So long, and thanks for all the fish

This is the last Internet Resources Newsletter. At the end of December I'm taking early retirement, and I'd like to thank all of the people who have been involved with the newsletter since it started way back in October 1994, including Gordon Andrew, Marion Kennedy, Catherine Ure, and Cap'n Pinakes. I'd also like to very much thank the sponsors, FUMSI. Thanks go to many people who have contributed to the newsletter by sending in suggestions and other items, especially K (Kebbie) and PR and marketing people too numerous to name. Many thanks also to those who have provided encouragement or advice over the years, or who have helped spread the word, including Alison McNab, Ian Winship, Phil Bradley, David Bradley, William Hann, Gary Price, Brian Kelly, Andrew Bevan, Karen Blakeman, Mark Furneaux, Jim Corlett, Randy Metcalfe, Boris Skandera and many more.

I've worked in university libraries since 1975, when I started at Heriot-Watt University as a 'graduate trainee'. Later on, I spent two years working at Chancellor College in Malawi, and in the 1990s another two years at the University of Botswana Library alongside some of the nicest people I've been fortunate to meet. Over the years, I've been involved in various, mostly externally-funded, projects and services, including EEVL, EMC, Pinakes, SAD1, SAD2, the Subject Portal Project, Engineering Portal, FAILTE, EEVL Xtra, PerX, TechXtra, DPIE1, ticTOCs, and Gold Dust. I'm sure that being involved with the Internet Resources Newsletter helped my role in these projects. Looking back, although several of the projects produced services which have been well-used, I found some of them frustrating, not just because of the lack of support from my boss of that time, but because several didn't fulfil their full potential. C'est la vie. I'd like to thank those people I've worked alongside in these projects here at Heriot-Watt, plus many more at various other institutions, and also JISC, which funded many of the projects. I'd also like to thank my colleagues, past and present, in the Library here at Heriot-Watt.

Each issue of this newsletter on the Web has attracted a few thousand visitors, and the email version has been distributed to about 30,000 subscribers. Over the years, we've listed details of over 18,000 websites and other resources.  My hope is that IRN has been of some use to those who have received it, and that in a small way it has contributed to our better use of the Internet. It's certainly been enjoyable editing it!

Finally, many thanks to you, the readers!

So long...

Roddy MacLeod

For news items in business information products we recommend VIP: http://www.vivavip.com/

A-Z NEW & NOTABLE WEB SITES

100 Incredible Open Courses for the Ultimate Tech Geek

http://www.onlinecourses.org/2009/10/28/100-incredible-open-courses-for-the-ultimate-tech-geek/

Here are 100 free resources to help you hone your techie skills and learn more about the ever-changing world of technology.

100 Useful Links for eBook Lovers

http://www.onlinecourses.org/2009/11/11/100-useful-links-for-ebook-lovers/

Here are 100 useful links for ebook lovers, from OnlineCourses.org

100+ ways to use social media for learning

http://c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/examples.html

100 ways that different social technologies (and tools) are being used by learning professionals worldwide.

92 Historical Interviews You Can Watch on YouTube

http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.org/blog/2009/92-historical-interviews-you-can-watch-on-youtube/

Some of these interviews document specific eras such as interviews with those involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, while some are more recent interviews discussing the past, as when Walter Cronkite relates his news reporting when the first man walked on the moon.

Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources

http://www.scholarsearchengines.com/

Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources" is a 59 page research paper, by Marcus P. Zillman. listing selected resources both new and existing that will help anyone who is attempting to find academic and scholarly information and knowledge available on the Internet.

Ariadne Issue 61

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue61/

Ariadne is a Web magazine for information professionals in archives, libraries and museums in all sectors. Issue 61 includes articles on search engines, overlay journals, user engagement, etc.

Automated Experimentation

http://www.aejournal.net/

A new Open Access journal, Automated Experimentation seeks to provide a platform for biomedical and informatics researchers to revise, re-use and recombine their automated experimentation processes or protocols.

Awareness Watch Newsletter

http://zillman.blogspot.com/2009/11/awareness-watch-newsletter-v7n12.html

The December 2009 V7N12 issue is available. This month's featured report highlights Tutorial Resources.

Become UK

http://www.become.co.uk/

Product shopping and price comparison site.

Best of What’s New 2009

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2009

From the Popular Science magazine.

BookAse

http://www.bookase.com/

Search and compare prices for the best prices for new & used books among the major online bookstores worldwide with total of more than 150 million books.

