Exam Period Sunday Opening

During winter exams, Aungier Street and Dame Street Libraries will be opened on the following Sundays:

13th December 2009
20th December 2009
10th January 2010


The Christmas break is scheduled from December 21st 2009 until January 3rd 2010 inclusive

Database trials old and new

Friday sees the end of our Safari Online ebooks trial, so today and tomorrow are your last chances to access any material from this resource. Monday Today sees the start of another database trial however, and this one is so cool as my son would say. It's Euromonitor Passport GMID (link only works on campus) and if I were a business student, I'd be excited about this, and even though I'm not, I still like this. Here's a description I've just been sent:

Passport GMID is an award-winning database allowing for in-depth research on established, emerging and developing global markets. Research is available on 80 countries for FMCG Consumer and Service industries plus granular macro and micro economic Countries and Consumers data for 205 countries.

Key features and benefits include:

∙ 9+ million statistics on Industries, Countries and Consumers
∙ 15,000 industry, company, country and consumer reports
∙ 12,000 company profiles and 8500 sector briefings
∙ 25,000 sources of further research information.
∙ Future Demographic reports illustrating which consumer groups will expand, decline or disappear in the future and indicating which countries offer the best prospects for business.
∙ Timely Comment from our own industry and country analysts on global events making the news.
∙ Consumer Lifestyle reports examining how people live their lives and factors influencing lifestyle choices. Topics include population segmentation, eating and drinking habits, income and expenditure.
∙ Strategy Briefings revealing major and emerging trends in consumer behaviour which will have an impact on sales and marketing of all consumer products.
∙ Global Risks and Vulnerabilities analyse opportunities and threats across 84 countries
∙ Students have improved employability prospects as this is the same data used by their prospective employers.
∙ International students have invaluable access to data on their home country and region
∙ Users have access to data on 95% of global consumer spending, making for unrivalled comparisons of business economies and consumer cultures

If you're interested in for example forecasting the pet food market in Finland or the retail sector in Hong Kong, then this is the database for you. Even if you're not, if you're doing a business or marketing course you should be able to find something of interest. This trial runs all next week, and I'll add a link as soon as it's active. Again, any feedback gratefully received.

Edit: Trial active.

Library Class Cancellations

Mark this in your diary: there will be no library classes the week beginning 30th November (St. Andrew's Day!) - thus the classes on the 2nd and 3rd of December are cancelled.

Electronic Reading Lists

On the library website, there is a page titled Electronic Reading Lists. You can find it under Library Resources. This page contains a list of all the module reading lists that have been given to us and a link to the library catalogue showing what books on those reading lists we have in the library. To illustrate, at the time of writing the first module is AC161 Introduction to Accounting. Clicking on that link, or indeed the link in the previous sentence, takes you to the library catalogue and searches the catalogue for books on the reading list AC161. Here's a wee screenshot:


Note that the library catalogue is searching the field "reading list" for the module code "ac161". We have added "reading list" to the list of fields that you can search in the library catalogue and moved it to the top of the list of fields in the advanced search option. You can search by module code or module title (module code is better as it will unique).
If you read this blog, or use the library catalogue online, you know that we have had some ...problems with the catalogue in the recent past. A side-effect of these problems is the "reading list" field a) being renamed "group" and b) being removed the top of the advanced search field list. Hence if you don't see "reading list" at the top, you will know that we had some problems with catalogue and have had to reinstall the software or something.
Two other observations: these are the reading that have been given to us. If we don't have any of the books on your reading list, it's 99.999% certain that your lecturer has not provided us with the reading list for this module (there is, at the time of writing a small backlog of 20 or so reading lists to add to the library website, but you should be able find your modules by searching the catalogue directly). Finally these are not the reading lists themselves, these are the books on the reading lists that we have in the library. If we don't have the book (yet), it's almost certainly due to the book being out of print, but we do leave no stone unturned in our efforts to find second-hand copies, no, honestly, we do.

Bank Holiday Closure

You will probably see elsewhere, but I'll say it here anyway: all DBS libraries are closed on Bank Holiday Monday 26th October.

School of Arts Library Day

People giving me content to add to the blog makes my life so much easier...





