Bits n' Pieces

A couple of small news items:

1) Loans due back Friday 29th, Saturday 30th March and Monday 1st April have a new due date of Tuesday 2nd April, so don't feel you have to make it over the Easter weekend to return your loans, you can wait until Tuesday now.

2) We've added a 4th study room in Aungier St. However you'll have to share this with library staff, who be using it from time-to-time.

3) We've experiencing some temporary difficulty with Westlaw UK access through Athens at the moment.  I'm sure this will be resolved swiftly. At least I hope it will.

     

Westlaws

No, it's not a typo, I meant Westlaws (plural).  Let me elaborate:

Westlaw UK:  We have purchased a subscription to this resource, which is like Westlaw.ie but contains UK law material.  A link for on-campus use is available from the e-library page of the library website.  It's also available through Athens.

Westlaw.ie: The good people of Westlaw.ie have seen fit to change its user interface - so it looks pretty much like Westlaw UK.  We have a very complicated way of ensuring that you can see this resource off-campus.  Currently it's available after logging into Moodle or Athens.  Because of the complicated nature of library stuff (please, don't ask), the old interface will still be available through Moodle for a while, but if you login to Athens and click the Westlaw.ie link, you'll be taken to the new interface.  The new interface is available on-campus through IP authentication.  

WARC, Westlaw and Moodle

One upon a time two of our electronic resources, Warc and Westlaw were available to students through Moodle. Then they weren't.  Now they are back on Moodle, hopefully to stay.  I offer sincere apologies for the length of time this has taken.

A period of transition

We think the new library website is much better than the old one. There's various changes that we have made, including a search box on the main page and a new 'Search All Resources'. As a consequence of this, we've had to change how a few databases are accessed off-campus. For the moment, access to Warc, Justis, Mintel and Westlaw will be through Moodle (Westlaw can also be searched off-campus via the new search interface). If you are asked for a password for Justis or Westlaw, please contact library staff.

Westlaw scheduled down time - 10pm -10.30 08/05/09

Just a little word of warning to any of our law students planning to burn the midnight oil on legal databases tonight.

Westlaw.ie will be unavailable from 10.00 pm until 10.30pm while they perform some routine maintenance. Full access should be restored after this time, so if you do log in during this down time, try back again after 10.30 and all should be restored.

As always, do let us know if you are having difficulty accessing any of our databases off campus (log in via the 'search all resources' button on the home page of the library website with student details) or if you are having problems locating specific material.

Westlaw Up

I can exclusively* reveal that Westlaw is once again working. Apologies for the delay: the conversation we had with Westlaw went something like:
Us: Westlaw isn't working
Westlaw: Okay, we'll look into that.
Us (later) What's happening?, It still isn't working.
Westlaw: Yes it is; we fixed it.
Us: No you didn't - we still can't access Westlaw
Westlaw: We fixed it; it's working for you.
Us: No it isn't!
Westlaw: Yes it is!...
It's working now. Please let us know if otherwise.

*That is, if you don't follow us on Twitter

Westlaw Down

Was that a film starring Ewan McGregor? Anyway, we have operational issues with Westlaw, which are being addressed even as I type. We hope to have Westlaw restored later today, or early next week. We'll provide an update as and when access is restored.

Off-campus access to legal databases

After a bit of a struggle, we have secured off-campus access to Firstlaw, Justis and Westlaw. Access is through WebFeat (better known to many of you as the 'Search All Resources' link). Firstlaw remote access requires a username and password, which you can find on Webfeat. We are currently working on removing that requirement. We'll let you know if and when this happens.