BHL - Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” 

The BHL has digitized millions of pages of taxonomic literature, representing tens of thousands of titles and over 100,000 volumes.

Collections include:

• Academy of Natural Sciences Library and Archives 
• California Academy of Sciences
• Carl Linnaeus Collection
• Charles Darwin's Library (Books that were a part of Charles Darwin's personal collection). 
• Curious and Bizarre Creatures
• Ernst Mayr Library of the MCZ, Harvard University
• Extinct Species
• Dinosaurs, dodos, and more
• Field Museum Library
• MBLWHOI Library, Woods Hole
• Notable Women in Natural History
• UNEP-WCMC Collection

There is a basic and advanced search facility (you can search for books/journals, articles/chapters, authors, subjects, and scientific names). You can also browse the collections by author, date, title, or collection. 

Go to BHL at: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/  
 

 

New acquisitions

Acquisitions made in May so far can be found on our Pinterest site at http://pinterest.com/zoolib/

See the board for 'New books May 2013'.

We have also received a new thesis:

Mechanisms of intestinal regulation in Drosophila melanogaster, by Paola Cognigni. Cambridge; 2013. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (528).

Scan and Deliver: re-launch of the CSL scanning service

The service, offered by the Central Science Library (CSL), is provided to allow current staff and students at the University to be able to get scanned copies of material from printed works that is not currently available electronically. 

This service will now be known as Scan and Deliver. The other major change is that users will now be charged for the service.

Please visit the CSL's website to see how you can order and pay for items to be scanned: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/CSL/serv.html#scanning

UL Drop-in sessions for dissertation and research help

As part of the University Library's Research Skills Programme, a number of drop-in sessions will take place during Easter term which will offer help with dissertations and research. Sessions will take place every Tuesday of Easter term in the North Reading Room from 11.00 am until 12.30 pm. 

The course aims to offer help and advice on a variety of information issues, including:

• Finding and managing research information
• Citation, referencing and attribution
• Reading, writing and notemaking

Topics covered:

• Literature searching
• Reading and writing strategies
• Information management
• Citing and attribution
• Reference management software

This link provides more detailed information http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul/event/644652

New acquisitions

Acquisitions made in April so far can be found on our Pinterest site at http://pinterest.com/zoolib/

See the board for 'New books April 2013'.

I have also created a new board for 'Life science professional development' books that are available in the library. They cover presentation skills, planning your research, writing about science, planning your scientific career, writing your thesis, writing and publishing scientific papers, using grammar correctly, creating poster presentations, talking to the media etc. They are aimed at graduate students, post-docs and lecturers. If you have any suggestions for purchase in this area please let us know.

New e-book purchased by the Zoology Library!

We have just purchased the e-book Vision and brain : how we perceive the world, by James V. Stone.

To see and access all the e-books available in zoology and neuroscience, and to keep up-to-date with the library's latest book and e-book acquisitions, please visit our Pinterest online pinboard at http://pinterest.com/zoolib/.

Rare book now on display

A history of the birds of Europe including all the species inhabiting the Western Palaearctic region, by Henry E. Dresser. Volume 3. London: Published by the author; 1871-1887.

Due to popular demand, more remarkable plates from this work will be on display throughout the year!

Balfour Library shelf mark: qKZ.4 (1)

The book is open at: Plate 144, Oriolus galbula (Golden oriole). This plate is a hand coloured lithograph produced by J. G. Keulemans, a renowned ornithological illustrator, and depicts a male and a female oriole perching on a branch. The yellow feathers of the male are particularly striking, and the detail in the fine hand colouring, especially on the breast of the female, is also very impressive. As always with Keulemans’ lithographs, the treatment of the eyes of the birds really brings them to life on the page.

Henry Eeles Dresser (1838-1915) was born in Thirsk. After his schooling in Bromley, Kent and at a German school near Hamburg he entered his father’s timber-merchant business and travelled extensively in northern Europe from 1834 to 1862. From his time at school in Germany he began to systematically collect the eggs and bird skins of Palaearctic birds. He deposited some 12,000 items at the Manchester Museum from 1899 onwards.

Dresser left England with a cargo for Texas in 1863 and spent over a year collecting there. Shortly after his return to England he published his first scientific paper, Notes on the birds of southern Texas, in Ibis in 1865. He continued to contribute to Ibis from then until 1909; and also joined the British Ornithologist’s Union in the same year. He was also a member and fellow of the Linnean Society and Zoological Society of London, and was an honorary fellow of the American Ornithologist’s Union. He was an authority on the birds of Europe and the author of several important works, including A history of the birds of Europe. Eight quarto volumes of this were published between 1871 and 1881, which were illustrated with 633 hand coloured plates, mainly prepared from drawings by Joseph Wolf, J. G. Keulemans and E. Neale.

After returning from Texas, Dresser started work in the iron trade in London but continued to travel extensively throughout the whole of his life.

John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912) provided the plate on display here. He was a Dutch bird illustrator who worked in London from 1868 and regularly provided illustrations for Ibis and The Proceedings of the Zoological Society, and many important bird books such as A history of the birds of Europe. His illustrations were produced through traditional lithography [a method for printing using a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface], allowing for a finished product that depicts a vivid, life-like figure through depth and tone.

Professor Alfred Newton subscribed to A History of the Birds of Europe as it was published in its parts. He has made a note inside the first volume of the number of subscribers (374), the top three of whom are “His Majesty the King of Italy, H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh K.G., H. H. Duleep Singh, Elveden Hall, Thetford”, in that order. Interestingly, the Newton family lived on the Elveden Estate on the Norfolk-Suffolk border until Newton’s father died in 1863.

