Passwords

Hello and welcome everyone to a new academic year.  For new students this can be a daunting experience (though we have an *excellent* student services department - if you are having any problems call into to see Caitriona), not made any easier by the number of passwords that you have to remember.  Here follows a list of usernames and passwords that you need.

Moodle, College PCs and checking your library account online.

To access these please enter your student number as your username and your student number as your password. If you are unsure what these are please contact IT or fill out their help form  or do both.  If you stop to think about, you'll probably realise that it's not a good idea to have your student number as both your username and password (it's a little like writing your PIN on your bank card), hence we strongly recommend that the first time that you login to a college PC, you change your password.  

Student E-mail  

Don't shoot the messenger here, okay?  I'm cutting and pasting here: 

To access your student email please enter your student number for your username and your password is the first 2 digits of your date of birth and your course code. Day of birth is in numerical format i.e. DOB 05th January insert 05 and the course code is as on your student card


When you log into your email it will ask you to change your password.

Any problems, contact the IT department as above.

Off-campus access to E-books and search results from the search box on the library home page

Use your student number and date of birth in format dd/mm/yyyy

Athens

If you want an Athens account, contact the library to have one set up for you.  You need to provide your student number, course code and a valid email address.  Within 24 hours of your request, you should receive an email with account activation details.  Follow the instructions therein to activate your account. You get to set your own password.  Any problems, contact the library again.

OpenAthens

If you have an OpenAthens account but are having difficulties with your username and/or password, here are two ways of circumventing that problem:

1) Your username always starts dbs... so if your student number is 1234567, your OpenAthens username will be dbs1234567. Simples. If you enter dbs and nothing happens, remember, you need to request an OpenAthens account from the library.

2) If you can't remember your password, there's a page on the MyAthens website where you can reset your password. Under the login boxes, there is a link Login help On this page, under the section Forgotten passwords is another link where you can reset your Athens password.

A gentle reminder about passwords

When you are first set up on the college's computer network, you have a standard password. While this password is unique to you, it's not going to take a Ph'D in cryptology to work out what it is. It is in your best interests to change your password as soon as possible, particularly if you use your college PC account to do any printing. An ideal password is long and has letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers, but to be honest stick to something that you'll remember; use something that's memorable to you but not known by anyone else.

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.

WebFeat ("Search All Resources") logins

I'm pleased to say that all students registered up until the 25th October should now be able to login to WebFeat ("Search All Resources") with their student number and date of birth. If your date of birth doesn't work, try your student number as your password. If your student number begins 00... only enter non-zero digits. Thanks for your patience.

Important - Ebook passwords

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

Having written a brief guide to username and passwords yesterday, I'm now forced to contradict what I said about Dawsonera - Ebook logins. First, let me explain. Rather than wait for you all to contact the library asking for Dawsonera username and passwords, we are able to bulk create new users. This means we can create hundreds of accounts at the same time rather than one at a time. This is really handy for us, and for you as well as you don't have to bother contacting the library to ask for a login. Sadly Dawsonera recently "enhanced" their bulk user creation software. One of the "enhancements" turned out to be their software now recognising the first slash in dd/mm/yyyy as some kind of end of line or end of field symbol, so instead of seeing dd/mm/yyyy as the password, Dawsonera sees dd as the password. Two character passwords are not allowed by Dawsonera. Epic fail.

So, if you are a new student, having registered since July, and have not previously logged into Dawsonera, or have contacted the library to be set up with a username and password, then your username is your student number and your password is your date of birth in the format ddmmyyy - no slashes involved (except for the one I want to make to the flesh of Dawsonera programmers).

Summarising Dawsonera logins:
If you were here before January 2009 your username is probably firstnamesurname or firstinitialsurename e.g. clarkkent or ckent and your password is your student number.
If you registered after January 2009 and before July 2009, your username is your student number and your password is your date of birth in the format dd/mm/yyyy
If you have registered in July 2009 or after, your username is your student number and your password is your date of birth in the format ddmmyyyy. If this doesn't work try using your student number as your password. If you are unable to login, please contact me.

I apologise for having to make this more complicated that it really should be, but I suppose I have to thank Dawsonera for making this post possible. Thanks Dawsonera! (To be said in the same tone as said here)

A very brief guide to resources, logins and passwords

Around this time of year, I and other library staff spend a lot of time passing on details on how to login to various resources on and off-campus. Here follows a very terse guide to what you can login to and how in no particular order:
Library Catalogue Here you can browse and search the library catalogue. You don't have to login to be able to do that, but if you want to manage your account - see your current and previous loans and charges and renew and reserve books, you will need to login. You login with your student number and a 4 digit PIN. To get a PIN you need to contact library: in person, by phone, by e-mail or using the all-new Ask A Librarian service.
DBS Computers: To login to a computer (on the student network!) at DBS, you need a username and password. Your username is your student number and when you first login, your student number is also your password, but you will be asked to change your password before you can proceed. Try to choose something memorable. The same combination also controls access to the print management system.
Moodle: is what's known as a virtual learning environment, which can supplement what you see and hear in your lectures. If nothing else, Moodle is very useful because its the online repository for most DBS exam papers. I'm very happy (honestly, I am) to say that Moodle is nothing to do with the library, and the following information is provided as a public service only. If you have any problems with Moodle, contact our IT department. You are responsible for your Moodle login and password. To set up a Moodle account, you need to activate your mydbs.ie email account. Do this by going to Windows Live and entering your student number@mydbs.ie as the username and your date of birth as your password. Follow on-screen instructions. A handy wee tutorial is available to assist here.
Search All Resources: The library subscribes to a number of elecrtonic resources that provide bibliographic and full-text access to newspapers journals and books. These can be accessed off-campus by clicking the graphic on the library website home page. You login again with your student number and date of birth. If you are a new student you may have to contact the library to gain access to this resource off-campus.
E-books: many (well, some) of the textbooks available in the library also come in pdf format that can be read online or downloaded (terms and conditions apply). If you started before January 2009, try using your name as your username and your student number as your password. If your name is Clark Kent and you started before January 2009, your user name is probably clarkkent or ckent and your password is your student number. If you started January 2009, your username is your student number and your password is your date of birth. If you can't login, contact the library.

