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Wed, August 27, 2008 04:26:30 PMFrom:
IRN@hw.ac.uk
Subject:
Issue 165, Internet resources newsletter
INTERNET RESOURCES NEWSLETTER
The free, monthly, newsletter for academics, students, engineers, scientists and social scientists.
Latest issue: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn165/irn165.html
Edited by:
Roddy MacLeod (R.A.MacLeod@hw.ac.uk ),
Catherine Ure.and Marion Kennedy
Heriot-Watt University Library
ISSN: 1361-9381
Web: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.html
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ISSUE 165- CONTENTS
1. COMMENT
Internet Resources Newsletter by email and RSS
Random quotes
News items of interest
2. A-Z NEW AND NOTABLE WEB SITES
Information and reviews of new and notable Web sites
3. NICE WEBSITE(S)
This month: OpenSIGLE and IET Discover
4. BLOGORAMA
Selected interesting blogs, RSS feeds and news items
5. RECENT INTERNET BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY
Recent arrivals
6. GET A LIFE! LEISURE TIME
After hours
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1. COMMENT
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It's (almost) the start of the academic year, heareabouts. A warm welcome to all new students!
Internet Resources Newsletter by email and RSS
Over 40,000 people subscribe to the free email version of this Newsletter. Very many thanks go to FUMSI http://www.fumsi.com/ who sponsor this newsletter. FUMSI publishes articles, tools, and a monthly magazine, to give you practical help with information skills.
To subscribe to the Internet Resources Newsletter, at no cost, go to http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/
The Internet Resources Newsletter has an RSS feed: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.rss
To add this feed to any feedreader, go to: http://tinyurl.com/39sg5j
A pdf of a foldable A4 leaflet about this newsletter is available. This may be useful for libraries or others who want to spread the word about the newsletter. If you do - many thanks!
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Random quotes
"...the sheer volume of online library resources discourages use." "...difficulty with navigation, an over-abundance of 'how to' guides and poorly designed web pages all contribute to users defaulting to open-web search engines for primary research" John Law, IWR Horizons 2008.
News items of interest.
E-books spell the end for publishers
http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2222494/books-spell-publishers
From: IWR
eIFL success story wins UNESCO Information for All Programme award
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=27024&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Better access to scientific articles on EU-funded research: European Commission launches online pilot project
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1262&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
The Commission has launched a pilot project that will give unrestricted online access to EU-funded research results, primarily research articles published in peer reviewed journals, after an embargo period of between 6 and 12 months.
Emerald Announces Winners of 12th Annual Citation of Excellence Award
http://info.emeraldinsight.com/about/news/story.htm?PHPSESSID=bmh98kfpftse238ifrp9c8lkp4&id=606
Now in their twelfth year, these distinguished annual awards recognize the 50 outstanding articles published by the top 400 management journals in the world.
A full list of the 2007 winners, as well as lists of previous winners, is available at:
http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/reviews/awards.htm
For more news items in business information products we recommend VIP: http://www.vivavip.com/
For news from Heriot-Watt University Library, see the spineless? blog.
http://hwlibrary.wordpress.com/
Note also the series of upcoming Library Workshops: http://www.hw.ac.uk/library/workshops.html
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2. A-Z NEW & NOTABLE WEB SITES
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Access to Higher Education course search
https://ava.qaa.ac.uk/SubSites/PublicSearch/search.aspx
What subject do you want to study?
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AfDevinfo
http://www.afdevinfo.com/
AfDevinfo tracks the mechanics of political and economic development across Sub Saharan Africa. They draw together a diverse range of publicly available data and present it as an accessible and ever expanding online database.
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Am Baile Literay Landscapes
http://www.ambaile.org/en/literary-landscapes/index.jsp
Literary landscapes is new on Am Baile – an interactive map featuring both past and present authors who have been inspired by the landscape of the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
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Ariadne – latest issue
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/
Issue 56 is now available. Ariadne is a Web magazine for information professionals in archives, libraries and museums in all sectors.
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Asklepios
http://www.asklepios.ca/media/
Asklepios is an online doctors’ community.
The Asklepios online community is only open to Canadian physicians, residents and medical students.
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Beyond Google
http://www.youtube.com/user/infostudies
Explores how students use the Internet.
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British Trust for Conservation Volunteers: BTCV
http://www2.btcv.org.uk/
The charity was set up in 1959, and has a successful history of environmental conservation volunteering throughout the UK and around the world.
