Eustathius of Thessalonica, Commentary on the Odyssey

Cambridge University now has access to Eustathius of Thessalonica’s commentary on the Odyssey at this link.

“Eustathius (c. 1115-1195), was archbishop of Thessalonica, and before that a successful teacher and rhetorician in Constantinople during the reign of Manuel I Komnenos. In connection with his activities as teacher and orator, he produced what he termed parekbolai on the Odyssey and the Iliad … ” – preface to the edition representing “the latest and most fully revised version of the text”.

The Commentary can be found via the A-Z of e-resources and in iDiscover shortly.

Ulysses and Telemachus kill Penelope’s Suitors by Thomas Degeorge (1812)

Happy Christmas 2020

Wishing all Cambridge online resource users and Cambridge’s amazing librarians a Very Happy Christmas, and a Christmas Robin, courtesy of John Clare:

Here the wood robin rustling on the leaves

With fluttering step each visitor receives

Yet from his ancient home he seldom stirs

In heart content on these dead teazle burs

He sits and trembles oer his under notes

So rich – joy almost choaks his little throat

With extacy and from his own heart flows

That joy himself and partner only knows

He seems to have small fear but hops and comes

Close to ones feet as if he looked for crumbs

And when the woodman strinkles some around

He leaves the twig and hops upon the ground

And feeds untill his little daintys cloy

Then claps his little wings and sings for joy

And when in woodland solitudes I wend

I always hail him as my hermit friend

And naturally enough whenere they come

Before me search my pockets for a crumb

At which he turns his eye and seems to stand

As if expecting something from my hand

And thus these feathered heirs of solitude

Remain the tenants of this quiet wood

And live in melody and make their home

And never seem to have a wish to roam

British Standards Online – New plug-in required for access

From 19 December 2020, British Standards Online will be gradually introducing a new security feature to their documents.

This means BSOL documents can only be opened with a plug-in installed on your device. The plug-in is called File Open. It will help to keep your documents and experience more secure. 

British Standards Institute (BSI) has agreed a grace period until the end of February 2021 for installation of the plug-in.

To help you, BSI has created guidance on how to install the plug-in, to ensure that you are able to access and use the documents as quickly and efficiently as before:

https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/topics/supporting-our-clients-and-content-partners/

Please contact ejournals@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any concerns

Cumhuriyet Digital Archive Trial

The full-image/full-text digital archive of Cumhuriyet — Turkey’s oldest daily and leading opposition newspaper — is now available as part of the East View Global Press Archive.

Access is available for a limited trial period up to 25 December 2020 via this link.

Established in 1924 as the founding newspaper of the Turkish Republic, Cumhuriyet has stood witness to the changing landscape of Turkey’s political, social, and economic environment. Despite the challenges over the past 95 years, the institution of Cumhuriyet has sustained its coverage of domestic and international news, providing critical documentation of Turkey’s dynamic history and its relations with the global community.

The Cumhuriyet digital archive offered by East View is browsable and searchable, with full page-level digitization of original graphics and text (including advertisements). This archive offers scholars the most comprehensive collection available for this title, with more than 14,000 issues from 1980-2019 at present. It will include all known available issues once complete and grow with new content added each year.

Please send us feedback on this trial via this feedback form. Thank you.

New on Cambridge University Libraries E-resources homepage

For students departing Cambridge and studying away from the city, there is help and support available from the ejournals@cam.lib.cam.ac.uk helpdesk up to 23 December 2020. Please get in touch with any question or issue you have at any time.

There are some updates and new tools to support you online on the E-resources home page.   The former ebooks page is now updated to include both ebooks & ejournals. As well as the LibGuide for ebooks, there is a new website for finding scholarly online journals, BrowZine, an iDiscover widget for article searching, and highlights of new e-resources available for the academic year 2020/21.

A new “How to access e-resources” site includes a LibGuide for help and support on using Raven to authenticate for access to e-resources from off campus, and features the new browser extension LibKey Nomad which automatically connects University members to online resources subscribed by Cambridge University Libraries.  This site also supplies help on navigating authentication procedures on different platforms, and full information on terms and conditions for use of e-resources.

LibKey – get connected to your library e-resources

Cambridge University Libraries now provide the LibKey tools to help ensure members of the University are connected easily and securely to library content.

LibKey Discovery

LibKey Discovery – you may not even have noticed this one it’s making linking that easy: – it provides the “Download PDF” links in article records in iDiscover. If you’ve logged into iDiscover already (see here) then it will be just 1 click from “Download PDF” to the PDF downloading to your browser. If you’ve not logged into iDiscover, then you will need to authenticate via Raven just for the first PDF download (for all sites in the chain of links behind the scenes to know that you are a bona fide University member). But thereafter you won’t need to authenticate again – regardless of the website or platform or publisher you are linking to for any PDF. This is neat, and saves you time.

It’s also a lot more reliable because it’s using DOIs and PMIDs to link rather than the metadata in the OpenURL links (further down the record) which can break if there’s just the slightest bit wrong with them. LibKey Discovery’s also displaying links for you to connect to the issue the article was published in, which can often be useful to see related articles in the issue.

LibKey Nomad

LibKey Nomad is a new browser extension which complements Lean Library. Nomad links you to full text articles when available from Cambridge University Libraries wherever you are studying or researching on the Internet. You can be in Google, Google Scholar, a publisher website, a subject gateway or an abstracting & indexing service, or a social media site, LibKey Nomad detects when you have access and seamlessly connects you to full text – with only one Raven authentication step for any one browser session, regardless how many different sites you visit.  

