Top tip for finding the full name of a journal abbreviation

Have you ever come across a fantastic quote from a journal article only to discover that the reference looks like this:

Sullivan, R. W. 1985. Correction of the hypermobile flatfoot by the subtalar arthroeresis procedure. Mil Med 150 (10), pp.546-8.

Sometimes the abbreviation of a journal title is easy to work out, the rest of the time it can be like doing The Times crossword without the clues! For those times when the abbreviation is not obvious, try using the Journals Database from PubMed. Enter the abbreviation and click go. Using the example above, we can see that Mil Med is short for Military Medicine.

Last book swap of 2009

The last LRC Book Swap for 2009 will be held on Wednesday, 9th of December 2009, in Food For Thought from 11.00am to 2.00pm.

Also, on behalf of the LRC, we’d like to say a big ‘Thank You’ to those who have helped make the Book Swaps of 2009 a success by contributing so many books for others to take away.

If you can’t make it on the day, do feel free to drop off books for the swap to the LRC Service Desk.

Using concept maps in Credo Reference

Scanning requests just got easier

In cognisance of feedback from academic staff and in support of the university's aim to rationalise administrative procedures, we are simplifying scanning requests.

Academic staff will no longer have to complete the online scanning request form to request a chapter or article to be uploaded to their modules in WebCT. Simply email the following details to CLAScanning@qmu.ac.uk and the LRC Scanning Services team will do the rest:

1. Module code
2. Number of students
3. Module start date and end date
4. Title of book or journal
5. Title of chapter or article

We are also happy to work with bibliographic lists.

If you have requested the material before in a previous semester or academic year, simply email us to let us know if you wish to make the material available again and we will upload the digital copy to the current version of the module on WebCT.

Under the terms of the CLA Scanning Licence, the preparation and distribution of digitised copies is restricted to the LRC Scanning Services. Please do not make and upload digital copies (aka PDFs) of articles or book chapters/extracts yourself as this would be in contravention of our Photocopying and Scanning Higher Education licence.

The LRC Scanning Services can also provide you with permanent links to electronic resources which you can upload as web links to your modules.

We're ready and waiting for scanning requests for Semester 2 so get emailing!

Temporary blocked access to MyiLibrary eBooks

There have been a few instances over the past week where users haven’t been able to access particular titles through MyiLibrary which have been temporarily blocked.

The explanation for this from MyiLibrary is as follows:

MyiLibrary uses advanced security software to protect the copyright of the eBooks available for access. This software is designed to detect and prevent any usage that is consistent with a breach in copyright such as spidering software attempting to copy a large amount of pages. As a result of this sometimes genuine accounts on MyiLibrary that have similar usage patterns are locked while the usage is examined.

They advise that the best way to avoid this lock-out happening is by using the Table of Contents or Search facilities rather than quickly moving from page to page through large sections of a book.

Lock outs will typically be for a 12 hour period and the time access is due to be reinstated is displayed when someone tries to access one of the affected titles.

This has happened before during busy periods and is something that has been raised as a concern with the supplier by QM and other libraries using this platform.

iTunesU coming soon

Here at QM, we are building our iTunesU site and hope to go live very soon. There is a lot of amazing material that is already available via WebCT, various servers as well as our web pages. It is our aim to have these audio and video files accessible from one place and encourage interests in other disciplines.

There is a lot of new material being recorded such as professorial lectures and guess speakers. Arun Gandhi recently gave a talk at the university. Click here to see the video.

Databases: what they are and how to use them

Green gown footage

Queen Margaret University was delighted to win the JISC sponsored Green Gown award for green ICT this summer. Following on from this, the lovely people from JISC have visited QMU and you can see the filmed results of this here.

All good things come to those who wait...

Some of you may have noticed that there are no power sockets in the single study carrels here in the East Wing of the LRC. The electricians are coming on Monday 5th October to put right this wrong! As they set about their work, there may be a slight disruption noise-wise but hopefully it won't take long.

