Celebrate National Libraries Day 2013 with Bath Big Reads!

As part of the build-up to National Libraries Day (NLD13) on Saturday 9 Feb 2013, the Library is pleased to announce the re-launch of its popular non-fiction collection – Bath Big Reads!

Subject Librarians have identified popular science, engineering, languages and humanities titles that are spread out throughout their collections and they have been collated into an easy to browse interface. Simply scan through the book covers and follow the title links to the catalogue to see where they are shelved!

Choose something fun and informative about your subject or a topic of interest to you beyond your day-to-day studies.  Nourish your brain with some of our Bath Big Reads!

It’s not all hard work; you will spot many bestsellers here, for example Freakonomics, The English or The Selfish Gene. Find books by such diverse and popular authors as Lynne Truss, Jeremy Clarkson and Stephen Hawking!

If you spot a popular non-fiction title you think we should include or if you cannot find a  book in our collection, get in touch to let us know through our Ask a Librarian service. Don’t forget, you can also join your local public library for access to even more popular fiction and non-fiction titles.

Oxford Handbooks Online – your chance to dip into the content

Oxford Handbooks are now available online, in addition to print.  The Library has negotiated a trial (until the end of February) giving users online access to three of the fourteen available e-book collections:-

• Economics & Finance • Business & Management • Political Science

Many online articles will appear in advance of their publication in print.  The online handbooks will also contain some ‘born-digital’ content not included in the print versions.

To dip into this content, visit

http://libproxy.bath.ac.uk/login?url=http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/

E-books in engineering and science from Woodhead Publishing– take a look!

We have signed up for a trial of over 800 ebooks from Woodhead Publishing and have access until the end of Semester 2.  We’ve added all the records for these titles to the library catalogue for the duration of the trial and we’ll be interested to see which titles have been viewed within this time.

The screenshot below is an example of a title included in the trial.  Why not type the title into our library catalogue to gain access to this book, and all the other ebooks included in the trial, via the Browse Collections option?

Make sure you click on the red Look inside link to see the full text – as the trial is view only, the normal functionality of accessing the pdf has not been activated.

SpringerLink Training for Postgraduates – 12 Feb 2013

Last year the Library substantially expanded its access to Springer journals and books online, including acquisition of over 10,000 new ebooks across STEM subjects.

Springer has recently launched an enhanced platform for accessing its materials – SpringerLink – and is sending a specialist trainer to demonstrate how to use this resource as a postgraduate student. This is likely to be of particular interest to researchers in the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Engineering & Design.

When: Tuesday 12 February 2013 from 13:00 – 14:00.
Where: The Library, Level 1 Training Room

Space is limited!

Register for the session and get an exclusive water bottle for free.

Library Catalogue – latest upgrades!

The upgrades that took place on Monday 28 – Tuesday 29 February enable the following enhanced features in the Library catalogue:

The key changes are greater personalisation of results ranking, export to reference management software, improved faceting and limiting of results as well as removal of the need to log in before searching the catalogue.

• Personalized ranking of results (from Primo Central): signed-in users can volunteer their discipline interests and results will be ranked accordingly
• EBSCO results included if you’re on campus: you will no longer need to log in before searching to ensure you are not missing these results.
• Multiple facet selection: users can choose more than one facet to include or exclude
• Author, subject and journal title facets included with EBSCO results
• Select specific publication date range in Advanced search instead of “last x years”
• Send to Endnote Web works for Primo Central and EBSCO results (instead of “Your session timed out” message)
• Export RIS format file for Endnote desktop – allowing you to manually import your results into EndNote X6

‘My Collection’ downtime – Monday 28 January

A scheduled upgrade to the new Library catalogue is expected to take about 9 hours on Monday 28 January, during which time the catalogue will be available for searching, but users will not be able to add, move or delete records in “My Collections”.

You will also still be able to place holds, renew loans, pay bills and place Inter-Library Loans or Bath Copies requests, because those are all done in a separate system.

At the end of the upgrade, the catalogue will be unavailable for a period of about 15 minutes while it’s switched to the new version. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

5pm Exams postponed – Tuesday 22 January

The University has taken the decision to postpone the exams scheduled to take place at 5pm on Tuesday evening.  While snow is falling on campus this afternoon, roads are accessible and bus services are running normally at present.  However, conditions may deteriorate this evening if the rate of snowfall increases.

Further information is provided via the news item on the University homepage

Further university updates in relation to the weather will be made as normal on the University homepage and via email.