LibKey Nomad also offers open access alternatives, if full text access isn’t available, and an open access version is.  And in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and Wikipedia, you will also see in-line LibKey Nomad “Download PDF” links that will connect you smoothly to the Cambridge University Libraries’ subscription full text access to the article or work cited.  The extension directs you to the website where you would have subscription access to an article.  Sometimes you might land on a different site where you don’t have access from the libraries, but LibKey Nomad will redirect you to the site where you should have access. LibKey Nomad also offers open access alternatives, if full text access isn’t available, and an open access version is.

LibKey Nomad doesn’t include linking for e-books just now and so we recommend both Lean Library – that does – and LibKey Nomad.

LibKey.io

We’re also recommending LibKey.io which resolves any DOI or PMID to deliver the options for access to an article, and niftily generates an LibKey.io URL that you can share with academic colleagues in other institutions on social media or in your web pages – and the benefit here is that this URL will work with those colleagues’ institutions’ authentication systems to seamlessly connect them to the article if it is subscribed by their institution. In others words, this Libkey.io URL does for article sharing with colleagues across the world what LibKey Discovery “Download PDF” links are doing for you as a Cambridge University member. Your colleague needs to be in an institution also using LibKey which more and more academic libraries are.

JoVE “Unlimited” – All Journal of Visualized Experiments at Cambridge

Until this year of unprecedented change impacting teaching & learning everywhere, the videos and articles in the Journal of Visualized Experiments available at the University of Cambridge have been limited to selected subjects in the sciences.

Now, the University of Cambridge has “JoVE Unlimited” which provides access to all past videos published as well as the 1,000+ videos published each year, and all textual content, for the physical and biological sciences, technology, and clinical medicine. JoVE videos bring to life the intricate details of cutting-edge experiments enabling efficient learning and replication of new research methods and technologies.

JoVE is an innovative publication that consists in providing video demonstrations with protocols in the physical and life sciences.  The ability for scientists to see video demonstrations (rather than textual descriptions only) of experiments significantly improves scientific reproducibility and productivity in the laboratory.

JoVE can be accessed via this link and titles for the videos and articles can be found in iDiscover. The JoVE link is also provided on the Cambridge University Libraries Databases A-Z.

JoVE educational videos empower effective teaching of science concepts and laboratory methods in undergraduate and graduate courses at universities and colleges. These videos enable quick in-depth comprehension of complex STEM subjects to increase student engagement and learning outcomes, and support innovative teaching initiatives such as blended learning and flipped classroom.

Data for the long view – Global Financial Data brings new insights

Cambridge University now has access to Global Financial Data (GFD) for 5 simultaneous users. The Global Financial Database provides long-range financial data on stocks, bonds, bills and other instruments, covering approximately 200 countries from the medieval world to the present.

Access Global Financial Data resource here. The first time you log in GFD you will be prompted to create your own personal login – you will only need to do this once. The GFD platform is called ‘Finaeon’.

Global Financial Data comprises comprehensive financial and economic data going back centuries. GFD has transcribed and collected critical financial information from original sources, using sources from their origin to make as complete a set of data as possible.

GFD’s collections of data on multiple levels helps companies to mitigate risk and “navigate the next iteration of investment ideas”, helping inform market insights and trading strategies.

See also the Marshall Library of Economics Statistical Databases page.

Global Financial Data is available also from the Cambridge University Libraries Databases A-Z.

Read, annotate & share scores online – nkoda digital sheet music comes to Cambridge University

Cambridge University members can now study the hundreds of thousands of music scores online in nkoda, the digital sheet music library.

nkoda is an innovative resource for phones, tablets and desktop, that not only provides the score to read, but lets you annotate it with intuitive mark-up tools, and share working scores online.

Access is provided via Institutional sign-on which is described in the Music Faculty’s guide nkoda – Institutional Sign In Process – University of Cambridge

Scores held in libraries are made less accessible due to the pandemic, and nkoda makes a significant crescendo of increasing access to scores, and in redressing those restrictions

nkoda has been called the “Spotify of sheet music”, and currently holds upwards of 6 million pages of music with around 1,000 new titles added each month, including works which are normally only available to hire from libraries.

Scores can be downloaded and used offline and markings can be shared between users. Titles from over 100 publishers are available, including Bärenreiter, Boosey & Hawkes, Breitkopf und Härtel, Faber Music, PWM, Sikorski, Universal Music Group and Wise Music Group.

Check out the Music LibGuide for more online resources for Music. And read about more online notated music collections on the MusiCB3 Blog.

nkoda can be accessed also via the Cambridge University Libraries Databases A-Z.

Related reading : iDiscover’s bX Recommender service

So you found the book or article you wanted in iDiscover, but wouldn’t you like to know what your colleagues and peers have also been reading related to this title?

We are pleased to say, now you can know, just by glancing at the right of any iDiscover record for an online resource, you’ll now see a “Related reading” pane. This displays, from most read to least read, the books or articles most read by library readers around the world who have also read your target title. This is brought to you by “bX Recommender”, part of the Ex Libris products.

How does it work?

bX harvests link resolver usage data from many academic institutions around the world. If two articles are used in the same session, it analyzes the connection between them and stores the items in a co-retrieval network. Because bX recommendations are based on link resolver usage, they are truly platform- and content-neutral. The usage is generated through discovery systems, A&I databases, publisher platforms, and any other source that links users to full text via a link resolver. The articles may be from different journals, publishers, and platforms.

Typically you will see titles that could lead to new discoveries, and new insights on your topic.

In this example an article in The Lancet on prediction and prevention of pandemic zoonosis has a related article, based on usage data collected from institutions across the world, in PNAS where zoonosis is linked to agricultural intensification and climate change.

bX Recommender from Cambridge University Library’s Digital Services & Electronic Collection Management