Author Archives: Kathleen Matthews

Announcing the UVic Libraries new guide to Indigenous Government publications and information – geographical focus on lands and waters of the Kwakwakaʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish peoples.

News: Very helpful new Indigenous Guide found at https://libguides.uvic.ca/GovInfoIndigenous.

From the home page of this new Libraries Help Guide:

This guide is designed to help get you started with your research for publications and information from Indigenous governments with a geographical focus on lands and waters of the Kwakwakaʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish peoples.

We acknowledge the colonial past of libraries and Western ways of interacting with knowledge that shape the ways information is shared (and not shared) from and by this type of institution. For many years, government publications of Canada, the provinces, and municipalities were collected, preserved, catalogued, and made available to the public by libraries. Representation of Indigenous governments in these efforts historically has been lacking, non existent, or not prioritized.

A majority of the resources in this guide are by Indigenous nations, communities, alliances, groups, and organizations.

Many thanks to Ry Moran, Jessie Lampreau, Sarah Miller, and Pia Russell for their input on developing this guide.

Happy Holidays – December, 2022

Some interesting readings for the Holiday Season:

 

 

UVic Libraries Fall 2020 Libraries Services

View the UVic Libraries website for updates on the virtual services and online resources that are in place for the Fall 2020 Semester. See also https://www.uvic.ca/library/home/covid-19/index.php to learn more about updates regarding:

  • Borrowing items for pickup of books, media laptops, equipment, InterLibrary loan
  • Update regarding databases, eBooks, Streaming Movies, Course Reserves
  • Booking a study space in the BiblioCafe and printing services
  • Virtual learning and research support [aka online workshops & research/reference help]
  • Faculty & Instructor supports: Requesting instruction sessions for classes; Copyright consultations; Putting course reserves online

UVic Libraries e-Book Collections Expanded for Fall 2020

Evidence-Based Acquisitions (EBA) eBooks
This is a new way of providing access to eBook titles for UVic Libraries. The UVic Libraries secured access to four publisher-specific eBook collections for a 12 month subscription period. At the end of the 12 months, UVic Libraries will select titles for purchase (perpetual access) up to the subscription level committed at the beginning of the subscription period. These eBook titles can be accessed via the library catalogue, searched for via the Summon Search, or searched directly on the publisher platforms. For the full EBA eBooks story see: https://libguides.uvic.ca/eba

The following passage is excerpted from the EBA LibGuide:

The UVic Libraries is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of over 209,000 new eBook titles from four major publishers. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need to expand online access, UVic Libraries has signed Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) agreements with the following publishers and their associated imprints:

  • Cambridge University Press eBooks
    Cambridge University Press eBooks contains subjects as diverse as astronomy, Shakespeare studies, economics, mathematics and politics. Reflecting the latest research from a broad sweep of subjects on the Cambridge Core fully searchable online platform.
  • Oxford University Press eBooks
    Includes access to thousands of academic works from the celebrated scholarly list of Oxford University Press and select partner presses, covering subjects across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, medicine, and law.
  • Taylor & Francis eBooks
    Access ebooks from across the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, Behavioural Sciences, Built Environment and Law. Imprints include Routledge, Psychology Press, and Focal Press.
  • Wiley Online Books
    Over 20,000 ebooks in a variety of subjects including Business, Finance & Accounting; Chemistry; Physical Sciences & Engineering; Health & Medical Sciences; Humanities; Life & Earth Sciences; Math & Statistics; Social Sciences & Psychology; and Veterinary Sciences.

The UVic LIbraries’ other eBook Collections are listed, and can be accessed, at https://webapp.library.uvic.ca/databases/results.php?subject=true&id=72

The UVic Libraries has thousands of e-books available from different vendors. Each vendor offers unique features for its e-book platform. You can search, annotate, and mark-up many digital e-books while reading them online or on your tablet, laptop, or smart phone. Use this eBooks LibGuide to ind out about the specific features of each e-book platform available to you at UVic Libraries.

 

New 2018-2019 Books on Ocean Themed Research

September 16-22, 2019 is Canada’s National Science Literacy Week.  The theme this year is “oceans”.

In preparation for a number of the 2019 Science Literacy Week activities and events to be hosted by the UVic Libraries, a digital scroll of book covers from new science titles acquired by the Librairies, focusing on some aspect of the oceans, has been prepared for display, during Science Literacy Week, on the Libraries digital monitors. For an advance peek at these new “ocean” themed science titles, take a look at https://libguides.uvic.ca/2019SciLitWeekScrolls.