WebCT related queries sorted!

Following on from the success of the drop-in sessions for WebCT during induction week, there will be a WebCT drop-in session held henceforth on a weekly basis.

In October, these will take place every thursday at 12.15-14.15 in Room 1:127 and the first one is tomorrow.

Proud achievement...

Each year all University libraries across the UK are asked to fill in a quesitonnaire about their services and facilities. The Learning Resource Centre at Queen Margaret University did particularly well in the latest survey, which covered the academic year 2007/2008.

One question asked for the percentage of overall library space devoted to IT provision. QMU scored the highest percentage in Scotland at 40% and we came joint third across the whole of the UK. The average for the 'new' universities in the UK was 19.6%!

Another question asks for the number of open access workstations. QMU was third highest in Scotland at 605 - just behind Edinburgh and Glasgow. The average for the 'new' sector was 414. Our LRC's study spaces were open for 47,493 hours in 07/08 - only Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities' figures were higher!

We also issued more items in 2007/2008 than three much larger Scottish Universities.

We are proud of our Learning Resource Centre - we hope you are too.

Parliamentary Papers now available online

The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers are now accessible via our Databases A-Z page (skip/scroll to H rather P like I did!). Access has been made possible by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) for all UK Higher Education institutions.

What this means is that you can access over 200, 000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 up to the 2003/4 session with supplementary material dating back to 1688. The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) website delivers page images to and searchable full-text for each paper along with detailed subject indexing. Further information can be found here.

Welcome to our new students

Hello and welcome to our new students. We're very busy this week with inductions and meeting lots of new people. We realise it's a lot to take in so here are a few highlights:

The Library Services home page is where you will find links to resources that you will find most useful during your time here. Our Library Toolbar has a set of quick links that will take you to:

• iLink - the traditional library catalogue
• QUEST - the interactive library catalogue
• renewals - renew your borrowed items online
• databases - an a-z list of over 100 databases
• subject resources - key resources for your subject area
• eJournals - an a-z list of over 16,000 electronic journals
• eBooks - links to our collections of over 41,000 electronic books

Workshops are scheduled at various times of the year. If you need help finding resources for your coursework, are struggling with searching databases or are not sure what an eJournal is then there will be a workshop to suit you. Click here to see what's coming up soon.

Top tips for setting up your computer workstation

Netanatomy

For those of you not in the know, we subscribe to Netanatomy. It's a database that covers three of the major disciplines of Human Anatomy including Gross Anatomy, Radiographic Anatomy and Cross-sectional Anatomy.

You can access Netanatomy via our Database A-Z list on-campus or via Remote Access if you are off-campus.

Staff accounts

Calling all QMU academic staff - please remember that your LRC membership will expire on the 31st October 2009.

Come along to the Service Desk and you can now get it renewed until 31st October 2010. It won't take long and while you're here, pick up your free copy of the new edition of 'Write and Cite'.

New feature on eTheses

You can now browse by degrees in eTheses, our online respository. It's an open access collection of our PhD theses and selected MSc dissertations by QMU staff and researchers.

Theses are an underutilised but significant information resource. The relatively restricted access to printed copies is the predominant reason for their underutilisation. Making the full-text available digitally, from any networked computer world wide, will greatly increase access and availability to this primary research.

Podiatry news from the LRC

We're branching out in the blog arena with a Podiatry blog:

http://podiatrynewsfromthelrc.blogspot.com/

Need to know more about Shibboleth...

Now is the time to get more acquainted with Shibboleth and what it means for you. Here at QM, we went live with Shibboleth on the 17th August and bid ATHENS a fond farewell.

If you're on campus or logged on to the Remote Access click here to find out more details on how it works, how the changes will affect you, who you can contact for help and why it is called 'Shibboleth'!

Remote Access available again!

The Remote Access solution is now available again. We have carried out some updates, which will hopefully resolve the issue we have been experiencing recently.

