Bank holiday Weekend

The library's (all 3 sites) opening hours this bank holiday weekend are:

Saturday 09.30 - 17.00
Sunday 11.00 - 17.00
Monday 11.00 - 17.00

You may have books due back on Monday - no fine will be charged if they are brought back on Tuesday

Happy (and productive) studying!

Library Newsletter

A bit late in the month, and you're all studying for exams, at least I hope you're studying for your exams(!), but here's the most recent edition of the library newsletter.



And here's the most recent list of recent acquisitions too

Changes to Emerald

The good people at Emerald are making changes to their website. They promise a new, more intuitive and user-friendly design and are taking the opportunity to give the site a fresh new look. The changes have not been implemented yet, but you can see a preview of them at http://beta.emeraldinsight.com. Please note the following - that's a trial site; it's not live - it's a full copy of the Emerald site as it was at the end of March. It will be updated periodically however. Also if you have a personal profile you set up, no changes you make on the beta site will be carried over to the "live" site.
Every page on the beta site has a link to a comments form where you can let Emerald know what you think of the new site

iGoogle library gadget

For those of you with iGoogle start pages (and I'll explain start pages another time), there's now a gadget that will let you search the library catalogue from your start page. You can also login to your library account or click the DBS logo to go to the DBS library website. Click on the image below to get the gadget
.

Good luck!

Just a very short post to wish all our student the best of luck in their forthcoming exams

skills4studycampus part 2

To access the resource described in yesterday's post, go to this link and launch the application (if it doesn't launch automatically). You will need to register in order to look at the site (I did say it was a highly personalised resource :-). Access is on campus only, but I'll clarify that.

New trial: skills4studycampus.

Perhaps just before the start of the exams is not ideal, but from tomorrow (pm) we will be beginning a trial of skills4studycampus, which is an interactive e-learning resource for students that aims to improve students' understanding of core skills needed for successful study, specifically, writing, critical thinking, reading & note taking and referencing & plagiarism. Students are encouraged to complete a wide variety of interactive activities, tests and assessments, to keep personal notes, tags and a learning journal. The learning experience is therefore highly personalised and focused on their individual needs. More details shortly.

World Book Day 2010

Did you know that on April 23rd we are celebrating World Book and Copyright Day all over the world?

Inspired by the Catalonian tradition of offering a rose and a book on Saint George's day (Sant Jordi) and because in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died, UNESCO chose April 23rd as the date to celebrate world literature and the protection of intellectual property through copyright.
So if you would like to share one of your favourite read with your friends, classmates, lecturers, librarians, whoever you can think of... this is the day! And if you are interested in discovering poetry by Galician poet Rosalía de Castro go to Dublin Instituto Cervantes on Lincoln Place (Dublin 2) on Thursday 22nd.

Happy world book day 2010!

Institutional Repositories

An institutional repository is an online archive of material produced by an institution. For academic institutions, this would include research papers, dissertations and teaching material. Generally, institutional repositories are created for a number of reasons: to increase the visibility of the institution's research output; to store and preserve material that otherwise may be easily lost and to provide open access to the institution's scholarly research. These days, most research institutions have created and populated institutional repositories, but where to find them? The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) has been mentioned here before. This is a directory of academic open access repositories. In addition to the directory OPenDOAR lets you search for specific respositories, and perhaps more usefully, lets you search repository contents. Similar in nature is the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) which like OopenDOAR allows you to browse or search for specific directories and also search the contents of directories. I'd also like to mention Repository66, which is a mashup (a web site or application that combines data or functionality from different sources) derived from Google Maps and OpenDOAR & ROAR, showing the worldwide location of different institutional repositories. Institutional repositories provide a treasure trove of freely available research output that should be considered if you are having no luck with more traditional electronic resources.

