Friday 27 February 2009

Careers Dept - Postgrad study seminar


For those of you thinking of continuing your studies to Postgraduate level...

The Careers officer will host a seminar on Postgraduate study on

Wednesday March 4th
in AS 3.5


Details of all future careers events can be found on the careers section of the DBS website

Anyone interested in pursuing Postgraduate study at DBS may be interested in attending the Postgraduate Librarian's talk on 'Library Resources for Postgraduate students' which will be held in Dame st Room 3.1 on Wednesday March 4th and is part of our Library Ireland Week events.

Friday 20 February 2009

More free databases

A few more to mention:

Alcohol Studies Database: Contains citations of over 55,000 documents indexed by the Rutgers University Center of Alcohol Studies since 1987. The database focuses on scholarly and professional materials on beverage alcohol, its use, and related consequences. A small amount of educational and prevention materials and information on other drugs are also included.

Cogprints: An eprint archive of any sciences relevant to cognition, including Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, many areas of Computer Science, Philosophy and Biology. The archive can be searched by author, title or keyword

Labordoc: Labordoc is the International Labour Office (ILO) Library's catalogue of its collection of books, reports, journals, and documents. It also includes over 350,000 references to journal articles, documents, online publications and hard-to-find material from countries around the world, giving worldwide coverage of labour, employment and related social and economic development issues. Labordoc provides multilingual (English, French, Spanish) access to specialised documents indexed and classified using the ILO Thesaurus. With its detailed abstracts, users can limit searches by main subject, by country or region, or by non-English literature, including original and translated versions of intergovernmental and nongovernmental publications. To find online full-text material, limit your search to location "electronic documents"

Project Guttenberg: Project Guttenberg is the largest single collection of free electronic books, with over 27,000 books available in its online catalogue and may be useful for subjects not so well-covered by Dawsonera.

pSearch: A customised search engine dedicated to philosophy-related web pages, searching only those web sites with online academic philosophy papers and authoritative reference sites.

Links to each of these have been added to the 'search all resources' page accessible from the library home page. None of these are searchable in Webfeat, but they may be of interest to some students.

Thursday 19 February 2009

Library Ireland Week (March 2-6) - DBS Library events


To celebrate Library Ireland Week (March 2nd-8th) DBS Library will be holding a series of events to introduce students and staff to library services and resources. Most of the scheduled talks focus on a particular subject area but are open to anyone who wants to come along and learn more.

Posters and flyers should appear around the college closer to the date but here are the details of events so far...

We hope to see you there!
  • Monday March 2nd - Time: 2-3, Room: AS 3.6 - 'Library resources for English Literature & Literary Criticism' - Justin Smyth (AS Library staff)
  • Tuesday March 3rd - Time:2-3, Room AS 3.5 -'Getting the most from library resources for Media, Communications & Film studies' - Laura Rooney Ferris (Library Systems, AS Library)
  • Wednesday March 4th -
1. Time 1.15 Room: DS 3.1 - 'Resources for Postgraduate students' - Emilie Jost (Postgraduate Librarian)

2. Time: 4-5 Room: AS 3.4 -'Using the internet for academic research' -Laura Rooney Ferris

  • Thursday March 5th -
  1. Time: 2-3 Room: Law room, Portobello Library - 'Resources for Law students' - Jane Buggle (Librarian, Portobello)
  2. Time: 4-5 Room: AS 1.2 - 'Locating business, company and marketing information' - Marie O' Neill (Librarian, DBS)
  • FridayMarch 6th -
  1. Time: 11-12 Room: AS 1.4 - 'Managing your library account'- Colin O' Keeffe (Reader services, AS Library)
  2. Time:2-3 Room: AS 3.3 - 'What can your library do for you' open feedback and suggestion session with staff & students - Laura Rooney Ferris/Marie O' Neill

Careers Events

A couple more careers events to mention. Today, there is an Interview Workshop to be held in AS 1.2 between 5.00-6.00 this evening. This is a talk from the Careers Advisor on how to prepare for an interview and what to expect during them. There is also an option of booking a mock interview session consisting of a practice interview and personal feedback. Next week, the 26th February, again from 5.00-6.00pm (location TBA), the DBS Careers Advisor will give a talk on the DBS Career pathways for Social Science students, in which she will discuss the main career paths open to social studies and social science graduates.

