February 5, 2018, by Katherine Beers

NUsearch February upgrade

Our latest upgrade of NUsearch, the online library discovery tool, will be available from Monday 5 February.

The previous upgrade in November contained many new features, focusing on eJournal searching and quicker access to full text results. Our theme for this February is the integration of Nottingham ePrints, also known as the Open Access research outputs from the University of Nottingham. These changes bring us closer to our vision for NUsearch as a one stop search and discovery tool. We are very proud to showcase over 25,000 fantastic research outputs from our own institution.

The Nottingham research outputs collection

Nottingham ePrints is now available within NUsearch, this growing collection contains the following research outputs:

• ePrints of published research, such as peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, books and book chapters etc.
• eTheses submitted for University of Nottingham research degrees
• eDissertations submitted as part of University of Nottingham taught courses (full text is only accessible to logged-in UoN users).

By including Nottingham research, NUsearch users will gain access to resources which we might not have available elsewhere in our subscriptions, or earlier than the publisher version. You can find out more about the University’s Open Access policy here.

Searching the collection

To find items from the collection use the normal All Collections search option. Any relevant items found will appear alongside other results.

If you want to filter your results to show only Nottingham research outputs you can use the following Collection filters:

• Nottingham ePrints
• Nottingham eTheses
• Nottingham eDissertations

Filtering results by Nottingham ePrints, eTheses and eDissertations collection filters

To narrow your search to this collection, there is a new Research outputs search available. It is a great way to explore Nottingham research. The following two screen shots show you the options of how to do this:

Blank search box showing drop down menu to select “Research outputs” search

On typing search terms shows option to select “Research outputs” search

Your search results

There are some really useful options available to find out more about the research output record. Click on the full view and you will see extra information including:

• Creative Commons licence – if provided under a CC licence it will indicate what type with a clickable link though to the CC licence terms.
• Description – abstract of the work.
• Citation – which includes clickable green ORCID ids for authors. These will take you to the author’s ORCID page where you can see other publications by them. To find out more about ORCIDs see the ORCID website.
• Try these links – in the case of published works you will often find additional links to the published version which may differ from the version available in the research archive. These include the publisher URL and DOI link.

Accessing full text

To access the full text article click on the Full text available online link in green as shown below:

Accessing full text

You will be taken into the Nottingham ePrints research archive. In most cases you will be able to download a full text version.

The full text link within ePrints

Navigating around ePrints

• Occasionally you may find temporary access restrictions on some of the records, these will prevent you from downloading the full version.
• Sometimes the version in ePrints is different from the published version. There is usually a publisher link or DOI, we don’t guarantee free access to all published versions
• eDissertations require a university username for access
• To access some of our latest eTheses you may need to click on the blue Request Thesis button. We will send you an email once access is granted.

Other NUsearch improvements and enhancements

You asked us to extend the session timeout for signed in-users, so we’ve now changed sessions from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Remember to log out if on a public PC and don’t forget you can save important searches by using the Pin symbol.

The controlled vocabulary service, first introduced in August, has now been rolled out across all collections. This will help expand your search results by recommending additional search terms, eg. if you search for adhd, NUsearch will return results that include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Helpful links now available in the full record of a print item

A missing book report form

We’ve made it easier to report if a book is missing from the library, click on the full title record and then the link shown below. Completing the online form will ensure that we will be notified straight away and can start to look for missing books more quickly.

Missing book form link

Link to services for part-time and distance learners 

Also available from the full title record, we’ve added a link for part-time or distance learner students so that they can more easily make a scan or postal loan request.

Link for print,copy, scan or postal loans for part-time or distance learners

To see the full NUsearch upgrade notes for February, please use this link.

We will continue to improve NUsearch and we’d really like to hear any feedback you have, please email us with your views.

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