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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Packing it away over the summer
You'll notice from this picture that our periodical shelves are absolutely full to capacity on level 4. This is partly the reason for a summer project in the library which has been termed 'Packing it away'. We are identifying material which is duplicated online via robust and stable platforms, that may be withdrawn to create space without losing access. These are not decisions that are made lightly or without consultation. This was raised at the last Information Services User Forum (23/2/06) as a discussion paper. Faculty members in the Biology & Biochemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science departments will have seen an email from their library representative asking for feedback on a proposal to withdraw a number of older abstracting and indexing titles. Currently all of this material is held on Level 1 of the library, and everything nominated for withdrawal is duplicated online. If there are titles we definately must keep, please let me know as soon as possible.
Any suggestions for material to add to the library collection must reach me by the 9th June - this is the cut off given by the technical services department of the library for spending this years budget.
Here's an update on library hours over the summer. Don't forget there will be quite a lot of building works on level 2 of the library - I'll keep updates posted here and of course you can find regular updates on the news section of the library website.
June 12th – September 29th
Monday to Friday 0800-2400 Services 0900-1700 Bank Holiday Monday 28th August and Tuesday 29th August no staffed services
Saturday 0900-1800 No staffed services
Sunday 0900-1800
Saturday June 10th - we are closing at 1800 because the Summer Ball is being held on campus. Sunday June 18th - we will be closed all day as there is no electricity. Sundays July 9th and 16th - we will open until 2100 for the Open University.
It is really a beautiful day outside today, as evidenced by the large numbers of students around the lake (mobile phone pic taken from the balcony on level 5 of the library 12 May 06)! It's the kind of day that makes you realised why wireless networking is a good thing. It's also a good time to point out that so many of the library resources are available away from the library - dictionaries,ejournals, ebooks, and you can even get your questions answered using the Ask-A-Librarian service. I'm also entertaining the idea of spending time in common areas of each of my departments next semester doing some wireless librarianship. I thought that might be handy in case people have orders to drop off, questions about accessing materials, new online resources, including links to the library in Moodle if you're using it, etc. Please let me know your comments, thoughts, etc.
Statistical Theory and Method Abstracts is now only published online (it has been on CD-ROM since 2001) and has been added to the A-Z ejournal list.
Some abstracts do offer links out to full text however this site is not OpenURL compliant. This means unlike most of our databases where you are linked through to our subscribed online journals, these links simply direct the user to where the article is available online. If we subscribe (and you are on campus), you will access the full text. If you are off campus, you will need to check the library A-Z ejounal list to see if we have a subscription to a journal and link through from there to authenticate with your BUCS username and password. It's complicated but I'm happy to explain with big sweeping gestures if anyone would like further explanation!
In October 2005, the library created a new position in the Technical Services section for an e-journals librarian. The post was filled by Tom Hyland. Tom manages access to our ejournal subscriptions with SFX, our Open URL link resolver that works behind the scenes to connect Bath library users with the ejournals we subscribe to. Tom has also been working to arrange access to a number of open access journal archives, and the latest one he's added to our list is the DigiZeitschriften Open Access Archive. This is a collection of (currently) 27 journals which have had their back issues digitised and archived. You can find details of the journals added from this open access initiative here. Whilst JSTOR is our main ejournal archive collection, there are other open access archives that Tom has added to our listings including the Goettingen archive and Numdam, a French open access maths journal project. There are many more open access digitisation programs around the world - if you come across one that you would recommend as a good quality addition to our ejournals, please let me know so Tom can investigate.
Watch this space - library training series on the way
Summer and Semester I 2006-7 training I have mentioned previously that part of the role of subject librarian is to provide instruction on library resources. This is usually on finding and evaluating information, and using library databases. However a task group has been set up in the library to develop a suite of training seminars that focus on training in emerging technologies for research. This includes topics useful to undergrads, postgrads and academic staff such as:
*Keeping up to date - using RSS feeds, journal Table of Contents alerting, social bookmarking (such as Connotea), etc *Who's citing who? - using cited reference searching, citation indexes, finding journal impact factors, etc. *New scholarly communication trends - what are pre-prints, e-prints, repositories, open access, etc. *Introduction to new copyright - creative commons licensing, copyright, digitisation licensing, etc. *Searching the internet - search engines versus subscribed databases.
This task group is still in the planning stages, but it's hoped these sessions will run perhaps in the late summer, and during semester one. If you have any comments or suggestions on areas you would like a refresher course about, or perhaps a topic of interest to your students, please let me know.
