We like our new catalogue, and hope that you do too. One of the reasons it's better than the previous catalogue is that users - you ladies and gents can update your personal details. When you login - with your student number and date of birth in format dd/mm/yyyy - there is a menu of the left of the page. Click on "my personal details" and change any details that you want to change. Simple! It's especially useful to ensure that your email address is up-to-date to ensure that gentle reminders and overdue don't get lost.
Showing posts with label library catalogue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library catalogue. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 February 2014
Friday, 27 July 2012
Using the new booking system
In theory, it should be quite easy to use, you can go to the library catalogue directly, and search for "book a PC" or "book a room". Searching for "Book a PC" will return 5 results:
Aungier St PCs1-9
Aungier St PCs 10-17
Aungier St PCs 18-24
Dame St PCs 1-7
Dame St PCS 8-14
Searching for "Book a Room" will return two results:
Aungier St Study Rooms
Dame St Study Rooms.
Click the result that you want. In the detailed record, click on the 'Place booking' button. If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to do so before you can continue. Once you have logged in, you will see the booking planner (as with all subsequent images, click the image, to enlarge it):
It's not as scary as it looks! On the left is a list of resources; PCs or study rooms. Here, you can see Aungier St PCs 10-17, with PC10 selected as the default. To the right is today's opening hours; the Aungier St library being open from 09.30 to 17.15. The greyed out area represents the past and is unavailable for booking; only the white is available. The red outline represents the current time available for booking. To make a booking, click the 'New booking button' and click the 30 minute box that corresponds to the time that you want to book. Click the box next to it if you want to book for an hour and click OK.
A confirmation message will appear after a successful booking. Click the Continue button.
Above, I've decided to book PC14 at Aungier St from 15:30 to 16:30 on Friday 27th July. I need to confirm that by clicking OK. This is the confirmation message: Take note of what you are booking as, unlike the existing system, there's no email confirmation sent.
You can change your mind and cancel the reservation by clicking the Cancel button. If you decide at a later time yo cancel your booking, you can do so by clicking on 'Account' then the 'Reservations' tab, ticking the box next to your booking and clicking 'Cancel.
If you have any feedback, it will be passed on to the developers and hopefully will be used to improve the system.
Aungier St PCs1-9
Aungier St PCs 10-17
Aungier St PCs 18-24
Dame St PCs 1-7
Dame St PCS 8-14
Searching for "Book a Room" will return two results:
Aungier St Study Rooms
Dame St Study Rooms.
Click the result that you want. In the detailed record, click on the 'Place booking' button. If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to do so before you can continue. Once you have logged in, you will see the booking planner (as with all subsequent images, click the image, to enlarge it):
It's not as scary as it looks! On the left is a list of resources; PCs or study rooms. Here, you can see Aungier St PCs 10-17, with PC10 selected as the default. To the right is today's opening hours; the Aungier St library being open from 09.30 to 17.15. The greyed out area represents the past and is unavailable for booking; only the white is available. The red outline represents the current time available for booking. To make a booking, click the 'New booking button' and click the 30 minute box that corresponds to the time that you want to book. Click the box next to it if you want to book for an hour and click OK.
A confirmation message will appear after a successful booking. Click the Continue button.
Above, I've decided to book PC14 at Aungier St from 15:30 to 16:30 on Friday 27th July. I need to confirm that by clicking OK. This is the confirmation message: Take note of what you are booking as, unlike the existing system, there's no email confirmation sent.
You can change your mind and cancel the reservation by clicking the Cancel button. If you decide at a later time yo cancel your booking, you can do so by clicking on 'Account' then the 'Reservations' tab, ticking the box next to your booking and clicking 'Cancel.
If you have any feedback, it will be passed on to the developers and hopefully will be used to improve the system.
Thursday, 26 July 2012
New PC/Room Booking System
We automated the PC/Room Booking process two years ago, and all-in-all it's been a success. The system however is not without its...foibles. These foibles will make it more difficult to use the system this year, so from Monday 30/07 we're testing a new system, one that is integrated into the library catalogue. This system has several advantages, a couple of which are that you can use your library catalogue login and you can more easily see and manage your booking. It's not going to be perfect, though to paraphrase thirteenth-century Chinese scholar Tai T'ung, were we to await perfection, our booking system would never be finished. I'll follow this with some details on how to use the booking system.
