Thursday, March 31, 2011

Afraid to Ask? Watch and Learn

We're always here to help in the Library, but for those of you who don't make it so far as our Information Desk we've made some short "movies" showing some basic functions on our Catalogue and website.

As Library productions of course they're silent (shhh...), and we won't be packing for the Oscars just yet, but we hope they'll be of assistance to some users.

For starters we've covered the following areas

(if they're too small to follow just click on the full screen option on the bottom-right of each window)

How to renew a loan


How to reserve a book that's out on loan


How to find and read an ebook on the Catalogue


How to search, copy and print with an ebook


These clips can also be found on our website by clicking on Online Tutorials in the Online Resources page.

They were made using free software so if you think you'd like more of the same (for other tasks) let us know at info.library@spd.dcu.ie and we'll see if we can get Spielberg in again...

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

An IAR to the Ground...

Irish Archives Resource (www.iar.ie) is a new web portal which allows cross-searching of some noteworthy online archives. The portal harvests content from 16 prominent repositories with material ranging from the 17th Century up to the present.

The searchable records and objects include contents of 11 County and 3 City archives as well as the Guinness Archive, Irish Film Archive and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

You can limit your search either to a single repository or to 'Collection Types' with options including Literary Papers, Theatre, Folklore, Trade Unions and Archives of Private Clubs and Societies.

The project was part-funded by the Heritage council and should be useful to researchers in a wide range of areas.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

The Library is closed tomorrow, March 17 for St. Patrick's Day. We reopen on Friday at 9am. See our full opening hours here.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Síol Workshops and Training

As part of Library Ireland Week (March 7-13), we are pleased to launch Síol Information and Research Support Service.

Good library and information services are an essential underpinning for research, just as they are for successful teaching and learning. Success in research depends critically on the quality of the information services to which researchers have accesss. We would like to invite you along to our refresher courses and basic demonstrations in using our Online Resources.

Over the next three weeks we are offering basic and refresher demonstrations in
  • RefWorks Bibliography Manager
  • Online Databases
  • Using the Catalogue
  • Journal searches
  • Accessing Ebooks
For details of when and where these courses are taking place check the Síol page on our website.