There’s a series of 15 practical handbooks covering activities such as hedging, sand dunes, drystone walling.
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Check4Jobs.com
http://www.check4jobs.com/
A UK job search engine with a large number of job records in their database.
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Cites & Insights
http://citesandinsights.info/civ8i8.pdf
August issue of this interesting newsletter from Walt Crawford.
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Connector Specifier
http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/cs/
A number of people took advantage of the free technical magazine subscriptions available through TechXtra that were mentioned in the June issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter. Here’s a further one available to qualifying individuals.
Connector Specifier, published monthly, is dedicated to providing design engineers and specifiers with the most current and innovative information about electronic and optical connectors and related topics, with a focus on the latest in connector technologies, design trends and standards.
Geographic Eligibility: International
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Disease Models and Mechanisms
http://dmm.biologists.org/
A new journal.
Disease Models and Mechanisms (DMM) publishes reports of research using model organisms to understand the mechanisms underlying human disease and to develop novel diagnostics and therapeutics.
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eLearning Africa 2009
http://www.elearning-africa.com/
eLearning Africa is delighted to announce that next year’s conference, the fourth in the highly successful series of pan-African gatherings, will take place in Senegal. In May 2009, the Continent’s largest annual assembly of eLearning and education professionals from Africa and beyond will convene in the capital, Dakar.
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Engineering Pathway
http://www.engineeringpathway.com/ep/
From the NSDL.
The Engineering Pathway is a portal to high-quality teaching and learning resources in engineering, applied science and math, computer science/information technology, and engineering technology and is designed for use by K-12 and university educators and students.
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ERIC
http://www.eric.ed.gov/
ERIC - the Education Resources Information Center - is an online digital library of education research and information.
ERIC have announced the release of a new Web site structure and design. The new ERIC Web site features several enhancements that will make the experience of using the site easier and faster for individual researchers, along with improvements to aid librarians in supporting ERIC users. These enhancements include improved navigation, expanded help and training, an information area for librarians, and a lighter visual design.
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ErrNET
http://www.errnet.net/
A commercial service, ErrNET is a product for proofreading formal written English.
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Freely Available Institute Resources
http://www.arl.org/sc/institute/fair/
This site from the Association of Research Libraries has been updated and reconfigured.
The FAIR site provides a space for institute faculty and alumni to share outreach resources with the broader community. Many resources are developed exclusively for the Institute but others may be developed by academic libraries and selected as FAIR resources.
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Green League
http://peopleandp***t.org/gogreen/greenleague2008
Tables of universities and their environmental performance.
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HI-energy - Renewable Energy in the Highlands & Islands
http://www.hi-energy.org.uk/
The Highlands and Islands of Scotland is the renewable energy power house of Europe, thanks to its abundance of renewable energy resources.
The development of these resources, such as wind, wave and biomass, now represent some of the most exciting economic prospects for many remote and rural communities across the region.
The HI-energy website provides comprehensive information on renewable energy technologies, the market for this energy, and details of what the Highlands and Islands has to offer this emerging sector.
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Higher Education Aauthority Policy Relating to: The Open Access Repository of Published Research
http://www.hea.ie/files/files/file/Open%20Access%20pdf_.pdf
The HEA mandate came into effect on June 30th 2008. It covers all research funded by the HEA.
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Hotels UK
http://www.hotels.uk.com/
Hundreds of hotels and guesthouses.
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IABSE E-Learning
http://www.iabse.org/publications/elearning/index.php
From the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE).
For the time being, it is accessible for free for Members and Non-Members. 15 Lecture Series, including web casting of lectures, short courses, videos and animations on the construction of structures.
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Icoste books
http://www.icoste.com/538_Books.htm
Icoste features thousands of books for many types of interest. They also claim to find the cheapest one for you on the internet saving you time and effort.
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IET Discover
http://discover.theiet.org/
A new social bookmarking service recently launched for engineers, scientists and technologists.
“IET Discover is a user-created information sharing and networking site for engineers, which gives access to a wide range of online engineering and technology resources. This new service is created by its members and allows users to call upon the global knowledge pool of peers and industry experts. You may be asking why you should sign up. Well, as a user of IET Discover you will be able to keep abreast of ‘hot’ topics in your field by searching the bookmarks of all users and browsing the latest reports and presentations from industry experts. You will also be able to keep an eye on industry trends, which groups are the most active and what content has been added.
