On the move

The time has come for us to part… …but fear not, we’re not going far! We in ILS are going to combine the two library blogs. That means that as of now we will only continue to update the ILS Matters blog rather than duplicating posts in two places. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has read and contributed to the Update blog and we hope that you’ll join us at ILS Matters. If you want to subscribe via RSS, the feed address for ILS Matters is here. It wouldn’t be the same without you, so get packing, and join us on the other side

Planned system maintenance this Sunday (13th December)

 

This Sunday is one of our bimonthly scheduled systems maintenance days. All University ICT systems are ‘at risk’ between 8 am and 6 pm on Sunday while work is in progress, though this does not mean that all systems will be unavailable on that day.

Witness the true power of the Dark Side

“internet searches are searching only 0.03% … of the [total web] pages available.”

Beckett, A. (Thursday 26th November 2009) The dark side of the internet. The Guardian. [Online] Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet [Accessed 26th November 2009]

Take a look at Andy Beckett’s article on The dark side of the internet. And if you want to learn a bit more about the other 99.97% of the web (the legal bits of it anyway), you may just want to talk to your Academic Liaison Librarian.

New database available! WARC (World Advertising Research Center)

Are you a business student or member of staff interested in advertising? If you are, WARC, will be of interest to you. Available through Resources Online – E-resources – Business and Management – WARC, this database is a really useful resource comprising around 50,000 items including:

- articles from the industry’s most authoritative associations and publications such as Admap, Market Leader, the MRS and ESOMAR Conferences
- best practice guides that cover best practice principles across the whole field of marketing communications and handy checklists for completing key tasks successfully
- case studies from the IPA, Euro-Effies, AMA New York and many more, covering every conceivable type of campaign and business sector
- data including benchmarks; media data; markets; economic indicators; demographics; tools – including the media budget calculator
- research reports
- company profiles of the top advertisers, brands and agencies

Please note that the first time you use the database you will need to complete a short registration form.

Hello. And goodbye.

First of all, hello to NHS Evidence, the new and shiny replacement for the National Library for Health. This site was launched this week and offers a really simple way to access NHS guidelines, evidence and various other bits of information. Very easy to use (think Google) and links to the full text where available.

Secondly, goodbye (for a while) from me. I’m off on maternity leave until next April, leaving you in the very safe pair of hands that is Clive Kennard. So all have a great summer and enjoy the new academic year when it comes. I’ll be thinking of you

Cheers, Alison.

Bye bye National Library for Health

As of tomorrow the National Library for Health will change. Throughout April and beyond content will move to NHS Evidence “a web-based service that will help people find, access and use high-quality clinical and non-clinical evidence and best practice”.

Keep an eye out for lots of changes. NHS Evidence is set to cover both health and social care and will release more and more new material as time goes on. The new site goes live on 30th April and will include specialist libraries and, as the name suggests, a focus on evidence.

Psychology videos on YouTube

The good people at PsycInfo have put together a series of videos giving hints, tips and ‘how tos’ on various aspects of our favourite psychology database. These are accessible via Youtube following this link.

Business, Management & Accounting Journals now available through Science Direct

Are you looking for quality, peer reviewed journal articles in business, management and accounting? If you are, you’ll be interested to know that the Library now has access to the full text journals of Science Direct’s Business, Management and Accounting collection.  A list of titles is available here. The collection is available through Resources Online – E-Resources – Business & Management (student access; staff access).

This database complements the existing business and management collections, Business Source Premier and Emerald Management Xtra. If you have any questions about this new resource please contact Stephanie Allen, Academic Liaison Librarian for Business, Computing and Sport: s.allen@worc.ac.uk.

Searching the Cochrane Library

A nice little web tutorial has just come through from the Cochrane Library. Available here, the tutorial is a presentation with a voiceover so make sure your volume is turned up. The demo will show you how to make the most of the Cochrane Library, describing what evidence is, different levels of evidence and how to browse and search. There is lots of help available so click here for more guides, slides and demos.

On line, on time and no fine… E-books

We all agree: print books are lovely. You can read them in bed. When they are new they smell nice and you can get yourself a snazzy bookmark. However, print is a bit less appealing when everyone on the module you’re teaching wants the same book, at the same time for the same assignment and its due in NOW. So, to make vital content available to as many staff and students as possible we are getting hold of as many e-books as we can.

 

We’ve bought several key e-book packages and are rapidly acquiring as many individual titles from reading lists as we can. Most e-books are available on or off-campus, any time, day or night. All you need is an internet connection and your Athens username and password (students will use Student Sign On). Go to Resources Online. Click on the E-Resources button and you’ll see a whole new section devoted to our e-books packages. There are several new services here, from the Shakespeare E-book Collection to PsycBooks.

 

If you specialise in English, drama, humanities or psychology you are particularly well catered for, but other subjects don’t lose out either. We have Oxford Reference Online Premium, a collection of dictionaries, encyclopaedia etc. We also have multidisciplinary packages like Taylor & Francis and MyiLibrary. Take a look: you’ll find titles for sport, business, education, nursing, midwifery, geography and social sciences and we are expanding the collection all the time.

 

A word to the wise: we are limited to buying the books that publishers choose to make available. So while we would love to have all the key texts for all your modules just a click away, some titles simply aren’t available in e-book format yet. But rest assured we are constantly haranguing publishers to try and get as many as we can. Any questions, have a chat with your Academic Liaison Librarian or email us at askalibrarian@worc.ac.uk. Meanwhile, fire up your machine, grab a coffee and snuggle up with an e-book…