If you have any further issues, please do not hesitate to contact the IS Helpdesk who thank you for your patience during this time.

Remote Access difficulties

As you may be aware, we have been experiencing some difficulties with our Remote Access solution.

In order to enable us to investigate the issue further, downtime is required. From 11:00am this morning the system will be unavailable and whilst it may be possible to get connected, your connection will be intermittent and could result in data loss. Please refrain from attempting to connect during this time.

We will update you with progress in due course but you can also check the logon page for the latest status.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Zetoc adds abstracts

Zetoc gives us access to the British Library's electronic table of contents or TOCs. Coverage starts from 1993 and is updated on a daily basis so is an excellent source of keeping you up to date in your subject area by setting up email alerts.

Up until recently, Zetoc was one of those databases that did not provide abstracts so you had to put in a little extra leg work to find either the abstract or the full-text elsewhere to decide if it was what you were looking for. Now, they are starting to provide abstracts and not only that but Linksource has also been enabled! This means that if you do decide from reading the abstract that your particular article is what you are looking for, you can click on the Linksource button and - if we have a subscription to that eJournal - you will be able to view the full-text in a couple of clicks.

The time has come...

...to bid farewell to ATHENS. Obviously, the preferred route to accessing QM's electronic resources when you're off campus is via Remote Access but not everyone has access to their own PC or laptop and of course there are those times when you are in internet cafe and you just have to print off that journal article but logging onto the Remote Access is not possible. This is where Shibboleth comes in.

For those of you who haven't heard, Shibboleth is the new ATHENS. It is an authentication system that is based on your network id so one less username and password to remember! It will give you access to most of the electronic resources that we subscribe to (please note a small number of resources are restricted to on campus access only).

We hope you find it as easy to follow as we do but click here if you need some pointers.

How to find the online timetable

Here at the LRC, we are asked about where to find the online timetable and how to use it. We thought these instructions may be helpful:

• From the QMU website
• Go to the 'Quick Links' at the top right hand corner of the homepage and choose 'Timetable' in the scroll down menu or
• Click on the blue box at the bottom of the homepage entitled 'Timetable for Students' where you will be directed to the timetables information webpage

We suggest that you start by printing the 'Guide: how to view your timetable' as this will provide step-by-step instructions. You will then be ready to access your timetable and can do so by clicking the link 'Access your timetable: http://o.qmu.ac.uk/o!Web/ '

If you experience any technical difficulties in accessing your timetable, please contact either timetable@qmu.ac.uk or the relevant School Office.

Feedback from the student survey: Printing

Printing - and in particular colour printing - featured in responses to the recent LRC user survey. Since we moved to the new campus two years ago, colour printing has been managed by our print-room provision through an external company called ServicePoint. Feedback, however, has usually highlighted the relative inaccessibility of this service and of course the prohibitively high colour print costs.

Up until recently, colour printing in our type of environment has only really been feasible using colour laser technology and this has been expensive both to procure the devices as well as in the final cost per page. However, the manufacturer of our imaging equipment - Hewlett Packard - has developed a new technology called Edgeline that dramatically reduces the cost of the final output.

As a result of this, we are undertaking a second trial of an Edgeline device this summer (the first trial earlier this year was unsuccessful) to ensure it operates within our infrastructure and we can use existing print accounts and smartcards to manage printing and copying on the device. We are hoping that this second trial will be more successful and if it is, we will deploy a device in the LRC for the coming academic year. All being well, costs for printing an A4 colour page will be dramatically lower than they currently are via the print-room.

Also this summer, we have undertaken the annual review of our print costs, looking at our supply chain as well as how we compare to others. Below is a comparison table for some other Scottish universities who openly publish their print costs:

With the exception to colour printing described above, we intend to keep our print costs as they currently stand. Please think of the environment before choosing to print or copy a document. Remember, you can reduce print costs by half by printing 2 pages per side (equating to 4 pages per sheet of paper). You can also scan to email or your Z: drive from all our MFDs, rather than photocopy.

