Summer Opening hours from May 18th

Though we know many of you will want to put some distance between yourselves and the inside of a library once the exams are out of the way a small band of dedicated library junkies have asked about our opening hours over the Summer months.

So for those of you who are interested...

Summer hours will commence on Monday May 18th & opening hours for AS & DS library's are;



Aungier St
Monday, Wednesday & Friday - 09:30 -17:15
Tuesday & Thursday - 09:30 -20:00
Saturday - 09:30 -17:00

Dame St
Monday & Wednesday - 09:30-20:00
Tuesday, Thursday & Friday - 09: 30-17:15
Saturday - 10: 00 - 14:00

May Bank Holiday opening hours

Just a reminder that the three library sites will be open throughout the May Bank Holiday weekend. We will continue Sunday opening at the Aungier St library right up to the end of the last week of exams.

Hours for the Bank holiday weekend and remaining Sunday openings are;

Aungier Street	Dame Street	Portobello
Saturday May 2nd 09:30- 17:00	Saturday May 2nd 09:30-17:00	09:30 -17:00
Sunday May 3rd 11:00 -17:00	Sunday May 3rd 11:00-17:00	11:00 -17:00
Monday May 4th 11:00 -17:00	Monday May 4th 11:00-17:00	CLOSED
Sunday May 10th 11:00-17:00	Sunday May 10th -CLOSED	CLOSED

Classrooms available for study this week

It may have escaped your attention but exam season is in full swing and library study rooms are booking up fast.

To accomodate students wanting to do group study some classrooms have been made available again this week.

These rooms are available all day and do not need to be booked;

Tuesday April 28th - Bow lane - room 4.3
Wednesday April 29th - Balfe St block B room 1.1
Thursday April 30th - Balfe St, block B rooms 1.1 & 2.1
Friday 1st May - Bow lane rooms 4.2 & 4.4


Big thanks to Neus Fernandez the timetabling officer for making this classroom space available to students.

More RSS

Recently I talked about RSS feeds from the Financial Times. You can also set up RSS feeds from EBSCO for notification of new journal content or for updating you with search results.

Before you go any further, you will need to set up a personal account with EBSCO. Instructions for doing so are here. It's quite simple, honest. There's a link to the sign-page on the top right of every EBSCO page.

The results of any search you perform on EBSCO databases can be saved as an alert, which will update you when new content matching your search criteria is added to the database. Rather than dribble on too much, with various degrees of coherence, here's EBSCO's instructions on setting up a search alert, alternatively here's how to set up a journal alert on EBSCO, and finally for EBSCO, here's the low-down on how to set up an EBSCO RSS feed. Why type, when you can copy and paste links, eh? The one negative, for me, is that EBSCO RSS feeds are only viewable on newsreaders and not on homepages such as iGoogle or Pageflakes.

Edit: RSS feeds do work with homepage services, but not it seems if you are searching using Business Source Complete's Enhanced Business Searching Interface. So there

Moodle and exam papers: A gentle reminder

My spider sense is tingling. I'm not sure, but I think that there might be exams coming up. Ah, spring and a young student's fancy turns to finding previous exam papers and pretty damn quickly too. If you're looking for previous exam papers, don't ask library staff, yet. Look on Moodle instead. Exams have a course category to themselves and are visible on the main page, the one that appears after you login. Scroll down and exams are at the bottom. Here's a hopefully helpful image Here's the link to the exams. You will have to login first, but once you do, you will go straight to the exams page. There are 7 different categories:

Law
Postgraduate Arts
Professional School
School of English
Postgraduate Business Studies
Undergraduate Arts
Undergraduate Business

To activate your Moodle account, you will need to activate your @mydbs.ie mail account. To do that, go to Hotmail, enter your student number and date of birth and follow the prompts.

Most but not all recent exams are up there and more are being added all the time.

The UNESCO World Digital Library

This one's for the culture vultures. Today sees the launch of the World Digital Library, an initiative of UNESCO and 32 partner institutions that sees placed on the web, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant and unique cultural materials from libraries and archives around the world. The site will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs.

According to the UNESCO website, examples of treasures that will be featured on the WDL include oracle bones and steles contributed by the National Library of China; Arabic scientific manuscripts from the National Library and Archives of Egypt; early photographs of Latin America from the National Library of Brazil; the Hyakumanto darani, a publication from the year 764 from the National Diet Library of Japan; the famous 13th century “Devil’s Bible” from the National Library of Sweden; and works of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish calligraphy from the collections of the Library of Congress. None of which I think feature on any of your reading lists, but are interesting, not only in their own right, but as examples of the pervasiveness of digitisation

Sadly for you dear reader, the likes of Understanding Organisational Context and Exploring Corporate Strategy do not qualify as rare or significant cultural materials, but you can find them free of charge on the web courtesy of DBS if you have a Dawsonera account.

