New ebook collection: Springer Nature Physical & Materials Sciences Reference Module (1975-2025)

Posted on August 20, 2025 by evaluna71

Cambridge University Libraries are very pleased to announce that Cambridge University now has access to the Springer Physical & Materials Sciences Reference Module (1975-2025). Records for all available reference works are now in iDiscover. Cambridge users can also access the collection via the “Springer Physical & Materials Sciences reference collection 1975-2025” entries in the A-Z Databases and on the ebooks@cambridge LibGuide.

This newly available collection comprises around 430 Physical and Materials Sciences reference titles, including encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries and atlases, which provide a great starting resource for any topic-based research. Each reference entry links to its primary and secondary sources, allowing researchers to trace the information trail and further enrich their understanding and knowledge.

Some titles in the collection are also available as living reference works, which are “online first, real-time snapshots (article collections) of a reference work which is in development or is being updated” and provide “the latest and most up-to-date content well in advance of the final printed work.”

The living reference works are fully discoverable and citable with their own unique DOI, and updates undergo a rigorous editorial process before they are accepted for publication on the Springer Nature platform.

Three separate entries for the reference work *Handbook of Porous Silicon*; the published (completed) first and second editions published in 2014 and 2018 respectively, and the updating living edition which when it’s finished will become the third edition.

The Physical & Life Sciences Reference Module is written and curated by internationally renowned and award-winning experts. It will be of interest to many core STEMM disciplines and areas of research, including:

Materials Science
Chemistry
Physics
Environment
Earth Sciences
Social Sciences

Some of the most popular titles within this collection include the following (clickable links into the content are available below the book covers);

A selection of recently published titles are shown below;

Please do get in touch with the ebooks team if you have any questions about the Springer Physical & Materials Sciences Reference Module.

Collections update: AGU Geophysical Monograph Series

Posted on August 6, 2025 by bookandfork2

We are pleased to announce that ten recently published titles in the AGU Geophysical Monograph Series (hosted on Wiley Online) are now available to Cambridge students and researchers. All titles are licensed in perpetuity and ebook access is DRM-free.

This purchase updates our existing access (all monographs published pre-2024) to bring you front list publications covering a range of subjects from the Earth and space sciences. These titles will be of interest to researchers and students of the Physical Sciences, in particular Earth Sciences and Geography.

These titles can be accessed via the Geophysical Monograph Series homepage on the Wiley ebook platform. You can also find the link via the Wiley AGU Geophysical Monograph Series entry in our ebooks@cambridge LibGuide A-Z.

Individual title records are now available in iDiscover. Please see below for a full list. Note: clicking on the hyperlinked titles will take you to the relevant record.

Please do write to us at ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any queries.

Collections update: IEEE Princeton University Press STEMM Collection

Posted on September 10, 2024 by camperdue

Cambridge University readers have had access to the Princeton University Press eBooks Library collection hosted on the IEEE Xplore platform as of July 2023. We are pleased to announce that the latest annual collection has recently been added and users now have access to selected STEMM titles published from 1945 through to 2024. All available titles are purchased in perpetuity. The collection includes a wide variety of scientific titles on the cutting edge of research and titles from famous thinkers such as Albert Einstein, Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The collection can be found directly on the IEEE Xplore platform, the ebooks@cambridge LibGuide, or through individual titles searches on iDiscover.

Some of the most popular titles include:

For any questions, problems, or content recommendations, please contact the ebooks@cambridge team.

New ebooks collection: AGU Geophysical Monograph Series

Posted on August 21, 2023 by bookandfork2

We are pleased to announce that Cambridge users now have permanent access to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Geophysical Monograph Series hosted on Wiley Online.

Access includes all monographs published in this series until the end of 2023; currently there are 277 DRM-free titles available in the collection with more to be added throughout the year. The collection will be of interest to students and researchers of the Physical Sciences, in particular Earth Sciences.

From the publisher:

This flagship series publishes in-depth reference volumes in all fields of the Earth and space sciences, often with an interdisciplinary element. They are usually edited compilations that present the state-of the-art in a particular field, literature reviews, developments in methods and techniques, recent scientific advances, case studies, and applications. They are designed for researchers, industry professionals, and advanced students.

