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22 May 2013

JISC Journal Archives user satisfaction survey 2012-13 report

Thank you to everyone who completed our JISC Journal Archives user satisfaction survey. The survey ran from 23 November 2012 to 28 February 2013, with a pop up prompt or a text link appearing after logging in to the platform, and we received 41 responses.

We were pleased to see that 76% of respondents found JISC Journal Archives easy to use, 90% agreed that their work would take longer without it and 95% of respondents would recommend JISC Journal Archives. Features that were liked include the ability to search a variety of journals in one place and being able to download them all as PDFs. Suggested improvements included adding more material and showing the article abstracts.

The full user satisfaction survey report (PDF) is available now and some highlights are shown below.

JISC Journal Archives survey charts screenshot

A selection of comments we received:

Higher Education, undergraduate student:

"JISc would be highly beneficial to any student"

Higher Education, undergraduate student:

"Everything I want/need is easy to find. All the information is given on the cover 'sheets' from which the articles can be downloaded, and so referencing is made that much easier"

Higher Education, undergraduate student:

"Because it is the main journal archive that I use - I find it the most reliable and most likely to have the sources I require"

We really appreciate people taking the time to provide this valuable feedback and all comments and responses have been reviewed by the team and will be taken on board as we develop the platform.

The JISC Journal Archives team


21 May 2013

Improvements to PDF downloads for JISC Historic Books

Over the last few months, in response to feedback from the community, we have introduced improvements to the PDF download processing in JISC Historic Books.

When a page, range of pages or whole book is requested using the download button in the full text viewer the request goes into a queue. Our system locates all the individual pages, generates searchable PDFs for each one, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, then merges them into one searchable PDF file. Once the file has been generated an email notification is sent to the researcher with a link to download the PDF.

Previously, all requests went into a single server queue to be processed. This meant that if a large text, say 800 pages, was being processed then all subsequent requests would be queued behind it and would have to wait until it had finished. A second server was installed in February 2013, which means one server now handles requests under 200 pages and another server handles all larger page requests. As a result, smaller downloads are no longer held up behind larger requests which speeds up the waiting time for smaller ones to be generated.

While most download requests are processed successfully on-the-fly, there are a small number of texts that fail the PDF conversion process. For example, there are some files that appear to be failing due to the quality of the digital scans for some of the page images, which for the EEBO and ECCO collection are scanned from microfilm.

If a download request can not be generated for any reason an email will be sent to the researcher, asking them to forward the notification message to the helpdesk for us to investigate. Our team can often generate the file for you, in some instances even by manually collating the individual images from the server, so please do contact us if you receive one of these emails.

We have been monitoring the server queues and loads over the past couple of months, altering the configuration to optimise the PDF processing further and investigating any unsuccessful downloads, and we continue to do this. Between 5-19 April 2013, for example, there were 490 total download requests, 481 of them were successful and only 9 failed to generate.

This is just the first stage of improvements though and we appreciate that researchers want instant downloads, so we are investigating long term caching and pre-processing options to see how we can provide this type of service in future.

Hopefully you will have noticed a decrease in the waiting time for PDF downloads to be generated and we're keen to hear feedback on this so please do contact the to let us know your thoughts.

For reference, the diagram below shows how the PDF download process works.


screenshot of downloading page images or text screenshot of download dialogue box screenshot of PDF server workflow screenshot of email notification message screenshot of searchable PDF


The Jisc Historic Books team


30 Apr 2013

New content available in Jisc Journal Archives

We are pleased to announce that new titles are now available in our Oxford Journals Archive and our Cambridge Journals Digital Archive.

Oxford Journals Archive Upgrade

The Oxford Journals Archive Upgrade is now available in Jisc Journal Archives. The upgrade includes an additional 32 Oxford University Press (OUP) journals containing over 76, 000 articles that have been digitised since the original archive was purchased by Jisc Collections in 2006. Each journal is available from volume one issue one until the last issue in 1995.

We have also received and indexed data previously missing from the Medicine Archive (1878-1995) and the Science Archive (1878-1995) from the original Oxford Journals Archive data provided to us.

