RESOLVED - Discover and EBSCO Databases Intermittent Technical Difficulties 20/07/16

EBSCO are experiencing intermittent technical difficulties and this might affect your use of Discover and/or EBSCO databases. Their engineers are working to restore stability as priority and hope to rectify the situation soon.

UPDATE
EBSCO have reported that these technical issues have now been resolved.

Maintenance to Library Resources - COMPLETE

             
The scheduled maintenance to Discover and associated services on Wednesday 3rd February has now been completed.

The underlying structures for accessing Library resources have been upgraded to improve their resilience, security and performance for the long-term.

The only visible change is to the login screen when accessing resources but please continue to enter your University username and password as normal:

For the time being, you will need to log-in whether accessing resources on-campus or off but you will only need to do this once a day.

We need your help!

How do you go about researching your assignments..?
What are your experiences using the Library’s DISCOVER search engine..?
What features do you find useful..?
What do you like or dislike most about DISCOVER..?

We want to make it easier for you to find and access the resources you need.

Please take two minutes to help by visiting https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/livlibusab
and completing our quick online survey.

Thank you.

Research Starter overviews in DISCOVER

We have been given early access to a new feature in DISCOVER called Research Starters. These are authoritative overviews at the top of the result list of frequently searched topics to give you an introduction to a topic before you plunge into the main search results.

There are currently 60,000+ Research Starters articles, with 27,500 images, 400+ videos and 75 audio clips. Content is curated from a variety of high quality sources, including Salem Press reference works and Encyclopædia Britannica.

To view the full Research Starter, just click on its title, or on the 'More' link at the end of the extract of text.

Here are some example searches, to give you the idea:

Science:
• volcanoes
• Higgs Boson
• Chromosome
• geothermal power
• Forensic Science
• Genetics

Health/Medicine:
• Heart Attack
• SARS
• Chemotherapy
• PTSD
• ADHD
• Alzheimers

Biography:
• Shakespeare
• Dali
• Churchill
• Edison
• Truman

Literature
• A Tale of Two Cities
• War and Peace
• A Farewell to Arms

History
• English Civil War
• French Revolution
• Industrial Revolution
• Norman Conquest
• Russian Revolution
• Great Wall of China

Research Starters Containing Video:
• Ecosystem
• Human Genome
• Amazon Rainforest
• Lava
• Renaissance architecture
• Tsunami

You can view the video full-screen, by clicking the arrows on the bottom right corner of the video box.

Research Starters Containing Audio:
• Sheng
• Baroque period
• Blue Whale

Related Inset Features (RIFs): RIFs appear on the right of the full Research Starter and are a list of links to images and other Research Starters articles related to the topic you are viewing.
• San Andreas Fault
• Cardiac arrest

For very broad topics, on which there are numerous related Research Starters articles, Topic pages provide links to the many Research Starters articles related to that topic. Examples include:
• International Business
• Environment
• Periodic Table
• Management

Research Starters are still in development, and there ar a number of known issues that will be corrected:

• Some image captions and credits are unreadable and require editing.
• Some links to other articles are out-of-context (example: "...George Washington..." linking to the Washington, DC article).
• Some tables are not displaying correctly.
• Some words are run together and some "see" references to a photo omit a word.
• Various accents and special characters are displaying incorrectly.
• Some images are not legible due to their size.
• Some articles end with several paragraphs in all bold or all italic.

Please use the comments feature to tell us what you think of Research Starters (good or bad!), and please do let us know about any problems that you come across (other than those already listed above). You can choose the anonymous option to comment without needing to have a Blogger account, but it helps if you include your name in your feedback so that we can follow up on comments.

DISCOVER links to Reading Lists @ Liverpool

A new feature has been added to DISCOVER – the ability to bookmark items our new system, Reading Lists @ Liverpool.

On the DISCOVER results screen, you will see a link: Bookmark to Reading Lists @ Liverpool.

Follow the link to add the item to your bookmarks.  This feature will be of most use to academics and library staff creating reading lists, but anyone with a Managed Window Service username and password can create their own bookmarks, so you may find it useful as a way of keeping track of publications.

More information about Reading Lists @ Liverpool is available at http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/readinglists 

Better known-item searching in Discover

Previously, if you entered a search into Discover that included very common words, such as:

a, also, an, and, are, as, as, at, be, because, been, but, by, for, from, has, have, however, if, in, is, not, of, on, or, p, so, than, that, the, their, there, these, this, to, was, were, whatever, whether, which, with, would

then Discover would ignore those words, and just search on the significant words in your query.

That caused problems if you were searching for a known item which has these sorts of words in its title, such as the book "To the Lighthouse". Discover would actually just search for the word "lighthouse", so the book you wanted would probably not be at the top of the search results.

Known-item searching is particularly common when using Discover to find a library catalogue record for a particular book or journal.

Now Discover will search for those common words - just in our own catalogue records - so the specific item you wanted should appear at the top of your results. You might get even better results if you put your search in quotes, or limit your results to books only.

Watch this example of a search for "To the Lighthouse".