Bricks and Bread Sustainable Living Centre

http://www.bricksandbread.com/

The Bricks and Bread Sustainable Living Centre is a hub for experts in sustainable living, building and business. They meet and share their knowledge at the Centre.

Broadband Genie

http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/

Broadband Genie is a free-to-use, broadband consumer advice website, and is independent of the broadband providers.

Building Products Index

http://www.bpindex.co.uk/

BPi is a free detailed search engine and electronic library of Building products and suppliers. The site includes links, images, British Standards, technical data and PDF catalogues.

Business Essentials on the Web

http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/

The wiki is run and supported by the British Library Business & IP Centre and its wide community of entrepreneurs and partner organisations.

Cargo Publishing

http://www.cargopublishing.com/

Cargo Publishing is not like any other publishing company.

Construction Executive Online

http://www.constructionexecutive.com/

Construction Executive Online is a career management center for construction and design executives (A/E/C), providing members access to an elite job board of executive construction jobs, and to career counseling from the nation’s top executive coaches.

Construction Executive Online is also an established information provider and publisher of construction employment demographics, construction salary surveys and construction career polls on senior executives. CE publishes construction job descriptions on construction management jobs, and maintains over 250,000 subscriptions to its distinguished Construction Executive Report.

Creative Scotland Perspectives

http://www.perspectives.creativescotland.org.uk/

Ensuring that as many people as possible can participate in creative activities

DART-Europe

http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php

DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses.

DeepDyve

http://www.deepdyve.com/

The largest online rental service for scientific, technical and medical research. Currently contains details of 30 million articles.

drop.io

http://drop.io/

Use drop.io to privately share your files and collaborate in real time by web, email, phone, mobile, and more.

Earthscan

http://www.earthscan.co.uk/

The world’s leading publisher on climate change, sustainable development and environmental technology.

Economists Online

http://www.neeoproject.eu/

NEEO is an EU-funded project which will address the lack of integration of academic output amongst premier economics institutions by creating a powerful new research tool called Economists Online.

Edge 2010

http://edge2010.wordpress.com/

February 25th and 26th 2010 in Edinburgh Castle.

The Edge 2010 National Conference is the premier development event for elected members, Chief Executives, Directors, Heads of Service, trustees, E-government and community professionals, library vendors, and others with an interest in libraries and information. Edge 2010 will provide opportunities to learn about innovative practice in libraries, buildings and community information. See how libraries are key to delivering e–government, learning and digital inclusion. Find out the latest ideas, share success stores, hear best practices and meet colleagues from across the country and around the world.

eHow

http://www.ehow.co.uk/

How to do just about everything.

Electronic Physician

http://www.ephysician.ir/

Electronic Physician is a peer reviewed journal and publishes original papers related to all areas of Basic and Clinical Medical Sciences, Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Medical Sociology. Reviews, symposia, short communications, letters to the Editor and Case reports are also accepted.

emplaw

http://www.emplaw.co.uk/

Employment law filtered internet Search tool.

Engineering Pathway

http://www.engineeringpathway.com/ep/

Learn, Connect, and Create with high-quality teaching and learning resources in applied science and math, engineering, computer science/information technology, and engineering technology for use by K-12 and university educators and students.

Enhancing Repository Infrastructure in Scotland: ERIS

http://eriscotland.wordpress.com/

The purpose of the ERIS project is to develop – in close partnership with researchers and their institutions’ repository managers – a set of user-led and user-centric solutions that will motivate researchers to deposit their work in repositories.

Erewhon project

http://erewhon.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

The Erewhon project exists to research and develop methods of accessing University information and services from mobile devices whilst also creating a comprehensive geo-location database to facilitate the anticipated demand for location based services

Fairtrade Vending Scotland

http://www.fairtradevendingscotland.co.uk/

”Throughout Scotland and the UK we are helping clients to achieve a high standard of vending solutions for the workplace whilst fully supporting environmental causes through the supply of Fairtrade products.”

Final report on the provision of usage data and manuscript deposit procedures for publishers and repository managers

http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER__D2_2_20091028_v5.pdf

From PEER, the pioneering collaboration between publishers, repositories and the research community, which aims to investigate the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access) on user access, author visibility, journal viability and the broader European research environment.

Free Technology Academy

http://ftacademy.org/

The Free Technology Academy consists of an advanced virtual campus with course modules that can be followed entirely on-line.

Freegle

http://www.ilovefreegle.org/

You might not need your old sofa or wheelbarrow any more – but there might be someone just round the corner who does. Or if there’s something you’d like, someone nearby might have one that they might just throw away if they don’t know what else to do with it.

Freegle groups make this happen online.

