Category Archives: Collections

RSL over vacation

Posted on by
Reply

Term is finishing and vacation is approaching, finally. Whether you’re driving home for Christmas, another holidaym or staying in Oxford here are some tips to access the RSL and our resources.

The staff at the RSL hope you all have a restful and relaxing break.

An old luggage covered in frost in snowy landscape

Opening Hours

The Radcliffe Science Library will move to vacation hours on Monday 4 December.
The Library will be open:
Monday – Friday: 9am–7pm
Saturday: 10am–2pm
Sunday: Closed

Full details of library opening hours can be found at www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/libraries/rsl.

Continue reading →

New Ebook series – ACS In Focus

Posted on by
Reply

New ebook collection

Exciting news for all those interested in the field of Chemistry! We have now arranged access to a new ebook series covering a broad range of emerging topics ACS In Focus.

Text reads New resource over a range of scientific, computer and book related images

What is it?

ACS In Focus digital books cover a wide range of emerging interdisciplinary and chemical topics, as well as core techniques from across the sciences. These primers are designed to be four-six hour reads and combine concise and in-depth information to facilitate a swift grasp of fundamental concepts and essential techniques in various scientific domains.  The ACS In Focus digital primers are delivered in a dynamic online platform, and include features such as a pop-up glossary, multimedia, video interviews with top experts in the field, A Day in the Life examples and tutorials, and more.

Cover of machine Learning in Chemistry

One of many new ebooks available from ACS In Focus.

Who is it for?

The ACS In Focus series will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduate students and researchers in Chemistry and related areas who want to get up to speed on a topic beyond their current competencies. It will also be useful to those students and researchers who want to learn about cutting edge techniques and new topics.

Cover of Metal Nanocrystals

One of many new ebooks available from ACS In Focus.

How can I access it?

Individual ebooks in the ACS In Focus series are available through SOLO https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/  To access them off campus use the University VPN or sign in to each ebook via SOLO with your Single Sign On (SSO). 

Cover of Astrochemistry

One of many new ebooks available from ACS In Focus.

What’s so great about ebooks?

Posted on by
2

Ebooks are hardly a new invention but there might be some things about the ebooks in the University of Oxford that you don’t know.

Access anytime, anywhere

Although any people like the smell of books and the feel of paper in your hands ebooks have a great advantage in that they can be accessed from anywhere. All the ebooks we purchase can be accessed from anywhere whether the room in your college or travelling the world. You just need to sign in to SOLO then follow the View Online link to the ebook or sign in to the platform.

You can also download most of our ebooks. We have thousands of ebooks from many different suppliers so the methods of download can vary. If you are having problems check out the downloading ebooks section of our ebooks guide.

Ebook on tablet on towel, next to pool with sun hat and sunglasses.

Read ebooks anytime anywhere

Continue reading →

Check out our Resource of the Month – November

Posted on by
Reply

The RSL has a huge collection of physical and electronic materials. We have so much that we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our items whether recently added or an existing collection item. The resources are recommended by our knowledgeable subject librarians who are excited to show off parts of the collection for their subject.

Text that says resource of the month over small images of books, computer equipment and scientific equipment

This month’s selector is:

Ollie Bridle

Photo of Ollie Bridle

Ollie Bridle

Ollie has selected RefWorks.

RefWorks logo

Brief Description

Creating reference lists for your essays can be a pain! It’s easy to lose track of all the papers you’ve been reading and formatting your references so that all the commas and italics are in the right place may not be the most fun part of academic writing. Fortunately, RefWorks can help! RefWorks is reference management software that helps you keep track of all the books and articles you are reading. It gives you a single place to store details about these documents for later citing and referencing in your assignments. Better still, RefWorks can automatically format your in-text citations and reference lists in hundreds of different citation styles saving you time.