Wednesday 18 February 2009

Free Databases

We in the library spare no expense in the quest to bring you top-quality electronic resources, and indeed the case of the two databases I am about to describe, no expense is in fact required.
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) is an online digital library of education research and information sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC contains over 1.2 million bibliographic records, and full-text where available. However don't expect over 1.2 million articles available as full-text. Although the primary emphasis is on education-related content, the size of ERIC means it contains a lot of material on the likes of social sciences and psychology
Animated tutorials are available here
PubMed is a search engine for accessing MEDLINE, an online database of biomedical information compiled by the US National Library of Medicine. PubMed contains around 19 million records, most of which are citation only, but full-text material is increasingly becoming available, partly due to US legislation requiring inclusion into PubMed electronic copies of peer-reviewed research funded by the US National Institute of Health. Of interest to DBS students will be topics such as addiction research and psychology.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

New(ish) databases

Following the success of our recent trials of Computer and Applied Sciences Complete (CASC) and Marketline, the library has purchased full subscriptions to these databases. Many thanks must go to the database vendors for giving us instant access to these resources. CASC, as the name suggests is an engineering, computer science (and related disciplines) database, with 500 journals and periodicals available as full-text. Marketline is a business information database with a wealth of information on companies, industrial sectors and countries. Data can be exported to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. CASC is available off-campus via WebFeat and can be searched in WebFeat. Marketline is not searchable in WebFeat, but can be searched off-campus via the 'Search All Resources' link on the library home page

Monday 16 February 2009

Reminder from the careers office - Postgrad Ireland Fair


A reminder from the careers office ...

The
Postgrad Ireland Fair

will take place in the RDS on Wednesday 18th February


Information will be available on Postgraduate study and research options in institutions across Ireland and beyond and is a must for any final year students considering further study.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Returning books at the self-issue station

Our self-issuing station has now been configured to accept book returns. If you want to return a book, press the 'Returns' button on the bottom right of the screen. If your book is returned successfully, a message with a green border will appear asking you to place the book in the book trolley to the left of the self-issuing station. If the book is unable to be returned, a message with a red border will say so and politely ask you to take the book to the issue desk or place it in the book return box.
Library staff will provide any assistance that you may need.

Careers cover letter workshop Thursday 12 Feb. BOOK NOW


DBS Career Services

COVER LETTER WORKSHOP

Thursday 12th February, 5-6


The careers service will conduct a practical workshop on writing cover letters on Thursday 12th February in the computer labs.

Students are reminded that places on these workshops are limited so BOOK NOW by emailing
careersservice@dbs.ie




Tuesday 10 February 2009

Attention Music Lovers - Rock's BackPages trial access





Want to hear James Brown discuss his problems with the tax man, read backstage interviews with the Beatles and Rolling Stones or listen to Jimi Hendrix's last interview? - Rock's Backpages is the database for you.

Rock's Backpages is the largest database of music journalism online offering access to over 14,000 articles from classic publications like Rolling Stone, Creem, NME, Melody Maker as well as music magazines like Q and Mojo and features writing by some of the most influential music journalists of the last 40 years. Coverage ranges from the birth of Rock and Roll to the present with every permutation and musical sub genre name checked along the way.
It can be searched by artist, writer, keyword (song or album title) or genre. The searchable audio archive features downloadable MP3 files.

This database should be of specific interest to journalism, media, communications and cultural studies students but the range and depth of musical tastes catered to mean it is a really enjoyable site for anyone with an interest in music just to browse through. Trial access (on campus only) will run until March 6th. Enjoy!

As always, let us know what you think of this database and whether you found it useful by emailing library@dbs.ie or laura.rooney@dbs.ie

Safer Internet Day - Feb 10th

Today is Safer Internet Day


Organised by the European Internet Safety Network this is an international event to promote personal internet safety and encourage informed internet use.

If you want to learn more about how to evaluate websites to distinguish reliable research sources from internet scam artists, hoaxes and media or culture jamming have a look at the library guide to evaluating websites or check out Intute's Internet Detective an online tutorial to help students develop critical evaluation skills for online research.

Monday 9 February 2009

World Global Style Network

The World Global Style Network (WGSN) is, and I'm quoting here, "the world's leading online business to business news and information service for the fashion and style industries. It currently offers over 300,000 pages of the most comprehensive, invaluable and up-to-the-minute international style intelligence". WGSN-EDU offers free access to the WGSN website for students and academics. DBS is now a registered user of WGSN.
If you have any interest in the fashion, style, design textile or related industries, then WGSN may prove informatative, if not useful. If you would like to be able to access the site, please contact David Hughes.

Friday 6 February 2009

Want to enter the exciting world of Librarianship?


Do you know your Dewey Decimal Classification from your Library of Congress, understand the logic of the library catalogue or what it means to be 'information literate'?

Maybe a career as a librarian is calling you.

If you want to follow in the footsteps of Philip Larkin, Casanova, Benjamin Franklin, David Hume and Immanuel Kant you may be interested in applying for the part time Msc in Library & Information studies with DBS School of Business which will commence in September '09.

