Friday 26 November 2010

Sunday opening - WINTER Exams

You'll be pleased to know that we will be open on Sundays to help you prepare for your winter exams.
You will be able to avail of the two libraries on:
- Sunday 5th December - 11.00-17.00
- Sunday 12th December - 11.00-17.00
- Sunday 9th January 2011 - 11.00-17.00

Good luck with your exams!

A Friday afternoon posting about ebooks

We've been asked this question more than once, so here's a good place in which to answer it. Question: Is there any easy way of searching the library's ebook holdings - so that books the library doesn't own don't appear in the results list? The answer is there are two ways you can do this:

1. In the online library catalogue you can go to the guided or the advanced search and in the 'Type of Media' /'Media Type' drop down menu, select E-books. You can enter your search terms in the search box and only library-owned-books will be returned as results.

2.On Dawsonera itself, on the advanced search tab, there is a box "Include not owned". Make sure that this box is unchecked or unticked.



Another query which has come up on more than one occasion, is that students have difficulties reading ebooks online. There are probably a million different reasons for this. Here are two solutions depending upon OS and browser type:

1. Windows and Internet Explorer. If you see the error ""Internet Explorer has encountered a Problem and needs to shutdown", check if you have the quickfind browser helper object (BHO) installed. To read Dawsonera e-books, you should disable this BHO. Details on how to do this can be found here

2. If you are using Mac OS X and Firefox, you may need to install a PDF Plugin for Firefox on Mac OS X in order to read ebooks online

Suggestion box

Thanks a lot to those of you who gave us suggestions to improve the Library via the suggestion box.
Here are a few updates you might find useful:
- we have a recycling bin in the photocopy room is AS library
- if you feel too cold or too warm in the Library, feel free to come to the desk and we'll turn on the heating or the air conditioning
- the fountain outside the Library in AS had to be disabled as it was constantly leaking (there is a fountain available to you in the canteen however)
- we try to keep noise levels at their minimum, but if you feel that the Library is too noisy, feel free to ask us to go around and check

Thanks a lot for the feedback and remeber that you can also give us your ideas by filling in the online survey at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FM5XY7B

Tuesday 23 November 2010

We want your feedback!


Dear Library users, the Library survey 2010 is now available for you to complete, so don't miss your chance to give us your feedback on the Library services in DBS!

All of you that use our services: students, staff, alumni members, external members are now invited to tell us what you think of the services you receive and what you would like to see improved. So follow this link and give us your feedback: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FM5XY7B

There will be a draw among all respondents to win a €100 HMV voucher... one more reason to give us your feedback!

Thanks a lot of in advance to all respondents!

Print version of the survey are also available in the libraries if you prefer to fill in the survey in print

Friday 19 November 2010

Catalogue Upgrade

And lo, one of the minor changes prophesied recently has indeed come to pass. We are now running a new version of the online library catalogue. We're still testing it to ensure that it runs ok - you can search and login to see your account and we'll check that renewals and reservations still work. Any problems, let us know...but we might know already.

Thursday 18 November 2010

Another minor change

One of our fine databases is Lexis Legal. Some confusion may arise because in the integrated search link on the e-library page and in the relevant subject portals, Lexis Legal is entitled All England Law Reports, which is only one component of Lexis Legal. We have amended the name that appears on the integrated search link and the subject portals to Lexis Legal. We hopefully will change the name on the advanced search page too shortly.

Wednesday 17 November 2010

Minor Changes

Changes are being made to a few electronic resources around here:

Justis will shortly be available on and off-campus via the search box and the adversearch page on the library website.

The interface, ans the URL for Marketline is changing. For a preview go here (on campus only). More content will be available too.

The Warc interface is changing too. There will be new content, including Topic Pages, which will provide a short cut to retrieving relevant content allin one place. Each Topic Page will include the likes of selected research papers, case studies, company profiles and news. In addition, Warc Briefings will provide historical overviews, detail likely future trends and suggest further readings on particular topics. More news as it becomes available.

Finally for now, the online library catalogue will shortly receive a makeover. If you want to see what the catalogue will look like, click here

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Esssential Maintenance

Because this is reading week this week, some essential maintenance will be performed on the student network which will hopefully help resolve some of the Pdrive mapping issues and slow connectivity.



What this will affect?

* All student pdrives, staff account Pdrive and lecture exams drive
* Students will need to save documents to USB when opening and saving in an application


Internet Access will be unaffected



Maintenance Window

10- 4pm 17th November

Friday 12 November 2010

Library survey - Access to online resources

Thanks a lot to all of you who answered our survey on accessing online resources in the Library and in DBS.
Thanks to your feedback we hope to be able to keep on improving our online resources service to you in the coming months.

Congratualations to Teresa Breitenlechner who won the €100 HMV voucher!

Have a great week-end!

Monday 8 November 2010

Library Newsletter

In case anyone reads this but not the news section on the library webite, below is the latest edition of the library newsletter. Thanks to Fiona for the funky new look.

Friday 5 November 2010

Justis

To reiterate what's been said elsewhere, Justis is no longer available off-campus It's not gone forever, promise. More news in 2-4 weeks or thereabouts. On-campus, Justis is still available from here. We do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Saving stuff on EBSCO

If I had a cent for every time this has come up recently, I'd have at least oooh 5cents, possibly more. The query goes something like this: I save stuff in my folder in EBSCO, but when I log in again and go to my folder there's nothing there and/or my login details don't work. Please help." This one is fairly simple:

In order to be able to save items etc. You need to create a personal account. Once you have logged in with your student number, there should be a blue menu bar on the top of the page with various options. One of these is Sign In. If you click this, you will be prompted for a username and password. Do not enter your student name and password, but instead click on Create A New Account. Once you do this you can save items and searches, set up RSS/email alerts etc

A personal account is necessary, because although you have a unique login to access EBSCO off-campus, you may be using other methods to login to EBSCO elsewhere – e.g. on-campus, access is by IP authentication – hence EBSCO has no way of knowing when “you” are searching – unless you login with your personal account – which you can do from anywhere. Your personal account will not grant access to EBSCO (for that you need the student number and date of birth), but will allow you to personalise how you use EBSCO.