All the new Oxford Journals Archive titles available in Jisc Journal Archives are listed in PDF and KBART file formats.

To view all the titles now included in the Oxford Journals Archive please see the platform browse page.

Additionally we have made some improvements to the way the OUP Notes and Queries articles have been indexed. Previously the titles were not very indicative of the contents, for example: "Notes and Queries: s1-I.1.10 " as shown in the screenshot below.

Jisc Historic Books survey charts screenshot

We have now created titles that are a concatenated list of the titles included on each page. The title for the example above is now "LIBER SENTENTIARUM.—INQUISITION OF THOULOUSE; NEW FACTS ABOUT LADY ARABELLA STUART", which is comprised of the following titles in the article:

This means the titles are more descriptive when they appear in your search results and when navigating the browse pages:

Jisc Historic Books survey charts screenshot

Cambridge Journals Digital Archive

We have also now received, loaded and indexed the Humanities and Social Sciences titles from the Cambridge Journals Digital Archive. Previously only titles from the Scientific, Technical and Medical collection were available in Jisc Journal Archives.

All the new Cambridge Journals Digital Archive titles available in Jisc Journal Archives are listed in PDF and KBART file formats.

To view all the titles now included in the Cambridge Journals Digitial Archive please see the platform browse page.

A full list of all the titles available in Jisc Journal Archives can be found in our KBART file: MS Excel version (140 kB), text version (144 kB).

The list follows the Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) format, so you will notice that there are repeated lines for journal titles where the sequence of titles is broken by one or more years. There are some journals where there are multiple breaks of one year, even though the sequence of volumes is unbroken, so they also appear on multiple lines.


The Jisc Journal Archives team


17 Apr 2013

Jisc Historic Books user satisfaction survey 2012-13 report

Thank you to everyone who completed our recent Jisc Historic Books user satisfaction survey. The survey ran from 29 November 2012 to 28 February 2013, with a pop up prompt appearing after logging in to the platform, and we received 162 responses.

54% of respondents indicated they were regular users of the platform and used it either several times a week or once a week, and 61% said they would recommend Jisc Historic Books. Features that were liked include the breadth of the collection, and the ability to search online and download for offline reading. We also received a range of suggestions for improvements which will be taken on board as we develop the platform.

The full user satisfaction survey report (PDF, 1.11MB) is available now and some highlights are shown below.

Jisc Historic Books survey charts screenshot

We were also pleased to receive some very positive comments on the platform including:

Higher Education, postgraduate student:

"The breadth of the collection - and ease of finding material - is remarkable."

Higher Education, undergraduate student:

"It provides a formidable database of early texts which can be used for research in a variety of areas."

Other sector, researcher/reader:

"I certainly do recommend it - it would be impossible to conduct research today without consulting it."

We really appreciate people taking the time to provide this valuable feedback. All comments have been reviewed by the Jisc Historic Books team and will inform future development decisions for the platform, and the support and training we provide for it, to ensure that Jisc Historic Books meets the needs of the community.

The Jisc Historic Books team.


09 Apr 2013

Jisc eCollections News - Easter 2013

The third edition of Jisc eCollections News (PDF, 335kB) is available now, highlighting recent developments and future plans for the Jisc eCollections service.

This Easter edition includes details of the latest enhancements and a new Bioscience collection for Jisc MediaHub as well as a variant spelling project and progress update on obtaining MARC records for Jisc Historic Books.

Top 10 statistics show the highest use institutions for August 2012 - January 2013 and you can also find out about upcoming events.

We hope you find the newsletter informative and we welcome feedback on it.

JISC eCollections newsletter - December 2012 screenshot (PDF, 335kB)

The Jisc Historic Books and Jisc Journal Archives team.


20 Dec 2012

Helpdesk closure dates for Christmas 2012

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives helpdesks at Mimas will be closed for the Christmas break from 22nd December 2012 to 1st January 2013 inclusive. We'll respond to any enquiries received during this period when we return on 2nd January.

JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives will run unattended during this time.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we'll leave you with a festive image from our JISC Historic Books collection. It's taken from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (click on the image to view an enlarged version).

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.


17 Dec 2012

JISC eCollections newsletter - December 2012

The December 2012 issue of the JISC eCollections service newsletter is available now. This issue includes details on the new features released in JISC Historic Books in November and new materials added to JISC MediaHub.

The newsletter has been created by JISC Collections, EDINA and Mimas and it's designed to keep you up to date with the latest enhancements, upcoming developments and support information for all three platforms in the JISC eCollections service (JISC Historic Books, JISC Journal Archives and JISC MediaHub).

JISC eCollections newsletter - December 2012 (PDF)

JISC eCollections newsletter - December 2012 screenshot

The newsletter is produced every other month and the next edition will be in February 2013.

We hope you find it informative and we welcome feedback so please do let us know what you think.

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.


04 Dec 2012

User satisfaction surveys

We are currently running online user satisfaction surveys for JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives.

The platforms are in continual development and these surveys give you the opportunity to have your say and help to shape their future development. We're keen to learn more about you and how you use JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives as well as what kind of support and training materials would be useful to you.

The survey prompts will appear when you login to the platforms:

JISC Historic Books

JISC Journal Archives

We would really appreciate it if you could take the time to complete the surveys, it should only take a few minutes.

Your feedback will help us to develop the platforms and support materials to meet your needs.

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.


29 Nov 2012

New features: marked list, title/author results sorting and plain text availability indicated

We are pleased to announce several new features in JISC Historic Books which have been developed in response to feedback from the community:

We have also re-indexed all three collections, providing better date ordering and improved results for the Advanced Search 'imprint' field.

Annotated screenshot of new features

Marked list

Select the checkbox to the right of each search result to add records to a marked list. When you select a record a grey bar at the top of the results list will be displayed with options to save, export or email the selected record(s).

If you choose to save the record then it will be saved to your 'My Bibliography' area. To access it at a later date select the 'My Bibliography' link at the top of the screen. You can save up to 50 records in 'My Bibliography' and you can email or export them individually or all together. Click on the record title to go straight to the full text in the viewer.

Only whole works can be added to the marked list, not individual pages, so the checkbox will not appear next to page results.

My Bibliography:

Screenshot of My Bibliography

PLEASE NOTE: saving records to 'My Bibliography' is only available when accessing JISC Historic Books using an institutional login account (Shibboleth/OpenAthens) as the records are saved to your individual account.

If you are accessing via ip authentication (i.e. you don't enter a username/password) then you will not see the option to 'save' on the grey marked list bar, and there will not be a 'My Bibliography' link at the top of the screen. With ip authentication there is no way to identify your individual session so we are unable to save records for you to access again later.

If you're a librarian at a subscribing institution and you would like to change your institutions authentication to Shibboleth/OpenAthens only please contact our helpdesk at .

Sort results by author and title

In addition to sorting search results by conceptual relevance and date you can now also order results by author or title (alphabetically and reverse alphabetically).

You can select the sorting options on the Search, Advanced Search or the Results pages. If you access JISC Historic Books via an institutional login account (Shibboleth/OpenAthens) you can set your default sort options by selecting the 'My Preferences' link at the top of the screen then the 'default search options' tab.

Results page indicates plain text availability

We have made it clearer which results have plain text versions of the page images, the 'plain text' link under each record on the Results page will be active and you can click on it to jump straight to the plain text in the viewer window. For works without plain text the link will be greyed out.

Plain text records are searchable versions of the page images produced either via digital scanning using optical character recognition (OCR) software or by manually keying transcriptions.

All titles in the BL and ECCO collections have plain text versions of the page images and around 25% of the EEBO collection has plain text currently, this is increasing as further manually keyed texts become available.

We hope you find the latest enhancements useful, please do let us know what you think at or complete our feedback form.

The JISC Historic Books team.


