Friday, February 29, 2008

Easter in the Medical Library


The library will be shut over the Easter Weekend: Friday 21st – Monday 24th March, inclusive.


We re-open at 8am, Tuesday 25th March 2008.


Trial access to the SCOPUS

The University Library has established trial access to Elsevier’s SCOPUS database on a university-wide basis until 5th April 2008.

Developed in conjunction with researchers to provide an easily navigated single entry-point to the world’s scientific information, Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database for the sciences and social sciences. It covers:

15,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 4,000 international publishers, including coverage of:

  • Over 1,000 Open Access journals
  • 500 Conference Proceedings
  • Over 600 Trade Publications
  • Over 125 Book Series

33 million records, of which:

  • 16 million records include references going back to 1996
  • 17 million pre-1996 records go back as far as 1869

Scopus also covers 386 million quality web sources, including 21 million patents. Web sources are searched via Scirus, and include author homepages, university sites and resources such as the preprint servers CogPrints and ArXiv.org, and OAI compliant resources. It is updated daily. For more information on Scopus see http://www.scopusinfo.com/

Linking to full-text articles has been set up for electronic journals for which there are subscriptions within the university.

The URL for SCOPUS is http://www.scopus.com/ No passwords are required on campus / while using computers in the Medical Library.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Library Redevelopment & Journals Consultation

Users of the Medical Library will see some big changes in the summer of 2008 when the Library embarks on an extensive £1 million refurbishment project.

It marks a major step towards achieving a core objective in the Library's strategic plan, namely its migration from a print-based collection to a service built principally around e-resources.

Over the next five to ten years the Medical Library is therefore planning the phased removal of all the printed journals housed on its upper floor, concentrating its services and collections (possibly still including a small number of printed journals) on its lower floor. Meanwhile the upper floor will be released for use by the Clinical School to support its educational activities.

The first phase of this conversion programme is now under way.
But we need your input!

Part of the project will be the construction of a new IT area on the upper library floor. To release space for this we need to remove at least 1,000 metres of shelving - about 1/3 of the upper floor's capacity - and journal backsets.

We have identified two categories of selected journals to be removed from the library, but we want to hear your views.

More details are available from www.medschl.cam.ac.uk/library/redevelopment.htm


Monday, February 18, 2008

Nature archives - access now available from 1869 onwards

The University Library is pleased to announce that it has purchased the complete Nature Archives (1869-1996), which can now be accessed online by anyone in the University.

Together with the Library's subscription to the current issues of Nature online, this means that Nature is now completely available online from the first issue published on 4 November 1869 to the most recent.
The archive, which cost over £100,000, has been purchased with the help of a benefactor to the University Library.

Nature is available via the e-journals@cambridge portal ( http://sfx7.exlibrisgroup.com/cambridge/az ) or directly from the Nature website at http://www.nature.com/nature/archive/index.html.

Access to the resource is available to all staff and students of the University within the cam domain and off campus via a Raven login.

Some web pages highlighting the history of the Nature Journal can be found at http://www.nature.com/nature/history/