Kindles for loan!

On top of all the other changes we made during the summer,  we’re now branching out into lending Kindle e-Book Readers.

There will be five Kindles storing Arts based material and the rest will contain Business, Law and IT related e-books. The Kindles will be loaded with core and supplementary texts from your reading lists. 

They will come with a cover, charging cable and portable envelope.  The Kindles will be available to borrow for one week periods at the Aungier Street and Dame Street Library desks, making their lending period similar to other items currently in the library collection. 

Some of the attractions of the device include access to material which is in high demand and the ability to borrow multiple books at once (no more heavy bags!)  Both students and staff will be able to borrow the items.  We expect demand to be high so take one out early not to be disappointed. 

Check your reading list online

Apart from Athens (see previous post), the other big change this year is the introduction of LORLS.  What is LORLS? I metaphorically hear you ask.  Let me tell you; LORLS is an online repository of module reading lists.  What;'s the point of that?  I think will be the second question. Let me answer that too.   Online reading list software makes reading lists more manageable, and if they're more manageable, then they're easier to use and you can do more with them - for example, you can see availability of reading list items in the library, you can directly link to electronic versions of the texts (i.e ebook versions) or to journal articles.

In LORLS, we've arranged the modules hierarchically starting with course type

so if you're doing a Master's, click on Masters; if you're doing a diploma, click on Diploma.

Under course type, is the name of the course, so find your course, click on that and you should see all of the modules on your course.

Click on the module and the reading list should appear.  Simples!

We're still populating LORLS, so if you don't see a list, check again later.  If the list doesn't appear in the next couple of weeks, contact the library.

LORLS can be accessed directly on campus (link to follow) or through Moodle.



       

  



 

Simplifying library logins

We're making a few changes to how you access library resources, and trying to cut down on the number of library logins that you have to remember.

Ok, let's review things as they stand.

Your library account - where you can view & renew items on loan and reserve items that other people have on loan, you access with your student number and date of birth

The search box on the library homepage also uses your student number and date of birth.

Access to all other library resources off-campus is through an Athens account.

In the near future

You will access your library account with the same login as you use for Moodle and for college PCs

The search box on the library website will require an Athens account. 

If you don't have access to Athens already, you should receive details of your account in the next few weeks.  This will be sent by email, to the same address that we have on record for you.

We'll keep you posted.

 

Search our library catalogue from your Android phone (I)

Smartphones are becoming ubiquitous in daily life.  While the majority of smart phone use is for leisure rather than work or study, it makes sense for us library folk to let you know, now and again, ways in which you can use your smartphone in a library context: thus this post.

If you have an Android phone, you can search our catalogue merely by scanning a book's barcode.  How cool is that?  "Not very" I'm sure is the response.   Anyway what you need to do is:

1. Download & install Barcode Scanner from Google Play (it's free)
2. Open the App & go to Settings.
3. Scroll down to "Custom search URL" and enter http://koha.dbs.ie/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?idx=nb&q=%s
4. Ok and exit.
5. Scan the ISBN code of a book. When the ISBN is recognised, touch Custom search, which will open the catalogue record of the book (if it's in the catalogue)

I don't have an iPhone, so I can't say for sure if you can replicate this on that device. 
Browscan - Barcode Scanner (again, it's free) has a custom URL setting, so perhaps you can try that on an iPhone and let us know.