Gizmodo

http://gizmodo.com/

A gadget guide.

iCyte

http://www.icyte.com/

iCyte enables you to highlight and save text on any webpage, allowing you to recall the most relevant information.

IGI Global

http://www.igi-global.com/

Founded in 1987, IGI Global (IGI) is an international publishing company specializing in high-quality research publications in the fields of computer science and information technology management.

Information for Practice

http://blogs.nyu.edu/socialwork/ip/

The mission of IP is to help social service professionals throughout the world conveniently maintain an awareness of news regarding their professions and emerging scholarship.

Includes news from around the world regarding social service issues broadly defined; guidelines published by professional and governmental organizations; meta-analyses & systematic reviews; funding opportunities for research and service; images in the news and videos; descriptions of recent books on topics of professional interest; scientific and technical reports; Open Access journals & newsletters; calls for submissions.

International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation

http://ijamc.psit.in/ijamc/index.php/ijamc/index

Open Access journal. This International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation (IJAMC) is of interest to a wide audience of mathematicians, scientists and engineers concerned with the practical issues in computational mathematics.

International Journal of Wireless & Mobile Networks

http://airccse.org/journal/ijwmn.html

The International Journal of Wireless & Mobile Networks (IJWMN) is a quarterly open access journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Wireless & Mobile Networks

JISC Inform 26

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/inform26

This autumn edition looks at how digital technologies are helping colleges and universities reach out locally as well as internationally.

JISC: Applications for Inclusion

http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/use/4292

An article in FUMSI, by Margaret McKay

Jorum Update

http://www.jorum.ac.uk/docs/pdf/novemberNewsletter.pdf

The November issue is available, with items on the future directions for the service.

London Broadcasting Company / Independent Radio News audio archive

http://radio.bufvc.ac.uk/lbc/

This digitised collection focuses on the most noteworthy content – approximately 3,000 hours of recordings relating to news and current affairs.

Maggwire

http://www.maggwire.com/

“With over 10,000 magazine titles attracting 200 million American readers, Maggwire makes discovering magazine content a personalized experience. Utilizing social intelligence, our system recommends magazine articles you will enjoy reading from over 600 magazine titles.”

Micraft Welding Supplies

http://www.micraft-welding.co.uk/

A welding supplies website.

Microbiology Research

http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/mr

Microbiology Research is a new, online-only, international, Open Access peer-reviewed journal which publish research papers in the areas of clinical microbiology, molecular and cellular biology, virology, parasitology, mycology and bacteriology.

Microsoft Academic Search

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

Explore over 3,500,000 papers. Includes a Visual Explorer for authors, and other clever ideas.

Minesoft

http://www.minesoft.com/

Innovative global patent information provider.

Modern Architect Design

http://www.modernarchitectdesign.com/

This is a blog.

Multi-science

http://www.multi-science.co.uk/

Multi-science prides itself on publishing journals that fill gaps in the scientific literature and are responses to technological developments that call new disciplines into existence.

My Secretarial Jobs

http://www.mysecretarialjobs.co.uk/

A leading secretarial UK job site featuring some of the latest office and admin jobs online for Secretaries, Personal Assistants and general office workers.

National Collection of Aerial Photography

http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/

The National Collection of Aerial Photography, held by RCAHMS, is one of the largest and most significant collections of aerial imagery in the world. It is an invaluable resource for historical research across a wide range of disciplines.

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre

http://www.nzetc.org/

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has four aims: 1. To create a digital library providing open access to significant New Zealand and Pacific Island texts and materials. This encompasses both digitised heritage material and born-digital resources. 2. To effectively partner with other organisations, as a collaborator and service provider, on a variety of digitisation and digital content projects. 3. To build a wider community skilled in the use and creation of digital materials through teaching and training activities and by publishing and presenting the results of research. 4. To work at the intersection of computing tools with textual material and investigate how these tools may be used to make new knowledge from our cultural inheritance.

One Job Group

http://www.onejobgroup.co.uk/

UK Jobs Board Group.

Open Environmental Engineering Journal

http://www.bentham.org/open/toenviej/index.htm

The Open Environmental Engineering Journal is an Open Access online journal, which publishes original research articles, short articles and review articles in all areas of environmental engineering.

Open Science at Web-Scale: Optimising Participation and Predictive Potential

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/opensciencerpt.aspx

A Report.

Pegaweb Web Design & Photoshop Tutorials

http://www.pegaweb.com/

This site features web design and Adobe Photoshop tutorials written by Daniel Piechnick, a professional web designer and graphic designer from South Australia.

