EEVL: Resident EEVL

EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. It is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) through the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

EEVL On-Line Bookstore

I have long had a fascination with the connections between the online and the print world. One of the earliest informative sources about the Web was the Internet magazine - a print publication, the first issue of which came as a supplement to What Personal Computer magazine. It was quickly followed by many other magazines about the Internet, some of which have survived to this day.

Some of the earliest Web directories were printed works. Then everyday magazines, journals and even newspapers began to have sections and regular features about the Web and its resources. Nowadays, business cards, poster adverts, T-shirts and even aeroplanes have Web addresses printed on them.

One of the Internet's biggest success stories is Amazon - a company which sells books (amongst other things). Not exactly in the same class, but relevant to this column and to EEVL's user community is EEVL's latest venture - an online bookstore. Thanks to an arrangement with Pearson Education, publishers of academic books, EEVL users can now benefit from large discounts on some excellent computing books from IT-minds.com. To get to the online bookstore, go to the Computing section of EEVL.

EEVL has worked with Pearson Education in the past, notably on the Free Book promotion, which gave away £7,500 worth of engineering, mathematics and computing books. Interesting titles which are on offer from the bookstore include: Inside XML, by Steve Holzner, UML Distilled - A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, by Kendall Scott and Martin Fowler, and PostgreSQL Essential Reference by Barry Stinson. Not all of the books are technical, though. Also available is How to use the Internet, by Rogers Cadenhead. These titles are available at prices less than at Amazon.

Resident EEVL?

I had intended to watch the film 'Resident Evil', find a thread in its plot, and then relate that thread to a subject I could write about in this EEVL column of Ariadne. Unfortunately, most of the people I spoke to who had seen the film advised against it. I am therefore left with rather a convoluted connection between the title of this article and its content. The connection is that, thanks to the work of the EEVL Development Officer, it is now possible for users to remain resident in one site, perhaps their own institutional pages, and search the EEVL cross-search.

In other words, you can now add the powerful EEVL search box to your own site.

If you add the search box shown above to your Web site, it will give your site more functionality, and will also help your visitors by enabling them to search EEVL, but at the same time easily return to your site. The search box could be inserted into library Web sites, Engineering, Mathematics or Computing departmental pages, or into subject pathfinder guides, or intranets, or any page that currently links to EEVL via a normal text link. Instructions are available which show how to copy the code into your HTML browser. You can try out the search box above to test what happens when you search for an engineering, mathematics or computing term.