Classrooms Available

Three classrooms have been allocated for student use week beginning 20/04/09, to alleviate some pressure on the library (reducing the temperature a little, maintaining breathable air, that sort of thing). They say a picture paints a thousand words, so here's a picture. Don't blame me, I didn't do it. Click on the picture to enlarge it and hopefully see what rooms are available on what days.

RSS and Twitter Feeds from the Financial Times

This page lists all of the RSS and Twitter feeds available from the Financial Times. RSS (Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary if you prefer) feeds contain headlines, links and descriptions and are updated as the website is updated with new stories. RSS is a great way of keeping up-to-date with breaking news, or simply even being informed on new content on webpages that you like. Accessing RSS feeds is really simple (really simple syndication remember):

You can download software (e.g. FeedDemon) or subscribe to a news reader service such as Google Reader or Bloglines. You can add RSS feeds to a personalised web page such as Pageflakes or iGoogle, alternatively, depending upon the web browser that you are using, you can access feeds directly through your browser.

Twitter seems to be the Web 2.0 application du jour allowing you to send text updates on what you are up to (er, looking at Twitter)and reading what other users are doing (er, looking at Twitter), in the form of 140-character maximum "tweets". DBS Library twitter updates can be seen by moving your eyes a little to the right (while this post is at the top of the page) or clicking here

EBSCO on WebFeat /Search All Resources

We've changed the links to EBSCO databases that appear on WebFeat 'Search All Resources'. Now, when you click on the link for say Academic Search Complete, you will be taken directly to that database. The links were supplied by EBSCO themselves, and the Benjamin Franklin adage about consistency and small minds applies here*, as, while the links take you to the different databases, the page to which you are taken is not the same for each database - clicking on Academic and Business Source Complete, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text and Hospitality & Tourism Complete will take you to the publications page, while the links for PEP Archive, PsycArticles and PsycINFO will to you to the basic search page.

We've also added Regional Business News™ (the ™ is very important) to the list of databases available. This will be useful for anyone interested in US regional business news as it incorporates coverage of 75 business journals, newspapers and newswires from all metropolitan and rural areas within the US.


*Just kidding, we love EBSCO and this isn't their fault.

Returning Books to the Library

We spent a lot of money buying a self-issuing station, one of these. They're the bees knees, especially since you can configure them to return books too. We recently configured the station to accept book returns and some of you have started returning book there and placing returned books on the book trolley next to the station. Many many thanks. We think you're awesome. However, and let's face there has to be an "however", or else I wouldn't be typing this, a very small number of you are placing books on the book return trolley, the trolley with the signage saying "Place books returned on self-issue station here", that you have borrowed, but haven't returned. I'll say that again, a very very small number of students are borrowing books and returning them by placing them on the book return trolley and walking away. This does not return books. This drives staff mad. This also messes up student accounts, because books that have been brought back to the library, are left on student accounts, with fines accumulating. Fines and overdue books lead to loan stops on student accounts. Staff then have to go to find the books that were left there (usually when there's a big queue at the issue desk). It's a mess. At the moment we waive any fines that accrue, but we have a problem: we've just been told that the home for insane librarians is full, so do we get rid of the book return facility on the self-issue station, or leave things as they are (and drive insane the rest of our staff)? We might have to start changing fines for books left on the trolley that haven't been returned. Any thoughts? Anyone?... Anyone?... Bueller?* We probably will go with the fine option unless popular opinion requests otherwise.


* Obscure 80's cultural reference

Reminder - opening hours for Easter weekend

Just a quick reminder to all that we are open through the Easter weekend for any dedicated students wanting to cram in some additional study time in the run up to impending exams (or those who just dont have anything better to do).
Opening hours from Good Friday until Easter Monday will be 11am to 5pm - site opening details listed below.

Aungier Street	Dame Street	Portobello
Friday, 10th April (Easter weekend)	Friday, 10th April (Easter weekend)	Closed
Sunday, 12th April (Easter weekend)	Sunday, 12th April (Easter weekend)	Closed
Monday, 13th April (Easter weekend)	Monday, 13th April (Easter weekend)	Closed

EBSCO's GreenFile database now available

The Library has added EBSCO's 'GreenFile' database to our list of electronic resources.

GreenFile provides access to over 4,700 full text reports examining the impact of Environmental change. Database coverage ranges from climate change, sustainable energy and pollution to recycling, ethical business practices and green building and government initiatives to reduce the effects of environmental damage.

This datebase is particularly useful for anyone investigating sustainable and environmentally ethical business practices or anyone interested in green issues in general.

Have a look and tell us what you think