Library Day Workshops AS1.1:

Psychology 5.00-5.30
film studies 4.00-4.30
Journalism 3.00-3.30
Media & Culture Studies 2.30-3.30
Literature 2.00-2.30
Social Science & Social Studies 3.30-4.00
General Arts 5.30-6.00

1st Arts Activities

Another cut n'paste job, I love cutting and pasting. I don't however recommend it for assignments and dissertations though (think about it: if you can find something on Google, then so can your lecturer!). This time step up ....Orna Farrell: Take it away Orna, but first, what's a gumball rally?

Week 3 12th-16th October
Study skills & learning styles Wednesday 5-6 BSB 2.2
Basic IT Thursday 5-6 SWS1.3
Gumball Rally Friday 16th meet 2pm Aungier St. Reception

Week 4 19th- 23rd October
Basic IT Monday 5-6 & Wednesday 5-6 SWS1.3
Communications Tuesday 5-6 SWS3.3
Yoga Thursday 5-6 BSA3.2
Basic IT Friday 12-1 SWS1.3
Study skills & learning styles Friday 1-2 SWS3.3
Arts Library Day Wednesday 21st
1st Arts Night Out in Bojangles Wednesday 21st

Week 5 26th-30th
Communications Tuesday 5-6 SWS3.3
Yoga Thursday 5-6 BSA 3.2

All events are free to 1st Arts students but places are limited
Contact: orna.farrell@dbs.ie to sign up for the activities

More library classes...

It seems all I write about these days is about library classes and the library catalogue. I have managed to review this for the library newsletter though. Anyway I digress: trumpets please - due to popular demand, there will be two library classes per week. On Wednesdays, there will be a class for non-business students at 5pm in Aungier St. 3.1 and on Thursdays there is a class aimed at business students also at 5pm in Aungier St. 3.1. That is all.

Revenge of the Library Catalogue

In ongoing attempts to solve the problems with the online library catalogue (for instance, there were NOT 214 people using the library catalogue at 2.30am this morning), we have rolled back to the previous version of the catalogue for now to see if that improves matters. This has slightly different menu options; if you want to see your library account, click on 'Reader Info' to login.

Addendum: You can login and click 'Reader Info' to view your library account.
You may experience some problems with the advanced search option in Firefox.

A brief guide to resource access at DBS part 1

This post is long and dull, but will give some insight into how and why you access electronic resources at DBS the way that you do.
The A to Z journal list, incredibly enough, is an A to Z listing of all the journals, magazines and reports accessible through the library. Some, a very small number are subscribed to directly by the library and hard copies are available to browse or photocopy in Aungier St or Portobello. The A to Z entry for such a journal will say something along the lines of "Print copies available in Aungier St". The vast majority of journals however are only available electronically. Again, the vast majority of journals available electronically are via electronic resources to which the library subscribes. Because we pay money for them, we have a licence to use them. One of the conditions of the licence is that we grant access only to current students and staff. At DBS there are two ways of doing this:

• IP authentication: every computer linked to the Internet has an IP address - which allows the computer to communicate with the Internet. The library registers with the electronic resource provider a list of IP addresses which are allowed to access a particular resource. The only IP addresses that we know are the colleges own, so IP authentication is used to grant access to resources on campus
• Referring URL: when you click on a link to visit a web page, there's a lot going on behind the scenes; as well as the IP address of the computer, the URL of the page from which the link was clicked is also sent. This can be used to record information about visitors, but it can also be used to restrict access to websites. Access to DBS resources off-campus is by referring URL. The URL in question is the link embedded in the 'Search All Resources' image on the library home page. This page cannot be accessed off-campus without having first logged in with your username and password, hence it's reasonably secure. A small minority of users may have problems with I'll detail in part 2.

Consequently, when you access the A to Z journal list off-campus and click on a link to a specific journal, access will be denied because the referring URL, the A to Z journal list URL, is not recognised as one which grants access to those resources. If you're on-campus, your IP address is registered and so you get access.
I know what you're thinking right now: "Why don't you make the A to Z journal list a referring URL?" We couldn't do that unless we restricted access to the A to Z journal list. "So why don't you do that?" We don't so this because we firmly believe that the library, and library resources are marketing tools; we want potential students to see what we have available in the library, because we think that we have a very good selection of resources (your opinion of course, may differ) Making the list of electronic resources and the A to Z journal list publically available facilitates this.
Hence on-campus, you can use the A to Z to gain direct access to journals, off-campus you can use it to identify electronic resources where you can access the journal via 'Search All Resources'

Another (short) miscellany

A couple of things to pass on
1) Our JSTOR journals have been added to our A to Z Journal collection.
2) Last week, or sometime in the recent past anyway, I mentioned that we're replacing WebFeat with new federated search software from EBSCO (EHIS). Anyway, we're still waiting for all our databases to be connected up to it, which is why there's been no formal announcement and indeed why WebFeat is still working, but in the interim, you can look at EHIS off-campus through WebFeat - scroll down to the very bottom and you'll see it. I think the interface is a vast improvement on WebFeat (sorry WebFeat), though perhaps the only change EHIS makes at the moment is that you can now access Encyclopaedia Britannica off-campus if you so wish.

