Access to Internet Archaeology

We’ve access now to the Internet Archaeology archive  - the premier e-journal for archaeology.

Access comes thanks to a JISC deal which gives us free access to the site.  We get access to the journal’s content from 1996 to 2006 (issues 1-21).

Summer Vacation Opening Hours

Today is the last day of the 2007/8 Academic Year and the start of the Summer Vacation. Learning Centres are open throughout the vacation with reduced hours.

The opening hours for Harrison Learning Centre are as follows:

Monday-Thursday	9am - 8pm (5 - 8pm Support Staff Only)
Friday	9am - 5pm
Saturday	1.30pm - 5.30pm (Support Staff Only)

For further information and details of opening hours at other Learning Centres, see here.

If you are going away over the summer I hope you have a great time and come back refreshed and ready for the next Academic Year!

Online Interlibrary Loan Forms

We now have online forms for requesting interlibrary loans on our LIS web pages - you can see them at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/interloan .

Current UK copyright laws mean that we still have to have a form signed by the requester before we can send interlibrary loan requests, so although the form can be filled in online, it will still have to be printed off for the signature. We’re planning to introduce a full online requesting service as soon as the legal position on electronic signatures is clear, but in the meantime please feel free to use our online forms which you can complete from anywhere and then print (and sign!) to bring your request to the nearest Learning Centre.

RSS Day

Today is RSS Awareness Day so I thought it would be useful to celebrate this by sharing some information on RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

Some of you may already be familiar with RSS feeds and even use the RSS feed on the SEBE blog. For those that aren’t, RSS is a simple way of subscribing to your favourite web content. You can use a desktop RSS reader (Outlook 2007 and ThunderBird have RSS feeds integrated to their e-mail applications), or you may prefer to use a web-based RSS reader. Bloglines and Google Reader are both popular RSS readers which you may want to try. Once you’ve got your RSS reader sorted you can subscribe to any RSS feed (usually an orange button like the one on the left column). BBC News website has RSS feeds you may be interested in, and almost all blogs have an RSS feed to subscribe to. You can also set up RSS alerts for searches from some of our databases.

There’s a great video demonstrating the basics of RSS from YouTube:

E-books for SEBE students

The University subscribes to a number of electronic books for SEBE students. The books can be viewed both on campus and off campus giving you the flexibility to be able to access useful resources from home (or anywhere else you choose to study!).

As shown before, e-books can be found by searching on the OPAC catalogue (a simple keyword search for engineering gives 743 different e-books, give your own subject of interest a try). If you want to access them off campus, remember to authenticate your PC first (using your usual IT username and password).

You may also go directly to the e-books from the e-book page on our website. For example, if your lecturer has told you a particular book is available on the Knovel Interactive Library you can go directly to Knovel from the e-book page.

Engineering Calculations with Calculator Edge

Just thought I’d share a great online calculator for engineers - it’s free to use and can work out all sorts of calculations for you - air flow, pressure, stress, strain, and a whole load of other calculations which go way beyond my engineering knowledge!

It has sections for Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and more.

Found via Internet Resources Newsletter.

EndNote workshops

Due to a large number of requests for help with EndNote, we are running EndNote workshops each Thursday lunchtimes 1pm-2pm for the next five weeks starting tomorrow (from 2nd April until 1st May) at Harrison Learning Centre. There’s no need to book, just come along if you are interested.

We will also be running InfoBites workshops on Tuesday lunchtimes, please keep an eye on the Information Skills webpages for an up-to-date version of the calendar. If you are a Google Calendar user, you may also wish to add the InfoBites calendar to keep updated with all the InfoBites sessions.

Learning Centre Easter Opening Hours

As I’m sure you’re aware, today is the last day of this term before the Easter vacation.

All Learning Centres are open Mon-Fri 9-5 throughout the vacation apart from Fri 21st, Mon 24th and Tues 25th March (Harrison and Walsall Learning Centres are open for self service only on these days).

For more information please see here.

Happy Easter!

Engineering resources added to Intute

 

Intute, the UK gateway to web resources for education and research, has recently added many more resources for engineering. You can check them out here.

Earn £20 by giving feedback on our web site

We are looking for students to help us with research into the Learning Centres web site. Volunteers can be any student registered on a taught course at the University, no experience with the web site is required or expected. The research will take a maximum of one hour, and we are offering a £20 voucher as an incentive to participants. We will arrange with volunteers a mutually convenient time and venue to carry out the research. Students who are interested in participating should email Learning Centre Direct.