Sample titles from the series include:

Records are now available in iDiscover. Please contact the ebooks team at ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions about this resource.

New resource: The ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication

Posted on August 19, 2022 by bookandfork2

Image shows the text: "ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication."

Images shows a close up of chemistry apparatus.

We are pleased to announce a 12-month subscription to the ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication, formerly known as the ACS Style Guide.

The ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication is produced by the American Chemical Society and is an updated edition of the ACS Style Guide, compiled by editors with varied scholarly communications experience. It also contains new chapters on preprints, Open Access, machine-readable data, and more.

The Guide is broken down into the following sections:

Scientific Communication
Scientific Journals
Data in the Google Era
Scientific Style Conventions
Editorial Style Conventions
Inclusivity

Content is regularly updated on the platform to meet a fast-changing publishing landscape. As noted in the website’s About section, new topics will also be added to:

Expand scientific communication beyond the scientific journal, including patents, communicating science to the public, and communicating science to decision-makers;

Expand data conventions beyond chemistry; and

Broaden our reach beyond ethics in scientific publications to ethics in scientific research.

This will be a valuable tool for students, researchers, educators and librarians looking for guidance on how best to present their research. Although the focus is on Chemistry, this will also be applicable to other chemistry-related disciplines.

A record is now available in iDiscover. Please do contact the ebooks team at ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions.

A spotlight on Multimedia Fluid Mechanics Online

Posted on March 30, 2022 by bookandfork2

This blog post shines a light on Multimedia Fluid Mechanics Online (or Homsy) hosted on Cambridge Core. This online resource was first published on CD-ROM in 2001; it was developed by George M. Homsy and his multi-investigator team and was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

This resource offers visual and hands on learning and complements any fluid mechanics textbook or course on fluid flow and its applications. It is organised into eight modules, which are linked below:

Records for all modules and the video library can be found in iDiscover.

Multimedia Fluid Mechanics Online offers:

Over 800 videos with explanatory text.
Interactive animations to make concepts tangible and aid learning.
The opportunity for students to design and run their own experiments in virtual labs.
A bookmarking function. Students can create free personal Cambridge Core accounts to bookmark their favourite content, including videos, interactive animations, virtual media and other media.

Please contact the Ebooks team at ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions about this resource.

NEW: The Correspondence of Isaac Newton on Cambridge Core

Posted on March 18, 2022 by bookandfork2

Black and white image of an older Sir Isaac Newton wearing a long wig, next to text reading The Correspondence of Isaac Newton.

We are delighted to announce that The Correspondence of Isaac Newton is now available on Cambridge Core. The print edition of this seven-volume series was originally published between 1959 and 1978, and spans most of Newton’s life, from his late teenage years until his death in 1727.

Themes include Newton’s correspondence (and later feud) with Leibniz; his correspondence with Halley, who encouraged and helped to fund the Principia; and with Roger Cotes, who worked with Newton on the second edition. Some letters also reference wider contemporary events, including James II’s escape to France and the landing of William, Prince of Orange, in England on 5 November 1688.

Please find below authenticated links to the seven volumes on Cambridge Core:

Highlights of the new online edition include:

The ability to perform searches across the entire collection.
Transcriptions of original manuscripts (including translations) with editorial notes to provide biographical and historical context.
Cross-reference linking allowing the reader to easily access any referenced letters that exist elsewhere in the collection.
Hyperlinks where letters are available as digital facsimiles in the Cambridge Digital Library or as transcriptions included in the Newton Project. Links are also provided to the Royal Society’s catalogue for all items entered there.

MARC records for the seven volumes are now available in iDiscover.

Please contact the Ebooks team at ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any question about the new collection.

Ebooks in 2020-21: Physical Sciences

Posted on September 17, 2021 by bookandfork2

This blog post will look at subscriptions and title-by-title ebook purchases for Physical Sciences in 2020-21.

Subscriptions

In May, we took out a 12-month subscription to ScienceDirect All Access & Freedom Collection ebooks hosted on the ScienceDirect platform. This vast and constantly updating collection comprises around 40,000 textbooks, monographs and major reference works across a wide range of STEMM and social science subjects:

Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; Engineering; Physics and Astronomy; Economics, Econometrics and Finance; Mathematics; Medicine and Dentistry; Materials Science; Earth and Planetary Sciences; Chemistry; Neuroscience; Psychology, Business, Management and Accounting; and Social Sciences.