Library Class - tonight

Tonight's library class - on essay writing, searching, referencing and a myriad of other exciting topics, is happening in AS 3.1.

Catalogue problems

Our catalogue works most of the time, but it's apparent that it's still falling over far too often. I've contacted Heritage technical support (AGAIN!) to see if a long-term fixed can be applied

JSTOR: update

I'm pleased to say that JSTOR is now available off-campus. Access is via 'Search All Resources'. Click the link and away you go.
New students who have been inquiring about logins to 'Search All Resources', we're in the process of tidying up the user database and we'll get you sorted out next week.

Library Catalogue and WebFeat

Yes, it's our seemingly demonically possessed catalogue again. This time it's been noticed that the library catalogue is not working in WebFeat. I suspect it's not been working since we upgraded the catalogue, but I don't imagine that WebFeat is often used as the gateway to the catalogue, either on or off campus. The good people of WebFeat have been informed and we'll let you know if they get it working.

Coming soon

If you are a new student and have been using Ask-A-Librarian to ask about accessing 'Search All Resources', you may have had this reply:

Hi, for now you can use xxxxxx and xxxxxx to access search all resources. We're making some changes to this service and so we're not handing out individual logins at the moment

If you're not a new student and haven't used Ask-A-Librarian to ask about accessing 'Search All Resources', well let me tell you that we're making some changes to this facility.
The big change and the one from which other changes flow, is that we are changing suppliers. We have been using WebFeat, supplied by Serial Solutions. Shortly, we will be switching over to EBSCOHost Integrated Search (EHIS). We like WebFeat, and it has functionality that EHIS lacks, but we like EHIS even more, particularly since one can search more databases through EHIS. With the change in supplier comes a change in user interface: individual or multiple databases are searched using the EBSCOHost database interface that you should be familiar with using databases such as Business Source Complete or PEP Archive, and results are presented in the same EBSCO interface. The other change relates to the way resources are accessed off-campus: we have been using WebFeat as a gateway for off-campus access, in that even if the database couldn't be searched by WebFeat, the link was still there for you to access the database off-campus. This isn't the case with EHIS: access to all databases off-campus will be through EHIS and if a database isn't searchable through EHIS it won't appear on that list. Offhand I can think of only one database where this will be problematic, but we'll address that down the line.

If you're on campus, then here's a preview of what EHIS looks like. It's still missing (more than) a few databases, but it'll give you an idea of what to expect. We'll keep WebFeat going for a while yet.

Any and all feedback gratefully received

Edit: Also available through "Search All Resources" itself (scroll to bottom)

Edit: Firstlaw now searchable in EHIS

A miscellany

Instead of playing solitaire during my tea break, I browsed some library-related blogs and saw the following links, which I thought are worth passing on:

Free access to SAGE journals online for the entire month of October. As it says on the tin - free access to SAGE journals online. You will have to register of course and give them an email address and a few other pieces of data - 3rd letter of middle name, inside-leg measurement, that kind of thing, but it'll be worth it. Quoting from the link:

SAGE Journals Online contains more than 260,000 articles from more than 500 SAGE journals* with content available from 1999-current.

Quick Search and Advanced Search interfaces are available. You can also browse by journal title.

* Some of the many disciplines include:

+ Communication & Media Studies
+ Engineering & Computing
+ Geography
+ Information Science
+ Management & Organization Studies
+ Pharmacology & Toxicology
+ Politics & International Relations
+ Research Methods & Evaluation
+ Sociology

2) Jinni - Film and Television recommendation database Self explanatory again. Search on plots, moods, people, keywords etc. You can even limit your search to free online content. More on Jinni here. It didn't find anything when I searched for "mutant space goats and zombies". Though it did find me 200 titles it thinks is similar to The Wire so I might have a look at some of those when I get a chance.