  • Free for Oxford University members.
  • Works online from any computer.
  • Compatible with Mac and Windows.
  • Cite using Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
  • Lots of training and support available.
  • Alumni access – you can carry on using RefWorks for free even when you’ve finished your studies at Oxford.
Photograph showing close up of hands typing on a laptop keyboard.

Image by janeb13 (Pixabay)

Who is this useful for?

Anybody at any level of the University who is involved in scientific writing – everything from undergraduate assignments to your thesis and research papers.

How can I access it?

You can access RefWorks from any web-browser by going to https://refworks.proquest.com/. You must set up a free account to use the software. When setting up your account, we recommend using the ‘Create Account’ option rather than the ‘Use login for my Institution’ option. Please ensure you sign-up using your Oxford University e-mail account.

For help using RefWorks, contact your Subject Librarian (www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ask/subject-librarians) or attend one of our free RefWorks courses – www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ask/workshops/reference-management-workshop-handouts

Black History Month Display 2023

Posted on by
Reply

This Black History Month we have selected a few key titles from our collection that highlight the role of black people in history and science. We have also selected a few  titles that show some of the impact of racism in these fields. Please browse our digital display and let us know if you have any recommendations.

Continue reading →

Check out our resource of the month for October

Posted on by
Reply

The RSL has a huge collection of physical and electronic materials. We have so much that we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our items whether recently added or an existing collection item. The resources are recommended by our knowledgeable subject librarians who are excited to show off parts of the collection for their subject.

Text that says resource of the month over small images of books, computer equipment and scientific equipment

This month’s selector is:

Rachel Scanlon

Photograph of Rachel Scanlon

Rachel has selected Patent Information LibGuide curated by Alessandra Vetrugno.

Brief Description

The Patents Information LibGuide has gathered together a range of resources on patents including key resources on the patent application process and international databases which list published patents including Espacenet and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The guide also contains a list of scientific databases which include patent information as well as resources on keeping up to date with patent information.

Sketch of a toilet roll with the paper folded over the top with various notations.

Toilet paper roll patent by S. Wheeler

Who is this useful for?

Patent information is useful for those researching Chemistry, Materials Science, Engineering, Pharmacology and those interested in keeping up to date with technical developments in these fields.

How can I access it?

The Patent Information Guide is available on our guides website with many other useful guides for researchers. It is available to anyone and doesn’t require any sign in.

Check out our Resource of the Month for September

Posted on by
Reply

The RSL has a huge collection of physical and electronic materials. We have so much that we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our items whether recently added or an existing collection item. The resources are recommended by our knowledgeable subject librarians who are excited to show off parts of the collection for their subject.

Text that says resource of the month over small images of books, computer equipment and scientific equipment

This month’s selector is:

Karine Barker

Photograph of Karine Barker

Karine Barker

Karine has selected the ClinicalKey Student database Elsevier.

Brief Description

ClinicalKey Student is an online education platform for students and faculty providing access to:

  • Over 200 textbooks including those recommended for the pre-clinical and clinical courses.
  • Over 850 associated videos.
  • Over 85 000 copyright cleared images for visual learning and enhancing lectures.

Recently acquired with our subscription is ClinicalKey Student Assessment, an extensive bank of single best answers (SBA) with case studies, tools and analytics for students to test their learning progress while also assisting teachers in preparing teaching content. The questions progress from basic sciences to clinical sciences and are graded from easy to difficult within each category.

 

Photograph of medcial accessories including a stethoscope, a syringe, small bandages, individual tablets or pills and packages of teblets or pills.

Who is this useful for?

Pre-Clinical medicine and Biomedical Sciences Undergraduate students will receive the most benefit from this database, as well as clinical medicine students. It will also be useful to faculty teaching medical courses.

How can I access it?

This resource is available through SOLO. If you have signed into SOLO, ClinicalKey will create an account for you based on your Single Sign On (SSO) details. If you have not logged into SOLO you will be asked to log into ClinicalKey with your Single Sign On (SSO). You will need to create an account to use ClinicalKey but this will allow you to save books and resources to your shelf.

