Need your inter-library loan material quickly?

University staff and postgraduate researchers can now submit requests for books and documents held outside the University Library electronically. From the Library tab in MUSE, click on the myInterLibrary requests link, complete the web form and press ‘send’. We’ll let you know as soon as your item becomes available.

If you’re an undergraduate or postgraduate on a taught course you can continue to make your request using the paper forms, and you should obtain an authorisation voucher from your department.

This is a three-month trial and feedback would be very welcome. Your comments can be emailed to library@sheffield.ac.uk

More information about the service can be found at http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/services/ill2.html

Magnificent Maps

Just a reminder about the marvellous Magnificent Maps exhibition running at the British Library St Pancras until 19 September 2010. If you haven't had a chance to visit it yet, do try to - it's free!  The website supports the exhibition and in addition to visitor information it also has some great online features. These include interactive images of some historic maps including the Psalter world map and the Fra Mauro map with background information on their content and importance.

If you missed the recent BBC series The Beauty of Maps the BBC website has some video highlights of the maps featured and a link to Maptube,  a free resource for viewing, sharing, mixing and mashing maps online, created by UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.

East Asia Image Collections

The East Asia Image Collections is an open-access archive of digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, and slides of colonial Taiwan (1900-1945) and occupied Japan (1947-52).

The site forms part of the Lafayette College Digital Library. It provides free access to over 1,000 images from the Skillman Library Special Collections.  Of key importance to historians are the Michael Lewis Taiwan postcards - 517 colonial-era (1895-1945) postcards from Japanese governed Taiwan, colonial era photographic albums which contain examples of propaganda promoting the benefits of Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan in 1938. Images show daily life and political events. The site may be searched or browsed. Copyright information is provided.

eBook Reader Pilot

We’re currently evaluating the potential use of ebook readers within the Library and are running a trial service from July to November 2010. An Amazon Kindle is available for you to try at Western Bank Library or a Sony Pocket Edition Reader is available at the Information Commons.

Tell us what you think of our ebook readers and you could win your own Kindle or Sony Reader! For more information about the pilot see the Library website.

Lies, damn lies and statistics?

If you've ever doubted the truth of what you read in the papers (and who hasn't?) the Straight Statistics blog is for you.  Set up by journalists and statisticians from pressure group Straight Statistics,  its aim is to expose and correct some of the worst examples of  sloppy or garbled use of statistics.  Some of the examples are hilarious and make for a very entertaining and illuminating read.  You'll find here the stats behind Gordon Brown's infamous encounter with Gillian Duffy, the true cost of public sector pensions, and whether you'll really catch Legionnaire's Disease if you don't put screenwash in your car windscreen washer.

For anyone interested in this topic and in the kind of scare stories which the media relish so much, may I also recommend Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science.

Eavesdropping on the past

Today sees the launch of the John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera, the product of a unique partnership between JISC’s  Digitisation Programme, the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and ProQuest to conserve, catalogue and digitise more than 65,000 items drawn from the collection.

The material selected for conservation, cataloguing and digitisation comprises a wide array of different types of printed document, including posters and handbills for theatrical and non-theatrical entertainments, broadsides relating to murders and executions, book and journal prospectuses, popular topographical prints, and a wealth of different kinds of printed advertising material. The resulting online collection will form an invaluable resource for researchers interested in the histories of consumption, leisure, gender, popular culture, commerce, technology, crime, and a host of other areas. With each item presented as a full-colour, high-resolution facsimile, the John Johnson Collection will also be indispensable for researchers studying the development of printing and visual culture in modern Britain.

More information and a short video about the project can be found at JISC's website.

Lending Services Survey

Many thanks to everyone who took part in our lending service survey. We received over 1100 responses in total from the online and paper survey! We're looking at the feedback now and will get back to you after we've analysed your comments.