Institution news
Sarah Rogers, the Institution’s Head of Library and Information Service said: “In 2013, the Institution’s Virtual Library had a record year, with over 322,044 user sessions and 103,079 downloads. We have made a number of enhancements to the service for 2014, including: full-text access to all Springer engineering journals and books; a new look Knovel interface offering a new data search facility; options to download whole books to tablets or phones and access to over 4,000 brand new ebook titles and 250 new ejournal titles.”
“Members advised us that they wanted to be able to download full ebooks to read offline; access to the services via tablets and phones; increased guidance; and more ejournals and ebook access. As a result we have restructured our ebook offering, replacing one of our main ebook providers, Books24x7, with Ebrary and have added Springer content. Springer is the second largest STM publishers in the world. Members already had access to all Elsevier content so this addition means we now provide you with all the engineering content from the top two STM publishers. Our agreement with them means that you can download whole engineering books in PDF format, with no need for special software or any restrictions.”
The new Ebrary ebook provider offers books from a whole range of publishers and will allow members to download books and chapters in PDF format; save and annotate titles to your personal bookshelf and offers an app to download full books for a period of 14 days to android/apple devices. Finally, the Institution’s popular Knovel ebook service has been improved with the addition of a new data search option which enables you to look up a whole range of material properties.
Sarah advised: “Members also wanted full-text access to standards in the Virtual Library. Unfortunately, this is an area where publishers are unwilling to licence full text access for such a large diverse membership base. However, we are working with BSI to offer a new service to members in the near future.”
She concluded: “We now provide you with access to 22,752 ebooks and over 9,000 ejournals and the new content really adds to our existing provision, which already included the leading Sciencedirect and Engineering Village databases. We will be running a number of webinars in collaboration with our content providers to make sure you get the best out of these resources and will be continuing to develop our service to you.”
Please log into the Virtual Library to try our these new resources and watch out for future focus articles and webinars http://www.imeche.org/my-account/library-services