Update on IBSS transfer to EBSCO for UK community

As announced earlier this year IBSS will be appointing EBSCO as its service provider for the UK user community from 1 August 2008. EBSCO has contacted all relevant institutions to arrange access to IBSS and to advise them about the new IBSS login links. Further information about the transfer is given below.

• Transition timetable
• Reminders for librarians
• IBSS support materials
• EBSCO developments and support

Transition timetable

The timetable for the transfer is as follows:

·         1 June to 31 July 2008 - Dual access to IBSS is available via both Ovid and EBSCO, so that individual institutions can decide when they wish to transfer.

·         31 July 2008 - Final switch-off date of the IBSS via Ovid service for institutions using IBSS free of charge.

Reminders for librarians

Listed below are just a few reminders about updating information about IBSS via EBSCO:

·   Links from your library website to IBSS will need to be updated using the new URL/login details given to you by EBSCO.

·   You may need to update  links to IBSS support materials  and to EBSCO user guides where relevant.

·   You can use our online form to order copies of IBSS printed guides and promotional materials (see list below).

·   Please discard old copies of IBSS user guides and promotional material to avoid confusion.

IBSS support materials

Updated versions of the following IBSS materials will be available as shown below:

• Highlighted in yellow available now

• Highlighted in grey available in mid August

EBSCO developments and support

New EBSCOhost 2.0

To coincide with the transfer of IBSS to the EBSCO platform EBSCO are also launching their new revised Interface that will be available for access from 1 June 2008.

EBSCO demonstrations

To arrange a demonstration of IBSS on the new platform please take the opportunity to contact Sally Clark (details below).

EBSCO support

Sally Clark sclark1@ebsco.com will be happy to help with any queries, including updating access details, login links, full text and portal linking, and usage statistics as well as arranging an appointment for a live demonstration.

If you require any non-technical advice about the transfer to EBSCO please email IBSS, j.l.ferguson@lse.ac.uk 

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A new IBSS blog was launched in early June 2008 and is available at http://ibssblog.wordpress.com . The purpose of the blog is to provide a place where social scientists can examine topical issues and explore how material available on IBSS can deepen understanding of these issues. The blog also aims to highlight some of IBSS's hidden treasures, thus showing users how to get more out of using the database.

The blog currently includes posts on the economic crisis, on food, sex and gender, and the IBSS thesaurus.

Our main blog authors will be the IBSS editors, who all specialise in one social science subject and several languages. We will also welcome contributions from guest authors, for example from members of the IBSS Steering Committee.

IBSS would welcome comments on the blog, particularly from anyone involved in the social sciences, including undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, academics and librarians. You may wish to comment on posts, share information about resources you've found useful, or ask questions about searching. Blog visitors can also suggest a topic to be covered in the future or volunteer to be a guest author.

Why not take a look at the IBSS blog, subscribe to our RSS feed and recommend the blog to colleagues or to library users?

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New journals included in IBSS

Since October 2007, IBSS has received a large number of suggestions for titles to be included in the database. As a result of a full evaluation we have recently taken on 15 new journals for indexing. The recent titles accepted for indexing are:

• Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia

• African journal of business ethics

• Agression and violent behavior

• Antipoda

• Atlantic economic journal

• Comparative American studies

• Cuadernos de información y comunicación

• East Asia: an international quarterly

• Human rights review

• International journal of transitional justice

• Journal of economic policy reform

• Journal of modern Chinese history

• Journal of Vietnamese studies

• Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques

• Sur: International journal on human rights

IBSS conducts journal evaluations twice a year based on suggestions from journal editors and publishers and from members of the IBSS Editorial Advisory Board. IBSS now indexes well over 2,800 journals on a regular basis. For more information on the evaluation process please click here.

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IBSS thesaurus

A thesaurus for the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) was introduced in early 2008. This is an important development for IBSS and will benefit users by enabling them to explore the range of keywords used to index IBSS records relating to their subject area. It will also enable them to use alternative search terms to retrieve all relevant information more effectively.

IBSS keywords are used to index biographical records and are listed in the Subject Terms field of the online database (see sample record) This is the first time the IBSS keywords have been incorporated into a browsable online thesaurus.

The screen shot below shows how the thesaurus can be used to unpack IBSS’s subject term “international law” – showing its broader, narrower and related terms.

The IBSS geographic thesaurus is also now available, within the thesaurus. This can make searching for geographic regions much simpler and more thorough. For example, if you are looking for articles focussing on the Southern African region, the thesaurus can show you that the following options are available:

The IBSS index terms originally came from four volumes of the Thematic List of Descriptors, covering social and cultural anthropology, economics, political science and sociology, which were prepared by the International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation and published by Routledge in 1989. This list, in turn, drew upon other sources such as the Unesco Thesaurus (Unesco), the Thesaurus for Information Processing in Sociology (ICSSD, Maison des sciences de l’homme), Macrothesaurus (OECD, UNO) Population Multilingual Thesaurus (CICRED), International Thesaurus on Cultural Development (Unesco), EUDISED Multilingual Thesaurus (Council of Europe) and other specialist thesauri. The list used by the IBSS editorial office has been expanded and adapted since IBSS came to the LSE in 1989, and IBSS continues to add controlled subject terms in order to keep up with changes in social science terminology. Currently IBSS has around 8,000 controlled subject terms and around 500 geographic terms. Most terms are linked in the thesaurus as smaller, larger, and related terms.

JISC ADAT                       

IBSS hits new productivity peak

Over the past twelve months, between April 2007 and March 2008, the team of eight IBSS editorial assistants indexed 128,427 records. This total is over 6,800 records more than for the same period in 2006-2007. The total includes over 11,000 new monograph records, taken from the catalogue of the Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and 17,000 chapter records.

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Who's Who

Profile of Debra Hiom, a member of the IBSS Steering Committee

Debra Hiom manages the Social Science section of the national Intute Internet Service http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/ and has been a member of the IBSS Steering Committee since 2004, with interests in the content and service provision of IBSS.

Intute is a free Internet service aimed at the UK HE community.  With millions of resources available over the Internet, issues of trust, quality, and search skills are very real and significant concerns - particularly in a learning context.  The Intute service is a consortium of seven UK universities working in partnership with a host of academic institutions to provide the subject and technical expertise to select and evaluate resources suitable for use for education.  As Debra says, in this context “IBSS is both a key resource for users within the Intute database as well as a source of information for the subject editors of Intute: Social Sciences.”

Debra has a first degree in Humanities and an MSc in Information Management.  She has been involved in Internet research since 1992, with special interests in the area of networked resource discovery and digital libraries.  She teaches on the MSc Course on Information and Library Management at the University of the West of England and has written extensively about the Internet, including the publications Online Information Services in the Social Sciences and the Library and Information Professionals Internet Companion.

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Forthcoming events

30 Jun to 3 July 2008

ESRC Research Methods Festival at St Catherine's College, Oxford. IBSS will be giving a presentation on 1 July at 9.15 (Session 17); and will have an exhibition stand throughout the Festival.

24 to 25 July 2008

ALISS conference "Supporting Researchers in the Social Sciences" at Queen's University Belfast. IBSS will be giving a presentation.

15 to 19 October 2008

Frankfurt Book Fair - IBSS will have an exhibition stand in Hall 4.2

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Further information

For further information email: ibss@lse.ac.uk

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences

London School of Economics and Political Science

Library, 10 Portugal Street, London WC2A 2HD

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