Thursday 29 January 2009

Everything you wanted to know about WebFeat but were afraid to ask

A couple of points to mention about WebFeat. WebFeat is a federated search engine which allows you to search multiple databases at the same time, thus saving time and effort. We are also trying to use WebFeat to cut down on the number of passwords that students need to remember. Thus, having logged into WebFeat off-campus, you can choose to search multiple databases, or search your favourite database individually without having to enter a user name and password. For example, you could login to WebFeat and choose to search Emerald and Business Source Complete together, or you could decide to search one then the other. Before WebFeat, you would have to enter a username and password for Emerald and then a different username and password for Business Source Complete. Thus WebFeat has cut down on the number of passwords required. Ultimately, our aim is to have one username and password for everything you do in the library and hopefully we'll have some news on that during the summer.

If you were a registered student before Thursday 22nd January 2009, you should have a WebFeat username and password. Your username and password should be your student number and date of birth. Because of the way registration works, it's entirely possible (particularly if you are a Portobello student) that you don't have a login. If you don't please contact me or the Issue Desk. We aim to update user lists every Monday. Also, please note that a few students get registered with a few personal details missing. These details sometimes include the date of birth. If, for whatever reason, we don't have your date of birth, then it's not possible for your date of birth to be your password. In this case you have been given a default password, which you can get from the Issue Desk or myself.

So what's on WebFeat and what can you search? On WebFeat, you can search all of the following at the same time though if you need to do so, you must have a very interesting search lined up ;-) There is a check box beside these that you click in order to search in WebFeat:

DBS Library Catalogue
Portobello Library Catalogue
Academic Source Complete
Butterworths Lexis Nexis
The Economist
Emerald
Film and Television Literature Index With Full-Text
FT.com
Hospitality and Tourism Complete
Lexis Nexis News and Business
Mintel
Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing Archive
PsycARTICLES
PsycINFO
WARC

Also in WebFeat, there are links to the following databases that you can only search individually. In these instances, the check box is greyed out and there's a note in the database description field to this effect:

A to Z journal list
Dawsonera
Encyclopaedia Britannica (not available off-campus)
Firstlaw
Justis
mad.co.uk (not available off-campus)
Westlaw

In time, some of these databases may become searchable in WebFeat. We have left in a link, with is non functional at this juncture, for Computer and Applied Sciences Complete. We had that database on trial, which has subsequently expired, however we hope to purchase it (fingers crossed)very soon. We hope to purchase a couple more databases too, in which case we'll tell you about them here and elsewhere.

Finally, if there is a link to that database, it is searchable by itself. Firstlaw requires a username and password, which should be visible to you. If you want to search Butterworths or Lexis Nexis News, you will need a user name and password that you can request at the issue desk OR you can search these databases through Webfeat and click to view one of your search results. This opens your search result in the appropriate database. You can then search that database by clocking on the search tab, which if memory serves appears on the top left of the screen.

I think this is enough for now!

Friday 16 January 2009

Last chance to win a €100 HMV voucher!

This week is your last chance to let us know what you think about library services by filling in our online annual users survey

We'll be drawing a winner for the €100 HMV voucher the week beginning January 26th so if you want to be in with a chance to take advantage of the voucher in the HMV sales - you'd better click the link and let us know what you think.

Thanks to everyone who's already filled in the survey for your feedback and suggestions.

Library closed for maintenence - Morning, Saturday Jan17th


To facilitate the laying of new flooring, the library will be closed for the morning of Saturday January 17th.

The library will open at 1.30pm and close at 5pm

Apologies for any inconvenience caused

Europeana: European digital library


Want to search across Europe's best libraries and museums?

Europeana; the European digital library is now open for business. This site, constructed under the European Digital Libraries initiative allows you to search across Europe's library, museum, audio and visual archive collections for material as diverse as video footage of Salvador Dali discussing Freud to theatre programmes for the Dundee Shakespeare society's performances from 1902.
Results are displayed by image, text, video and sound holdings and can be limited by language, location, country and date. The site is still in Beta version as the project to add content is on going so searching may be limited at times of peak traffic.

Thursday 15 January 2009

Interesting Search Engine

Not so much interesting as potentially useful: pdfse is a Google-powered PDF search engine (pdfse = pdf search engine, simple really). Ebooks, public papers, reports etc tend to appear on the web in pdf form, hence you may get more meaningful hits if you use this as the basis for an academic search rather than Google (having failed to find what you want after using DBS-subscribed electronic resources, of course!)

Tuesday 13 January 2009

Database trial

From Monday 19th until Friday 30th January, we have on trial a new database, Marketline. This is a very comprehensive collection of company, industry, financial, product and country information, research and data extending across every major marketplace and industry. If you want an in-depth report on the bottled water industry in France or want to look at the volume of alcoholic beverages sold in Vietnam*, this is the database for you. Marketline is big on PEST SWOT and five forces analyses, which I understand are of interest to business students. Marketline will only be available on campus (IP authentication), so don't click the link at home. Don't click the link before the 19th or after the 30th either!

We are interested in purchasing this database, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Please mail the library if you have any comments on this database.

*peaking at 8.1 million litres in 2005 and estimated to fall to 4.47 million litres in 2012

Monday 12 January 2009

Library email

We have just noticed that emails being sent from within the online library catalogue are being blocked by our firewall. Talk about the left hand not knowing... This is due to changes made to our mail server just before xmas. We, well our IT department, are working on this and we'll keep you posted. Apologies for the inconvenience

Sunday returns

Happy new year! A small number of you may have noticed that your loans have been date stamped for return on a Sunday. Specifically, Sundays 11/01/09, 18/01/09 and 25/01/09. Please disregard these dates and work on the assumption that the books are due back on the Monday (today, 19/01/09 and 26/01/09). Obviously as this is being posted around 09.35pm on 12/01/09, it's only really relevant to those of you with books due back on the 18th or 25th.