And here's how it would have looked previously. (Doing a search for just "lighthouse" to mimic how the search for "to the lighthouse" would have been handled previously).

Note that the other sources covered by Discover still ignore these common words in searches, but EBSCO (who power Discover) are investigating how best to improve known-item searching in those too.

Discover's new 'Available @ Liverpool' limiter

As Discover searches more and more content, we've been hearing grumblings that it's becoming annoying when Discover finds you things that you can't readily access.

At the same time, we've been re-working the way we manage our online library resources so that the information about what we have access to, on what sites, and with what coverage, is now held in a single place that can be integrated with Discover.

The result of those two factors is that we've now adjusted Discover so that by default it limits its search results to just those items that we have ready access to here at the University of Liverpool, whether full-text online or in print.

So now when you run a search on Discover, you will see that the 'Available @ Liverpool' limit has been applied:

If you do want to explore content that we don't necessarily have full-text access to, then either:

• · click on the cross next to 'Available @ Liverpool' in the 'Limiters' area in the screen above, or
• · uncheck the box next to 'Available @ Liverpool' in the 'Refine your results' area in the screen above

If you are not interested in print resources, then remove the  'Available @ Liverpool' first, and then click on the 'Full-Text Online' limiter.

If you apply both the  'Available @ Liverpool' and the 'Full-Text Online' limiters at the same time, then the effect is the same as 'Available @ Liverpool' alone - i.e. our print resources will be included.

Resource of the Week - DISCOVER

Need to research a topic for your assignment? Want to read beyond the textbooks and find articles from quality journals? Try DISCOVER  

What is it?
DISCOVER is a “Unified Resource Discovery” tool, unified because entering your search terms once in a simple Google type box allows you to search across many thousands of journals and our key academic databases. (For more detail on exactly what DISCOVER searches see here) You can search DISCOVER directly from the Library Home page, or search a subject specific group of databases via our LibGuides pages  

Why use it?
DISCOVER will help you to find quality sources for your assignments quickly and easily. Many of your results will appear with a PDF icon so you can open up the article straight away, but you can also use the  "is is @ Liverpool" tool to access the full text of the article.

Accessing DISCOVER on iPads, Tablets and mobile devices

A recent new release of DISCOVER has improved access to Discover on mobile devices.

If you access  DISCOVER  through a small-screened mobile device you will automatically be taken to the new mobile version of DISCOVER, though still with the option to use the full site if you prefer. The new mobile version is full-featured: allowing you to search, view records, save results to a folder and view full-text (though you may prefer to save them and read them on a full size device later).

The new mobile interface is also available for EBSCOhost databases such as Business Source Premier and Cinahl.

Unfortunately this new release introduced a problem accessing DISCOVER on an iPad or Tablet: the Discover search boxes embedded in library web pages no longer work from iPads and other tablets, and previously saved Permalinks don't work either.

But you can still access DISCOVER at:

http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/login.aspx?authtype=ip&profile=EDS

whatever device you use.

EBSCO are aware of the problem with iPads and other tablets and should have a fix in place by the end of August.

More sites included in DISCOVER

Discover now searches several more sites:

• Accessible Archives (a new subscription)
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Persee (an archive of French journals)
• Public Information Online (a recent resource of the week)

Plus 5 repositories from the University of Pittsburgh:

• Aphasiology Archive – A repository of papers presented at the annual Clinical Aphasiology Conference
• Archive of European Integration – Research materials and publications related to European integration and unification, such as official European Union documents
• Industry Studies Working Papers – Research on the topic of industry studies from a wide range of academic disciplines and from scholars who have made significant personal investments of time in learning about specific industries
• Minority Health and Health Equity Archive – Research materials and publications pertaining to minority health and health disparities research and policy
• PhilSci Archive – Collection of philosophy of science pre-prints to promote circulation of new work

All of these resources are included in our main Discover search, and they are included in our subject sub-sets of Discover as appropriate.

Links take you directly from the records in Discover to the item, and we have turned off find it @ liverpool links for these sites if it doesn't help you to get to the items.

To see Publication Information Online in action for example, search Discover for: open data white paper.

Reminder: Searching JSTOR? Now search DISCOVER too

New features in JSTOR make it easier to extend your search instantly to look for results from the full Library DISCOVER service.

As you search for something in JSTOR you will see that there is a link ready and waiting to take your search into DISCOVER ('Search... at DISCOVER'). There's also an additional link at the foot of the results page to carry your search forward:

Once you get to the 3rd page of results, you'll also be prompted to try your search in the Library's DISCOVER service:

The link to 'Try your search at DISCOVER' now also appears on the Advanced Search screen:

If you get no results in JSTOR then a much larger DISCOVER search box is displayed!

University of Liverpool Library offers access to over 1300 JSTOR journal titles

DISCOVER is the Library's unified, customised index of University of Liverpool Library resources, print and e-resources, books and journal articles - an easy yet powerful means of accessing what the Library has from one single search box.

It works the other way too. JSTOR content is in DISCOVER as well of course and you can find JSTOR content by selecting JSTOR as the 'Content Provider ' in the left-hand column of your results screen.