IET Discover provides an online community where you can start or join as many subject-specific groups as you like. ‘My Discover’ allows you to create your own ‘library’, adding your favourite websites and references to your index. This gives you access to your online favourites wherever you are in the world and whatever computer you are using.”
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In the First Person
http://www.inthefirstperson.com/firp/index.shtml
In the First Person is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world.
The index contains approximately 20,500 months of diary entries, 63,000 letter entries, and 17,000 oral history entries.
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Institute for Sustainable Solutions
http://www.usyd.edu.au/sustainable_solutions/
The University of Sydney's new Institute for Sustainable Solutions.
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Instructables
http://www.instructables.com/home
Lots of ‘How to’ ideas.
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International Journal of Systems, Control and Communications
http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=287
A new journal. The objectives of IJSCC are to provide an international forum to report latest developments of theoretical studies, novel modelling methods, computational algorithms and successful application solutions.
The full text of the first issue is freely available.
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Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship
http://www.istl.org/08-summer/index.html
The Summer 2008 issue is now available.
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Journal of African Real Estate Research
http://www.rics.org/Knowledgezone/Researchandreports/Brochiure+for+Journal+of+African+Real+Estate+Research.htm
In collaboration with the African Real Estate Society, RICS has launched the Journal of African Real Estate Research. This is aimed at providing a forum for the publication, discussion and debate on the latest research on issues relating to land, property and construction markets in Africa.
All papers are downloadable free of charge.
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Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship
http://www.library.gatech.edu/jerl/index.php/jerl
This journal aims to inform librarians and other information professionals about current research, evolving work-related processes and procedures, and the latest news on topics related to electronic resources and the digital environment’s impact on collecting, acquiring and making accessible library materials.
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Lalisio Literature
http://literature.lalisio.com/oai.html
“"Lalisio Literature" is a search engine designed to help you find the right literature for your research, studies, teaching and leisure.
For this purpose, we cooperate with major providers of international literature databases: Top booksellers such as Amazon, Abebooks and Powell's are among our partners as well as open access repositories such as arXiv and PubMed Central. Due to the integration of open access repositories our users can find and access cutting-edge articles mostly free of charge. Based on our analyses of content from numerous sources, we develop helpful search suggestions and relevance indicators for your literature search and help you quickly identify the literature you really want. “
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Macdonald & Company
http://www.macdonaldandcompany.com/content/home.asp
Macdonald and Company are specialist recruiters for property jobs throughout the UK.
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Medpedia
http://www.medpedia.com/
Medpedia is the collaborative project to collect the best information about health, medicine and the body and make it freely available worldwide.
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National Risk Register
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/national_risk_register.aspx
As announced in the National Security Strategy, the Government has published a National Risk Register which sets out our assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a range of different risks that may directly affect the UK.
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National Subject Profile for higher education programmes in: Materials
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/networks/MaterialsWeb.pdf
The National Subject Profiles (NSP) are designed to provide contemporary characterisations of subjects and their provision in higher education. Informed by discipline communities and practitioners, the profiles have been initiated, compiled and written by the Higher Education Academy’s Subject Centres.
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newsflashr
http://www.newsflashr.com/
An all-in-one news search engine.
Pretty good!
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Online Information 2008
http://www.online-information.co.uk/index.html
Online Information 2008 - the event where content and technology meet. The event covers 6 main sectors:
Online Content Resources
ePublishing
Library Management Systems
Content Management Expo
Web 2.0 Technologies
Search Solutions.
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OpenSIGLE
http://opensigle.inist.fr/
OpenSIGLE is an open access to bibliographical references of reports and other grey literature (GL) produced in Europe.
The records are in English. They include bibliographical data, the SIGLE classification codes (cf. Full Subject Category List) with their wording, and possibly an English summary.
SIGLE - System for Information on Grey Literature, was created in 1980
OpenSIGLE combines the ressources of major European information and document supply centres who have joined together in an association known as EAGLE : European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation.
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Peptide Guide
http://www.peptideguide.com/
The goal of this project is to collect all information about peptides and peptide synthesis in one place.
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Power of wikis in Higher Ed
http://campustechnology.com/articles/66505/
An article in Campus Technology, by Linda Briggs.
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Profit Magazine
http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/prft/
This is another magazine which is available free to qualifying individuals.