I'm off for a cup of tea now.

Passwords - a reminder

At DBS, there are a variety of resources available to the student. Here's a gentle reminder of how to access what's available.

Moodle: Moodle is a virtual learning environment. Here you might find material pertaining to your courses. What's there though very much depends upon the individual lecturer. What's probably there though is previous year's exam papers for you to cast your eye over. If you're looking for exam papers, don't look on your individual course, click the exams link instead and look at the appropriate area e.g. undegraduate arts or postgraduate business studies. Unlike other resources in this list you define your username and password. To access Moodle, you need to have an active mydbs.ie mail account account. Go here to activate your account. Please remember the answer to your security question and please choose a memorable username and password. Our IT department will love you for it. Here's a nice tutorial on Moodle.

PCs and Printing: To login to a PC and to print, you will need to have a student account. Your username will be your student number and your password will be your date of birth. If you don't have have an account set up, inform our friendly and efficient information desk staff know, and you should be set up soon after.

WebFeat: WebFeat is what we in the library use as an access management system, to allow access to all our electronic resources off-campus. Again, your username is your student number and password is your date of birth. Bulk uploads of new users are done on a weekly basis. If you do not have a WebFeat login, give your student number and date of birth to our issue desk staff or email the library. A temporary login can be supplied.

Dawsonera: Dawsonera is our electronic book platform. This is a bit more complicated, so pay attention! If you started before January, chances are you are set up on Dawsonera with your username being your first initial followed by your surname, or your first name followed by your surname. Thus, if your name is Brian Cowan, your username is probably bcowan or briancowan and your password is your student number. If you enrolled in January or after, your username should be your student number and your password should be your date of birth.

Everything you wanted to know about WebFeat but were afraid to ask

A couple of points to mention about WebFeat. WebFeat is a federated search engine which allows you to search multiple databases at the same time, thus saving time and effort. We are also trying to use WebFeat to cut down on the number of passwords that students need to remember. Thus, having logged into WebFeat off-campus, you can choose to search multiple databases, or search your favourite database individually without having to enter a user name and password. For example, you could login to WebFeat and choose to search Emerald and Business Source Complete together, or you could decide to search one then the other. Before WebFeat, you would have to enter a username and password for Emerald and then a different username and password for Business Source Complete. Thus WebFeat has cut down on the number of passwords required. Ultimately, our aim is to have one username and password for everything you do in the library and hopefully we'll have some news on that during the summer.

If you were a registered student before Thursday 22nd January 2009, you should have a WebFeat username and password. Your username and password should be your student number and date of birth. Because of the way registration works, it's entirely possible (particularly if you are a Portobello student) that you don't have a login. If you don't please contact me or the Issue Desk. We aim to update user lists every Monday. Also, please note that a few students get registered with a few personal details missing. These details sometimes include the date of birth. If, for whatever reason, we don't have your date of birth, then it's not possible for your date of birth to be your password. In this case you have been given a default password, which you can get from the Issue Desk or myself.

So what's on WebFeat and what can you search? On WebFeat, you can search all of the following at the same time though if you need to do so, you must have a very interesting search lined up ;-) There is a check box beside these that you click in order to search in WebFeat:

DBS Library Catalogue
Portobello Library Catalogue
Academic Source Complete
Butterworths Lexis Nexis
The Economist
Emerald
Film and Television Literature Index With Full-Text
FT.com
Hospitality and Tourism Complete
Lexis Nexis News and Business
Mintel
Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing Archive
PsycARTICLES
PsycINFO
WARC

Also in WebFeat, there are links to the following databases that you can only search individually. In these instances, the check box is greyed out and there's a note in the database description field to this effect:

A to Z journal list
Dawsonera
Encyclopaedia Britannica (not available off-campus)
Firstlaw
Justis
mad.co.uk (not available off-campus)
Westlaw

In time, some of these databases may become searchable in WebFeat. We have left in a link, with is non functional at this juncture, for Computer and Applied Sciences Complete. We had that database on trial, which has subsequently expired, however we hope to purchase it (fingers crossed)very soon. We hope to purchase a couple more databases too, in which case we'll tell you about them here and elsewhere.

Finally, if there is a link to that database, it is searchable by itself. Firstlaw requires a username and password, which should be visible to you. If you want to search Butterworths or Lexis Nexis News, you will need a user name and password that you can request at the issue desk OR you can search these databases through Webfeat and click to view one of your search results. This opens your search result in the appropriate database. You can then search that database by clocking on the search tab, which if memory serves appears on the top left of the screen.

I think this is enough for now!