16 Oct 2012

New JISC eCollections newsletter

We are pleased to announce that JISC Collections, EDINA and Mimas have created a JISC eCollections service newsletter to keep you up to date on the latest enhancements, upcoming developments and support information for all three platforms in the JISC eCollections service (JISC Historic Books, JISC Journal Archives and JISC MediaHub).

The newsletter will be produced every other month and the first edition is available now:
JISC eCollections newsletter - October 2012

The next edition will be in December 2012.

We hope you find it informative and we welcome feedback so please do let us know what you think.

 

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.


28 Sep 2012

New features released in JISC Historic Books in September

We released several new features in JISC Historic Books recently, in time for the new academic year. They were developed in response to feedback from the community and we do hope you're finding them useful.

full screen and zoom

Thumbnails

There are thumbnails for every page in the three collections in JISC Historic Books. They enable you to quickly scan the page images of a particular text to identify the ones you wish to view in detail. You can access these by selecting the 'thumbnails' link next to each record on the results page or by clicking on the thumbnail thumbnail iconicon in the viewer. Use the next/previous buttons at the sides of the viewer to select a particular thumbnail then click on the thumbnail to go directly to that page image. The number of thumbnails displayed will vary depending on your screen size and you can use this feature in conjunction with full screen mode to view more thumbnails per page.

Full screen view

You can now hide the left hand side panel and the toolbar at the top of the viewer to maximise the space to view pages by clicking on the full screen full screen icon icon. You can still access all the options on the toolbar by hovering over the show toolbar icon in the top right hand corner, which will unhide the toolbar while you're hovering over it.

Variable zoom

The variable zoom feature gives you more control over the zoom magnification and you can now zoom up to 400% on page images as well as zoom in on the full text using the zoom icon zoom icon. You can use this feature in conjunction with the full screen mode.

Next/previous book

Instead of closing the page viewer to go to the next search result in your results list you can now go directly to the next or previous search result within the viewer using the book arrow icons.

The screenshot below shows the full screen and zoom feature used together. You can control the zoom level using the plus and minus icons at the bottom of the viewer screen.

zoom and full screen feature

We have also introduced significant enhancements to the quality, size and processing for page downloads.

Searchable PDF images, improved quality and reduced file sizes

We have improved the PDF quality, reduced the file size of the documents and incorporated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in the PDFs so they are searchable. This means that the page image PDFs are now searchable for the first time.

Researchers may find this feature particularly useful for page images in the EEBO collection, which currently only contains manual text transcriptions for around 25% of the collection. The remainder of the collection contains page images only, which previously were not searchable. Now, by downloading the page image PDFs with OCR included, you can search within each title.

Please note: the OCR in the PDF files is separate to the OCR and full text transcriptions included within the platform itself, which power the full text searching in JISC Historic Books.

Email notification when downloading texts

While the file size of the documents has been reduced considerably, making file generation faster, we recognise that researchers may not wish to wait for particularly large texts to be processed so we have introduced a new email notification feature.

When you request to download a document now you will be prompted to enter an email address. Once the document has been generated and is ready to be downloaded an email notification will be sent to that address with a link to the document included.

We welcome feedback from the community on these features so please do contact the helpdesk at historicbooks@mimas.ac.uk or use the feedback form to let us know what you think.

The JISC Historic Books team.


21 Aug 2012

Usage statistics for JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives

We are pleased to announce that JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives usage statistics are now available for institutions to download.

Librarians at subscribing institutions are able to view and download their full text access statistics for both platforms via new web interfaces. Statistics are available from the launch of the platforms on 1st August 2011 and reports can be viewed online in html format or downloaded in csv format.

Access details have been emailed to librarians at subscribing institutions. You can access the usage statistics interfaces using the same authentication method you use to access JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives, either via UK Access Management Federation (Shibboleth and OpenAthens) or ip authentication, depending on which options have been set up for your institution.

If you haven't received an email, or if you experience any problems with accessing the usage statistics, please do contact our helpdesks at historicbooks@mimas.ac.uk or journalarchives@mimas.ac.uk.

