Welcome to FSTA | IFIS

Hello! My name is Angela Ball, and I am the Customer Relations Manager. I’ve been with IFIS for almost 20 years, and throughout that time, I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with our customers. Some of them, I’m delighted to say, I’ve known for nearly as long as I’ve been here!

My role is to ensure you get the most value from your subscription. I’m here to answer your questions; provide training for you, your colleagues, faculty, and students; help set up searches and alerts; guide you through our suite of complementary services and resources; and assist with any platform or subscription-related inquiries.

On a personal note, I’m married with one grown-up son, a lively Border Collie and two cats. I’m a big movie fan (our dog, Chief Brody, is named after the lead character in Jaws) and love attending Comic Conventions.

Food is another passion of mine—especially Cuban and Indian cuisine. Recently, I’ve adapted to a gluten-free diet after being diagnosed with Coeliac Disease. It’s been an adjustment, especially when dining out, but I’m learning to navigate it.

Now that you know a little about me, I look forward to getting to know you! I’ll be in touch soon, but in the meantime, feel free to reach out if there’s anything I can do to help.

Warm regards,
Angela

Share interactive training and self-certification with one simple url

Click the button for your platform to roll out interactive platform-specific training designed by an experienced university research librarian.

Empower library users to use FSTA confidently and effectively with a combination of transferable research skills, FSTA training, interactive practical exercises throughout, and a final assessment with automated self-certification.

Request the EBSCO training modules

Request the Ovid training modules

Request the Web of Science training modules

Advancing knowledge together: Free expert resources for IFIS database subscribers

We are a not-for-profit educational charity established in 1968. By subscribing to an IFIS database, you’re helping us continue the important work we do to provide support for people working, studying and researching in food science, health and nutrition.

We are a small group of dedicated people with a passion for food and a will to ensure that trusted, high-quality content in this field is easily discoverable – so your support means an awful lot.

As an IFIS customer, you have access to a variety of complimentary services included with your subscription. We want to ensure you have the best possible experience throughout your journey with us. As such, we’ve developed a range of extra tools and resources just for our user community. Here’s a list of what we offer, all free of charge to our subscribers:

Bespoke reports on topics, trends – for example, has there been an increase or decrease in research over recent years? What innovation trends does the published research show us? Which companies are registering patents in these areas?
Read an example report Oats: Unlocking Gut Health and Holistic Wellness.
Bespoke search string alerts - send us your question and we can create a detailed search string to meet your research needs by capturing all relevant areas, saving you time and helping you to ensure accuracy.
Recorded training video snippets to share - we can create short videos aligned with your course modules to show your students how to search the FSTA database and find the most relevant results.
Customised subscription-based training with tailored demonstrations designed to enhance your research or coursework, helping you maximise the value of your IFIS database.
For those in the food industry we can create a tailored webinar on how to do competitive mapping using patents, if you’re in academia and want to help your students understand patents, we can record a video for you too!
Do you understand the risks of predatory journals? We provide our customers with educational webinars on predatory publishing - gain a clear understanding of predatory publishing and take away useful practical tips.
Best practice training webinars - explore the challenges to searching for scientific information in the sciences of food and health. We outline the best practices on how to understand and undertake effective searching for literature reviews.

To arrange any of these, please email Angela as your direct contact here at IFIS.

And if there is anything you feel you need that we don’t offer in the list above, get in touch and make a suggestion – we are here to help and would love to understand even more about your needs, challenges, and how we can support you even further!

signpost-icon

Expand Your Guides

Integrate FSTA into subject guides for all food-related courses and research projects. Our subject pdfs are a great tool to help identify these.

meeting-icon

Generate Buzz

Highlight FSTA as a valuable tool for the research and teaching at your next departmental meeting.

webinar-icon

Expert Insight

Schedule a free tailored webinar showcasing FSTA's capabilities. We can host or hold jointly with your platform provider. To arrange, email Angela.