3) Online glossary of economic terms from the Economist Unsure of the meaning of Pareto Efficiency or Velocity of Circulation? Wonder no more by consulting this handy glossary of economics and economics related terms adapted from the book Essential Economics by Matthew Bishop from Profile Books.

4) Free e-books directory An ever growing list of freely available ebooks. Further comment superfluous.

New Database - JSTOR

I'm very pleased to welcome JSTOR to the list of electronic resources to which DBS Library subscribes. I shall shamelessly plagiarise* from wikipedia the following paragraph:

JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is a United States-based online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions.

JSTOR is slightly different from other electronic resources that we have; it's a not-for profit service and more pertinently for our students, access to journals is embargoed, which means there's a significant time delay on access to full-text of nearly all JSTOR journals, agreed upon with individual publishers, but normally 3-5 years. Most journals have a "moving-wall" embargo, which is a delay between what's on JSTOR and the current issue of the journal, but 3 publishers operate a fixed-wall, with no new content being added to JSTOR after a certain date.
JSTOR has an arts-based bias, with arts here being a catch-all term for social sciences, humanties and law. It has a good reputation and provides some social cachet. We might be, thus far, the only private college in Ireland, if not the world with a subscription to JSTOR.

For now access is restricted to on-campus only until we sort out off-campus authentication issues. When that happens we'll inform you.


* Actually since I'm quoting the source and linking to it, this doesn't qualify as plagiarism, but I digress...

Library Class change of venue - again

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

To keep you all on your toes, we've moved Wednesday's (that Wednesday 07/10/09) library class to Aungier St. classroom 3.1 Sadly it looks like the location of the class might change from week to week depending upon classroom availability, so keep a lookout for updates, here, the library website, our twitter account, the library tv screen and the noticeboards. If we have the money we''ll take out TV and radio ads too.

Library Class - change of venue

To keep you all on your toes, we've moved Wednesday's (that Wednesday 07/10/09) library class to Aungier St. classroom 1.5. Sadly it looks like the location of the class might change from week to week depending upon classroom availability, so keep a lookout for updates, here, the library website, our twitter account, the library tv screen and the noticeboards. If we have the money we''ll take out TV and radio ads too.

Freud Online

Here's a tip from Marie, our Acquistions librarian, on finding Freud standard editions in EBSCO online:

When I was looking for a volume of Freud’s standard edition on EBSCO recently I found a way to find all the chapters for a particular volume of Freud’s complete works together in one search. Just select the PEP Archive database on EBSCO and in the search box type the following:

BR “SE.***”
The BR stands for book records, the SE stands for standard edition, and then the number "***" is for the volume number so 002 for volume 2 and 010 for volume 10 and so on.

Happy reading

And now for something completely different: DBS Freshers Week

No, not this. This; A word or 27 from our Student Services supremo:

Freshers week will be running next week starting Tuesday 6th Oct – Thursday 8th Oct. Freshers week is a great way for new and continuing students to get involved in sports & societies, and these events are designed to maximise student participation and help students to really enjoy their time at DBS. I can’t stress enough how important extracurricular activity is to students, so any support you can offer in helping to spread the word, and encourage students to get involved, would be greatly appreciated on my part. One of the most important events is the Sports & Societies sign-up day. Details of Freshers week are listed below for your information:

Tuesday 6th October:
11am – 2.30pm Sports & Societies sign-up day
DBS Reception & Portobello Canteen
2.30pm Comedy Show.
The lower deck, Portobello.

Wednesday 7th October:
2pm Sports Day
Buses collect from DBS @ 2pm
Buses collect from Portobello at 2.15pm
5pm Barbeque
Diceys garden, Harcourt St.

Thursday 8th October:
10pm Freshers Ball
Break for the border
Tickets FREE from Student Services.

I’d like to thank you all in advance for your support in promoting this important week.


Rob Finney

Library Classes - reduction in number (boo!)

Due to demand for classrooms, we are temporarily forced to reduce the number of library classes from two per week down to one. The next library class will be held in AS 3.5 on Wednesday 7th October at 5pm, and every Wednesday after that at the same time and same place until further notice (which will probably come tomorrow). Come along to get an insight into essay writing, finding and assessing information sources, avoiding plagiarism and referencing. Oh and macramé. Mustn't forget the macramé. It's probably worth your while booking beforehand to ensure a place. Contact the library directly or use the form on the library website