The top twenty most viewed papers for November are now available from the Spiral site.

For more information on Spiral, Imperial College’s digital repository, please visit the Spiral Repository page on the library website, or see the Spiral FAQ.

There are new Chemistry books available in the library, just in time for reading over Christmas! Please click on the icon below to view the list.

Don’t forget to check the loan arrangements and vacation opening hours too.

The Central Library offers extended loan periods on books over the Christmas vacation. You can see the full list on the library website.

The following special arrangements will apply at the Central Library:

• From Saturday 12 December, short and standard loans will be issued on request to Monday 11 January to all borrowers, providing there are still 4 copies in the library.
• From 09.00 on Friday 18 December, core texts will be issued to 11.00 on Monday 4 January.

Please ask if you want any books issued for the vacation, otherwise the usual loan periods will apply.

You can also check the Christmas Vacation opening hours on the Library website.

The library survey is still underway, and we’d love to hear your views! You have until Monday 30th November to fill in the survey and be in with a chance of winning a £50 Amazon voucher. So far we’ve had 134 responses from Chemistry students, which is great, but we’d like to get more!

There’s more information about the survey on the library website, or you can just go straight to the survey itself.

As of November 17th 2009, new SciFinder enhancements are available via your web browser. Reflecting CAS’ commitment to continuous improvement of SciFinder performance, this release includes several performance and usability enhancements, such as:

• Improved navigation and search speed for faster retrieval of answers
• Increased ease-of-use when switching between reaction and substance structure search types within the drawing editor
• Improved access to the structure drawing editor, via Java 1.5 or earlier versions*

If you have any questions, please contact CAS at help@cas.org

*Java versions prior to 1.6 are no longer supported by Sun Microsystems or CAS.

Complete the 2009 Library Survey now!

The library wants to know what you think about our services and how you use them. Do you love e-books or want more books on the shelves? Is it easy to find what you want? Is the library too noisy or too quiet?

Tell us what you think by completing our survey – it only takes five minutes of your time and you could win one of three £50 Amazon vouchers in our prize draw!

Take the survey now at – http://www.imperial.ac.uk/library/survey

The survey closes on Monday 30 November so don’t wait too long!

We’ll be publishing the results of the survey in early 2010 and what you say will help inform us how we can improve services for you.

Paper copies of the survey are available on request.

There’s a new poll on the library website. This time, we’d like to know what you think of ebooks. The poll is located on the right hand side of the page. It only takes a second to vote, so please tell us what you think!

You can see results of previous library polls here.

The latest update of the Gmelin database, 2009/03, was made available
on Friday 23rd October.

Statistics for the new Gmelin database are as follows:

Number of compounds: 2,710,511
Number of citations: 1,408,491
Number of reactions: 2,060,290

There are no changes to the DST files from the previous version, 2009/02.

ISI Web of Knowledge has some new tools that may be of interest. The tools allow you to conduct a search across the ISI Web of Knowledge and easily perform an ‘All Databases search’.

1. Web Browser search extension

The search extension allows you to easily perform an ‘All Databases search’ directly from your browser’s search bar.

(Please note that only Firefox 2 and above and IE 7 and above are supported.)

Internet Explorer at: http://isiwebofknowledge.com/webtools/browsersearch/

Firefox at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11624

2. The ISI Web of Knowledge Widget for your Desktop

The widget is an icon that you can download directly your desktop to perform a search of ISI Web of Knowledge. Search terms can be entered directly into the box. You can download the widget here: http://wokinfo.com/webtools/widget/

If you have any problems using these tools or widgets, please contact the Mimas ISI Web of Knowledge helpdesk at: wok@mimas.ac.uk.