Published quarterly, Profit Magazine is distributed to more than 110,000 C-level executives and provides business leaders with a road map on turning their technology investments into top and bottom line advantages.
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Renewable Energy Scotland
http://www.renewablescotland.com/
Renewable Energy Scotland offers an innovative and practical approach to the application of Renewable Technologies for the production of heating, cooling and hot water.
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Research Explorer
http://research-explorer.dfg.de/research_explorer.en.html
The Research Explorer contains over 17,000 institutes at German universities and non-university research institutions, searchable by name, geographic location, subject and other structural criteria. Listings contain current postal and internet addresses.
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Research: A Diligent Approach
http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/3125
An article in FUMSI, by Michele Bate.
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ScienceDirect Top 25 Articles
http://top25.sciencedirect.com/
The Top 25 is a free service which provides lists of most read articles - counted by article downloads on ScienceDirect.
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Scirus Topics Page
http://topics.scirus.com/
Scirus topic pages is a free service that serves authorative scientific topic summaries.
Scirus Topic Pages are produced by scientific experts, faciliate knowledge sharing, and provide the latest and relevant journal and web results.
Examples include Emission Control, and Solid-state fermentation
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Scopus TopCited
http://info.scopus.com/topcited/
Get a quick overview of your subject-specific top 20 cited articles in the past 3, 4 or 5 years of publication. Also find them displayed on Google maps taking the first author’s affiliation as the point of reference.
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Scottish Jobs On The Net
http://www.scottishjobsonthe.net/
Find a Job or Career in Scotland. Jobs of many kinds are featured.
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Search Beyond the Web: When to Pick Up the Phone
http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/3093
An article by Risa Sacks in FUMSI.
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SIStech
http://www.sistech.co.uk/
SISTech is a not-for-profit research group established to promote and foster best practice in sustainable development. Jointly owned by MWH UK Ltd and Heriot-Watt University, work is centred on a commitment to developing methods and promoting projects that further community welfare and maintain the principles of sustainability, as well as producing accurate, unbiased scientific results.
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Skillstudio Limited
http://www.skillstudio.co.uk/
A communication skills training specialist company.
Includes a free eCourse on job interview skills.
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SortFix
http://sortfix.com/
Search engine with some new ideas and features.
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specAmotor
http://www.specamotor.com/
”specAmotor is developed for engineers that quickly want to determine the best electric motor for their specific application. It offers a solution to engineers that think they spend too much time with the collection of information via the internet and product catalogs, and that have to invest too much time in contact with manufacturers and representatives.”
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The Edinburgh Journal
http://www.journal-online.co.uk/
Edinburgh's Student Newspaper.
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UK Educational Evidence Portal: EEP
http://www.eep.ac.uk/Main/Default.aspx
This portal helps you find educational evidence from a range of reputable sources using a single search.
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Yahoo! Search BOSS
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/
“BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!'s open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!'s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. By combining your unique assets and ideas with our search technology assets, BOSS is a platform for the next generation of search innovation, serving hundreds of millions of users across the Web.”
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ZooKeys
http://pensoftonline.net/zookeys/index.php/journal
ZooKeys is a peer-reviewed, open-access, rapidly produced journal launched to support free exchange of ideas and information in systematic zoology.
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3. NICE WEB SITE
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In the course of finding sites of interest for this Newsletter, we sometimes come across Web sites which we feel deserve slightly more than a passing mention. Each month we will pick out one or more such sites, and give them a short review. The sites will often be UK based, may be small or large, and be of interest or potential interest to academics. After lengthy discussions we have decided, with incredible creativity :-), to call these: Nice Web Sites. Details of previous Nice Web Sites are available in the Nice Web Site Archive.
There are two Nice Web Sites this month.
OpenSIGLE
http://opensigle.inist.fr/
OpenSIGLE describes itself as "your open access to SIGLE bibliographical references of reports and other grey literature (GL) produced in Europe."
A definition of grey literature from a Glossary of Scientific Literature explains that: "Grey Literature are open source materials that are not controlled by commercial publishing. These materials are usually produced by the government, academia, associations, business and industry, and included government publications, technical reports, newsletters, bulletins, white papers, position papers, fact sheets, conference proceedings, and other publications that are distributed freely. They can be printed or electronic."
