You may be familiar with the phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, but there is such a thing as a free resource. Your Alumni Library Online service provides a wide range of databases that unlock access to many full-text articles and reports. But in addition to that, our library staff have also put together an impressive range of top quality websites providing full-text material that are well worth you taking a look at.
You will find these in the Useful Websites section of your Alumni Library Online service in the Alumni Portal.
What’s included?
The Useful Websites area is divided into four sections. Let’s look at each in turn.
1. Subject-Specific resources
This section is split into the areas of Aerospace/Engineering, Biosciences, Defence, Energy, Environment and Water, Forensics, Management/Social sciences, and Physics, Mathematics and Computing.
Here are just a few examples of the many good websites included:
- Civil Aviation Authority publications
- Defense Technical Information Centre
- NATO STO reports
- BioMed Central
- Toxnet
- RAND papers
- Digest of UK energy statistics
- Oil & Gas UK
- Foundation for Water Research
- International Water Association
- Crime Scene Investigator Network
- Forensic Focus
- Academy of Management Online
- EconBiz
- arXiv eprints server
- Computing Research Repository.
2. General resources
Check out this section if you’re interested in sources of Annual reports, Audio and video, Country information, eBooks, eJournals, Images, Maps, News services, Patents, Standards, Statistics and Theses.
A few examples of the genuine treasures you’ll find in this section are:
- UK Companies House
- British Library Archival Sound Recordings and Free Music Archive for audio files
- BBC Country Profiles and CIA World Factbook for Country information
- Directory of Open Access Books and Hathi Trust Digital Library for free e-books
- Directory of Open Access Journals, Public Library of Science and Unpaywall for free e-journals
- Pixabay and Unsplash for copyright-free images you can use in presentations and publications
- Streetmap
- Pressreader (for news items)
- EThOS – Electronic Thesis Online Service and Open Access Theses and Dissertations
- Espacenet, US patent database and EverySpec.com for patents and standards
- Eurostat, Office of National Statistics and Zanran for statistical data.
3. Keeping up to date
This section provides a number of free tools that will keep you up to date in your field of expertise by alerting to you to what is being published in relevant academic and professional journals. They are multi-disciplinary unless otherwise stated:
- JournalTOCs
- MyJournals.org (Popular science journals)
- CiteULike Current Issues
- Ebling Library (Biomedical and health science journals)
4. Mendeley – free Reference Management Software
If you’re still conducting research, publishing articles, or just like to keep your professional reading organised, then you may well find our information on Mendeley useful.
Mendeley is reference management software that allows you to create your own library of references, as well as storing the PDF files if you have them. As well as doing all the things you’d expect of reference management software, it has the following features:
- It is an academic collaboration network with over 3 million researchers you can reach out to. You can create a profile showcasing your publications and interests.
- You can set up groups with your peers to collaborate on projects.
- There is a searchable crowdsourced database of 400 million papers - if you find an open access (free) version of a paper you can save it into your Mendeley library with a single click.
- It includes a PDF viewer to allow you to read and annotate your papers.
- It works on all major platforms and browsers, as well as mobile devices, so you can access your library from anywhere, synchronising across devices with a single click.
How much does it cost? Mendeley is free! Although there are paid-for options, the free version is so full of features it is unlikely that you’ll need to pay.
Any questions about the ALO service?
Just ask us!
Also, do let us know if you have any suggestions for websites you would like us to add to the Aumni Library Online.