Free access to IMechE journals

Sage are offering free online access to 18 journals of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers until the end of July 2011. Access via Sage here.

Bized trial – ebooks in business and computing

We currently have a trial to Bized – electronic books in business and computing. View the login details from the databases A-Z website. The trial will run until 29th April. Please send any feedback to learningcentredirect@wlv.ac.uk.

Test drive Summon

We are currently testing a new search service called Summon. This is a fast and simple search engine giving you access to all of the books and journals in the Learning Centres as well as most of our online resources. You can find full details about Summon on the LIS website. We’d love to hear your feedback so let us know what you think if you try it out.

Trial to RefWorks

The University currently has a trial to RefWorks – a web-based reference management system that allows you to collect and organise your research references and insert them into Word. Fulll details about the trial can be found on the LIS website. If you try RefWorks please let us know what you think. The trial will run until 11th March 2011.

Free chapter on Cloud Computing

You can download a sample chapter from Cloud Computing: A Practical Introduction to the Legal Issues direct from the British Standards website. Simply fill in this online form. For more titles on cloud computing, have a look at this selection from our online catalogue.

Interactive material from Knovel

As well as providing a range of electronic books in engineering Knovel, the site allows access to interactive content. You can search for different types of data which you can then manipulate and download for use in your assignments.

View this video from KnovelVideos to see how the data search works:

Let us know if you find it useful!

Student Competition – Win £300

The Information and Computer Sciences subject centre of the Higher Education Academy are running another student competition open to students on computing courses. To enter you need to write a 1,000 word essay or record a podcast on the subject of flexible learning. The winner will receive £300 and be invited to receive their award at the HEA conference dinner in Nottingham. The deadline is 31st March 2011. More details about the competition are available on the Student Central website.

Raising standards

As you may or may not know the University has a subscription to the complete collection of British Standards Online (BSOL). This is a significant resource for the School of Technology in particular as standards and technical specifications are important information sources for the construction and engineering industries as well as the fields of computing, information systems, and management.

From BSOL (accessible via the LIS website) you can locate and download full text documents by searching by standard number or by keyword. Results will include current standards as well as previous versions and drafts in progress. In addition to accessing documents directly from British Standards Online, there are a range of sources available to you via the BSI Higher Education website. You may be particular interested in the section ‘Standards for your course‘ which provides information about standards and their relationship to your field of study. From the main BSI site you can find more information about how standards are developed as well as how you might contribute to the process.

You can find British Standards on a whole host of social sites. Here is one of the latest videos from their YouTube channel on web accessibility:


For academic staff an alerting service is available for tracking a standard. For more information about this service or if you would like to arrange a training session, please get in touch with us.

International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Information Security

The International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Information Security was launched earlier this year as an open access journal. You can access the full text articles covering the latest research in the field of computational intelligence, information security, and their applications. View the information for authors section if you are interested in publishing in the journal.

Drop-in support for law databases

If you are studying any aspects of law in computing, engineering, or construction you should find the main law databases Lexis Library and Westlaw very useful for your research. Each year Lexis and Westlaw employ student associates to provide training and support for these resources. The student associates will be available in Harrison Learning Centre on a weekly basis if you would like to drop-in and ask any questions. Details below:

Lexis Library
Weekly drop-in sessions in MD129, Mondays, 11am-1pm

Westlaw
Weekly drop-in sessions in MD206, Wednesdays, 1-3pm

You can access Lexis Library and Westlaw via the LIS website.