Using digitised articles or book chapters in your WebCT modules

It is not too early for Academic Staff to submit Scanning requests now to the LRC Scanning Services if you would like to include digitised copies of articles or book chapters/extracts as PDF files in your WebCT modules in the new academic year.

To fulfil the requirements of the Copyright Licensing Agency, you will need to submit a request form for each item - even if it is the same item that was included in the last academic year.

The online CLA Scanning Request form is available on the LRC website, at http://erc.qmu.ac.uk/library/index2.php.

May we please remind all Academic Staff that under the terms of the CLA Scanning Licence, the preparation and distribution of digitised copies is restricted to the LRC Scanning Service. Please do not make and upload digital copies of articles or book chapters/extracts yourself as this would be in contravention of our Photocopying and Scanning Higher Education Licence.

May we also remind you that instead of including articles from E-Journals or chapters from E-Books in your WebCT modules, you should instead include permanent links to these items. These links will then allow access to authorised users as required under the terms of the electronic resources licences. The LRC Scanning Services will be happy to provide you with the permanent links for articles from E-Journals or E-Books.

More information about what can be digitised and uploaded to WebCT under the terms of the Licence can be found on our Scanning Services webpage - http://www.qmu.ac.uk/lb/IFAS_CLATrialScanningLicence.htm

Please bear in mind that the CLA may carry out, at any time, an audit of any material included in WebCT and that non-compliance with the regulations could result in our Licence being revoked and a large fine.

Please contact Nik Hussin at the LRC if you have any questions about the Scanning Licence and the Scanning services that the LRC offers.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Top tip for the Remote Desktop

If you need to open or save files to a USB drive, plug the drive into your local computer or laptop before connecting to the Remote Desktop.

Feedback from the student survey: Loan Periods

Over the summer vacation the LRC is considering changes to loan periods and our charging structure. This is due in part to comments received from the recent LRC survey.

Students have commented in particular on the length of time that DVDs can be borrowed, which is currently 1 day. We are looking at ways of perhaps increasing this loan period to 2 or 3 days. However, we are aware that some students need a “quick turn-around” of stock, as they often need access to a particular DVD for a module, so their needs will be taken into account.

Other LRC users have said that they would like the books in the Short Loan Collection to be available for longer than 4 hours. The items in this area are reviewed at regular intervals with the help of the teaching staff of the University. We will continue to liaise with the teaching staff to ensure that the loan periods for these particular items best suit the needs of all users.

Our charging structure is in place to ensure that the maximum number of users get access to LRC material. Most libraries charge fines to encourage the return of items. However the charges we currently have in place will be revisited over the vacation to ensure that users are not charged unfairly.

Introduction to Scopus by the TrainingDesk

We love Scopus and we hope you will too. Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Introduction to Scopus by the TrainingDesk

View more documents from Elsevier TrainingDesk.

Bidding farewell to ATHENS

Due to changes in the way we access LRC electronic resources, we will not be issuing ATHENS usernames and passwords from the academic year 2009-2010. Existing accounts will remain valid until 30th September 2009 for students and 31st October 2009 for staff.

QMU will be moving to an authentication method using your institutional login rather than ATHENS accounts later this summer. During the week beginning 17th August all off-campus links will be directed to the 'Institutional login screen' on our subscribed database or e-journal homepages.

You may also find this called a Shibboleth or Federation login by our suppliers. At this page you should select "UK Federation" (where necessary) then "Queen Margaret University" from the drop-down list. This will take you to our login screen where you should enter your Institutional login details - i.e. the same one you use to login to the desktop or email.

More information about the changes can be found on the Intranet which is available from on campus or via the Remote Desktop.

Further information about the Remote Desktop is available here. Please remember that use of the Remote Desktop greatly reduces the need to use other usernames and password, this is the preferred route for access to all our resources.