Pharmaceutical Business Review

http://www.pharmaceutical-business-review.com/

News, events, suppliers, etc

Postgraduate Search

http://www.postgraduatesearch.com/

“Postgraduate Search can help you find the right course at the right university. With the most complete postgraduate course listings available, a comprehensive course search and links to information on scholarships and student finance, Postgraduate Search is the primary source of information on postgraduate studies.”

Soon to include RAE information, details from Unistats as well as funding opportunities.

Recommendations on RSS Feeds for Scholarly Publishers

http://oxford.crossref.org/best_practice/rss/

This document is important for all publishers of scholarly journals.

Robert Louis Stevenson Website

http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/

The RLS Website is the most comprehensive site dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), providing resources for academics, school children, and people interested in learning about RLS. This site is particularly significant because it holds images not seen by the general public before.

Scholarship Search

http://www.scholarship-search.org.uk/

From Hotcourses. A directory of funding opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the UK.

Searchlighter

http://www.searchlighter.org/

Searchlighter was founded towards the end of 2008 to work for an enhanced research and scholarly communications environment with processes that reflect its value in the stimulation of new research at an international level.

TechJournalContents

http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/techtocs/

New, free service which searches the tables of contents of the most recent journals in engineering, mathematics and computing. Based on an aggregation of RSS TOC feeds for those journals. You can also save searches as RSS feeds, and thereby keep up-to-date in the future.

Text Mining for Scholarly Communications and Repositories Joint Workshop

http://www.nactem.ac.uk/tm-ukoln.php

Slides of the presentations of the Text Mining for Scholarly Communications and Repositories workshop are available.

Transport Scotland

http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/

“Transport Scotland is the national transport agency for Scotland. Our purpose is to help deliver the Scottish Government's vision for transport, making a real difference for people and businesses using the national rail and road networks.”

Trove

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

Trove is a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. It supplements what search engines provide with reliable information from Australia's memory institutions.

Website Setup Guide

http://websitesetupguide.com/

Guide written to show beginners how to set up a website.

Worldchanging.com

http://www.worldchanging.com/

Worldchanging.com is a nonprofit media organization headquartered in Seattle, WA, that comprises a global network of independent journalists, designers and thinkers

Yahoo! Pipes: Relevant information on tap

http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/4342

An article in FUMSI, by Scott Brown.

Zycon

http://www.zycon.com/

A search engine for manufacturers.

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

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've picked out one or more such sites, and give them a short review. The sites will often be UK based, may be small or large, and be of interest or potential interest to academics. After lengthy discussions we decided, with incredible creativity :-), to call these: Nice Web Sites. Details of previous Nice Web Sites are available in the Nice Web Site Archive.

TechJournalContents
http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/techtocs/

TechJournalContents is a brand new service which lets you to search across the current issues of more than 3,600 scholarly technology journals from multiple publishers, in order to find the latest research articles. In addition, if you know about RSS you can save the results of searches made in TechJournalContents as feeds, and then keep up-to-date with new content via a feedreader of your choice such as Google Reader or Bloglines. So, in two different ways, you can use TechJournalContents as a current awareness service.

TechJournalContents takes advantage of RSS Tables of Contents feeds provided by publishers, and then incorporates the journalTOCs API, produced by the journalTOCs Project, which is based at the ICBL, Heriot-Watt University, and is being managed by Santy Chumbe. A journalTOCsAPI project blog is available.

TechJournalContents is part of the TechXtra service. TechXtra is produced by the ICBL and Library at Heriot Watt University.

Trove
http://trove.nla.gov.au/

Clever site which brings resources of different types together. Trove is a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. It supplements what search engines provide with reliable information from Australia's memory institutions.

Microsoft Academic Search
http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

Lots of clever ideas at this search engine for scholarly materials, but so far it only covers a few subject areas.

RM

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

BLOGORAMA AND TWITTERSPHERE

Selected interesting blogs, RSS feeds and news items, and Twitter items and feeds

Recommendations on RSS Feeds for Scholarly Publishers
http://oxford.crossref.org/best_practice/rss/
This document is important for all publishers of scholarly journals.

Researching Usability
http://lorrainepaterson.wordpress.com/

Bethan's information professional blog
http://bethaninfoprof.wordpress.com/

Engineering Information from K Exchange
http://knovelblogs.com/
A Knovel blog

Reuters News RSS Feeds
http://www.reuters.com/tools/rss

Federal Communications Commission RSS feeds
http://www.fcc.gov/rss/

ABC News RSS feeds
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3520115

Reference Notes
http://ref-notes.blogspot.com/
Providing profiles of significant or substantive developments and news of potential interest to Reference and Research Librarians worldwide.

