Library Classes: change of location

These short posts are sometimes so difficult to write. The new locations for our popular library classes are as follows:

AS 3.1 on Wednesdays (non-business students)
AS 3.2 on Thursdays (business students)

Business students can turn up on Wednesday and non-business students can turn up on Thursdays; it's just that different (appropriate to the subject area) databases and referencing systems are examined on each day.

If you're a new reader (Hi!) the library runs classes twice a week covering: using library resources, essay writing skills, avoiding plagiarism and referencing. All welcome.

DBS Library on Delicious

Delicious (formerly del.ici.ous) is a social bookmarking web service for storing and sharing bookmarked web sites online. We have an account on Delicious, which we will try to use to share what we think will be interesting and useful sites. While this post remains at the top of the page, if you cast your eyes to the right, you'll see the our 5 most recent bookmarks (which due to us being so busy, date back to 1826). If you go here, you see all our bookmarks. Perhaps, just perhaps, there might be one or two that might help you in your studies.

EBSCO EJournals

Life without an access management system can be very complicated. We have been in the process of rationalising our serials collection and where possible have switched to online subscriptions. This has two advantages, it frees up more space in the library and it allows access to the journals off-campus. In theory at least anyway. We love EBSCO and we love their A to Z journals list, however it works best on campus. Full-text of some of our 76 online journal subscriptions may be available through one of our subscribed electronic resources, others are handled by EBSCO EJournals. This is where things get complicated: in addition to EBSCO Ejournals, the full-text should be available through publishers' websites, and indeed the A to Z journal list will direct you there. In order to get journals accessible through publisher websites, we have to register with them and set up access routes. Without an access management system in place, this will lead to a plethora of usernames and passwords. To simplify matters, we're making EBSCO Ejournals available off-campus, with yes, you guess it, a user name and password. Please contact library staff for details of how to login.

If you're keen, (and why shouldn't you be?) here's a list of the 76 journals available.

Britannica Online

Back in the day, as part of their punishment for academic impropriety, students had to attend a presentation by yours truly on avoiding plagiarism (having attended the presentation, they felt duly punished). While researching the presentation, I generated enough material for another presentation, on evaluating websites. Some of the material can be found here, though not this germane cartoon or this one. Type "AIDS facts" into Google and click on result number 3. Do you think this page is accurate?

Basically, anyone can write anything on the Internet, and a lot of the time they do. When you are using the Internet for research purposes (why are you doing this? Use the library's electronic resources first!) you cannot use the same criteria as you do when you are surfing the net for pleasure. Wikipedia is often the first port of call for students doing research, and it's a great site. I use Wikipedia frequently. However I don't use Wikipedia for research purposes because I wouldn't trust it to be accurate. Fair enough, the vast majority of vandalism is noticed and removed quite quickly, but what if you visit the page before heinous errors are corrected? I once looked up Swinford (County Mayo) on Wikipedia and found that the town is notable for werewolves and pot smuggling. Yeah, right.
If you want to look something up, for academic purposes, use an online encyclopaedia, the library subscribes to Britannica Online, the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB). EB has more a lot more cachet and credibility than Wikipedia for academic topics. There was a study published in Nature in 2005 comparing Wikipedia and EB. Surprisingly, Wikipedia was claimed to be nearly as accurate as the EB, however this study has been comprehensively refuted (albeit by EB themselves). So please use Britannica Online where you can.

Britannica Online is available directly on-campus and via EbscoHost Integrated Search off campus

MINTEL online database

If you are experiencing difficulties using MINTEL it probably is because you are using Internet Explorer (IE) to browse the web and there seem to be incompatibility between MINTEL and IE at the moment.
So, a solution is to install another (very good!) web browser called Firefox developed by the Mozilla Project and you should then be able to search MINTEL no problem.

Free Ebook!

Smarta is an advice and networking resource for anyone starting and running a small business. To mark the start of a new decade, they asked some business minds how they thought the entrepreneurial landscape would develop over the next decade.

