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CONNECTIONS: The VDOT Library E-Newsletter

Tell a Friend: VDOT Now Subscribes to the ICE Virtual Library!

by Ken Winter on 2019-08-19T14:58:04-04:00 in Construction, Engineering, Materials, Multimodal, Pavements, Research, Safety & Security, Structures | 0 Comments

Screen shot of the ICE Virtual Library home page.Produced by the Institution of Civil Engineering, the ICE Virtual Library contains more than 37,000 full-text journal articles. Search using the handy search box or follow the red arrow above to browse 40 peer-reviewed journals. 

 

Great news for engineers and researchers!  

 

We got so much positive feedback from users when we did a trial of the ICE Virtual Library database back in March that we have added it as VDOT's latest online journal subscription.

 

In case you missed the trial, we invited VDOT employees from all districts to explore access to 40 peer-reviewed journals in the database, which contains 37,000 full-text articles in subject areas like: construction, civil engineering, structures, materials, environmental science, urban planning, research and transportation history.  

 

Here's a complete list of the journals in the trial. 

 

During the 30-day trial we recorded 222 article downloads, primarily from VDOT engineers, 65 of whom completed our user-satisfaction survey. Several respondents indicated that they were able to advance current projects or research topics through the trial and a majority of all respondents recommended we consider a subscription.  

 

However, one thing that threw a lot of our testers off is the fact that we were ONLY testing access to 40 core journals in the ICE system, which also contains a several additional journals, some deep backfiles (going back to 1836) and 1,500 eBook chapters. 

 

Long story short, when some users typed in a search term they got results for resources that were indexed in ICE, but not available in our trial. Why not test all resources? 

 

We omitted a few journals with very high price tags and limited utility at VDOT.  We opted not to test access to any of the eBooks because we already have access to many of those through VDOT's subscription to the database Knovel.  Anything we don't have we can get you for free!  Simply use this Document Delivery Request Form.

 

But this does raise a a legitimate question about using the ICE database: How will you know if full-text is available for the item you want?  

 

Simple. If you click on an article and the words "Full Text" or "PDF" do not appear underneath it, the content is not a part of VDOT's subscription.  Visually, it may be easier to simply look for one of these three icons.

 

You'll want to look for one of these icons next to an article as a cue that you can read, print or save the full text: 
 

Key to full-text items in the ICE Virtual Library trial.

 

To recap, the ICE Virtual Library database is open for unlimited access by all VDOT employees right now, so we encourage you to do the following: 

 

1. Check out the ICE Virtual Library for free full-text access to more than 37,000 articles on civil engineering, structures, construction and more.

2. Bookmark the site or bookmark the library's Web page so you know how to get back next time you need a resource.

3. Tell a friend at VDOT who might not know that they can access the database too! 

 

Questions?  Contact the library at any time...

 

Ken Winter
(434) 962-8979
VDOT Research Library


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