Legal Deposit Libraries legislation now covers electronic publications

Legal Deposit now covers material published digitally and online, so that the Legal Deposit Libraries can provide a national archive of the UK’s non-print published material, such as websites, blogs, e-journals and CD-ROMs. 

The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013 came into effect on 6th April.

Access to the material is available from dedicated public workstations in the University Library and Affiliated Libraries in Cambridge.

Please visit the University Library's Legal Deposit website at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/legaldeposit/ to find out more about the legislation, how to access the material, and to link to some useful FAQs about its content and accessibility.

National Libraries Day 2012

National Libraries Day is devoted to all types of libraries, library users, staff and supporters across the UK. 

Join in by organising a celebratory event, contributing to our forums, tweeting with the #NLD12 hashtag and visiting your local library on the 4 February or the week leading up to it. How will you get involved?

Find out more at: http://nationallibrariesday.org.uk/

Rose Book-Collecting Prize 2011-2012

Attention student book-collectors! 

Your chance to win £500 

You can enter any type of collection provided it is solely owned by you and has been collected by you. The books do not have to be especially valuable - a collection of paperbacks, put together with imagination, is equally eligible. 

The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Cambridge. 

The closing date for entries is the first day of Lent Full Term, Tuesday 17 January 2012. 

Full details of how to enter are given on the University Library website at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookprize/

The Libraries Directory has a new look!

Photo courtesy of libraries@cambridge

The Libraries Directory has a new look!

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries_directory/libraries_directory.cgi

The newly designed interface uses the new University style, and is enhanced by the incorporation of images from the libraries@cambridge Flickr stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/libatcam/sets/) as well as from those contributed by libraries.

You can use the Directory to find out the opening hours, locations (with maps), contact details, stock and service information of all the libraries in the University. It is searchable and you can also find out what libraries cover which subject via the Subject List link.

Helpful tip: when searching for a book on the online catalogue, LibrarySearch http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/, click on the details of the book and scroll down the screen to see which libraries hold the book. Next to the library name is an 'i' icon - click on this and you will be brought to the library's entry on the Library Directory.

Natural History Museum's first book for iPad, Audubon's Birds of America

Unfortunately the Balfour Library does not own a copy of John James Audubon's magnificent, 1m tall Birds of America, with 435 hand-painted plates illustrating American birds in their natural habitats, so you may be interested in the iPad or eBook version of a copy owned by the Natural History Museum (NHM).

A resized print edition of the work will also be launched by the NHM.

The NHM's art collection holds half a million artworks, representing all the great natural history artists. There are also over 1 million books, including some richly illustrated volumes of great historical significance.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2011/september/museums-first-book-for-ipad-birds-of-america-is-launched102402.html

New to Cambridge Libraries, or don't know where to start?

Check out the Cambridge Libraries Gateway! http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/

This is a website that consolidates information about all the libraries available within the University of Cambridge - there are over 100 of them!

Sections include: How do I...? (e.g. find books, find journals etc.); ads for new library services such a the new mobile phone app; the Research Skills Programme for all undergraduate other members of the University; a feed from various libraries' blogs; a link to the online book renewal / library account facility; and much, much more.

Cambridge Libraries will have a presence at the Freshers' Fair, which will be held on Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 6th October at the Kelsey Kerridge Sports Hall. Several librarians from different libraries around the University will be ready and very willing to talk about all the libraries available to you and how you can use them. We will be giving out fliers, and hopefully will have a mobile phone and laptop to demonstrate some of the remote library services available.

On the new Cambridge Libraries website you can also check out also our new film, The Perfect Desk, to give you a student's eye view of the library system in Cambridge.

The Balfour Library is participating in Open Cambridge 2011!

We are very pleased to announce that we are taking part in the annual Open Cambridge event for the first time this year.

The event allows members of the public to gain exclusive access to and insights into libraries, museums, gardens, and many other University institutions (as well as many non-University ones in Cambridge!). There are tours and drop-in sessions available, some of which do require booking.

We thought it would be great to be able to open our doors to the public, who may have always wondered what the inside of this centrally located building is like having walked past it several times! On Saturday 11th September we are giving a one-hour, bookable tour, to show visitors how the library is used by students and members of the department for their teaching, learning, and research needs. We will also have a selection of items from our special collections on display - this is very exclusive, as we do not have space to show these off within the library at present. If the tour proves popular maybe we can deliver some more next year.

The event takes place on Friday 9th and Saturday 10th September, culminating in the Bridge the Gap Charity Walk on Sunday 11th.

For more details of what's on please see the Open Cambridge website at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/opencambridge/ Bookings now open.

Leading research organisations announce top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust have announced that they will be supporting a new top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research.

For more information, see the Wellcome Trust's 'News and features' page on their website at: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/index.htm

Inspection copy sale of books from the Cambridge Library Collection!

This will take place 1st-20th June at the Cambridge University Press bookshop - see the poster outside the library.

Books will be available at special prices from the Bookshop only, not online.

With subjects ranging from anthropology to zoology, the Cambridge Library Collection allows readers to own books they would otherwise find it hard to obtain. It the result of a collaboration between Cambridge University Library and the Cambridge University Press, each page of the book is scanned, and a new cover and blurb added.

For more information on the Cambridge Library Collection and the titles included in it, please see the poster and visit the Collection's website at: http://www.cambridge.org/features/cambridgeLibraryCollection/default.html

The books are also searchable online and can be downloaded from http://ebooks.cambridge.org/clc/home.jsf

The Big Book visits the Big Library (19-21 May)

The Big Book, entitled Imagine, is a leather-bound wooden sculpture that invites the 'reader' to step inside and write their own individual answer to the question: "What do you imagine?".

The artist is "particularly keen for contributions from mathematicians and scientists - are we the only animal that has imagination? Why do we have imaginary numbers?".

For more information see the news item on the Cambridge University Library website at:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=265

Red letter day for Darwin Correspondence Project

The project mapping Charles Darwin’s life and work in the 15,000 letters he wrote or received during his extraordinary lifetime will be completed after a £5 million funding package was announced.

See the news item on the University Library website here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=263

Find out more about the project here: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/home

Flickr Photostream of photos of the Zoology Library!

Rachel Marsh and Angela Pittock from libraries@cambridge visited recently to take some photos of the Balfour Library to post in a Flickr Photostream.

They are visiting as many libraries as they can and have posted some other Cambridge library Photostreams already. It was great to see them both, to have a chat about libraries@cambridge things, and to show them around our lovely library!

Rachel took some great and quirky photos, I hope you will agree. Also included are some photos that I took a while ago.

See the images here at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/libatcam/ You can also click on 'Detail' to show captions that accompany the photos. You can also click on the 'Slideshow' button to view the images as a slideshow (then click on 'Show info' to display the accompanying captions).