If you have any queries about the changes please contact LRCHelp@qmu.ac.uk.

Moving spaces

We're busy at the moment making room for extra study spaces in the Academic Reserve Room. As you can see from the photo, the shelves in the centre of the room have gone to make way for more desk space. These desks will be for quiet study - with terminals and sockets to plug in your laptop.

The StudySkills collection is currently being moved from this room and by September will be amalgamated into the main lending stock in the East and West wings of the LRC. Books in the StudySkills collection will no longer have the prefix of 'STUDYSKILLS' before the shelfmark.

Please ask at the Service Desk if you can't find what you're looking for.

We won!!!

This is just a quick note to let you all know that QMU won the Green ICT category last night at the Annual Green Gown awards for our Thin-Client project, further emphasising the leading edge work we have done in this area.

Unfortunately we just missed out the sustainable construction award but we came away with 'highly commended' in this category.

Feedback from the student survey: LRC Spaces

In the LRC User survey, we asked you which spaces you used in the LRC and this is how you responded:

Please tell us which learning spaces you have used within the Learning Resource Centre
Silent study room: 14.80% 86
Quiet study rooms: 19.28% 112
Quiet IT study rooms: 15.15% 88
Study carrels: 9.81% 57
Group study rooms: 21.17% 123
Post-graduate study rooms: 7.75% 45
Academic Reserve: 10.50% 61
Other (please specify): 1.55% 9

Some of the 'other' answers were:

computer workshops
Effective learning service
Far, far too few quiet study areas with PC access. This is a massive issue. I frequently come into uni at the weekend or wait until evening to get a quiet space to work, away from people laughing, shrieking etc
Group study areas, quiet comfy chairs
I have only used the carrel's once and I find they are claustrophobic, and there was no power point to plug the lap top into the bridge area

Our previous blog entry has dealt with quiet and silent study spaces, but we are also making some changes over the summer that we hope will make a difference and improve the service we provide.

We are reconfiguring the academic reserve room to become a quiet study space with 6 fixed terminals and power for using our loan laptops. Whilst the Short Loan collection and DVD collection will remain in this room, the Study Skills collection is being integrated into the main lending stock. Excess shelving has been relocated to the top of the LRC outside the post-grad room.

The LRC bridge area is being reconfigured as a mobile phone zone, so you can take and make phone calls in this area without having to leave the secure area of the LRC itself. Hopefully you will all use this rather than disturb those studying elsewhere. Please don't use your mobile phone anywhere else in the secure LRC as this really annoys everyone - staff will ask you to take your call elsewhere!

The IT labs which we piloted last semester as quiet IT labs when not in use for teaching will now officially be designated quiet areas.

We have requested that additional power points be installed in the study carrels with Estates and Facilities. Initial responses have indicated that this may be an expensive exercise but if it is affordable we will implement this.

There will be more terminals installed on the LRC terraces but we will also be providing one empty hexagonal desk per terrace for those that may want to study here without IT or who want to plug in their own laptop for using on our wireless network. We have also increased the number of printer/copiers on the terraces to 4 and they are now doubled up so that if one has a problem, the nearest device is immediately next to it. We know that this is important for 24/7 access when we may not be able to fix the device quickly.

The Great Musselburgh Book Swap

In conjunction with the opening of the CILIP CoFHE conference on the 17th of June 2009, the LRC will be holding a community book swap event that we are calling The Great Musselburgh Book Swap in Food For Thought from 11am to 7pm.

It's a chance for you to pick up your summer read, get rid of those books you are not reading anymore and decrease the environmental burden of our voracious reading habit.

We have invited members of the local community to come along to the event. So, do join us on the day. Any books left over from the swap will be donated to the charity Book Donors.

If you would like to contribute books to the event, please feel free to drop them off at the LRC Service Desk.

