Rent-an-article
Nov 2009:
Buying a single article from a scientific journal is usually prohibitively expensive if you are not a student or teacher at an institution that subscribes to the journal. Now
DeepDyve are offering an online rental service for articles. Could be the model of the future..
Trove Search
From the website: 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.
If you are researching in the fields of the social sciences, literature, local or family history, or need inspiration for your school assignment, then this is the tool for you. Go the
Trove..
PubMed has a new look
Oct 2009: After all these years, the PubMed database has resedigned its front page. Things just won't be the same again. Check it out
here.
Excellence in Research for Australia Initiative
Sep 2009: The ERA initiative will be developed by the Australian Research Council. It will assess research quality within Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review by committees comprising experienced, internationally-recognised experts.
More...
Convert CINAHL searches into RSS feeds
You've read about converting PubMed searches to RSS feeds (below), now you can do the same thing to create updating
CINAHL feeds.
Change PDF files to Doc and other formats
PDFs are a ubiquitous file format for read only documents. Now you can convert them to .doc or other file formats for editing.
Here's how ..
RSS Feeds Explained in Plain English
Sep 2009: Dedicated to my friend and colleague Elaine, who dreams of being more technical and prefers
simple explanations for things..
Import Google Scholar searches into EndNote
Aug 2009: Hate typing out all those references manually? I do. Why not let
Google Scholar do most of the work for you..
Alternative Citation Tools
Jul 2009: A brief summary of the free Zotero and Bibtex reference applications at
Duke University Libraries..
Convert PubMed searches into RSS feeds
Jun 2009: Performing research in the 21st century is not quite the laborious task it used to be in the pre-internet days. Make the technology work for you by creating a search which automatically sends the results to you via a self-updating
RSS Feed.
Creative Commons = Free Copyrighting
May 2009:
Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Free licenses and other legal tools are provided to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
National Library of Australia has a new look
Apr 2009: The NLA has a
new prototype interface which they are experimenting with. The page, "is an exploration of ideas and techniques aimed at making information easier to find and showing it within a useful context." They're keen for feedback, so check it out and send in suggestions. The database provides integrated access to over 42 million metadata and text resources from a range of the National Library's collaborative services and from elsewhere.
For this initial version there are a range of data sources including: the Australian National Bibliographic Database, Australian Newspapers, Picture Australia, the ARROW Discovery Service, and PANDORA. The new service will also provide the discovery interface for the People Australia initiative. Additionally we have included some external sources of data such as OAIster, Open Library, the Hathi Trust, the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress tables of contents, publishers' descriptions and sample book chapters.
Worldcat
Mar 2009:
Worldcat allows searches of libraries in local communities and thousands more around the world. WorldCat grows every day thanks to the efforts of librarians and other information professionals.
From the about page: "You can search for popular books, music CDs and videos all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries. You can also discover many new kinds of digital content, such as downloadable audiobooks. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Because WorldCat libraries serve diverse communities in dozens of countries, resources are available in many languages.."
OAIster database partnership
Feb 2009: The University of Michigan and OCLC today announced that they have formed a partnership that will ensure continued public access to open-archive collections through the
OAIster database, and will expand the visibility of these collections to millions of information seekers through OCLC services.
Launched in 2002 with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, OAIster was developed to test the feasibility of building a portal to open archive collections using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAIster has since grown to become one of the largest aggregations of records pointing to open archive collections in the world with over 19 million records contributed by over 1,000 organizations worldwide.
More..