We will be enhancing the web interfaces to include additional statistics in the future, so if you have any suggestions for other statistics that would be useful to you please do contact our helpdesks to let us know.

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.


28 Jun 2012

ECCO Part II available in JISC Historic Books.

We are pleased to announce that Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) Part II is now available in JISC Historic Books.

Part II includes almost 50,000 titles and 7 million pages of new material uncovered by the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) since 2003, from the library holdings of institutions including the British Library, Bodleian, Cambridge University, the National Library of Scotland, Library of Congress, National Library of Ireland, and the University of Texas.

Covering the same subject areas as the original collection, with an emphasis on Literature, Social Science and Religion titles, and incorporating more than 900 works and editions by women authors. While the majority of titles are in English, works can also be found in French, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, and Welsh.

Influential works can be found from authors such as Voltaire, John Milton, Sir William Blackstone and Captain James Cook and there are also 96 new editions of Shakespeare.

Part II has been added to the existing Eighteenth Century Collections Online archive in JISC Historic Books, providing access to search and download over 180,000 titles (200,000 volumes) published between 1701 and 1800 now in ECCO.

You can login to JISC Historic Books to search and download titles from our updated Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

The JISC Historic Books team.


05 Apr 2012

Stable URLs for JISC Historic Books.

We have recently added stable URLs to JISC Historic Books.

This feature provides you with a link which you can copy and paste into web pages or documents, enabling you to link directly back to either a specific page of a book in the viewer or to the results list for a search on an author or title. Our stable URLs are OpenURL compliant and the terminology 'OpenURL' is used for them in JISC Historic Books.

For links to individual pages there's a new globe icon in the viewer for every page of every book.

globe icon

Simply navigate to the desired page and click on the globe icon to display a URL which you can copy and paste into a document or web page.

openurl link

For links to the results list for a search on an author or title, select the 'Advanced Search' and enter your search terms in the 'author' or 'title' fields. On the results page you will see the 'Open URL' link at the top of the screen. Just click on the link then copy and paste the URL displayed into a document or web page.

openurl link results page

When someone clicks on the link from another website or document they will be prompted to login (unless they have already logged in or have ip access), then they will be taken either to a page in the viewer (for a page link) or to the results list (for a title or author search link).

Further details can be found in our FAQs.

We hope you will find this feature useful and if you have any questions or comments about it please do contact the helpdesk at: historicbooks@mimas.ac.uk.

The JISC Historic Books team.


05 Apr 2012

JISC Journal Archives Advisory Board Meeting 30 Mar 2012

The JISC Journal Archives Advisory Board met in London on 30 Mar 2012 to discuss the next development steps for the platform. The meeting notes will be made available on the JISC eCollections service website shortly. The notes from the last meeting in December 2011 are already available.

You can find out more about the Advisory Board on the JISC eCollections service website, including their objectives and a list of their current members.

There's also a new blog for all the Advisory Boards in the JISC eCollections service and the first post from the chair of the JISC Journal Archives board, Graham Stone, Information Resources Manager at the University of Huddersfield, is up now. We really value feedback from the community so please feel free to comment on it to let us know what you think.

We welcome additional members on the board so if you are interested joining and helping to guide the development of this platform please contact the JISC Collections helpdesk at help@jisc-collections.ac.uk.

The JISC Journal Archives team.


07 Mar 2012

Taylor & Francis Geography, Planning, Urban and Environment Online Archive now available.

The Taylor & Francis Geography, Planning, Urban and Environment Online Archive is now available in JISC Journal Archives.

The archive contains the backfiles of 28 journals published under the Routledge imprint between 1884 and 1996. Many of the titles included are published on behalf of other societies and organisations, for example Landscape Research (The Landscape Research Group) and European Planning Studies (The Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). The archive includes many well established journals, influential in their field, for example Australian Geographer and the Scottish Geographical Journal (previously titled Scottish Geographical Magazine).

As some journals have had title changes during the period covered by JISC Journal Archives, you will notice they will be listed under both titles, along with the relevant volumes and issues for each one.

