A quick guide to getting the most from your Idox Information Service membership
The Idox Information Service The Idox Information Service is the most complete and accessible source of public sector knowledge in the UK. Your subscription offers all of the following and more. The most comprehensive library in the UK covering planning, regeneration, economic and social policy, practice and management issues Content focused on the evidence-base required by practitioners and policy makers Items on strategies and initiatives, projects, current and good practice, trends and new ideas, comment and opinion from a wide variety of sources (see diagram below) A weekly bulletin of abstracts covering the best material acquired that week Regular updates and alerts on specific topics of interest Over 160,000 abstracts in the database with around 200 new items added every week Over 60,000 books and reports and more than 400 journal titles Semi-published material from think-tanks and organisations The ability to search the catalogue online and download full-text items to your desktop (99.5% of post-2000 journal articles are available electronically) Access to qualified Research Officers for help in searching for the right content Same day dispatch of hard-copy books and documents
Current awareness services One of the key aspects of the service is our Weekly Bulletin. The Bulletin is issued by email each week, usually on a Wednesday, and contains around 50 carefully selected abstracts of new documents, reports and articles of interest to our members. Bulletin abstracts contain hyperlinks to documents published on the web, so that items which look useful can be viewed online instantly. The Bulletin is a great way to keep up to date with policy, practice and current thinking in your area. To subscribe, simply email us to be added to the mailing list. You can also sign up to receive Topic Updates from us every fortnight. Each Topic Update lists all new items relating to that particular topic, and there are 30 topics to choose from. Topic Update abstracts also provide hyperlinks to documents published on the web, making it easy for you to stay in touch with the very latest developments in your fields of interest. To subscribe to as many of our Topic Updates as you wish, simply email us to be added to the mailing list or register on the web when you next log in to the Idox Information Service online library portal. Our Topic Updates are listed below. Architecture and design Business development Children and young people Community development Crime Economic development Education (pre 16) Employment Energy Environment Equality Health Housing ICT Information management Learning and skills Management Partnership working Property development Public finance Rural development Scottish planning appeals* Social exclusion Social services Sustainable development Tourism and leisure Town and country planning Transport Urban regeneration Waste *Monthly Our new email Alerts service allows you to refine the information you receive even further, which is great if you re looking for content on a particular topic or related to a specific organisation. Simply save your search terms online and you ll receive emails with lists of records that match your criteria whenever you want them. Alerts can be sent to you either weekly, fortnightly, monthly or on demand. Click on this link to learn more about our services
Accessing the library database There are two easy ways to access the library database. One of our Research Officers can carry out a search for you, or you can search at any time yourself by using our online library portal. This is the webenabled version of our database, and it includes the full-text of most items. Online searching First you must register for a username and password on the website. This is really easy to do. Go to http://informationservice.idoxgroup.com and click Register here underneath the log in boxes, then follow the simple instructions provided onscreen. Once registered, you can carry out your own searches of the online database and you can also read the full text of recent material there. Alternatively, you can request that the document be emailed to you. There are searching guidelines on the website to help you, and you can alternate between basic and advanced searching to suit your information requirements. The advanced search facility allows you to combine search terms in different fields, such as author, title, publisher, abstract, or keywords. The online database is available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Research Officer assisted searching Simply call us on 0141 574 1920, 09:00-17:00 Monday-Friday, to speak to one of our staff. Alternatively you can also request a search by completing a form on our website or sending us an email. Tell the Research Officer the specific item required, or the issue, theme or topic of interest to you and what type of material you think might be useful. We understand that you might not be certain of what you re looking for, so we use our skills and knowledge of the database to help you find exactly what you need. Your search results (a list of relevant abstracts from the database) will be emailed or faxed back to you within one working day, but usually within a few hours of the request. You can then select to obtain copies of the items that look most relevant or, if we ve not quite found what you re looking for, request another search of the database from us. We re always happy to help. Requesting full text items Ordering of items in full text is very easy to do through the website. As you identify relevant items you can mark them of your Library basket then place the order at the end of your session. You will receive an email confirmation of all your orders. We are able, through licensing agreements with the Copyright Licensing Agency, to provide full text of all the recent journal articles for a month on the site to download. Even after this period you can ask for the article to be emailed to you automatically. You may however prefer to use the document request form which is sent out with each weekly Bulletin, Topic Updates and search results. Simply complete the form with the reference numbers of each required abstract, then email us or fax the form over to our office. Journal articles, when supplied through the library, are provided as digital copies for you to print. Other items are loaned out for four weeks two if the item is in heavy demand. Requested items will usually be sent out within 24-36 hours, and we ll let you know if there is a waiting list for the item. Items out on loan can be renewed by telephone.
Examples of recent enquiries Factors affecting participation in higher education Single Outcome Agreements Research methodologies Management of adult services Quality in social work services Biometric technology and the delivery of public services The impact of globalisation on regions in Europe The economic downturn and commercial property markets Land value capture Links between drugs and crime Environmental planning Contact us Idox Information Services 7 th Floor 95 Bothwell Street Glasgow G2 7HX W: http://informationservice.idoxgroup.com E: iu@idoxgroup.com T: 0141 574 1920 Glasgow City Council is pleased to confirm that we have been a long-term user and supporter of the Idox service for over fifteen years. It gives staff access to a wide range of information and, through the succinct weekly bulletins, keeps them up-to-date across many areas that are of direct relevance to the City Council Anne Connolly, Strategic Adviser to Chief Executive, Glasgow City Council One of the main benefits for us is access to a very large number of practitioner and academic journal which it would be very costly to access directly Julia Bennett, Acting Head of Strategy and Development Unit, Local Government and Development Idox News Service Providing access to a central digital database of over 100 regional and national newspapers, the Idox News Service is a new user-friendly, efficient and cost-effective media research tool. It is a one-stop shop for users to research news articles by searching the database, which contains over 9 million articles from over 100 UK newspapers, covering 2006 onwards. The Idox News Service allows you to: Find information on your organisation in the news media Search using simple keywords by newspaper, date, or author Access content not available online anywhere else (a great deal of newspaper stories are not freely published on the web) View and download pdf files of articles in the format they were originally published Set up email alerts on any topic you choose Pay only for the articles you view or download - searching is free once you are registered Access is available on a pay-as-you-go basis, starting from as little as 150 (plus VAT). http://www.idoxnewsservice.com