Tuesday 2 June 2009

Can't find the journal article or book you need anywhere in Cambridge?

Don't forget that the Balfour Library offers a document supply and inter-library loans service!

Library staff can request journal articles or books for you from the British Library, for a small fee. Requests only take between 3-5 working days to arrive. Find out more by visiting the Inter-Library Loans page of our website at http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/ills.html

We also have a collection of over 100,000 reprints from the 19th and 20th centuries in the library.

We have many of the theses written by postgraduate students based in this department.

You may not be aware of it, but the Balfour Library encourages recommendations from you all for the purchase of books and other media for our collections.

We welcome recommendations from postgraduates, researchers and teaching staff for purchases which are relevant to teaching and research that takes place in the department, especially text books provided on reading lists, as well as purchasing material to develop particular subject areas. Items recommended for purchase should ideally be of benefit to a range of people in the department.

Books: Would you like more text books, or those with additional teaching materials included? How about guides on how to write about science or do your PhD? Do you have a particular series in mind that would complement our collections?

DVDs or CDs: Would you like to be able to borrow a DVD or CD from the library? We do keep any that accompany text books in the library office for you to borrow but there might be other ones useful to you?

Donations: Are there any books that you own that you don't want anymore and think would be really useful for the library to have? Recent titles are preferred.

Ebooks: The library contributes funds annually to the ebooks@cambridge team and we can recommend titles for purchase by them (for undergraduate teaching purposes, preferably Part I, only). I can ask them if particular books are available in ebook format.

Ejournals: Purchasing of new ejournals titles is achieved through a central fund that all libraries in the university contribute to. We can recommend new titles for purchase on your behalf or you can do so yourself, via the 'Recommend an ejournal title' form online at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/help/index.php Recommendations are considered for purchase a couple of times per year usually.

Eresources and trials of eresources: Purchasing of new eresources (e.g. not an ejournal or ebook) is generally achieved through University Library funds. We can recommend new eresources for purchase on your behalf or you can do so yourself, via the 'Recommend an eresource' form online at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/help/index.php We can also arrange trials to be set up for eresources you consider to be useful.

How to tell us what you want!

We have an annual donation of a few hundred pounds to spend from Cambridge University Press, and an 18% discount from Heffers. Have a look at our 'Books and ebooks' website at http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/books.html to find links to various booksellers. We also have many booksellers' catalogues in the library office that we can lend you.

I can take recommendations by email at cmc32@cam.ac.uk or we have recommendation cards available in the library office. For books and ebooks, please provide details of the author, title, date of publication, publisher, ISBN, price, who the book will be useful for and why. For ejournals please see the online form I have mentioned above and let me have those details.

I look forward to hearing from you soon!