The Library has recently subscribed to LexisNexis Practical Guidance, a research tool that offers modules in a range of practice areas. Use this resource to discover practice-related checklists, legislation, case law and commentary. As the name suggests, this resource also offers practioner guidance throughout.

To explore LexisNexis Practical Guidance, click on the relevant practice area appearing on the top of the screen, and then browse to the relevant topic or use the search bar appearing on the right-hand side of the screen.

Knovel provides access to essential reference works and databases from leading publishers and professional societies covering the fields of engineering, chemistry and the life sciences. The collection is continually expanding.

Knovel's new interactive graphs allow you to plot curves from an equation, digitize charts, and plot and compare several curves from individual points. All five Knovel Graphs, (1) Equation Plotter, (2) Graph Digitizer, (3) Graph Plotter, (4) Phase Diagram Viewer and (5) Parameterized Graph have been reprogrammed with scalable resolution so the graphs can be resized. There is a quick How-to-Use guide available on the interface.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has announced that Inspec, its database indexing science and engineering research, has reached 13 million records. Inspec adds approximately 700,000 new records each year, indexing scientific literature in electrical engineering, electronics, physics and information technology from 1896.

Inspec on the Engineering Village platform enables researchers to drill down search results using Inspec controlled terms, Uncontrolled terms and Inspec classification codes. The Inspec Thesaurus identifies controlled vocabulary terms and finds synonyms and related terms.

Are you a new RHD or researcher? Not sure which databases to search in your area? Come to an advanced database workshop:

• Workshop: Finding research information: the next level (engineering & sciences)
• Date: Tuesday 16 October 2012, 9.30 - 11.00am
• Where: eZones, Level 2, Biological Sciences Library (Building 94)

Book online

The workshop will cover:

• Web of Science and Scopus - multidisciplinary databases allowing useful manipulation of results, setting up alerts
• PubMed - biomedical sciences
• SciFinder and Reaxys - chemical and biochemical information

Subject Guides provide access to other relevant databases in your area. Contact your Librarian for assistance.

This video animation from RMIT is aimed at first year undergraduate university students but also has applications for secondary school students.

It can be viewed via Youtube or Vimeo

In Scopus, ScienceDirect or SciVerse there is an Applications link on the top menu bar. Clicking on the SciVerse Applications Gallery will take you to several pages of mainly free apps which can be downloaded to enhance your search results. Some example apps are:

• MostDownloaded - displays the most downloaded articles from the last 3 months from the journal of the article you are viewing.
• TopReviews - uses your search terms to find the most relevant review articles in Scopus.
• Wordle - lets you create a Wordle word cloud out of the titles of the last 100 papers from any author in Scopus.
• Co-Author Network - provides a visual representation of an author's network of top co-authors.
• Send to Kindle - send journal articles wirelessly to your Amazon Kindle e-reader.

The search results screen provide options to manage, add applications and find help.