Check out our Resource of the Month – SPIE Digital Library

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.

This month’s selector is:

Alessandra Vetrugno

Lead Librarian – Physical and Applied Sciences
Subject Librarian for Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Materials Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics.

Photograph of Subject Librarian Alessandra VetrugnoAlessandra has selected SPIE Digital Library, available on SOLO.

Brief description 

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, supporting the advancement of light-based research and technologies. The SPIE Digital Library provides access to the extensive collection of SPIE technical publications. It includes:

  • SPIE journals
  • SPIE conference proceedings and presentations recordings, covering photonics-driven advancements in a broad range of areas from biomedicine to defence and security
  • ebooks from SPIE Press from 1962 to the present

New content is regularly added, with more than 18,000 new technical papers and 25 ebooks added annually.

SPIE logo

Who is this useful for? 

This resource is particularly useful for students and researchers in Physics, Engineering Science, Computer Science, and Materials Science, and for those with an interest in the latest developments and technologies in optics and photonics.

How can I access it? 

SPIE Digital Library 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 – Zoological Record

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 

Subject Librarian – Life Sciences and Non-clinical Medicine
Subject Librarian for Biochemistry, Biology, Forestry, Pharmacology, Plant Sciences and Zoology

Photograph of Subject Librarian Oliver Bridle

Ollie has selected Zoological Record by Web of Science and Ovid, available on SOLO

This resource is available on two providers, Web of Science and Ovid: 

Brief Description 

First begun as a publication by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the British Museum in the 19th century, the Zoological Record is the oldest database of animal biology, with records dating back to 1864. The database has extensive coverage of the zoological literature published in journals, books, reports, meetings, etc. The Zoological Record has become the ‘unofficial’ register of taxonomic names for animals, and records in the database are enhanced by added taxonomic and systematics information.

A black and white drawing illustrating the bones in a giraffe skeleton

Credit: Gordon Johnson, Pixabay

Who is this useful for? 

This database is useful for students or researchers looking for literature in zoology and animal biology and palaeontology. It is also useful for researchers investigating the taxonomy and naming of particular animal species. It is a particularly valuable resource for uncovering older literature in these areas which is often not included in other databases and is missing from web-based literature searching tools like Google Scholar.

How can I access it? 

This database 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).

Note that the database is divided between two providers – Web of Science and Ovid. To find older material use Ovid. To ensure a comprehensive search of the database you will need to search both providers to cover the whole contents.

Check out our Resource of the Month – GeoRef

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.

This month’s selector is:

Rachel Scanlon

Subject Librarian – Physical and Applied Sciences
Subject Librarian for Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Materials and Statistics

Photograph of Rachel Scanlon

Rachel has selected the database GeoRef, available on SOLO

Brief description

From the American Geological Institute (AGI), GeoRef is the most comprehensive geoscience database available. It provides access to a wide range of geoscience literature from around the world in the form of articles, books, maps, conference papers and more.

The GeoRef database covers the geology of North America from 1666 to the present and the geology of the rest of the world from 1933 to the present. The database includes references to all publications of the US Geological Survey.

GeoRef logo and collage

Search functions

Along with the Basic Search function there is also an Advanced Search, though we recommend using the Multi-Field Search for ease of use. All these searches accept Boolean operators and allow you to conduct detailed keyword searches. GeoRef also has an excellent thesaurus function with more than 40,000 controlled vocabulary terms and the complete GeoRef indexing structure. If you find a Subject Heading in your results that you find useful you can click on that term and see all related results.

Who is this useful for?

This database is useful for students and researchers working in Earth Sciences, particularly geology, geophysics, geochemistry and seismology. It may also be of use to geographers or economists interested in petrology and mineralogy.

How can I access it?

The GeoRef database 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 – CAB Abstracts

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 

Subject Librarian – Life Sciences and Non-clinical Medicine
Subject Librarian for Biochemistry, Biology, Forestry, Pharmacology, Plant Sciences and Zoology

Photo of Ollie Bridle

Ollie has selected CAB Abstracts by CABI, available on SOLO

Brief description 

CAB Abstracts is an applied life sciences database, providing over 10.4 million records. If you are researching topics touching on forestry, agriculture, crop science, environmental sciences or nature conservation and biodiversity, CAB Abstracts can be a fruitful place to search for literature. Here’s why:

  • It has wide, international coverage, with material from over 120 countries in 50 languages
  • Every record is provided with an English language abstract
  • Extensive grey literature content is included – including bulletins, annual reports, field notes and technical reports
  • Each record is professionally indexed with terms from the CAB Thesaurus to make comprehensive topic searching easier
A forest bathed in dappled sunlight

Credit: Manfred Antranias Zimmer, Pixabay

Who is this useful for? 

This resource is useful for students and researchers at any level who are researching topics in applied life sciences. It is particularly useful for those researching topics in forestry, agriculture and environmental sciences.

How can I access it? 

This database is available through SOLO. It is searched using the OVID database platform. 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 – ACM Digital Library

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 ACM Digital Library by the Association for Computing Machinery, an association of computing professionals including educators and researchers, available on SOLO.

Brief Description

The ACM Digital Library brings together full text access to the full range of ACM publications including journals, conference proceedings technical magazines and books. It also includes publications from select publishers with over 3.5million publications in the library.  ACM is the world’s largest computing society and their content covers the latest developments in areas of

  • Security and privacy
  • Computational theory and algorithms
  • Machine learning and natural language processing
  • Software engineering and programming
  • And more.

The ACM journals also have great open access credentials. Oxford has agreed a read and publish deal with ACM that allows all Oxford affiliated corresponding authors to publish open access in all gold and hybrid ACM journals. Research articles and conference proceedings are covered. Authors are asked to use an Oxford email address. Please choose CC BY and list Oxford as your affiliation.

Person standing in front of a screen showing the faces of many different people.

ACM provides great opportunities for networking and collaboration.

The people section is a great resource for finding experts and potential collaborators. There are filters on geography and subject so you can find the best people to work with.

The conferences section has proceedings from more than 170 computing conferences, symposia  and workshops with content from renowned experts in various computer science disciplines.

Image of ACM Digital Library website home page.

Who is this useful for?

Researchers, DPhils and postdocs in the field of Computer Science particularly those looking to find collaborative colleagues. It is also useful for other scientists looking to develop skills and knowledge in computing.

How can I access it?

This database 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 – IEEE Xplore

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 IEEE Xplore

Brief Description

IEEE Xplore is a digital library and online platform provided by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It provides access to more than 5 million documents including journals articles, conference publications, standards, and other resources in the fields of electrical engineering, electronics, computer science, and related disciplines. The platform offers powerful search and discovery tools to find and access its content efficiently.

Circuit board interface

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Who is this useful for?

The platform is primarily useful for students, researchers, and academics the fields of electrical engineering, electronics, computer science, biotechnology, power and energy, and other technologies. It is also relevant for researchers in other areas with an interest for technology-related research and education.

How can I access it?

The IEEE Xplore platform is available through the Oxford Libraries catalogue SOLO. To access it off campus use the University VPN or sign into the platform via SOLO with your Single Sign On (SSO).

Check out our Resource of the Month – November

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

Check out our resource of the month for October

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

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.

Check out our resource of the month

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).