providing high-quality travel and entertainment content solutions.

WhittleBit

http://whittlebit.com/

WhittleBit works much like most other search engines, except it can help you to refine your searches by allowing you to give positive or negative feedback on each search result.

Wireless Web

http://wireless.iop.org/

A site for wireless professionals.

Year Out Group

http://www.yearoutgroup.org/

"The Year Out Group Website is packed with information and guidance for young people and their parents and advisers.

Find out how to plan your Year Out and choose the Year Out programme which best suits your needs and aspirations."

NICE WEB SITE

In the course of finding sites of interest for this Newsletter, we sometimes come across Web sites which we feel deserve slightly more than a passing mention. Each month we will pick out one or more such sites, and give them a short review. The sites will normally be UK based, may be small or large, and be of interest or potential interest to academics. After lengthy discussions we have decided, with incredible creativity :-), to call these: Nice Web Sites. Details of previous Nice Web Sites are available in the Nice Web Site Archive.

scenta
http://www.scenta.co.uk/

scenta is a new service for professionals, schoolchildren and students, the media, teachers and academics interested in science, engineering and technology. scenta provides content from leading industry, academic and institutional players from the SET community.

Current Content Partners include: BNFL, British Council, Chamber of Shipping, CIBSE, EBS Trust, EC(UK), EES, ETB, Fit for the Future, HeadStart, ICE
IIE, Institute of Physics, IWO, Jobsite, LZW, NMSI, Nuffield Design and Technology Project, Psigate, REME, RINA, RoadSafe, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Sea Vision, Smallpeice Trust, SEMTA, Specialist Schools Trust, STEP Enterprises, The BA, The Chilli, WISE, Year in Industry.

With such an impressive list of content providers, this site is worth a visit.

To launch the new portal, scenta has launched The 100 Greatest Inventions and Discoveries competition http://www.scenta.co.uk/100greatest/ . What do you think is the greatest invention or discovery of all time? Tell scenta what you think and you could be in with a chance to win an Apple laptop computer worth over £1,000.

Roddy MacLeod

PRESS RELEASES

**** National Library of the Netherlands and BioMed Central agree to open access archive ****

Jan Velterop, Director and Publisher of BioMed Central, and Wim van Drimmelen, Director General of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, today signed an agreement to secure the long-term digital archiving of all research published by BioMed Central http://www.biomedcentral.com

The KB will act as an official archival agent for BioMed Central. As well as archiving all of the publisher's research articles, the KB has committed to updating the archive as technology changes. This will preserve the articles as a usable resource and ensure open access in perpetuity.

Wim van Drimmelen underlines the importance of this agreement: "Long-term preservation is part of the mission of the KB and features among our main strategic goals. Unlike printed publications, digital publications require from the publisher an active part in the archiving. Therefore arrangements with publishers are essential to realise the safe-keeping of the intellectual output of scientists."

BioMed Central's rapidly growing collection, currently 100 journals and more than 2500 articles, will sit alongside material from the two-largest STM publishers worldwide. All of the research BioMed Central deposits will be freely available, in keeping with the publisher's open access policy, both to walk-in visitors to the KB and via the library's website (http://www.kb.nl).

Jan Velterop explains what makes the BioMed Central archive at the KB so important: "Open Access authors want reassurance that their work will be freely available in the future. The KB deal delivers such assurances. This is the first sizeable quantity of fully open access research articles to be archived by the KB, which means that that part of the library's archive can be fully open to anyone who cares to seek access."

Should the BioMed Central website be inoperable for a long period of time, for example in the case of a disaster, the KB would be part of the interim service system. In the unlikely event that BioMed Central or a successor should be forced by circumstance to cease to make these journals available, as an official archive the KB would continue to keep them accessible to all indefinitely, maintaining the open access promise.

This agreement is part of a concerted effort by BioMed Central to provide its authors and readers with a solid and secure long-time archiving solution for electronic publications.

About BioMed Central:

For further information about BioMed Central please contact Grace Baynes (press@biomedcentral.com or +44 20 7631 2988) or visit the website http://www.biomedcentral.com/)

**** Sentient DISCOVER Wins More Sites ****

Since its launch in January 2003, Sentient has become the fastest growing resource management system vendor. July was yet another exceptional month for Sentient, as 6 more institutions purchased Sentient DISCOVER (previously ReadingListDirect). Additional sites include the London School of Economics, Drexel University in Philadelphia, Stirling University, Middlesex University, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College and Newman College, Birmingham. Within less than a year, 34 institutions have chosen Sentient DISCOVER as their ideal learning resource management system.

Sentient's commitment to being both LMS & VLE independent is clear. Its current customers have various Library Catalogues, including Innopac, Ipac, Geoweb, Heritage, Voyager, Talis and Unicorn, with different VLE's such as WebCT, Blackboard, Learnwise and in-house systems. Sentient DISCOVER can also now integrate with OpenURL Resolvers such as SFX.