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Advanced/Guided Search on the Library Catalogue
This has come up a couple of times recently in the content of searching for e-dissertations (I can eke out another short post about that however), and so merits escalating to a blog post (DEFCON 3 is next).
We have had a couple of queries from user who have been unable to use the guided search or advanced search options and the drop down boxes for media or field selection have been greyed (grayed?) out. Here's a couple of suggestions to resolve matters:
1) Change browsers. Switch to Firefox or Chrome as this problem has only cropped up with Internet Explorer. If I may editorialise briefly, you should consider switching to Firefox or Chrome as both are better than Internet Explorer (in my humble opinion of course). If you are on-campus, this is a better solution as the one below may not work.
2) If you really prefer to stay with Internet Explorer, then take the following steps (these instructions come from the library catalogue vendor's technical support department):
1) Click on the Tools icon (a small cog in the upper right hand corner of IE's Window).
2) Select "Internet options" from the list that comes up.
3) Now click on the "Security" tab that comes up in the new "Internet options" window.
4) Please now click on the "Custom level..." button.
5) The window "Security Settings - Internet Zone" should now be open.
6) Please scroll just about all the way down to find the "Scripting" section.
7) The "Active scripting" radio button will currently either be set to "Disable" or "Prompt" neither is desirable and will cause the issue as described. Please set it to "Enable".
8) Finally click on the "OK" button twice to bring you back to IE and try the library catalogue again
We have had a couple of queries from user who have been unable to use the guided search or advanced search options and the drop down boxes for media or field selection have been greyed (grayed?) out. Here's a couple of suggestions to resolve matters:
1) Change browsers. Switch to Firefox or Chrome as this problem has only cropped up with Internet Explorer. If I may editorialise briefly, you should consider switching to Firefox or Chrome as both are better than Internet Explorer (in my humble opinion of course). If you are on-campus, this is a better solution as the one below may not work.
2) If you really prefer to stay with Internet Explorer, then take the following steps (these instructions come from the library catalogue vendor's technical support department):
1) Click on the Tools icon (a small cog in the upper right hand corner of IE's Window).
2) Select "Internet options" from the list that comes up.
3) Now click on the "Security" tab that comes up in the new "Internet options" window.
4) Please now click on the "Custom level..." button.
5) The window "Security Settings - Internet Zone" should now be open.
6) Please scroll just about all the way down to find the "Scripting" section.
7) The "Active scripting" radio button will currently either be set to "Disable" or "Prompt" neither is desirable and will cause the issue as described. Please set it to "Enable".
8) Finally click on the "OK" button twice to bring you back to IE and try the library catalogue again
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Fancy yourself as a critic?
Well, do you? It's possible on the library catalogue to write reviews and assign ratings to our catalogue records. If you've been waiting to tell DBS library catalogue users exactly why 'Exploring Corporate Strategy (Text and Cases)' is the best thing since sliced bread or why 'Starship Troopers' is the greatest film ever made, then see below as to how you can do it.
Monday, 31 January 2011
QR codes in the catalogue
A QR code is like a two-dimensional barcode. Here's one:
If you have a QR code reader and a camera on your smartphone (and most of you have smartphones these days), pointing your phone at the above should return:
McClave, H. ,Communication for business ,658.45 MCC
Which you may recognise as Henry McClave's popular textbook, Communication for Business and its classmark (658.45 MCC). Last year, with the assistance of our Library Management System vendor, we introduced QR codes into the library catalogue, the rationale being that instead of writing interesting book details on pieces of paper or your wrists, you could store some details on your mobile by pointing your phone at the QR code on display. We have upgraded our library catalogue since then, and in the new version, QR codes are present on every page. These codes only contain the URL of the page on display, so if you scanned the QR code on your mobile, your phone’s browser would open the library catalogue page that you were looking at on your PC. A bit pointless really. We've spoken to our library management system vendor again and they have given us the ability to display once again author, title and classmark, which hopefully is more useful to you than the URL of the page that you are looking at on the catalogue.
