Access to electronic resources off-campus with a Raven password important changes from 1 August 2009

Access to subscription electronic resources, including ejournals, ebooks and online databases, is available off-campus to current staff and students of the university and is controlled by Raven ID and password.

Your Raven ID and password may be used off campus wherever you are prompted to log in using one of the following links:

• Shibboleth login
• Login via your home institution
• Institution login

From 1 August 2009 it will not be accepted in place of an Athens password.

A small number of services do not support direct Raven logins but are routed through a secure proxy server which prompts users for their Raven IDs and passwords. The simplest access route to an ejournal or other electronic resource is through ejournals@cambridge and eresources@cambridge, which have up-to-date links.

Information about Raven, including how to obtain a Raven password, is available on the Computing Service web site.

A list of Frequently Asked Questions are also available; other questions and requests for support on Raven should be addressed to the University Library Raven helpdesk at lib-raven@lists.cam.ac.uk.

The above changes do not affect those who log into electronic resources remotely using a VPDN connection.

Document Scanning Service

From the beginning of July until the end of September, the Central Science Library (CSL), will be conducting a free trial of a new Document Scanning Service for current staff and students of the University. The service will be used for material held at the CSL that is not currently available electronically. This includes articles from journals and chapters from books.

We will scan on request and email out the document, as an A4-sized PDF, within a 24-hour period.

Users of the service should be aware that the CSL operates within the restrictions of the Copyright Act. This means that under UK law we will only be able to provide, for the purposes of private study or research for non-commercial purpose, the following:

a) one article from any one issue of a journal or periodical

b) one chapter or 5% of extracts from a published work.

To make use of this service please send the details via this form.

At the end of the trial we will review the service and look to assessing the long-term sustainability of the Document Scanning Service.

Using information on the move survey

A chance to win an Flip video camera, £30 in book vouchers or membership to the Arts Picturehouse worth £27.

Take part in a survey intended to establish how the majority of Cambridge University students and staff access, or would like to access, information away from your desk or laptop. The survey questions are primarily about how you use your mobile phone, smartphone or PDA to look up, use or interact with information. As mobile phone use has become increasingly common, more and more ways of using them to access or interact with information have developed. Newer models of mobile phones are more powerful than personal computers were a few years ago and often include much of the functionality of a pocket PC, such as a calendar, a camera, a notes function, and an internet browser.

All answers will be completely anonymous. If you choose to provide your email address to enter the prize draw, or if you wish to contribute further to the project, we will not associate it with your responses or retain it after the end of the project. The aggregated survey results, however, will be made publicly available and may be used to inform development of services for students and staff.

This research is being undertaken jointly at Cambridge University and The Open University as part of the Arcadia project. Staff and students at The Open University will be receiving the same survey. For more information about the project, please click on the link provided at the end of the survey.

To take the survey, please go to http://cli.gs/caminfosurvey. It should take 10 to 15 minutes to complete it. The cut-off date for submissions is 19 March 2009.

Wireless internet access at CSL

The Central Science Library can now provide wireless access to the internet via the University Lapwing wireless service. The access point is in the main reading room on the 2nd floor but you may find that can get a connection elsewhere in the building.

This is service is available to all current members of the University via RAVEN. See here for further details.

Non University members, alumni or anyone who does not have a RAVEN account can still use the wireless service by creating a Lapwing ticket. See here for details.

Expanded DRA service at the CSL

The Library has now added four more PCs to its DRA service, bringing the total available to ten. The new machines are located on the 1st floor.

See a member of staff for details.

New ejournals archive Springer Online Archives Collection

The University Library is pleased to announce that it has purchased access in perpetuity to the Springer Online Archives Collection, making available to the university every issue and article from volume 1 onwards to 1996 of 900 journals. The collection complements the existing Springer journal subscription taken out by the Journals Co-ordination Scheme, which covers the years from 1997 onwards, thereby providing access to complete backruns online.

Springer is the world's second largest publisher of scientific, medical and technical journals. All eleven subject collection packages have been acquired.
These include:
• Behavioral Sciences
• Biomedical and Life Sciences
• Business and Economics
• Chemistry and Materials Science
• Computer Science
• Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Engineering
• Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• Mathematics
• Medicine
• Physics and Astronomy

Both archive and current ejournals are available through SpringerLink. To locate a title or to browse the collection go to the ejournals@cambridge portal at http://sfx7.exlibrisgroup.com/cambridge/az .

science@cambridge

The new web portal for science students, science@cambridge was launched today.

Science@cambridge aims to draw users into a virtual library space giving them immediate access to electronic information from their desktop, tools to help them navigate through the vast number of sources available, as well as on-line real-time help from library subject-experts.

This development acknowledges that for many of those working in contemporary science the library is now largely a 'virtual resource'. Science@cambridge will increase access to and knowledge of scientific electronic resources. It will help users discover, search across and improve the use of science e-resources, generally and within discipline specific areas.

Science@cambridge has been developed with the generous support of the Arcadia Trust.