Bloomsbury Design Library trial

From  Monday 2nd October all ECA students and staff will have access to a trial of the new Bloomsbury Design Library, a comprehensive online resource which offers coverage of design and crafts worldwide, from 1500 BCE to the present day. It combines carefully curated text and image content of the highest quality with an intuitive taxonomy for research and discovery. It can be used to enhance teaching, learning and research in the field of Visual Arts and Design.
You can access the trial directly via: https://www.bloomsburydesignlibrary.com/home
To access all the trials currently available on the library e-resources trials webpage, using your EASE log-in, please go to http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/e-resources-trials
Our trial of the Bloomsbury Design Library will last 60 days. Please dont forget to give us your feedback via the trials webpage above.

"What can I access once I have left ECA?"

As a graduate of ECA and the UoE, you will still be able to access various services and resources of the ECA and UoE libraries. For example, you will have access to databases such as Jstor, and you can register as an Alumni library user.
For more information, see
http://www.ed.ac.uk/alumni/services/benefits/stay-connected/library
and
http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/using-library/join-the-library/graduates-edinburgh
We wish you all the best for your future!

University PhD theses digitisation project

The University Library PhD digitisation project will complete the digitisation of the University of Edinburgh’s collection of roughly 25,000 PhDs.
Approximately 10,000 PhDs are already accessible online through the Edinburgh Research Archive, our institutional repository, and this project will digitise the remaining 15,000, thereby making unique Edinburgh research available to all.
The collection dates from the early 1600s to the present day and includes theses of varying sizes, styles and formats. Duplicate theses will have their spines removed using an IDEAL 4705 Guillotine and will then be fed through the 100-page-per minute Kodak i4250 document scanner. These copies will be recycled, freeing up around 500 linear metres of storage space in the Main Library building.
Unique theses will be scanned manually using a Copibook Cobalt flatbed scanner and any items in poor condition will receive conservation treatment.
Following scanning, digital images will undergo several post-processing procedures, such as de-skewing, cropping and de-blurring, and will also be OCR-ed to enable keyword searching. Fully processed files will be uploaded to ERA as searchable multipage PDFs.
All files are due to be made available online by the end of 2018. For further information, please contact Gavin.Willshaw@ed.ac.uk
You can find more information on the project blog at:
http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/phddigitisation/
To search our databases for other PhDs and dissertations from across the world, go to our webpage for theses databases at: http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/databases-subject-a-z/database-theses
 

Database trials available from 16th January

The Library has organised several trials of online databases and resources which are sure to be of interest to ECA students and staff.
You are now able to have trial access to ProQuest Film Scripts Online, Bloomsbury Fashion Central including their new Fashion Photography Archive,  and the online music encyclopaedia MGG Online, (Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart).
To access these and many other database trials, and to give your feedback, please go to:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/e-resources-trials

Online resource trials

The University Library is running a large number of trials of online resources at the moment. You can access them here:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/e-resources-trials
Our current trial databases cover a vast range of subjects and types of information, from contemporary Chinese politics, to history, philosophy, feminism, visual arts and popular culture. Please take a look at the trials on offer and explore these resources, and don’t forget to give your feedback so that we can decide whether to subscribe to them!
Thank you.

Free open access book: Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture

UCL Press has launched a brand new open access book: Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture, edited by Laura Allen and Luke Caspar Pearson.
Drawing Futures brings together international designers and artists for speculations in contemporary drawing for art and architecture.
Despite numerous developments in technological manufacture and computational design that provide new grounds for designers, the act of drawing still plays a central role as a vehicle for speculation. There is a rich and long history of drawing tied to innovations in technology as well as to revolutions in our philosophical understanding of the world.
In reflection of a society now underpinned by computational networks and interfaces allowing hitherto unprecedented views of the world, the changing status of the drawing and its representation as a political act demands a platform for reflection and innovation. Drawing Futures will present a compendium of projects, writings and interviews that critically reassess the act of drawing and where its future may lie.
Drawing Futures focuses on the discussion of how the field of drawing may expand synchronously alongside technological and computational developments. The book coincides with an international conference of the same name, taking place at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in November 2016. Bringing together practitioners from many creative fields, the book discusses how drawing is changing in relation to new technologies for the production and dissemination of ideas.
A limited number of print copies of this book are also available from https://goo.gl/kmCXs1.
It will also be available as an open access title via OAPEN library and JSTOR.
Download free: https://goo.gl/kmCXs1

JSTOR launches open access ebooks platform

JSTOR has introduced a new program to make Open Access monographs available on its platform.  At the moment, 63 monographs across the Humanities and Social Sciences are available from UCL Press, Cornell University Press, University of California Press, and University of Michigan Press.  JSTOR are planning to announce additional partners and hundreds more Open Access titles in the coming months.
The ebooks are freely available for anyone to use, and carry one of six Creative Commons licenses.  The titles are DRM-free, and users will not need to register or log in to JSTOR to access the titles.
For further details and the full list of titles, please visit:
http://about.jstor.org/open-access
You can also access ebooks via DiscoverEd, the library catalogue, and by exploring some of our databases such as Berg Fashion Library. The best route into our subject specific databases is via the library subject guides webpage or the databases by subject page.
 

Change of look for WGSN website

WGSN* is our trend forecasting tool for fashion and design. Recently the website for WGSN has changed in appearance. Now when you log in (on campus) you will see a website called homebuildlife. WGSN is still accessible from this new parent website.
You can still find the WGSN pages when in homebuildlife: from the homebuildlife Main Menu choose “Design & Inspiration”, then choose “Fashion Connection” then you will see the WGSN options.
Do tell the Library if you have any problems accessing what you need.
Please note that WGSN is available on-campus only.
*WGSN: The leading online fashion trend-analysis and research service providing creative and business intelligence for the apparel, style, design and retail industries.

Win an i-Pad mini!

Would you like to be in with a chance to win an i-Pad mini? Do you use Jisc MediaHub? If so, a new survey has just gone live to gather views on Jisc MediaHub:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FKMQKVL
As part of Project Enriched Playlists, a new Jisc-funded project, Jisc is looking into how audio-visual collections in Jisc MediaHub might be developed for Higher Education (HE) into ‘enriched playlists’:
http://bufvc.ac.uk/projects-research/project-enriched-playlists
This project will help Jisc understand and document how HE would like to use and get the most out of Jisc MediaHub’s moving image, audio and stills collections.
EDINA would be grateful for your help: please do complete the survey by 13th June 2014.
All participants who submit a completed survey will be entered into a prize draw to win an iPad mini 16GB (Wi-Fi).
To find out more about the project or this survey, please contact Hetty Malcolm-Smith, Jisc Project Manager (Content), Project Enriched Playlists (020 7393 1520 /  hetty@bufvc.ac.uk).

Berg Fashion Library online goes live!

Our new subscription to the Berg Fashion Library is now live, on and off campus!
Berg Fashion Library: “the authority on world dress”: an extensive online portal which offers fully cross-searchable access to a large and growing range of Berg content collections – including the Berg Encyclopaedia of World Dress and Fashion online, e-books, reference works, and images.

Access this amazing resource via the A-Z list of all University Library databases here:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/databases-a-z
Or via the Art & Design list of databases here:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/library-databases/databases-subject-a-z/database-design
To find out more about what is included in the Berg Fashion Library see:
http://www.bergfashionlibrary.com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/page/whatsinbergfashionlibrary/whats-in-the-berg-fashion-library