Online

Joy Cadwallader, University of Wales, Aberystwyth (Aberystwyth Online User Group). Please send your submissions for the next edition to jrc@aber.ac.uk

Cambridge Information Group

http://www.cambridgeinformationgroup.com/

The Cambridge Information Group (CIG) have completed their $222 million purchase of ProQuest Information and Learning, combining it with CSA to create ProQuest-CSA. CIG also include R.R. Bowker and RefWorks among their holdings.

ProQuest's Early English Books Online has been purchased by the university libraries at Leiden, Amsterdam, Groningen, Nijmegen and Utrecht, a move supported SURFdiensten B.V (the Licensing Agency for Higher Education in the Netherlands).

COPAC

http://copac.ac.uk/

Following 60 responses to the COPAC Challenge Fund, the Consortium of Research Libraries (CURL), the Research Information Network (RIN) and the British Library have announced that collections from twelve further institutions will become partly or wholly available through COPAC. These include the Tate Gallery, St Andrews University and the Women's Library at London Metropolitan University.

Emerald

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/

Emerald have announced a second five-year consortium deal with the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) to provide access to Emerald's online journals and databases to 1.1 million users.

Intute: Arts and Humanities

http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/

In their regular feature section Limelight, Intute focused Web resources highlighting the recent destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq, research on drawing and, on World Book Day, the history of the book.

JISC News

http://www.jisc.org.uk/

A new JISC Collections agreement has been announced for H. W. Wilson's Art Museum Image Gallery (AMIG) providing more than 155,000 copyright-cleared images for educational use, particularly in art history, studio art, and design. Different HE and FE prices rates are available, with discounts for those institutions already subscribing to Art Abstracts or Art Full Text via the existing JISC agreements.

JISC have also announced a new collections agreement for Social Policy and Practice comprising over 200,000 bibliographic records of evidence-based social science research provided by Ovid from four databases: Planex (IDOX), Acompline (Greater London Authority), CareData (Social Care Institute for Excellence) and AgeInfo (Centre for Policy on Ageing).

A new National e-books Observatory Project in association with UK Higher Education has been launched by JISC Collections to “fund and license a collection of e-books that are highly relevant to UK higher education taught course students” in business and management studies, engineering, medicine (excluding mental health and nursing) and media Studies. Selected e-books will be licensed to HE for 2 years under the terms and conditions of the JISC Model License for e-books during which time studies will take place on user behaviour and patterns of use.

Macmillan

http://www.mcp.com/

The publisher Macmillan has announced the availability of 30 titles as e-books to browse, buy and download from their website. MacMillan is using their new BookStore digital content platform, developed within the MacMillan group, and the purchased e-books can be downloaded in Adobe eReader, MS Reader and MobiPocket Reader formats or read online or ordered as a book.

Natural History Museum

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-societies-online/

Nature Societies Online is a new Web-based resource from the Natural History Museum Library and Information Services that provides direct links to British and Irish natural history and related societies and their websites. This growing database originated from “A Directory of Natural History and Related Societies in Britain and Ireland” (Audrey Meenan, 1982) and is searchable by name, keyword and region.

OCLC

http://www.oclc.org/

A new, free directory service to libraries, museums, archives and consortia called WorldCat Registry has been launched by OCLC where institutions can store data such as institution type, location, services, service URLs etc. and, if desired, share the information with others such as vendors, current service providers and partners using an encoded link. OCLC is planning to enhance the sharing service by offering syndication to other websites including their WorldCat platform.

Thomson Gale

http://www.galegroup.com/

Thomson Gale have published free classroom content during March to recognize Women's History Month, comprising of biographies, activities, timelines a quiz and more.

Wiley

http://www.wiley.com/

Wiley have announced the completion of their £572 million purchase of Blackwell Publishing, to be merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical arm and making it the largest of Wiley's core businesses.

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