DISCOVER: better handling of question marks

It is now much easier to search DISCOVER for a title that ends in a question mark. For example book and article titles like:

Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
Appendicitis: is surgery the best option?

DISCOVER normally treats a question mark as a wildcard representing 'any single character,'. So searching for 'option?' would find 'options' but not 'option' itself. And that certainly isn't what you would want if you had pasted a title into DISCOVER to find the full-text online.

Now DISCOVER will ignore question marks at the end of a word, so the searches above will work as expected.

A question mark within a word will still mean 'any single character' so 'speciali?e' will find 'specialise' or 'specialize'.

And if you search EBSCOhost databases, a question mark is still interpreted as 'any single character' wther it is at the end of a word or not.

If you really want a question mark at the end of a word in a DISCOVER search to mean 'any single character' then there is a way to do it - see the FAQ.

DISCOVER Tip - What does it search? Updated!

It has been well over a year since we told you what DISCOVER searches, so compare the post below with that old post from September 2010. We'll draw attention to some of the key differences - resources in bold below weren't included back then.

When you search DISCOVER your main results can include hits from 61 different databases (was 41), plus 'more results' from another 17 external databases (in the column on the right). In time, those 17 additional databases will expand to 40 databases (see below).

The main search includes 5 multidisciplinary databases:

University of Liverpool Catalogue
University of Liverpool's Institutional Respository
EDS Foundation Index (a huge 'base index' of data supplied directly by publishers)
Academic Search Complete (EBSCO's largest multidisciplinary full-text database)
British Library Document Supply Centre Inside Serials & Conference Proceedings (i.e. Zetoc)

It includes the 3 main components of Web of Science:

Arts & Humanities Citation Index
Science Citation Index
Social Sciences Citation Index

It includes 11 JSTOR segments:

JSTOR Arts & Sciences I
JSTOR Arts & Sciences II
JSTOR Arts & Sciences III
JSTOR Arts & Sciences IV
JSTOR Arts & Sciences IX
JSTOR Arts & Sciences V
JSTOR Arts & Sciences VI
JSTOR Arts & Sciences VII
JSTOR Arts & Sciences VIII
JSTOR Ireland
JSTOR Life Sciences

(We don't have full-text access to Arts & Sciences V, VI, VIII or IX, and only the Biological Sciences subset of Life Sciences, but as we may have full-text access elsewhere we include these resources to ensure that you find out about these articles).

It includes 2 major repository resources:

arXiv - the particle physics, maths, computing pre-print archive
OAIster - a site that searches multiple insitutional and other repositories

It includes 3 publishers' full-text sites where we have full-text access to all/most/a lot of the content:

Oxford Scholarship Online
PsycARTICLES
ScienceDirect

It includes 9 more EBSCO full-text databases that we subscribe to:

Art & Architecture Complete
Business Source Premier (and Regional Business News)
Communication & Mass Media Complete
Computers & Applied Sciences Complete
Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source
Environment Complete
Humanities International Complete
MEDLINE with Full Text
SPORTDiscus with Full Text

It includes 15 indexing and abstracting databases that we subscribe to on EBSCOhost:

AMED - The Allied and Complementary Medicine Database
America: History & Life
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals
CINAHL Plus
EconLit
GeoRef
GeoRef In Process
Global Health
Global Health Archive
Historical Abstracts
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
Philosopher's Index
PsycINFO
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature

It includes 3 indexing and abstracting databases that EBSCO provide for free to their EBSCOhost customers:

GreenFILE
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
Teacher Reference Center

It includes 6 freely-available databases that have been intergrated into EBSCO Discovery Service with the agreement of their creators (these sometimes, but not always link to freely-available full-text):

Agricola
ECONIS
ERIC
Government Printing Office Catalog
Manuscriptorium Digital Library
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts

It includes 4 collections from RMIT Publishing. We do not subscribe to these collections but we sometimes have full-text access elsewhere and it is high quality content that we believe you should be able to discover:

Informit Business Collection
Informit Engineering Collection
Informit Health Collection
Informit Humanities & Social Sciences Collection

Our DISCOVER 'subject profiles' (Health & Life Science, Humanities, Science & Engineering, and Social Sciences) search the multidisciplinary databases, plus a subset of the subject specialist databases. Searching one of our 'subject profiles' won't find you anything that you won't find in our main DISCOVER search, but it can help to reduce 'noise' from irrelevant hits and make useful hits more prominent.

Similarly our main search's 'more results' area uses 2 multidisciplinary databases (it was 3 but Web of Science is now included in the main results):

Scopus
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

and 9 subject specialist databases:

ACM Digital Library
BIOSIS Previews
Cochrane Library
Compendex
IEEE Xplore
Literature Online Criticism
Literature Online Fulltext
MathSciNet
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

We have greatly reduced the number of 'more results' databases that we offer. We know that little use if made of this area so we think it makes sense to offer a brief list of key resources rather than a bewilderingly long list.

Our LibGuides list the full range of databases that we have for each subject, regardless of whether or not they are included in DISCOVER searches.