Following the extensive JISC funded DELIVER Project, Sentient are extremely pleased to announce that the London School of Economics will be adopting DISCOVER. The DELIVER Report specifies that ReadingListDirect (now Sentient DISCOVER) compared favourably in comparison to alternative systems, meeting almost all of the very demanding LSE requirements. The report reflected very favourably on Sentient with the London School of Economics commenting that "the response times from Sentient were excellent" and their impression of Sentient's staff was "extremely favourable". This demonstrates Sentient's commitment to delivering an excellent customer service. The final report is available on: http://www.angel.ac.uk/DELIVER/deliverables/RLD_evaluation_final.pdf

The phenomenal success achieved within the UK is now supporting Sentient's international expansion. Sentient DISCOVER is now being successfully launched globally, with North American and Australian institutions expressing great interest in the innovative features that Sentient continues to deliver. As the fastest growing resource management system vendor, Sentient continues to strive for leadership in interoperability (as a contributing member to IMS), innovation, customer service and support. Sentient's corporate mission, "We will succeed with you", and its ongoing commitment to help institutions improve the quality of learning and teaching, is undoubtedly attracting new sites world wide.

For additional information about Sentient DISCOVER and the benefits that it can deliver, please visit: http://www.sentientlearning.com or contact Ceri McCall for an online demonstration on: +44 (0) 151 288 1089 or by email: ceri.mccall@sentientlearning.com

NETWORK NEWS

Athens News

Athens is an Access Management System for controlling access to web-based subscription services. The latest Athens news is available at:

http://www.athensams.net/news/

BUBL News

BUBL has retained a strong library element, but now provides a subject-based service to the academic and research community more generally, this via the BUBL LINK Subject Tree. The latest news from BUBL is available at:

http://bubl.ac.uk/news/

The latest updates to the BUBL LINK / 5:15 Catalogue of Internet Resources are available at:

http://bubl.ac.uk/link/updates/current.html

EEVL News

The latest news from EEVL, plus the latest additions to EEVL, The Hub for Engineering, Mathematics and Computing, is available at:

http://www.eevl.ac.uk/news.htm

 

EEVL's latest press release "Industry and job announcements news from top engineering publishers added to EEVL" is at: http://www.eevl.ac.uk/pressrelease/newsandjobsfeeds.htm

SOSIG News

The latest additions to SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway) are available at:

http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/roads/whats-new.html

EDINA Newsline

The latest issue of Edina (Edinburgh Data & INformation Access) Newsline can be found at:

http://edina.ed.ac.uk/newsline/

CHEST News

CHEST aims to obtain quality commercial software, datasets, training materials and other IT products for the Education and Research Community at low prices and attractive licence terms. The latest news from CHEST is available at:

http://www.chest.ac.uk/news.html

MIMAS News

MIMAS is a JISC-supported national data centre run by Manchester Computing, at the University of Manchester, to provide the following range of services to the academic community:

Flexible on-line access to strategic research and teaching datasets.
Access to key bibliographic information.
Access to specialist support and training.
Access to software packages and large-scale computing resources.

The latest news from MIMAS can be found at:

http://www.mimas.ac.uk/news.html

BIOME News

BIOME is a collection of gateways which provide access to evaluated, quality Internet resources in the health and life sciences, aimed at students, researchers, academics and practitioners. The latest news from BIOME can be found at:

http://biome.ac.uk/whatsnew/

Netskills: News

Netskills aims to help the UK HE community make effective use of the Internet for teaching, research and administration. The latest news from Netskills can be found at:

http://www.netskills.ac.uk/news/

What's new on Eldis

Electronic Development and Environment Information System. A gateway to information sources on development or the environment. What's new on Eldis can be found at:

http://nt1.ids.ac.uk/eldis/wnew.htm

What's New on Biz/ed

Biz/ed is a dedicated business and economics information gateway for students, teachers and lecturers.

http://www.bized.ac.uk/homeinfo/whatsnew.htm

AHDS Newsletter

The latest issue of the AHDS (Arts and Humanities Data Service) Newsletter can be found at:

http://ahds.ac.uk/newsletters.htm

JISCmail News

JSICmail provides electronic discussion lists for the UK higher education community.

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/news/index.htm

UK Data Archive news

The UK Data Archive at the University of Essex houses the largest collection of accessible computer-readable data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom. It is a national resource centre, disseminating data throughout the United Kingdom and, by arrangement with other national archives, internationally.

http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/home/archiveNews.asp

CDS provides on-line access to a variety of quality databases in the field of Chemistry, plus support, training and advice. This is available (free of charge) to academics at UK Universities.

http://cds.dl.ac.uk/cds/

Your gateway to quality educational resources. Academic Info is an annotated subject directory tailored toward a college and university audience and is used by students, librarians, and researchers.

http://www.academicinfo.net/new.html

The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) is a cooperative network of independent subject-based service providers called hubs, coordinated by the Resource Discovery Network Centre (RDNC). It is a free Internet service dedicated to providing effective access to high quality Internet resources for the learning, teaching and research community.

http://www.rdn.ac.uk/news/

The latest additions to Humbul, the humanities hub of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

http://www.humbul.ac.uk/output/new.php?int=30

GET A LIFE! - LEISURE TIME

PR Bop
http://www.prbop.com/
Weird and Wonderful off the Wires, by Tara Calishain

Portobello
http://www.portobello-edinburgh.org.uk/
My own home town!

This page is: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn109/irn109.html

© 2003 Heriot-Watt University

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