For example, the Journal of Property Research was known as Land Development Studies between 1984 - 1990. JISC Journal Archives coverage for this title is 1984 - 1996 so you will find it listed as:

Details of all the title changes for this archive can be found on our new Title Changes page.

You can browse the journals, and access the full text for each article, from the JISC Journal Archives browse page.

If you have any questions or comments about the Taylor & Francis Geography, Planning, Urban and Environment Online Archive please do contact the helpdesk at: journalarchives@mimas.ac.uk.

The JISC Journal Archives team.


23 Jan 2012

JISC Historic Books Advisory Board meets on the 23rd January 2012 at the British Library

The Advisory Board is made up of Librarians and Academics who use Historic Books on a daily basis as part of their work.

The Advisory Board will discuss recent enhancements to the interface as well as advising on future enhancements. They will also discuss the inclusion of additional content in the service and a project to improve the computer generated text that supports the page images.

The JISC eCollections team.


22 Dec 2011

Helpdesk closure dates for Christmas

The JISC Journal Archives and JISC Historic Books helpdesks at Mimas will be closed for the Christmas break from 23rd December to 2nd January inclusive. We'll respond to any enquiries received during this period when we return on 3rd January.

JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives will run unattended during this period.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The JISC Historic Books team.


22 Dec 2011

New full text TCP records for JISC Historic Books

We are pleased to announce that we've added some new full text transcriptions to the Early English Books Online (EEBO) collection in JISC Historic Books. These transcriptions have been created by the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) and we'll be adding more as and when these become available to us. Further details on the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership can be found on their website .

We have also indexed the rest of the MARC records for the EEBO collection, enabling you to discover all the image-only records for that collection within the platform. Some of these records had been indexed in our previous release on 14 Nov 2011, however, not all of these were included at that time. As the image-only records have no metadata associated with them (until now) they were hidden in the platform previously, the MARC records enable you to search and find these image-only records within JISC Historic Books now.

JISC Historic Books is in continuous development and one of our upcoming enhancements is creating stable urls to enable you to link directly to books, pages and authors. Please see our development roadmap for details of all of al the enhancements we're currently working on, as well as those already released.

If you have any questions or feedback on these enhancements please do contact the helpdesk at: historicbooks@mimas.ac.uk.

The JISC Historic Books team.


21 Dec 2011

Inbound OpenURL linking available for JISC Journal Archives

It's now possible to link into JISC Journal Archives via OpenURL link resolvers. We've provided our holdings details to Serials Solutions (360 Link), ExLibris (SFX) and EBSCO (LinkSource) already and we are currently liaising with Innovative Interfaces (WebBridge).

If your insitution uses an OpenURL link resolver that is not provided by one of these companies please do contact the helpdesk at journalarchives@mimas.ac.uk and we'll liaise with the provider on your behalf.

If your institution does not have an OpenURL link resolver and you would like to use title level url links we provide a journal titles list spreadsheet, including these links, in our FAQs: http://ecollections.mimas.ac.uk/journals/faq.html#titles

The JISC Journal Archives team.


24 Nov 2011

JISC eCollections service formal launch

JISC Collections has formally launched the new JISC eCollections service today. Read the full announcement on the JISC Collections website.

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.


14 Nov 2011

JISC Historic Books - Advanced Search, PDF download and EEBO MARC records release.

We are pleased to announce we have released phase 1 of our Advanced Search as well as a PDF and citation download option and EEBO MARC records update today.

The Advanced Search feature enables you to quickly narrow down your search by searching on exact phrases, bibliographic reference numbers (e.g. ESTC number) and place of publication, for example.

The Advanced Search feature is a separate page which can be accessed by clicking on the 'Advanced Search' button on the main search page. When you enter your search terms and click on 'search' the results will be presented on the main search results screen. For advanced users, who want to refine their search results even further, you can also edit the search string in the search box directly from here. Additional information on the search operators available and how the Advanced Search works can be found from the help link on the platform.