Trial access to Stress

We have arranged access for a 30 day trial period to the journal Stress: the International Journal on the Biology of Stress. The title can be accessed on campus via our ejournals web page or off campus by first logging in to the Remote Desktop.

The trial is set to end on the 10th July and as always feedback on the trial would be much appreciated.

Feedback from the Student Survey: Longer hours and 24 hour opening

In the LRC user survey, 65% of respondents thought our term-time opening was just right, however 28% thought they were too short. You also commented that we should be open 24 hours and longer at weekends. A greater percentage - 75% - thought our vacation hours were about right, with only 14% saying they were too short. Some respondents didn’t know what the vacation hours were and some said that they should be the same as term-time.

So what's happening with 24/7 access to the main, secure area of the LRC? As you will know, we have our LRC terraces with IT access available at all times but the secure area of the LRC - through the speedgates - remains inaccessible. Despite being designed to be available at all times, with automated systems to issue and return resources and hi-tech security, we remain at the mercy of health and safety, the local authority and the fire service who remain reluctant to have such a large area without fire marshal cover. We are working closely with colleagues in Estates and Facilities to resolve this and rest assured it remains at the top of our priorities.

When we ultimately implement 24-hour opening, then you will be able to access all our printed resources as well as borrow and return items but the LRC will still not be staffed, as usage simply could not justify the expenditure which we think is better spent on additional physical resources. In the meantime, 24-hour access is still available on the terraces which contain terminals and printing/copying facilities. We have increased the number of multi-function devices on the top terrace to provide resilience during the night. Security are able to open all three terraced areas if demand is high. Catering have also installed a multi-vend machine which is accessible during the night and we are working with them to look at drinking water supply.

Feedback from the student survey: Quiet and silent study spaces

In our recent student survey, when asked how they use the different spaces available in the LRC, 61% had used the Group Study rooms, and 56% the Quiet Study rooms. Comments included that there were too few quiet study areas, and a note that the study carrels were claustrophobic. With regard to noise levels, 58% were either fairly or very dissatisfied.

We have occasionally received requests from students to make the entire LRC a quiet area, like our old libraries at Corstorphine and Leith. We don't think that this would be a viable solution as the LRC is designed to facilitate all types of learning, including group and social study, which will inevitably create noise. What we have done is give you a large number of quiet, silent and individual study spaces. In addition, further quiet space is being created in the Academic Reserve area over the summer months.

Before the survey was launched we undertook a headcount survey of the usage of our 4 quiet study rooms and the silent study room, over 2 one-week periods. The results of this are below:

Week commencing 6 April 2009

Week commencing 20 April 2009

We would like to encourage all our students to make more use of rooms 1093 - 1096 and 1128. Remember that you can borrow a laptop from the Service Desk to use in the former but no IT is to be used in 1128. It goes without saying that mobiles should be on silent and all calls taken outside the LRC or in the new phone zone but more on that later.....

We've got 'The Lancet Specialty Collections' on trial

We're offering free trial access to TheLancet.com Speciality Collections via our Trial Databases web page.

The Lancet Specialty Collections allow targeted access to selected articles within 15 areas of clinical practice and public health. Most of these collections are also clustered into a total of 96 topics to allow more focused browsing. The collection or topic provides a convenient, single, entry point to the original research, expert comment, and authoritative review articles published since January, 2006 in the four Lancet journals - The Lancet, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Neurology, and Lancet Oncology.

From the link on the trial database page select the collection you require, then click on the Free Trial button at the right of the screen and follow instructions from there.

The trial lasts until 30th June and any feedback would be much appreciated.

Feedback from the student survey

Many thanks to all of you who completed the LRC User survey 2009. The 10 prize-winners will be announced here shortly.

All our feedback and analysis this year will be reported back through the blog only, so do check back regularly. It's easy to subscribe to our RSS feed or become a fan of our Facebook page.

