Tuesday 25 November 2008

Sunday Opening and Christmas closure


Its coming up to that time of year again folks and as the festive season is approaching, so too is the exam season.

To facilitate students' exam preparation, Aungier St and Dame St libraries will be open on the following Sundays from 11am - 5pm;

  • Sunday December 7th
  • Sunday December 14th
  • Sunday January 4th
We will close for the Christmas holidays at 12.30pm on December 23rd and open again on January 5th.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Trial access to Computers and Applied Sciences Complete



The Library Now has Trial access to

Computers and Applied Sciences Complete

Access is available through the EBSCOhost database platform.

Computers and Applied Sciences Complete provides access to 730 full text publications covering computing theory and systems, electrical engineering and new technology.
Publications available on CASC include; AI Communications, Advances in Multimedia, Broadcast Engineering, Computational Intelligence and Communications news.
This database is a great resource for students interested in computing, database and systems design and engineering, communications and new media technology.

Our access to this trial will run until the end of the year, but we are considering adding it to our EBSCO database package in 2009. So, if you use CASC and like it, let us know as we base our decisions to purchase new resources on student and staff usage and feedback.

You can access CASC through the 'search all resources' link on the library homepage, but you may not be able to search CASC using WebFeat for a day or two yet. To access CASC, click on 'EBSCOhost Research Databases'.

Wednesday 12 November 2008

Online survey feedback


Many thanks to everyone who filled in our online survey and gave us their feedback on the new look library website and our range of online features and resources.

Congratualtions to Louise Byrne who was the winner of the €50 HMV voucher.


The survey responses gave us some positive feedback on the new look library site, for example; 62.3% of respondents are able to easily find the information they need from the site. 43% of respondents are able to easily identify the section of the site in which the information they need is located. Your preferred online library features are; the Library catalogue, electronic resources (databases), Webfeat (search all resources) and the AZ journal list.

We also got some good (as well as some strange and some utterly incomprehensible) suggestions for online features you'd like the library to provide. Here are just some of them with details of whether they are feasible or not, in some cases the suggested feature is already in place;
  • Exam papers online - Exam papers are now available on Moodle (at least the last 2 years should be up for each module). Just log in to Moodle and go to the exams section then select the approproate department (Arts, Business or professional)
  • Book reviews - Members of library staff write reviews of recently acquired material and add these to the library's monthly newsletter which you can find under 'library information/library news'.
  • Booking study rooms & computers online - We hope to add timetabling software to the website in the new year.
  • Ask a librarian instant messaging - We aim to set up instant messaging enquiries in the new year
And the two best suggestions...
  • Access to JSTOR - We have been working to arrange access to JSTOR for some time and it is added to our budget for next year so (fingers crossed) we should have it in place early next year
  • One password to access all resources - We have been busy battling with all our electronic resource providers lately to grant access to all our resources off campus via the 'search all resources' function using your student number and date of birth. Handy as this is, our long term aim is to have 'one ring to rule them all ' and enable student access to ALL our resources (PC's, databases, ebooks, library catalogue) using a single login. We are making steps towards bringing in institutional access to all resources using Shibboleth. This is a long term project involving the IT department and the library and we hope to roll this out as soon as logistically possible.




Tuesday 11 November 2008

Off-campus access to legal databases

After a bit of a struggle, we have secured off-campus access to Firstlaw, Justis and Westlaw. Access is through WebFeat (better known to many of you as the 'Search All Resources' link). Firstlaw remote access requires a username and password, which you can find on Webfeat. We are currently working on removing that requirement. We'll let you know if and when this happens.

Monday 10 November 2008

Emerald and lack of full-text

Another popular query that comes up time and again goes something like this: "When I search on Emerald I always get lots of articles coming up that are abstract only. Why can't I see the full-text?" Here's the answer:

Emerald is not a single database; it's a collection of different products all gathered together and searchable via the Emerald website. We have a subscription to Emerald Management Xtra (don't you just hate that spelling of "Extra"?). If you bothered to click the link above, you'd see it's one of many Emerald products. One of these, Emerald Backfiles, is relatively new, and I think it's being promoted by Emerald. This promotion takes the form of appearing at the top of your search results. Being there, the Backfiles articles are likely to be the first articles that you click on...leading to some frustration and irritation when you see that it's abstract only, because DBS do not have a subscription to it.
Before you contact the library, consider the fact that these articles all date from at the most recent, the early to mid 1990s. It is entirely possible that there are more recent articles on your subject that appear further down the list of your search results. Emerald's marketing has worked to the extent that a DBS subscription to Emerald Backfiles is under consideration for next year

Alternatively, you can remove all articles from Emerald Backfiles, and indeed removed all non-DBS subscribed content from your searches by amending some search options. On the quick or advanced search options page, make the sure the options below are checked thus:



This should remove any articles you can't see the full-text of from your search results.

Friday 7 November 2008

Issue Desk Relocation

Much of the issue desk traffic in the main library in Aungier Street consists of queries. It's true, honest. Queries take longer to process than simple book issues or returns. At peak times, this causes queues to build up. Queues can make students (and staff) frustrated. Frustrated students and staff don't make for a happy library environment for either.