University of Aukland Library: Engineering
http://blogs.library.auckland.ac.nz/engineering/Default.aspx

Twitter

Listorious
http://listorious.com/
Directory of Twitter lists

TipTop
http://feeltiptop.com/
Twitter search engine. Discussed by Phil Bradley.

baplig
http://twitter.com/baplig
Business and Patents

oatp
http://twitter.com/oatp
OA Tracking Project

UoB Library
http://twitter.com/uoblibrary
University of Bedfordshire Library

Everything you ever wanted to know about Twitter
http://www.curledesign.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-twitter/

nulibsage
http://twitter.com/nulibsage
Newcastle University Library Science, Agriculture and Engineering liaison team

TalesOfOneCity
http://twitter.com/TalesOfOneCity
Edinburgh Libraries

CILIPevents
http://twitter.com/CILIPevents

PostRank
http://twitter.com/pr_library

LILAC 2010
http://twitter.com/LILAC_2010
Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference 2010, Limerick, Ireland.

infobunny
http://twitter.com/infobunny
Bunny's wit and humour are legendary.

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

RECENT INTERNET BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY

The Mantex Information Design web site has reviews of some of the books mentioned in previous issues of the Internet Resources Newsletter.

Recent Arrivals

153.125 MAY
Delete: The virtue of forgetting in the digital age
by Viktor Mayer-Schoneberger
Princeton Univ. P., 2009

302.231 MOR
All a twitter: A personal and professional guide to social networking with Twitter
by Tee Morris,
Que, 2010

A complete list of new books added to Heriot-Watt University Library is available at: http://hw.lib.ed.ac.uk/cgi-bin/newbooks.cgi

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

NEW BOOK REVIEW

Bite-sized marketing: Realistic solutions for the overworked librarian
by Nancy Dowd, Mary Evangeliste, and Jonathan Silverman
Facet Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-85604-704-3
Price: £32.95
Price (to CILIP members): £26.36

Inside the front cover of this book is a statement saying that marketing does not always have to be grand, and that this book is about integrating marketing into every day and thereby making it manageable. I'm immediately attracted to that concept!

In my experience, library marketing often begins with the formlation of a rather grand 'marketing strategy'. Before you've noticed, the drafting of such a strategy has taken weeks of effort, has involved much discussion, and the result can sometimes be an overblown document including much that may well have been obvious right at the beginning.

Just about everyone in an organisation can have a role in its marketing. In the case of libraries, the welcome that someone receives when they arrive at the service desk, or equivalent, can be as effective in terms of marketing as an integated re-branding operation costing lots of money. Dowd, Evangeliste, and Silverman advise that we should not let the idea of marketing become overwhelming. Instead, they suggest we should try out various things, inject some excitement into the organisation, and then figure out what works.

"All good marketing always takes intio account a customer's need and includes an evaluation. In between is the magic that we will share with you. The real secret to marketing? Just try."

Ths is excellent advice, especially in today's world where we've seen the emergence of a new wave of consumer-driven marketing, social networks, and Web 2.0 technology. This new era makes it possible for any library to work towards reaching its audience with messages about its services and collections.

The idea behind this book is to provide tangible ideas in bite-sized chunks so that librarians can dip in and out when they want.

The contents include:

With respect to the first chapter, the authors explain that "If we want to deliver a message, we need to know what people want, develop the product that fills that need, and then give people the tools to spread the word for us. That is WOMM." WOMM is potentially a very powerful tool in today's socially networked virtual world.

Gosh! I really like a lot of the advice given in this book. For example - usability studies have shown that readers often feel overwhelmed by the amount of results that a federated search returns, so a better way to use a federated search is to narrow the amount of databases per subject area and allow readers to add more if they so want. Here's another one - be aware of marketing and design everywhere, analyse TV to see what appeals, look at magazines and notice colours and themes, in shops, see what attracts different audiences.

Librarians in public libraries will gain the most from reading this book, but much of it is also relevant to those who work in other types of libraries. Although the authors are all based in the USA, and examples given in the text are mostly to American initiatives and websites, it will also be very useful for librarians just about anywhere.

RM

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

GET A LIFE! - LEISURE TIME

Coupons, coupon codes, etc
http://www.couponsaver.org/
Promotional codes and coupons that can save you money

SFX
http://www.sfx.co.uk/
Science fiction and fantasy magazine

Vintage posters
http://www.arengario.it/bookdesign/_pdf/posters.pdf

[Contents] - [ IRN Home Page ] - [HWU Library Home Page] 

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