Wednesday 14 December 2011

ARTstor digital library now available

The University Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of access to the ARTstor digital library. The acquisition was made possible by contributions from the faculties of Architecture and History of Art, Classics, Divinity, English, History and Philosophy of Science, and Modern and Medieval Languages, and from St. John’s College, Trinity Hall, and Wolfson College. The Library is extremely grateful for their support. 

ARTstor is an online resource containing more than one million digital images relating to the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences. The collections comprise contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists’ estates.

There are several history of medicine and natural sciences images available on ARTstor: 
featured collections include Cook's Voyages to the South Seas (Natural History Museum, London), Hill Ornithology Collection (Cornell University Library - some spectacular images from Audubon and Gould), Magnum Photos, Vesalius Anatomical Illustrations (Northwestern University). I've put a poster highlighting these on the Library noticeboard.
 
ARTstor allows the user to search using keywords and advanced search terms or browse by collection, classification or geography. Users can sort their search results and organize images into groups and share those groups with colleagues and students.

A range of tools allow users to make the best use of these high resolution images for research and pedagogical purposes and users can register for a personal account to access to additional features.

The ARTstor downloadable guides highlight important content and collections for subjects including African and African-American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture and the Built Environment, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Design, Decorative Arts, Fashion and Costume, History of Medicine and Natural Science, Languages and Literature, Latin American Studies, Maps and Geography, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Music History, Native American Studies, Photography, Religious Studies, Renaissance Studies, Theatre and Dance and Women’s Studies.

ARTstor is available on campus at http://www.artstor.org and off-campus using your Raven login and the link to the site which can be found at the eresources@cambridge Database A-Z. It is also available on a range of mobile devices.


Friday 9 December 2011

Borrowing books from the Balfour Library only possible during opening hours next week


The library management system, Voyager, is being upgraded throughout the whole of next week beginning Monday 12th December. This means that the self-issue system will not be available so books will have to be issued manually by library staff, during library opening hours only. 

Due to library staff taking annual leave on various days throughout the week the Library Office may be unattended for short periods at times; in this case please come back later and do not remove books from the Library without speaking to a member of library staff first.

The online catalogues, Newton and LibrarySearch, will still be available during the downtime - click on this link to access the catalogue and for more details on how the downtime will affect the information displayed: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newton/. You will still be able to access online journals as usual.

You will not be able to use the 'Library Account and Renewals' widget linked to from the Balfour Library website home page (under the Quick links menu), or from LibrarySearch, during the downtime - please ask a member of library staff for assistance with renewing books. 

Please take all of this into account when planning your borrowing.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, and thank you for your assistance.

P.S. No book stamping actually required!

Thursday 1 December 2011

Android version of Qiqqa available


This is now available to download from the Android Market, in a beta version. You can also download it via Qiqqa.

It allows you to sync your documents down to your device and view them offline. See the Qiqqa website for more information at http://www.qiqqa.com/ (see the Download tab).

I haven't been able to try it out on my own Android phone (annoying phone memory problems) but I'd be pleased to hear from anyone who has used it.

If you're interested in using Qiqqa in general let me know and we can go through it together and I can perhaps put you in touch with others in the Department who are using it.

2 new e-books in zoology now available

Two books that are recommended on undergraduate reading lists are now available as e-books - although undergraduate and postgraduate students and teaching staff alike may find them useful.

They can be found and accessed via the library catalogue, LibrarySearch, at http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/. There are also direct links to the books as provided below. The library has several print copies of each.

The biology of lakes and ponds, 2nd ed., by Christer Bronmark and Lars-Anders Hansson.
http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=86973&src=2


Evolution, 3rd ed., by Mark Ridley. 
http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=229196&src=2

You can find out all about e-books on the ebooks@cambridge website at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/