In order to better deal with queries, and prevent queues from building up, from Monday, we will be relocating book issues and returns to the smaller issue desk in the short loan section. Turn left as you enter the library and left again. You can't miss it.

The main issue desk will be devoted to enquiries and all staff-student transactions that do not involve issuing or returning books. For example, if you are returning books and want to pay a fine, go to the short loan issue desk. If you are paying a fine for books previously returned, go to the main issue desk.

If you are short of time, why not use the self-issuing station and the book return box? Regarding the book return box however, I feel compelled to mention to a few (and only a few) of you that the book return box is a big box that you put books into, which is emptied by staff at regular intervals. We do not have a pixie in there who magically takes books off your account (we did, but he quit after being flattened by textbooks once too often ). Hence if you are returning books and want to borrow more, please use the issue desk! If you don't, you will cause delays while staff retrieve your books from the box.

We will be interested in any feedback that you may have concerning this change. Let us know if you think it works, or not.

Thursday 6 November 2008

WebFeat Password

Currently you access WebFeat with dd/mm/yy as your password. This can be a bit confusing, as elsewhere you are using dd/mm/yyyy as a password. A window of opportunity has arisen, so we are changing the WebFeat password to conform to the dd/mm/yyyy format used elsewhere. One fewer password to worry about. You may mock, but we are, albeit slowly, working on having one password for everything. You may not be a student by the time it happens, but we are going to make it happen.

To retiterate, your WebFeat password, the one you have to enter after clicking on 'search all resources' on the library home page, is changing from dd/mm/yy to dd/mm/yyyy

The generic user password has also been altered to make it 4 digits. I can't give the new password here, but you can probably guess what the first two digits are. If you can't, contact the library.

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Searching the library catalogue, again

What you see and what we see on the library catalogue are pretty much the same. One difference is that we have administrator rights. One of the things administrator rights gives us is the ability to see what students are searching for in the library catalogue. It's not something we look at too often - life's too short after all, but we did look at the search log recently and were a bit surprised by what we found. Many students' searches are better suited to finding journal articles rather than books. This isn't going to work on the library catalogue. In previous years, DBS library staff would enter journal articles onto the library catalogue, in effect creating a mini-electronic resource. The electronic resources we subscribe to now are significantly better than what we had at the time when we entering articles into the catalogue. We can't compete with the multinational corporations who produce these resources and in any case we are better served answering your queries.

Anyway, here are some search tips:

Use the library catalogue to search for books. The best way to search for books, in my experience is to combine the author's surname with a meaningful word from the title, e,g, "mankiw and economics" or "scholes and strategy". If you don't know the author, enter a word from the title or the subject. Search for journals or articles elsewhere

Don't use the library catalogue as you would an electronic resource or even google (or any other search engine). Cataloguing books for the library is quite different to putting data into an electronic resource and generally speaking, we don't enter as much data -just enough to distinguish one book from another.

Keep your queries short. The longer the query, the more chance you will get no results, because there's more chance of making a mistake.

If English is not your first language, have a dictionary at hand. Also, don't use the author's name unless you know how to spell it (Decenzo, Ayckbourn)

Use the advanced search option to be more specific and at the same time, potentially limit the number of results retrieved. For example "depression" will return 102 results. Searching for "Depression" in the title returns 36 hits. Searching for "Depression" in the title and in media "dissertation" returns 6 hits.

There's an excellent guide to searching the library catalogue here

Last chance to win a €50 HMV voucher!


Just a reminder that if you haven't already filled in our online questionnaire with your feedback on and suggestions for the new library website you'd better do so before the end of this week to be in with a chance to win a €50 HMV voucher.

Just click on the link on the main page or CLICK HERE

The winner will be announced next week

Monday 3 November 2008

Class Numbers 000-499

In an earlier posting, I described the classification system used to organise DBS library books. Here follows some relevant class numbers to DBS students:


001.42 Research methods
004-006 Computers
110 Metaphysics
120 Epistemology
150 Psychology
150.195 Psychoanalysis
150.1952 Freud
150.1954 Jung
158.7 Work psychology
160 Logic
170 Ethics
174.4 Business ethics
180 Ancient, medieval and eastern philosophy
182 Pre-Socratic philosophy
190 Modern western philosophy
300.72 Social science research
300.723 Qualitative research methods
301 Sociology and anthropology
302 Social interaction
302.23 Media studies
302.35 Organisational behaviour
305 Social groups
306 Culture and institutions
307 Communities
330 Economics
331 Industrial relations
337 International economics
338.88 Multinational businesses
340 Law
342 Constitutional law
344 Employment law
346 Business law
347 Civil law
362.29 Substance abuse
362.292 Alcohol
362.293 Narcotics
362.295 Cannabis
370.1523 Learning
371.3 Study skills
378.17 Postgraduate study skills
382 International commerce
401 Philosophy and theory of language
423 English dictionaries
428 English usage
443 French dictionaries
463 Spanish dictionaries
491.43321 Hindi dictionaries
495.1321 Chinese dictionaries

Relevant class numbers from 500-999 will follow shortly. Stay tuned!