Entrepreneurs, marketers, investors, journalists and Dragons lined up to say why:

• The cloud would be nothing without the crowd
• Small is the new large
• This will be the decade of the mobile phone
• Apps are more than just a buzzword
• Green tech will be where the smart investments are made
• Collaboration is king

The results are contained in a new ebook, The smartest brains in business : 2010 and beyond, which is available as a free download (click the link in the title). This might be of interest to business students in particular.

Library Polices/Self Issue Stations/Fines

Without wanting to sound authoritarian, we'd love it if you'd take a look at DBS library rules and regulations, which are available here.

Something else that we'd like is for the very small minority of you with books on loan who leave books on the self-issue stations' book return trolley, without actually using the self-issue stations, to return your books on the self-issue station first. If you don't, the books will stay on your account and may lead to fines accruing. Thanks.

Thirdly, we impose fines on overdue library loans not out of punishment, but rather to encourage you to return material on time, thus trying to ensure fair and equitable access to library material for all students. Fines can easily be avoided by returning books on time, or renewing them. Contact the library for a PIN to enable you to manage your library account online. Loans can be renewed by phone, by using the self-service stations, or even through Ask-A-Librarian

Email again

From tomorow we will be sending overdue notices by email. By default they will be sent to your @mydbe.ie account. If we have another email address for you on record, we'll also send any overdues notices there, but please have your @mydbs.ie emails activated and checked on a regular basis.

New students - orientation week

Hi there new students, to support your learning and better integrate you into DBS, there's an orientation week next week, with some library relevant material as follows:

Monday 25/01/2010
4-5pm Library tour for undergraduate business students
5-6pm Library tour for postgraduate business students (Dame St.)
5-6pm Library tour for undergraduate arts students
5-6pm Essay writing for undergraduate business students (AS 3.5)

Tuesday 26/01/2010
5-6pm Study Skills (SWS 3.2)
5-6pm Moodle and IT (SWS 1.3)

Wednesday 27/01/2010
4-5 pm Essay writing for arts students (AS 1.4)
5-6pm Essay writing for postgraduate business students (DS 2.3)

Thursday 28/01/2010
4-5pm Referencing and plagiarism workshop (AS3.2)
5-6pm Moodle and IT (SWS 1.3)

E-mail

Two news snippets concerning e-mail:
1) From today we'll send out a reminder 3 days before you have week loan or standard loan books due back in the library. The email will say some something like:

Dear (your name here),

Your library loan is near their due date

According to our records, the following item on loan to you is approaching its due date. You can avoid having to pay a fine by renewing the item or returning it to the library on or before their due date. You may be able to renew your items either by telephoning the library (contact details below) or using the online library catalogue http://www.heritage.dbs.ie/heritage
Title: International business negotiations
Author: Ghauri, Pervez N.; Usunier, Jean-Claude
Copy no: 18607
Class: 658.4052 GHA
Due: 21 Jan 2010

If you cannot return or renew the loan item please contact the library immediately.

Please do not reply directly to this email.

Yours sincerely

DBS Library
Aungier St.: 01 417 7572
Dame St.: 01 417 8745
Portobello: 01 478 7667

library@dbs.ie

It's important not to reply directly to the email because it's being sent from an unmonitored mailbox, so any response won't be read.

The email will be will be sent to your mydbs.ie account and any other email address that we have on record. If you haven't set up your mydbs.ie account and we don't have anther email address for you, then you won't receive any emails.

Please note, this is only a courtesy reminder, if you return your books late and say that you didn't get an email saying that they were do back, that won't get you much mileage.