The second of two short posts about dissertations

We recently received a comment on a blog posting, which asked about access to the Index to Theses in Great Britain and Ireland. This will be considered in the near future. However, as the name suggests, this is merely an index of theses and dissertations - no (or very little) full text is available: hence if you were able to search this Index, you'd need to request by Inter Library Loan, the hard copy of the dissertation. Index to Theses is not a free service either. An alternative that may (or may not) be useful to you is the British Library's Electronic Thesis Online Service -EThOS. This aims to be a "'single point of access' where researchers the world over can access ALL theses produced by UK Higher Education". Here's the interesting bit (emphasis mine):

Many UK institutions support Open Access to their theses, so download of their digital and digitised theses is free to the researcher. A small number of participating institutions may not be able to offer Open Access and in this case the researcher may have to pay for the digitisation

You will need to register, but registration is free. You don't need to register to search EThOS, but you will need to login in order to be able to download or order digitisation of a thesis (that won't necessarily be free). Sometimes however, you'll find a link to a thesis on an institution's institutional repository, in which case you can bypass EThOS. The database currently contains over 250,000 records (Index to Theses contains over 500,000, but less that 1% of those are full-text). Shortly I'll mention how to find institutional repositories.

The first of two short posts about dissertations

In addition to the dissertations physically held in the library, we have (quite literally) a small number available online that can be accessed via the library catalogue. You can find them by visiting the online library catalogue and selecting the Advanced Search option. In the drop down Media box, select E-Dissertations and in the Search box type *. Here's an illustration:


This search will show all e-dissertations held by the library. To look at a dissertation online, go into the catalogue record and click the link in the:
Other resources: URL for direct access to this e-dissertation: field. This will open the full-text (pdf) of that dissertation.
As I say, we have a small number available at the moment, but we expect to dramatically increase the number of such e-dissertations in the near future.

School of Arts Mentoring Scheme

Those nice people in the School of Arts intend implementing a mentoring scheme for first year arts students next academic year. If you are not a first year arts student next year (that is, if you will be a second or third year arts student next year) and would like to be involved contact Orna Farrell

Going mobile

You don't need to be sitting at a computer to access the library's electronic resources.

• Our E-books from Dawsonera can be accessed and read on iPhones and other handheld devices.
• Our Ebsco databases are available in a mobile-friendly format
• The library catalogue can be accessed on mobiles also, while we are told:

  Heritage Online 3.4 will include a cut down display for mobile devices so it will fit more easily onto smaller screens and require less network bandwidth, and so be more appropriate for mobile connections.

We're currently using Heritage Online 3.3 and will be upgrading to Heritage Online 3.4 once exam fever subsides

A gentle reminder about gentle reminders

It's nice to see that the reminder email service we (re)started in January has been very well received. However, we'd like to remind readers that the reminder email does not represent any official notification of the due date of your loans. This service is like a bonus, a courtesy service ...reminding you of the due date. If you use the self-service stations to borrow books, you get a receipt with the due date, please don't throw this away. If you have a PIN, you can manage your library account online. We're also available by phone, by email and by Ask-a-Librarian, hence if you try to use "I didn't get a reminder email" to avoid liability for a fine, you will get the same reception you'd expect from saying that your dog ate your homework (I didn't have a dog so I had to eat my own homework). I know there's more pressure on our readers at the moment, but it shouldn't be too difficult to manage your library account to avoid liabilities being incurred

Library Catalogue - One click searching

In the online library catalogue, it's possible to highlight a word or phrase in and then search for it (on the catalogue) by using a right mouse click. I was thinking of disabling the feature because I don't find it useful at all, but if anyone cares to disagree with me, I'll leave it be. So, any thoughts on the utility of one click searching here?

Reminder and Overdue E-mails - service disruption

There will some disruption to the reminder and overdue email services over the Easter weekend, normal service will resume on Tuesday

Easter Opening

A quick note about Easter opening hours. All DBS libraries are open as follows
Friday 2nd April 11am to 5pm
Saturday 3rd April 09.30am to 5pm
Sunday 4th April 11am to 5pm
Monday 5th April 11am to 5pm

Normal opening hours resume on Tuesday 6th April.

The library would like to wish Happy Easter to all our users