You can now download single pages, a range of pages or whole books as PDF documents via a new download button in the viewer download. Just click on a title hyperlink on the results screen to open the viewer and the download button is on the menu bar on the far right hand side. You have the option to download books (page images or just the text) and citations (in RIS, Refworks, BibTex format) from here.

download menu

We have also loaded MARC records for the EEBO collection which will enable you to easily discover all of the records in this collection within JISC Historic Books now. *Please note* we are aware that some EEBO records do not have page images at the moment and we expect this issue to be resolved by the end of this week/early next week.

We hope you like the new features and we would really appreciate any feedback on them. Please do contact the helpdesk at: historicbooks@mimas.ac.uk to let us know what you think.

The JISC Historic Books team.



03 Nov 2011

Follow us on Twitter!

JISC Journal Archives and JISC Historic Books are now on Twitter. Follow us to find out the latest news, developments and support information for each platform.

Follow @JournalArchives

Follow @HistoricBooks

The JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives team.



12 Oct 2011

JISC Journal Archives browse feature released.

We are pleased to announce that we have just released the new browse feature for JISC Journal Archives, enabling you to browse by archive or browse alphabetically by journal title using a separate browse tab on the platform

You can browse the journal titles list without logging in however once you select an article you will be prompted to login with Shibboleth, OpenAthens or you will be granted access via ip authentication (if this has been set up for your institution).

The browse feature has been included in repsonse to the valuable feedback we have received from the community on JISC Journal Archives and we are keen to hear of any other features you would like to see available in this platform. Please contact the helpdesk at: journalarchives@mimas.ac.uk to let us know.

All feedback and enhancement requests for JISC Journal Archives will be reviewed and considered by the development team and the JISC Journal Archives Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is comprised of members of the community who will guide the development of this platform going forward and we welcome new members. If you are interested in joining the JISC Journal Archives Advisory Board to advise on the development of this platform you can find further details on the JISC eCollections service website.

We hope you like the new browse feature so please do let the helpdesk know what you think at: journalarchives@mimas.ac.uk

The JISC Historic Books team.


19 August 2011

Advanced Search coming in early September 2011.

A new Advanced Search page will be included in JISC Historic Books in early September 2011.

We have been listening to feedback from the community and in response to this we are pleased to confirm the options to be made available during phase 1 of the Advanced Search, as shown in the screenshot below. A pdf walkthrough is also available as well as further details on the search fields.

The development of JISC Historic Books is being guided by the community and we welcome any feedback or enhancement requests you may have for the platform. Please do contact the helpdesk at: historicbooks@mimas.ac.uk to let us know what you think.

Details of all upcoming enhancements for JISC Historic Books can be found on our Development Roadmap page.

Advanced Search Page

The JISC Historic Books team.


20 July 2011

IP authentication available on request.

We are providing access via ip authentication on request for any subscribing institutions now. If your institution requests ip authentication then this will be the default access method for JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives. Our system will check if your ip address is authorised first, if it is you will be granted access, if not it will prompt you to login with Shibboleth or OpenAthens.

Please note, if you request ip authentication for your institution then any personalisation options, e.g. saved searches, will only be available for the current session.

The JISC Historic Books team.


30 June 2011

Final website addresses for JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives.

Until the JISC eCollections service launches in August 2011 the final website addresses for JISC Historic Books (www.jischistoricbooks.ac.uk) and JISC Journal Archives (www.jiscjournalarchives.ac.uk) will be re-directed to our support website (http://ecollections.mimas.ac.uk).

The JISC Historic Books team.


15 June 2011

Authenticated Access for JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives.

As part of the development process for JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives, we are currently setting up UK Access Management Federation access (Shibboleth and OpenAthens), and ip authentication where institutions do not have Shibboleth or OpenAthens.

While we are setting this up, when you go to the platform urls you will find a username and password prompt. This is only temporary and UK Access Management Federation access will be setup shortly. If, in the meantime, you would like to access these platforms please contact the helpdesk at: journalarchives@mimas.ac.uk to request a temporary username and password.

We do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

The JISC Historic Books team.