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.
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.
As we complete the first full academic year since the pandemic began, we thought that it would be a nice idea to look back at our year (and a bit) in ebooks. The first lockdown in March 2020 saw a huge surge in demand for electronic resources, with a staggering 2230 new title-by-title ebooks purchased by the central ebooks team for teaching and research between March 16th and the close of the financial year at the end of July! (In comparison, 519 new ebooks were purchased during the same period in the previous year.) Thousands of ebooks were also made temporarily available via trial subscriptions.
The 2020-21 academic year has been another exceptional year in terms of expanding ebook access, and the remainder of this blog post will provide a brief overview of the title-by-title ebooks, new ebook platforms, and ebook subcriptions/packages acquired over the past 12 months.
Before going any further, it is worth noting that the past 16 months have involved a huge collaborative effort between the ebooks team, the faculty and departmental libraries, research teams at the UL, and college libraries. There has also been tremendous support provided by colleagues at the UL: the Electronic Collection Management team, Materials Processing, Digital Services, and our fellow Collections and Academic Liaison-ers, who have checked seemingly endless lists of ebooks, have helped with loading records and ebook portfolios, and with purchasing. Such extensive ebooks provision would also not have been possible without additional funds generously released by the Colleges, the University, and the University Library. Thank you to all!
Title-by-title ebook purchases
Between August 2020 and July 2021, 5809 new title-by-title ebooks were purchased by the central ebooks team, by faculty and departmental libraries, and by research collections teams at the UL.
This includes:
2676 new ebook titles purchased by the central ebooks team for teaching and learning, with thanks to recommendations from faculty and departmental libraries, college libraries, and Cambridge University students and staff.
1892 new ebooks purchased by faculty and departmental libraries (Biological Sciences (research), Business & Management, Classics, Education, English, HPS, Medicine, MMLL, Music, Philosophy and Psychology).
1241 new ebooks purchased by research collections teams at the UL.
2251 new titles purchased for subjects in the Arts & Humanities.
2485 new titles purchased for subjects in the Humanities & Social Sciences.
701 new titles purchased for STEMM subjects.
57 new French language titles from Amalivre, which you can read more about here.
82 new Japanese language titles from KinoDen (Kinokuniya Digital Library).
30 ebooks of statistics and analysis about the 2001 Ukrainian census from East View (29 in Ukrainian). You can read more about these resources here.
Cambridge’s first Russian language ebook was also purchased from East View. More information here.
2 new Korean language titles from ebook platform BookRail.
Below is a small sample of some of the new title-by-title ebooks acquired in 2020-21. All of these titles can be found in iDiscover. Alternatively, follow the title links below the cover images for access.
Sezgin Online: volumes 1-9 of Fuat Sezgin’s renowned Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (GAS), the largest bio-bibliography for the Arabic literary tradition, particularly for the history of science and technology in the Islamic world.
All titles from the below collections/subscriptions (except Perlego) can be found in iDiscover.
Research (new)
Access to nearly 10,000 Russian ebooks through a subscription to BiblioRossica’s Leading Russian Scholarly Presses package. Please see this blogpost for more information.
Brill Online Collections: Schöningh and Fink History: Early Modern and Modern History (2020 collection & 2021 collection).
Permanent access to the Knowledge Unlatched Routledge African Studies Collection (partly funded by UL research budgets).
Annual subscription to the Art & Architecture ePortal (A&AePortal) (funded in 2020-21 by the Art History and Architecture library). More details about the platform can be found here.
Permanent access to the three John Dewey components on Intelex Past Masters (partly funded by the Whipple Library and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science). Please see this blogpost for more information.
Taylor & Francis HSS and STEM deep backlist collections
STEMM
Subscription to ClinicalKey. Please see the blogpost here for more information.
A subscription to O’Reilly for Higher Education, with titles in the Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences/STEMM but with a particular strength in technology.
Institute of Physics (IOP): EBA for the Concise and Expanding Physics series (releases 4-6) and their 2020 ebook collection. Cambridge also has perpetual access to the Concise and Expanding Physics series (releases 1-3) and AAS-IOP Astronomy (releases 1-2).
1000 Perlego accounts until the end of September 2021, which have largely been used for research and for some smaller teaching cohorts. Please see here for more information.
The ebooks team are delighted to announce that a year-long subscription has been taken out to O’Reilly for Higher Education (OHE). University staff and students had access to OHE through a two-month trial in the spring, and the new paid-for access has followed on seamlessly from the trial thanks to flexibility from O’Reilly.
OHE holds titles of interest across the Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences/STEMM board but with a particular strength in technology.
The ebooks@cambridge team are pleased to announce that two new OA collections containing nearly 15,000 titles of interest across the board are now in iDiscover.
A Project Muse title
Project Muse Open Access Books: 2,139 titles. Individual titles are now in iDiscover, but these ebooks can also be accessed directly from Project Muse’s own catalogue, which allows searches to be narrowed by subject, publisher, series, and funder.
The Open Research Library from Knowledge Unlatched: 12,825 titles. Individual titles are again also in iDiscover, but these ebooks can additionally be accessed directly from the ORL’s own site here, where they are organised by subject.
Cambridge staff and students now have trial access to O’Reilly for Higher Education. This will be of particular interest for those studying and teaching technology and business. From O’Reilly promotional material:
“O’Reilly includes tech and business content from more than 250 publishers – along with videos, case studies, expert-curated learning paths and self-assessments on exclusive O’Reilly-produced content from world-renowned innovators and corporate leaders.
“The platform includes more than 35K book titles plus 30K+ hours of video, proven learning paths, case studies, interactive tutorials, audio books, and videos from O’Reilly’s global conferences and 250 of the world’s best publishers.
“More than 2.25 million professionals in more than 4,000 businesses and government agencies learn with us every day. O’Reilly for Higher Education, complements classroom curriculum, prepares users for future careers, and encourages lifelong learning.”
Titles for the O’Reilly titles are in iDiscover. Our staff and students can also browse content directly on the O’Reilly website here: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/temporary-access/ (select “University of Cambridge” from the dropdown list).
Please try the site out and send feedback to ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk or to your faculty librarian. While the trial generously lasts until 20 April, we would be grateful for feedback as soon as possible!
*UPDATED 26/4/21 IN CONNECTION WITH TRIAL EXTENSION*
ebooks@cambridge 