Emerald Reading ListAssist

Here's an interesting new service from Emerald.  Reading ListAssist draws together articles from Emerald's journal and book content in over 50 subject-specific reading lists.  I doubt many of you are interested in the engineering reading lists, but you may find some interesting articles in the Business, Management & Economics, Library & Information Science and Social Sciences themed reading lists.  They all have been created by teachers and students for teachers and students, so should be relevant good quality material. 
Each list is presented as an Excel spreadsheet and for most there's an accompanying PDF editorial.  Each list also comes with an abstract giving a brief overview of content and coverage.
There's a caveat, and that caveat is that access to articles within the reading lists will be subject to whether we subscribe to that journal or not.  For DBS, that basically means that if the article is from Emerald Backfiles you won't see it, but you should see most of the non-Backfile material.  Have a look anyway and see what you think.   

Netlibrary ebook & audiobook trial

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the nice people at EBSCO have given us trial access to their Netlibrary ebook and audiobook platform.  Take it away EBSCO!

Containing around 500 of the 350,000 eBook/eAudiobook titles, this trial will allow you to view the functionality and features of subscribing to eBooks/eAudiobooks via EBSCOhost, including:
• Cross-searching databases and eBooks together to get a single Results list (within EHIS or for EBSCO only products)
• Download eBooks to Apple devices, eBook tablets and Mobile Phones
• How the EBSCOhost interface has been enhanced to handle eBooks, offering familar options to students.

The trial will be available until 16th December.  The links have been integrated into EBSCO, so when you use the library home page search box, your results will include ebooks and audiobooks (if they match) but if you like, you can directly access the ebook trial here, or if you prefer audiobooks only, click here  (off-campus,  login with your student number and date of birth. 

Winter exams Sunday opening / Christmas break

To facilitate your winter exam revisions, Aungier St. and Dame St. libraries will be open on the following SUndays:
 - 11th Dec. 2011 - 11.00-17.00
 - 18th Dec. 2011 - 11.00-17.00
 - 8th Jan. 2012 - 11.00-17.00

For Christmas, all DBS buildings will be closed from Fri. 23rd Dec. 2011 until Monday 2nd Jan. 2012 inclusive.
Library services will resume on Tues. 3rd Jan. 2012 at 9am.

Mobile Apps for Zotero

This post is the motherlode as it's about two things I'm interested in, Zotero and mobile apps .  If you've read this blog before, you'll know that we plug Zotero, which is a free reference management software.  By reference management, I mean keeping track of your bibliographies and plugging the citations into your assignments and dissertations.  Until recently Zotero was only available as a Firefox add-on, but a stand-alone version has just been released.

Recently a number paid and free iPhone and Android Zotero apps have appeared. Here's a quick look at a few of them:

Zandy (Android)

Zandy allows you to access your Zotero library from your Android smartphone You can edit  and view your library, sync, and work offline. Zandy provides a simple interface to all your research. You can browse and modify the items in your library, as well as add new items to your library, all from your phone.

Zandy has been created  by one of volunteers working on the Zotero project and will cost you €2.94.


Scanner for Zotero (Android)

Scan the ISBN barcode on any book, and Scanner For Zotero will retrieve the book's bibliographic information from the web and allow you to add it to your Zotero library.

You can download the code or an Android installation file, or simply pay €1.46 for the App itself

BibUp (iPhone)

BibUp is an iPhone equivalent of Scanner for Zotero, with the added functionality of photographing specific pages to be collected, on which BibUp will even perform OCR.  BibUp weighs in at my favourite price: free.