At the end of the subscription, we will be able to select a number of the most popular ebook titles to keep in perpetuity following consultation with faculty, departmental and college librarians.

All ebooks in the ScienceDirect All Access & Freedom Collection are available with unlimited, DRM-free access. All titles can be found in iDiscover or by searching on the ScienceDirect platform.

At the end of July, we subscribed for one year to the Institute of Physics (IOP) Concise and Expanding Physics series (releases 4-6) and their 2020 ebook collection.

Our subscription gives us access to an additional 335 IOP titles, building on our existing (perpetual) access to the Concise and Expanding Physics series (releases 1-3) and AAS-IOP Astronomy (releases 1-2).

“[The IOP] ebook collections offer high-quality research across the physical sciences. They have been created to meet the needs of students, early-career researchers and established leaders in the respective fields.”

The Concise Physics series is produced in collaboration with Morgan & Claypool and consists of short texts that are described as the “first book” on a given topic – either as a first introduction to a subject, or as the first work published at the forefront of a fast-moving area.
The Expanding Physics series includes authoritative works by leading researchers in physics and related subject areas.

IOP ebooks are available with unlimited, DRM-free access. All available titles can be found in iDiscover.

In July, we also renewed our subscription to the Springer Mathematics & Statistics eBooks Collections (2018-2021) for another year. The 2018-21 collections include textbooks and monographs and cover a range of key topics (algebra, analysis, geometry, probability and statistics), as well as newer areas of research (mathematical biology, computational science and engineering, and quantative finance).

Key mathematical topics in the 2021 collection include:

Computational topology
Geometry of information
Mathematics of machine learning
Partial differential equations
Functional analysis

Key statistics topics in the 2021 collection include:

Analytics and big data
Statistical applications to epidemiology and public health
Environmental science
Spatial data analysis

All titles in the Springer Mathematics & Statistics eBooks Collections are available with unlimited, DRM-free access. All titles can be found in iDiscover.

Title-by-title purchases

Please see below for a small sample of individual ebook titles purchased by Physical Sciences in 2020-21. All of these titles can be found in iDiscover. Alternatively, follow the title links below the cover images for access.

Chemistry

Earth Sciences

Geography

Materials Science

Mathematics

Physics

Polar Studies

ScienceDirect: All Access & Freedom Collection ebooks

Posted on June 8, 2021 by evaluna71

The ebooks team are really pleased to announce that a 12 month subscription has been taken to a collection of around 40,000 scholarly and academic ebook titles, hosted on the ScienceDirect platform. The collection includes textbooks, book series, monographs and major reference works, covering all available subject areas and publication years. As new titles are published online they will be automatically added to the collection. All titles are searchable in iDiscover and they are DRM-free.

Subjects covered on ScienceDirect include;

At the end of the 12 month subscription period we will be able to retain access to a selection of the most popular ebook titles. The title selection process will be overseen by the ebooks@cambridge team and will involve reviewing usage data and consulting with faculty, departmental and college librarians.

Here is the Raven-authenticated link for anyone who would like to explore ebook content directly on the platform: https://ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/login?url=https://www.sciencedirect.com

Please let the team know by emailing ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any queries about ebook content on ScienceDirect.

Oxford Handbooks Online 2021 – now available

Posted on May 4, 2021 by Rebecca

The ebooks team are very pleased to announce that the 2021 updates for all the Oxford Handbooks subject collections have been purchased in perpetuity for registered University of Cambridge users. This purchase – funded by Collections and Academic Liaison (UL), the Squire Law Library, and several STEMM libraries – adds to the considerable backfile of handbooks already available to the Cambridge community via Oxford Handbooks Online.

Complete coverage for all the following subjects from Foundation up to and including 2021 is now complete:

Oxford Handbooks Online can be accessed on and off campus via Raven. Monthly updates to the platform ensure that chapters from as yet unfinished handbook titles are available online in advance of print publication, meaning that we have the most current coverage possible: in April, 310 individual articles were added to the platform. However, bibliographic records for each handbook will not appear in iDiscover until the title is completed and published in full online.

A selection of recently completed titles can be seen below.