Using library resources for research

Paul Johnson

Bedford Library

The size of the literature problemTotal world science journalsabout 100,000Royal Holloway Libraryabout 1,500 print and 8,000 onlineUniversity of London about 6,000 print titles over all the collegesScience Citation Index (within Web of Science)about 5,000 titles covered

Aids to help with the problemBibliographic databasesElectronic resourcesLibrary collections

Library ServicesAt Royal HollowayIn the University of LondonIn M25 area H.E. institutionsSCONUL Access schemeAt the British LibraryBy Inter-Library Loan

At Royal HollowayALEPH web catalogueSFX buttonlinks to online resources & other cataloguesMetaLibgateway to the librarys electronic resources

Electronic journalsAll Royal Holloway subscriptions are listed on the Aleph library catalogue and on the MetaLib serviceClick on SFX for years covered and linksPassword free from campus networkMost accessible off-campus with College/Library barcode and PINCampus Anywhere allows further access

Science Citation IndexAvailable on ISIs Web of Knowledge servicedata back to 1970, abstracts from 1991about 5,000 science journals coveredcore journals, those which are heavily citedcitation indexing, trace research through timesave searches for re-useSFX button in full record for RHUL users

ScopusClaims to be the largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sourcesCovers 25 million abstracts from over 14,000 titles across 4,000 publishers Rival to Web of Science!

ZETOCCoverage from 1993About 20,000 journals on all subjectsAbout 16,000 conference proceedingsIndexing service with some abstractsAlerting service

MathSciNetComprehensive database of world mathematical literature from 1940 to dateOnline version of Mathematical Reviews and Current Mathematical PublicationsIncludes abstracts

Electronic Full Text Databases ScienceDirect service for full text of all Elsevier journals since 1995JSTOR journal archive for major science journalsLecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer series includes Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics sub-series)

Other Electronic DatabasesOnline newspaper collection for items of topical interestBusiness Source Premierincludes current affairs weeklies, such as Newsweek, EconomistOxford Reference Collectionincludes dictionaries of computing, physics, astronomy and mathematics

In the University of LondonGood Computer Science holdings at:Imperial CollegeUniversity CollegeCatalogues on the webFull access to read and copy journals

Union List of Serials (journals)Shows all journal titles and holdings held at any College in the University.Searchable from the SFX buttonyour Aleph search is automatically copied overpress + to see the full holdings of a title

M25 Web GuideM25 Web Guide athttp://www.m25lib.ac.uksearch by subject strengthsunion search engine for booksdirect links to opening hours, access arrangements and online catalogues

Other library cataloguesComprehensive union catalogues include:COPAC: combines the catalogues of 24 major academic research libraries in the UK and IrelandWorldCat: millions of bibliographic records from libraries worldwide

SCONUL AccessSCONUL Access card allows all research postgraduates and academic staff access and borrowing rights at most UK university librariesCard obtainable from Royal Holloway library enquiry desks Card also now available for Masters level students

The British LibraryAt St PancrasLibrary of last resortComplete holdings of U.K. print publicationsGood holdings of journals, but not all in LondonCatalogue on the web - check before applying

Inter-library loansVouchers available from departmentSubmit to library help desk or online via library catalogue (my account)

Resources on the WebUseful links from the Librarys MetaLib resources pagesIntute gateway for science, engineering and technology: http://www.intute.ac.ukBUBL catalogue of internet resources for computing: http://www.bubl.ac.ukGoogle Scholar: a simple way to search for scholarly literature: http://scholar.google.co.ukScirus: the most comprehensive science-specific search engine available on the Internet: http://www.scirus.com

RefWorksWeb based bibliographic software package that allows you toOrganise your researchInclude citations while you write your paperBuild a bibliography in a variety of formatsImport references from many data sources Guides to citing internet resources at:http://www.ifla.org/I/training/citation/citing.htm#style

Contact detailsPaul Johnson, Information ConsultantRoom 2-08 Bedford Library01784 414424paul.johnson@rhul.ac.uk