See end of this posting for information about the SciLitWeek Theme of “oceans”, from: http://www.scienceliteracy.ca/about/

And…. Here is a sample of book covers from the Libraries new 2018-2019 books:

 

About the SciLitWeek Theme of “oceans”, from: http://www.scienceliteracy.ca/about/

In 2019, we’re partnering with ocean groups across Canada to bring together the largest ocean engagement and outreach event. Our nation has a special relationship with the sea, bordering three separate oceans—and so the Week will highlight ocean research, ocean health, challenges facing ocean communities and wildlife and solutions we can all implement at home. Whether you attend a talk, take part in a shoreline cleanup, get out on the water or just pick up a book, we’re hoping to make the oceans come to life for Canadians everywhere.

New online edition of the Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences (2019)

Encyclopedia of ocean sciences / editors-in-chief: J. Kirk Cochran, Henry J. Bokuniewicz and Patricia L. Yager. Academic Press, 2019.
Web Link: http://ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login?url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/referenceworks/9780128130827

Consider adding this new resource as a link in your Course pages.

Description

The oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, and are critical components of Earth’s climate system. This new edition of Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences summarizes the breadth of knowledge about them, providing revised, up to date entries as well coverage of new topics in the field.

New and expanded sections include microbial ecology, high latitude systems and the cryosphere, climate and climate change, hydrothermal and cold seep systems.

The structure of the work provides a modern presentation of the field, reflecting the input and different perspective of chemical, physical and biological oceanography, the specialized area of expertise of each of the three Editors-in-Chief. In this framework maximum attention has been devoted to making this an organic and unified reference.

Key Features

  • Represents a one-stop. organic information resource on the breadth of ocean science research
  • Reflects the input and different perspective of chemical, physical and biological oceanography, the specialized area of expertise of each of the three Editors-in-Chief
  • New and expanded sections include microbial ecology, high latitude systems and climate change
  • Provides scientifically reliable information at a foundational level, making this work a resource for students as well as active researches

 

Announcing: Springer Nature SciGraph, the new Linked Open Data platform

SpringerNature announces Springer Nature SciGraph:

See Announcement at http://www.springernature.com/gp/researchers/scigraph?countryChanged=true

We are pleased to introduce Springer Nature SciGraph, the new Linked Open Data platform aggregating data sources from Springer Nature and key partners from the scholarly domain. The Linked Open Data platform will initially collate information from across the research landscape, such as funders, research projects, conferences, affiliations and publications. Additional data, such as citations, patents, clinical trials and usage numbers will follow over time. This high quality data from trusted and reliable sources provides a rich semantic description of how information is related, as well as enabling innovative visualizations of the scholarly domain.

By doing so, Springer Nature SciGraph overcomes former boundaries by relating comprehensive information about the research landscape. It represents a further step in data integration and it will continue to grow organically. This platform will increase the discoverability of high quality data as larger parts of our datasets will be made freely available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

The data in Springer Nature SciGraph is projected to contain 1.5 to 2 billion triples. It will comprise metadata from journals and articles, books and chapters, organizations, institutions, funders, research grants, patents, clinical trials, substances, conference series, events, citations and reference networks, Altmetrics, links to research datasets and much more.

See also

Springer Nature SciGraph: Supporting open science and the wider understanding of research

Benefits for the research community

  • Researchers benefit by overcoming internal and external data silos in research communities
  • Users of the scholarly domain broaden their perspective by semantic relations being revealed visually
  • Developers are actively encouraged to reuse Springer Nature’s datasets
  • Authors and editors enjoy easy access to high quality data from trusted and reliable sources
  • Funders, librarians, conference organizers find optimal data for analysis and recommendation tools
  • Large parts of the datasets will be freely accessible (CC BY-NC 4.0 license)

SCOAP3 Newsletter #7 – Highlights: Oct-Dec 2016

SCOAP3 is a global partnership of libraries, research centers and funding agencies to convert High-Energy Physics journals to Open Access at no cost for authors.

Newsletter #7, reporting on SCOAP3 activities between Oct-Dec 2016 can be read at SCOAP3 Newsletter 3_2016

Excerpts from SCOAP3 Newsletter #7

A recording of the webcast and the slides are available
here: http://scoap3.org/scoap3-forum-2016