For information on application and entry requirements contact patricia.moriarty@dbs.ie or marie.oneill@dbs.ie

Thursday 5 February 2009

Reservation glitch

When Heritage was down last week, some corruption was introduced into the system. We have repaired the damage, but at the cost of wiping some reservation records. Hence we now have a couple of books that have been reserved by one student, but we don't know who that student is. This is a long shot, but if you are reading this, studying a BA in Social Sciences part time and are waiting for a couple of reservations to come in, can you contact the library information desk? Mention my name and that you have reservations outstanding. Ta

Library changes

We are making a few changes to operational procedures in the Aungier St library. As you are aware, we have two desks. One desk, the main desk is an Information desk, and the other desk is for issuing and returning books. We are increasing the separation of function between the two desks, so that the main desk will be purely for information only. Thus:

  • All financial transactions will be done at the Issue Desk. That is, all fine payments, cash, and credit card, and all purchases of printing tokens will be done here. If you want to pay by phone, the number of the Issue Desk is 01 417 7594
  • The Restricted Access collection will be moved into the Short Loan section. As the Issue Desk will be manned permanently, we ask that any book you want to take from the short loan area be issued on your account first.
  • A colour printer will shortly be available to students. The printer that will be set up thus is the printer that currently resides behind the Information Desk. This printer will not be replaced. Therefore, there will be no more printing at the Information Desk. We're setting up a print station, next to our newspaper stand, where you can go to print exactly what you need in colour, and I say "exactly what you need in colour" because printing from the colour printer will cost 25 cent a sheet, even if you print in black and white. Only use the colour printer for pages that you want to print in colour.
We're not doing this because we hate you or anything, we're doing this because we think it will help provide a more efficient service to our patrons, i.e. you guys. Change sometimes needs a little time to adjust to, but please bear with us. Any feedback will be appreciated

Wednesday 4 February 2009

Annual survey winner and feedback


Congratualtions to Conor Doherty who won the annual survey draw for a €100 HMV voucher - enjoy!.

Many thanks to everyone who filled in the survey and offered your input, praise, suggestions and constructive criticism.

Here are a few responses to some points raised in the survey.

  • Library PC's/IT equipment: A few of you mentioned the need to upgrade library PC's. The old PCs which admittedly had seen better days were replaced late last year. Software upgrades are done every summer. WiFi connection no longer requires log in via a proxy so those of you using your laptops in the library can now logon to the DBS wireless network automatically.
  • PC booking: Many of you were concerned about library internet PCs being monopolised for non essential internet use (ie webtexting and social networking). In reponse to your concerns all library PC's should now be booked at the issue desk. This should mean more access to a PC when you really need it to complete assignments. We hope to have an online booking system for PCs and study rooms installed on the library website by Summer.
  • Opening hours: We had some positive feedback on our opening hours (51% of respondents were very satisfied with opening hours) and many of you were very appreciative of Sunday opening prior to exams. A few of you felt that Sunday opening should be available all year. At the moment this is not feasible when weighing the actual demand against the costs associated with year round Sunday opening. If you do need a place to study on a Sunday even when the library is closed, the building is open so you can still come in and use an available classroom space. Also remember that the library's electronic databases, resources and ebooks are accessible anytime, anywhere.
  • Noise & food in the library: We introduced a zero tolerance policy on noise and food consumption in the library last year in reponse to your requests. Failure to reduce noise levels following a warning by staff can result in a €5 fine. In order to create an atmosphere conducive to study library staff need your help in enforcing noise control. Its your library, so if you feel other students' behaviour is hindering your ability to study, please inform a member of staff. Equally, if you are asked by a staff member to reduce noise or remove food or drink from the library, please do so in a respectful manner.
  • More seats more books, more, more, more..: It was good to note how many of you requested we create more space for study, get more books, more resources and generally more of everything. It shows us that you are using what we've got and are hungry for more. We will be examining any changes we can make to the library's physical layout over the summer and hope to open up more study space. Keep any suggestions for book titles you'd like to see in the library coming in through the 'suggest new titles' section on the website. We continue to review and add new databases and resources all the time in response to requests from staff and students. Let us know what you think of current resources and whether there are areas you feel could be enhanced. Believe it or not, we like getting new resources for you to use so dont be shy, if there are library resources you'd like us to get, let us know. Not every suggestion will be feasible but we will certainly give them all consideration.
Finally, many thanks for all your kind words of appreciation for the Library staff. 63.5% of you stated you were 'very satisfied' with the helpfulness of library staff and many of you singled out the helpfulness of staff as a positive feature of the library.

WARC

The World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) is a good source of knowledge and insight into the global marketing and advertising market. It contains full-text articles from a number of journals (for example the International Journal of Advertising) and trade periodicals (for example Admap) as well as case studies, best practice, news, views and statistical information. Further to the long post on WebFeat below, WARC is now searchable in WebFeat. That's a whopping 16 DBS library-subscribed databases that can be searched simultaneously inWebFeat now.

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Webfeat Up

Happily, WebFeat is now once again working normally. The problem was nothing to do with us either, an internal server problem at WebFeat headquarters.

Monday 2 February 2009

WebFeat down

Wouldn't you just know it? A couple of days after I post some information about WebFeat, it falls over. I've been in touch with WebFeat technical support, who tell me that can't see any problems with it, so it may still be working off-campus, but on-campus the network pixies will prevent you from seeing any search results. Fortunately, you may still search databases individually by clicking on the appropriate link.