To start the ball rolling, here are some statistics:

There were a total of 201 respondents -

88.8% are students
88.6% are full time

Just under 50% are from the School of Health Sciences but only 4% were from DCI.
The majority of respondents come in to the LRC to either borrow or renew books (57%) or to use a terminal (44%). 30% asked a question at the desk and 30% used an MFD.

Vacation time!!!

We're now into vacation opening hours. This means that we're open at 9am to 7pm from monday to friday and from 9am to 5pm on saturday and Sunday.

If you require an overnight loan of a Short Loan book, this is now possible from 3pm.

The terraces - as ever - are accessible 24/7. Don't forget your smartcard!

PubMed on iPhone or iTouch

For those of you lucky enough to have an iPhone or iTouch, you may be interested to learn that 'PubMed On Tap' is an application for your iPhone or iPod Touch that lets
you search PubMed while on the go.

Click here for more details.

May's Book Swap

Bring along your unwanted books to our book swap on the 14th May from 12 pm to 4 pm at Food for Thought.

Come and browse the tables and remember they are all free to take away. Swap your tired textbooks for some chick lit to read on the beach.

If you cannot make it on the day, you are very welcome to drop books off for the book swap at the LRC Service Desk.

Free Access to Swine Flu Information from DynaMed

Due to the recent global outbreak of Swine Influenza, EBSCO Publishing and the DynaMed Editors have made DynaMed’s information about Swine Influenza free to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. The DynaMed topic on Swine Influenza consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis. Please click on the following link for information regarding Swine Influenza:
http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed/swineflu/.

DynaMed is a point-of-care reference resource designed to provide clinicians with the best available evidence to support clinical decision-making. DynaMed is part of the suite of medical products owned and provided by EBSCO Publishing and is updated daily by monitoring medical literature sources.

Have your say!!!

To all students and staff.

Have your say! We want to know what you think about the Learning Resource Centre.

Go online to fill in our short survey for a chance to win one of 10 Amazon £10 e-vouchers.

Thank you for your time.

Henry Stewart Publications - journal trial

A trial of Henry Stewart Publications is granting us access to their collection of 15 journals covering the areas of health, social care, finance and management.

Current articles include:

Barrow, B., Mehler P. and Price, C. 2009. A communications campaign designed to improve hand hygiene compliance and reduce infection rates. Journal of Communication in Healthcare. 2 (1) February, pp. 61-77

Haines, E. 2009. The dos and don'ts of proximity marketing in sponsorship. Journal of Sponsorship. 2 (2) February, pp. 113-119

The trial is available until the 19th April and is available on campus or off campus via the Remote Desktop. Let us know what you think - fill in the trial database feedback form or email Barbara Houston.

Film and Sound Online add Wellcome titles

EDINA have recently announced that content from the Wellcome Film Collection have been added to their database Film and Sound Online with more to come throughout the year.

Subscription to this database is free to Further and Higher Education institutions within the UK which means that researchers and students will be able to access this unique collection. Highlighted titles include:

• Conditioned reflexes and behaviour (1925) - with reported rare footage of Pavlov
• Living with diabetes (1959) - where two patients discuss treatment of their type 1 and type 2 diabetes with their consultant and dietician

Some titles may be restricted due to their sensitive, medical nature. For more information on the collection go to: http://www.filmandsound.ac.uk/collections/wellcome.html

Extra quiet study spaces

Starting next week Room 1:126 and 1:127 will be designated quiet study spaces in the East Wing. This is in addition to the five individual study carrels and the four quiet study rooms in the West Wing.

The new spaces are primarily used for teaching so you may occassionally be asked to leave if there is a class scheduled.

Blackwells bookstall is coming to QMU

Happy New Year!!!

Christmas may be over but the singing carries on. Blackwell's bookstall is coming to town...

You'll be able to find them on the bridge area of the Learning Resource Centre from the 26th January to the 6th February. They will be bringing a wide variety of books from reading lists in all subject areas. If you can't find what you're looking for, you'll be able to place orders.