Library Newsletter - November December edition

Click here for the latest edition of the Library Newsletter. 

 In this edition of the newsletter:

• Lists of new titles available in the library from 1st October until 1st December this year.
• Marie O'Neill explores the research funds available to early researchers in all disciplines through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST).
• DBS US Exchange Student Konark Patel gives us his impressions of his visit to Northern Ireland earlier this semester.
  
• Alex Kouker outlines how the Assignment Planner can help students manage their academic workloads more effectively. 
• Marie O'Dwyer looks at the most borrowed books by student in DBS.
• Trevor Haugh picks an interesting case in EU Law available through our database Westlaw IE and explains how the "Missing Items Unit" works.
• Of more specific interest to librarians and students on the MSc in Information & Library Management might be the details of the annual conference next February 2015 of the A&SL group of the Library Association of Ireland.
• And the usual regular pieces to entertain and inform...

And with this newsletter we bid a fond farewell to Amye Quigley,, our newsletter editor for the past 3 years, who moves on to pastures new and more lucrative (but I bet not half as much fun).
All the best Amye - see you in the funny papers!

Obligatory Christmas Opening Hours Post

Christmas is coming, so of course we are closing over the holiday period.  The college is closed that time, so it's not possible for the library to stay open over Christmas, sorry.

Also, too we have some now traditional Sunday opening hours coming up as we enter the exam period too.

First, Sunday opening

Sunday 14th December   11.00-17.00
Sunday 21st December   11.00-17.00
Sunday 4th January         11.00-17.00

Christmas opening

Aungier St is now open every day until Tuesday 23rd December, when we close at 1pm and re-open on Sunday 4th January.


Dame St will close on Monday 22nd December and re-open on Sunday 4th January

In addition to these dates, Aungier St library will close at 17.00 on Friday 19th December (Dame St will be open to 9pm as usual) and Dame St library will be closed Saturday 20th December (Aungier St library will be open as normal on this day).

Gosh! That was a bit complicated!  Our opening hours can be found on the Library website, so check there.

One other thing to note, is that closed days do not count towards overdue books and library fines.  If you have a book due back on 23rd December, but instead return it on January 5th, your fine will be a whopping ...60 cents, ok? So don't panic about rushing into town on the 23rd.  In any case, you should be using your online library account to manage your loans.

Finally, library staff wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Image - Wicklow Street: "Happy Christmas" – A Christmas greeting in Irish. (2006) ( PabloBarcelona at en.wikipedia)    

New trial: EBSCO e-book business collection

For the next month, well, until 5th December, we are trialling EBSCO's eBook Business Collection.  This collection includes over 12,000 e-books on subjects such as marketing, finance, supply chain management and entrepreneurship and also focusing on career growth, personal development, communication and networking.

Here's a title list  eBook Business Collection Title List

This direct link seems to work else content will appear via the search box on the main library page.  

Bank Holiday Closure - Monday 27th October

As usual, we are closed the October Bank Holiday Monday.  Don't take my word for it though, here's a nice poster saying the same.

Normal service will resume on Tuesday

Want to win a £100 Amazon voucher?

Technically speaking the title should be "Want a chance to win a £100 Amazon voucher?"  If you do read on...

Emerald Insight - which is a fine resource in its own right - want you to take a “selfie” in the library which they you then post on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the phrase “#EmeraldInsight into [your study subject here]”.   Here's a helpful Vine on the topic.  Vines, selfies and hashtags! Where will it end?

Even if you don't want to post a selfie, do consider using Emerald, especially if you're a business or library student.  No login required on-campus.  Off-campus use your Athens account for access.

 

DBS Assignment Planner

I think the image is self-explanatory.  You can use the assignment planner to help manage and organise your forthcoming assignments.  We strongly recommend that you have a look.  Moodle login required.  

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.