According to the RSPB the elusive Golden oriole mainly arrives in May and stays until August. The best place to find them is at Lakenheath Fen; try finding them by listening for their call in May to July.

Sources:

Animal Diversity Web http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/

Dresser’s obituary in Ibis 58 (2) 340:342 (April 1916) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-919X.1916.tb07939.x/abstract

Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fdr12

RSPB http://www.rspb.org.uk/ 

Wikipedia ‘John Gerrard Keulemans’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gerrard_Keulemans 

Wikipedia ‘Lithography’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography

New acquisitions

 
New printed books and e-books have been purchased by the Balfour Library!

Please visit our new Pinterest online pinboard (see the boards for 'New e-books March 2013' and 'New books March 2013') to find out more: http://pinterest.com/zoolib/ 

New theses: 

Population dynamics in meerkats, Suricata suricatta, by Andrew Bateman. Cambridge; 2013. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (527) (Library Office). 

Towards a comprehensive phylogeny of Bovidae (Ruminantia, Artiodactyla, Mammalia), by Eva Verena Baermann. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (526) (Library Office).

Easter Vacation information

Here is a special Easter egg basket of information to help you get through the vacation!

Balfour (Zoology) Library end of term information

Lent Term 2013 ends on Friday 15th March. All books on loan from the Balfour Library must be returned by this date, or can be renewed for further periods unless they have been requested by another reader. Saturday morning opening has now finished until next term.

Please see the library website at: http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/booksborrow.html for more information on how to borrow, return and renew books on loan from the Balfour Library.

Vacation borrowing for undergraduates:

Borrowing is permitted for the whole of the Easter vacation.

You can borrow up to two books for the vacation period from 9:00am on Thursday 14th March. This is on a strictly first-come, first served basis. You may not reserve books before borrowing them. The book(s) must be returned by midnight on the first day of the Easter Term (23rd April 2013). Vacation borrowing applies to Overnight Loan books and Open Shelf books. 

Please remember that you will need to have registered your University Card with a member of library staff before you will be able to borrow books.

You may be interested to know that the University Library and the Central Science Library (on the New Museums site) also offer vacation borrowing for undergraduates, please see their websites at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/index.php?c=1 and http://centralsciencelibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/vacation-borrowing-march-april-2013.html respectively.

Don’t fancy taking home all those heavy books or loads of paper to read over the vacation? Use e-books and e-journals from home instead:

The simplest way to find and access e-journals and e-books is through the online library catalogue LibrarySearch at http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/.

If you perform a catalogue search for a book or journal and there is an electronic version of it available, the title will have [electronic resource] following it. This record will contain a direct link to that e-book or e-journal.

HINT: To refine your search results to showing only e-journals or e-books click on the appropriate link under the ‘Refine’ section on the right-hand side of the page.

It is strongly recommended that you check the catalogue to see whether you will actually be able to access particular e-journals or e-books remotely BEFORE you leave Cambridge:

There is also an up-to-date list of all e-books available that you can browse by subject here http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/ebooks_coll.html.

You can see all the zoology and neuroscience e-books that are available in the University on the Balfour Library’s new Pinterest online pinboard here: http://pinterest.com/zoolib/

There are even more collections of free e-books available to you that won’t be found through LibrarySearch however. Please see the ebooks@cambridge website for further information on all the e-books available in the university, how to use them, and how to download them onto your e-reader or other mobile device, at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ebooks/.

Finding journal articles while you’re away from Cambridge:

See the eresources@cambridge website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/ for access to particular citation databases, such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge. See the 'Access Route' link next to the journal or database title to check this. Some online resources are not accessible outside of the University network so you may wish to download or print off articles from these before you leave Cambridge.

You can also try LibrarySearch+ at http://searchplus.lib.cam.ac.uk/, a new type of catalogue that can be used to search at article title level. This will link you directly to the full text of the article, if it is subscribed to by the University.

IMPORTANT: Away from Cambridge, you will not be able to get the full text of ejournal articles through searching PubMed or Google / GoogleScholar, or directly from the journal's homepage for example, as you will not be recognised as being a valid member of the University of Cambridge and will not be allowed to download them. The recommended route as above should guarantee you the access to the content you are entitled to.

To access e-resources away from Cambridge you will need your Raven password:

You will be prompted for this once you click on a link to access the e-book or e-journal. You only need to enter the Raven login once per session so you won't have to keep logging in and out each time you need a different e-book or e-journal.

Troubleshooting online access:

Finally, if you are having trouble accessing e- resources remotely using your Raven password please see the guidance provided on the Central Science Library's 'Raven FAQs' website at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/CSL/ravenqanda.htm

Easter holiday closing dates:

The Balfour Library will close for Easter at 5:00pm on Thursday 28th March and will re-open at 8:30am on Tuesday 2nd April. The library will be open as usual throughout the Easter Vacation however, see our opening hours at http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/open.html

We wish you a very Happy Easter!

Clair and Jane

Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics

Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics, the Wellcome Library's new digital resource which contains over a million pages of books and archives relating to the history of genetics, has now been officially launched. 

A further half million pages will be added over the coming weeks from the holdings of the Wellcome Library and partner institutions at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library, King’s College London, University College London, Glasgow University Archives and the Churchill Archives Centre. 

Codebreakers contains twenty archives including the papers of Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, as well as archives of the Eugenics Society, made available by kind permission of the Council of the Galton Institute, the papers of J B S Haldane, and the collections of Guido Pontecorvo and his students Malcolm Ferguson-Smith and James Renwick at Glasgow University. 

Codebreakers also contains over a thousand digitised books covering the science, history and social and cultural aspects of genetics and related disciplines, mostly from the 20th century.

You can find out more about Codebreakers and the collections that have been digitised on the Wellcome Library website http://wellcomelibrary.org