OpenSIGLE is a multidisciplinary database, covering fundamental and applied sciences, technologies, humanities and social sciences. The records are in English. They include bibliographical data, the SIGLE classification codes (cf. Full Subject Category List) with their wording, and possibly an English summary. The user is informed of the availability of the document and the conditions of access from each supply centre
IET Discover
http://discover.theiet.org/
IET Discover is one of a growing number of discipline-based social/collaborative websites. This one has been made available by the The Institution of Engineering and Technology.
RM
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4. BLOGORAMA
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Selected interesting blogs, RSS feeds and news items
You already know what blogs are, but for more information about RSS see the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol) or Webopedia http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RSS.html
The Internet Resources Newsletter has an RSS feed (essentially the Table of Contents for each issue): http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.rss
To add this RSS feed to any feedreader, go to: http://tinyurl.com/39sg5j
What the heck is RSS?
http://www.susansweeney.com/NewNewsletter/hottopicvolume6issue1.html
An article by Susan Sweeney
ScienceDirect TOP25 Hottest Articles - Engineering
http://top25.sciencedirect.com/rss.php?subject_area_id=12
ScienceDirect Title Alert
http://info.sciencedirect.com/news/title_changes/title_alerts.xml
100 Cool Things You Can Do With RSS
http://www.accrediteddldegrees.com/2008/100-cool-things-you-can-do-with-rss/
Metalogger
http://metalogger.wordpress.com/
Neil Godfrey's passing thoughts and queries as a metadata specialist with RUBRIC
APS feeds
http://feeds.aps.org/
A list of American Physical Society feeds including cross-journal ones
Ancient Egypt
http://egyptian12.blogspot.com/
A blog about ancient Egypt, Egyptian antiques, the pyramids, etc.
The Diary Junction Blog
http://thediaryjunction.blogspot.com/
Occasional posts on diaries in the news
Learning Exchange Social Services Repository
http://learnx.iriss.ac.uk/IntraLibrary-RSS?rss_feed_id=6a6176612e7574696c2e52616e646f6d40353461643734&rss_2.0.xml
Content from all collections in the Learning Exchange repository of social services information resources
Clip Art Must Die
http://petertcoyne.typepad.com/
About libraries and marketing
LSE Research Online
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/cgi/latest_tool?output=RSS2
A RSS feed for the open access repository of the scholarly research of London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London (LSE).
Mark Hepworth's Blog
http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/
About effective independent learning, information literacy, etc
NLS OPU blog
http://nlsopublog.blogspot.com/
Official Publications in the National Library of Scotland
Check4Jobs.com: Engineer Jobs
http://www.check4jobs.com/rss.aspx?q=engineer&l
RSP Blog Directory
http://rsp.ac.uk/blogs/
A list of recommended and informative blogs regarding the repository scene from around the globe.
Grow Your Wiki
http://www.ikiw.org/
Grow Your Wiki offers insight, examples, case studies, and advice on enterprise wiki adoption and usage inside organizations.
Am Baile - Item of the Day
http://www.ambaile.org/en/rss/iod_rss.xml
A digital archive of the history and culture of the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/services/rss_tools/
e4innovation.com
http://e4innovation.com/
E-learning innovation: research, evaluation, practice and policy
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5. RECENT INTERNET BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY
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The Mantex Information Design web site has reviews of some of the books mentioned in previous issues of the Internet Resources Newsletter.
Recent Arrivals
301.07 BIR
Psychological experiments on the Internet
edited by Michael H Birnbaum
Academic Press, 2000
301.07 FRA
How to conduct behavioral research over the Internet
by R. Chris Fraley
The Guildford Press, 2004
658.05 ANU
e-Business in construction
edited by Chimay J Anumba and Kirti Ruikar
Wiley, 2008
A complete list of new books added to Heriot-Watt University Library is available at: http://hw.lib.ed.ac.uk/cgi-bin/newbooks.cgi
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6. GET A LIFE! - LEISURE TIME
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Scotways
http://www.scotways.com/
The Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society has been working to safeguard rights of way for 160 years. It is probably the oldest organisation in the world dedicated to improving countryside access.
The wave singer. by Greg Michaelson
http://www.thewavesinger.com/
Ratho - the place for climbing in Edinburgh
http://www.eica-ratho.co.uk/
SoundJunction
http://www.soundjunction.org/default.aspa
SoundJunction is the award-winning site for listening to, exploring, discovering and creating music
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End of issue 165
This page is: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn165/irn165.html
© 2008 Heriot-Watt University
You may pass this newsletter on to others, as long as it is sent in its entirety.