2) We're looking at the possibility of emailing from the online library catalogue, hence the appearance of an 'e-mail the library' option. As yet this doesn't do anything, and may indeed never do anything, in which case it will disppear and never be seen again. If it does work, then you will be able to send e-mails on specific topics to specific members of library staff

Emerald ebooks trial

In addition to publishing some journals very popular with DBS students, Emerald have branched into ebooks. For the next four weeks we have access to their two ebook series collections:
Emerald Business, Management and Economics eBook Series Collection contains over 450 volumes from over 60 book series titles. Featuring relevant, international and trusted content in many fields including strategy, economics and accounting and finance. A list of titles can be found here
Emerald Social Sciences eBook Series Collection complements and extends the current Emerald portfolio, adding over 210 volumes from over 35 book series titles. Providing contemporary and high quality research, this collection contributes much to debate in the fields of politics, psychology, sociology, health care and education. Here's the list of titles.

Access is through the Emerald website, in the same way you access Emerald journals. The trial lasts until February 14th. Happy reading!

More updates

To fill you in on what's happening in library land:

• Reminder emails will probably start next week and electronic overdue notices soon after
• The library website is being redesigned and hopefully improved (don't get us wrong, we love our website, but that doesn't mean to say that it couldn't be given a lick or two of paint). This will be starting in the next week. When the new website is ready, we will probably switch 'Search All Resources' from WebFeat to EHIS at the same time. If I say this will probably take two or three weeks, I'd end up being wrong, so I won't (but if I had to guess...)
• For EHIS, we are nearly ready to add Lexis Nexis (News) and Westlaw.ie
• Some changes have been made behind the scenes that should give us access to full-text of a few (well perhaps 20-30) more journals. More soon.
  

EBSCO Integrated Search (EHIS) update

For the benefit of amnesiacs and new readers, EBSCOHost Integrated Search (EHIS) is replacing WebFeat ('Search All Resources' on the library home page)as our federated search software and our off-campus access to electronic resources platform. WebFeat is still available as we wait for all our databases to be made available on EHIS.

We are making good progress however, with the number of databases available to be searched (and therefore available off-campus) on EHIS Now available are:
ft.com
WARC
Lexis Nexis Legal (Butterworths All England Law Reports)

If you're interested in using EHIS, you can click here and login with your student number and date of birth. Even if you can't login to WebFeat, you almost certainly should be able to login to EHIS and if your date of birth doesn't work, then login with your student number as both username and password. Currently databases available on EHIS are:

Academic Search Complete
All England Law Reports (Lexis-Nexis Legal)
Britannica Online
Business Source Complete
Computers & Applied Sciences Complete
Emerald
ERIC
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text
Financial Times.
First Law (Ireland)
GreenFILE
Hospitality & Tourism Complete
JSTOR
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text (Trial)
MarketLine
PEP Archive
Regional Business News
PsycARTICLES
PsycINFO
PubMed
SocINDEX with Full Text (Trial)
WARC

We're still waiting for Mintel, Westlaw and Lexis Nexis (news), not to mention the libraty catalogue too

CDRoms for purchase at the library

If you are submitting an essay electronically you can now buy a CDRom for €1.00 at any of the three library desks.

We're still here

Despite the semi-apocalyptic weather conditions the library will adhere to its scheduled opening hours. We also intend to open on Sunday from 11am to 5pm.
If the weather is preventing you from returning outstanding loans do contact us, and we'll see whart we can do about renewing books and cancelling fines.

Happy new year, happy new email

A happy new year to all our returning and new students. We hope you all had a nice xmas and that Santa was good to you. Santa was good to us in the library as he brought (or rather, restored) to us library management system email functionality. "Huh?" I hear you say. What this means, after as we set it up (again) and test that it works smoothly, is that we can send automated email reminders to you when you have items due back in the library soon. It doesn't make sense to send reminders for DVDs borrowed overnight, nor at the moment will we remind you of the due-dates of three-day loan items, but three days before your standard and week loan items are due back in the library we'll send you an email saying that your loans are shortly due back. Hopefully we'll get this working by the end of the week.

Once we've sorted the reminder emails, we'll start on automating our overdue procedures. As soon as you have an item overdue, you'll receive an email saying as such. Follow-up emails will appear at regular intervals.

Informing you of due-dates or overdues by text messaging, as we do for book reservations, is not feasible at the moment, but it's something that hopefully will be possible in the future.