Books moving back to the RSL

Posted on by
Reply

After being out of the building for over two years the books and staff of the Radcliffe Science Library (RSL) will be returning to our newly refurbished building for October 2023. Can you tell we’re excited?

Moving the books from the Vere Harmsworth Library (VHL) will take some time so we’re going to begin packing up our books in early September. From 4th September until the end of the month we will be packing and moving books from the VHL to the RSL.

Graphic of library shelves. Three of the shelves are nearly empty and there are cardboard boxes in front of the shelves.

Book fetching service

During that time the book you are looking for may not be on our shelves. To help with this we will be operatine a fetching service. You can ask the staff at the desk or email enquiries.rsl@bodleian.ox.ac.uk to get our staff to fetch a book from the boxes for you. As this is a time consuming process, it will be faster for readers to order books from Offste or get them from another library so we will not fetch books that meet those criteria.

Disruption

During the book move there may be some noise disruption in the VHL particularly on the 2nd floor. We will try to keep the disturbance to a minimum.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Check out our resource of the month

Posted on by
Reply

The RSL has a huge collection of physical and electronic materials. We have so much that we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our items whether recently added or an existing collection item. The resources are recommended by our knowledgeable subject librarians who are excited to show off parts of the collection for their subject.

Text that says resource of the month over small images of books, computer equipment and scientific equipment

This month’s selector is:

Rachel Scanlon

Photograph of Rachel Scanlon

Rachel has selected the Lyell Collection.

Brief Description

The Lyell Collection, created to mark the Geological Society of London’s 200th anniversary in 2007 and named after Charles Lyell, the eminent nineteenth-century geologist, represents one of the largest integrated collections of online Earth science literature available. It comprises the Society’s journal titles, Special Publications and key book series and allows cutting edge science to sit alongside important historical material with full-text archives back to 1811.

Natural Bridges at Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor, Oregon USA

View through Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah USA to arid/desert valley beyond

Who is this useful for?

This is an essential resource for researchers and students in the field of Geosciences including geochemistry, geology and petroleum geoscience.

How can I access it?

This collection is available through SOLO. To access it off campus use the VPN or sign in to the journal platform with your Single Sign On (SSO).

Check out our resource of the month

Posted on by
Reply

The RSL has a huge collection of physical and electronic materials. We have so much that we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our items whether recently added or an existing collection item. The resources are recommended by our knowledgeable subject librarians who are excited to show off parts of the collection for their subject.

Text that says resource of the month over small images of books, computer equipment and scientific equipment

This month’s selector is:

Alessandra Vetrugno

Photograph of Alessandra Vetrugno holding a laptop

Alessandra Vetrugno

Ale has selected the Institute of Physics evidence-based acquisitions (EBA) ebook collection

Brief Description

The institute of Physics (IOP) is the leading scientific society for Physics in the UK and Ireland. It supports the promotion and advancement of Physics around the world. The IOP EBA ebook collection provides DRM-free access to around 800 ebooks published by the Institute of Physics including high-quality monographs on key areas in physics and shorter texts that cover rapidly advancing topics.

We have access to this collection under an EBA model. This means that we are able to access all titles in the collection for one year and at the end of our subscription we’ll retain the titles that have been used the most.

Abstract illustration of waves and particles

This photo by Gerd Altmann is licensed under CC0 Public Domain

Who is this useful for?

This resource is essential for Physics students and researchers, from undergraduate level up to academics. It is also relevant for researchers in other areas with an interest for Physics-related research and education.

How can I access it?

The IOP EBA collection is accessible from the Oxford Libraries catalogue SOLO. Individual titles can also be also accessed from SOLO. To access it off-campus use the VPN or sign into SOLO with your Single Sign On (SSO).

Our access to the IOP EBA ebook collection is valid until the 10th May 2024.

If you want to know more about searching titles included in the IOP EBA, you can talk to one of our friendly Subject Librarians! 😊