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.
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
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, 31 August 2010
Logging into the Library Catalogue
As part of our quest to reduce the number of passwords that you have to remember, you will no longer need a PIN to login to the online catalogue, instead you will need to use the same username and password that you use to login to a college PC. We'll change "PIN" to "password" at some point in the near future.
Monday, 26 April 2010
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
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Thursday, 15 April 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
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?
Monday, 15 March 2010
Library Catalogue / 'Search All Resources'
You may have noticed since we (again) upgraded to the latest version of the library catalogue, the occasional issue with access - not enough licences to use the catalogue, or the catalogue being unavailable at times. We scheduled a catalogue reset once a day every day, but this is not sufficient to ensure 24 hour access. Subsequently we have identified the source of the problem, and it seems to be 'Search All Resources'. As a consequence, we've taken the library catalogue out of 'Search All Resources'. We'll put in a link to a relevant page on the library website, but for now, no more searching the library catalogue on 'Search All Resources'
Monday, 15 February 2010
Library catalogue (re-)upgrade
Ok, it took a while, but we did manage to (re-)install the latest version of the online library catalogue. Version 3.3 has a few nice features which I posted on before, and in lieu of writing about them anew, I shall find the last posting and copy n'paste:
If, like me (hey, it's my job!) you're interested in library catalogues (but let's face it, you're probably not), here's a preview of the next library catalogue upgrade, scheduled for the summer months if all goes well.
- Favourite searches - Readers can now save their favourite searches so they are able to run them again by simply clicking a link. Readers must log in to access this feature.
- Search history - Readers can now view a list of their most recent searches, and re-run them by simply clicking a link. Readers must log in to access this feature.
- Star ratings - This feature allows readers to rate items using a star rating system. Readers must log in to access this feature.
- Reader reviews - This feature allows readers to submit reviews for books and other catalogue items. Readers must log in to access this feature. Reviews will be moderated, as we don't want reviews consisting of streams of bad language (unless they're well written, perceptive and witty, and even then...).
- Reader preferences - Readers can now set their own default Enquiry settings such as the default display format, font size and whether Boolean icons ("and", "or", "not") are displayed.
- Google Preview - Catalogue records now contain links to Google Book Search previews (where these are available). The preview is then available when the catalogue record is viewed using the display format ‘Cover image with dynamically generated information’ (which we'll probably make the default display setting whenever I get round to it)
- Social bookmarking sites - Results screens now contain links to the social bookmarking sites Delicious, Digg, Reddit, Facebook and StumbleUpon.
If, like me (hey, it's my job!) you're interested in library catalogues (but let's face it, you're probably not), here's a preview of the next library catalogue upgrade, scheduled for the summer months if all goes well.
Library catalogue downtime
You may recall we had some problems with the library catalogue last semester. The problems were due to some subtle incompatibilities between the latest version of the library catalogue and our self-issue stations. We solved the problems by uninstalling the latest version of the library catalogue and reverting back to a previous version. In the interim the boffins at Heritage (our library management system suppliers) have been working away and now think they have solved the problem. Hence, this afternoon, from 2pm onwards, the library catalogue will be down as we attempt tp upgrade to the latest version again. Hopefully it shouldn't be down too long.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 16 October 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
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
Thursday, 8 October 2009
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.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Library Catalogue Up and Running
Students of the Dublin Business School rejoice! Your online library catalogue is back up and running. In the end the problem turned out to be having two self-issue stations run at the same time as the library catalogue. Hopefully, the problem has been resolved, with a big thank you to Rob Perkins of Heritage Technical Support merited for his patience. I think if it falls over again, you'll see me in the foetal position.
For you newbies, the online catalogue (OPAC) allows you to access your library account - see the books you have on loan, your lending history, your fine history, reserve and renew books and create reviews of books available in DBS. You will need a PIN, which can be gotten from Information Desk staff (or indeed through Ask A Librarian)
For you newbies, the online catalogue (OPAC) allows you to access your library account - see the books you have on loan, your lending history, your fine history, reserve and renew books and create reviews of books available in DBS. You will need a PIN, which can be gotten from Information Desk staff (or indeed through Ask A Librarian)
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