Cambridge E-books Trial

We have obtained trial access for one month to Cambridge's complete online collection of e-books.

Cambridge Books Online contains thousands of e-books titles in the humanities, social sciences and education.

Chapters can be downloaded in pdf format and titles are indexed in such a way that they are easily discovered through commonly used search tools such as Google Scholar.

While the trial is live, why not dive straight in to http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ and browse or search your own areas of interest.

If you want to check a particular title or search for a term you can start right away by typing your terms in below:

• 
• Widget Search Keyword
• 

This trial is obtained for the purpose of assessment for any future purchase.  We'd be glad to hear from staff or students about how relevant these collections are to you or your department.

Remember to check our Trial Databases page on our website to see what is currently available in addition to our existing resources.

School Placement Resource

World Book Online is an excellent online resource primarily aimed at children and those working with or teaching children.  It is currently available on trial access to all SPD staff and students.

Click here to access the collection - it's also available via our website.

To access this resource you'll need our trial login which will be emailed to your College account.  If you haven't received this, please just ask in the Library or Resource Centre and a member of staff will help you.

This site is presented in four sections - World Book Web, Speciality Sites, World Book Digital Libraries and World Book Classroom.

Together these contain children's literature, encyclopedia articles, primary source collections, educator tools, student activities, pictures, audio, and video, complemented by current periodicals and related websites.

As with all of our trial subscriptions we invite feedback from staff or students, so please let us know if you like it!

Books for School Placement

If you’re about to head out on school placement and are wondering which books to bring with you into the classroom, we can help!

Check out our LibraryThing account @ www.librarything.com (username: StPatsJLibrary / password: farmerduck).

Click on a curriculum strand (see tags) or on a theme (see collections). Then check availability of anything you find interesting in the Catalogue.

This is a work in progress so all comments welcome!

Open Access Week

This week is Open Access Week, a global event in its sixth year which promotes awareness of and participation in open access initiatives.

When the fancy takes us we like to point out relevant and interesting open access resources here, so for the week that's in it we'll list a couple of our current favourites...

World Digital Library
Created by UNESCO and Library of Congress, WDL is a digital collection and portal for "significant primary materials" from countries and cultures around the world.  Digitised objects vary from a first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to a map of Ireland from Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.  

BambooDIRT
A great one-stop shop for digital tools for researchers and teachers. Not all the resources listed are open access but the majority are, and the site itself is a really quick way of seeing what tools or resources can help you in your line of research or work.  They are neatly categorised into typical research tasks such as

• analyse data
• make a dynamic map
• organise research materials
• annotate resources
• write collaboratively

Clicking on a task opens up a list of what online tools are available for that particular aspect of research, along with brief descriptions and links.  The lists can be further narrowed by cost (including 'free'!) and platform (Windows, Apple etc.) so you can quickly see what you're looking for.

Happy Open Access Week!

Teaching and Learning Resources

In our Main Lending Collection we have many titles relating to different aspects of Teaching and Learning.

They're not all in the same spot so to help you find them we've put a list on the Subject Resources section of our website under Teaching and Learning, giving a quick reference of what we currently stock in that area, along with the relevant shelf numbers. They're all on our Catalogue too so you can check there whether they're out on loan.

Any staff who wish to add titles in this area can request them in the usual way through our website.

Oxford Handbooks Online Trial

We have trial access to Oxford Handbooks Online: Political Science until February 18.  This module of the Oxford Handbooks series comprises of 24 titles each covering a different aspect of the area.

Titles available in this module include:

• The Welfare State
• Local and Regional Democracy in Europe
• Climate Change and Society
• Public Policy

Political Science is one of four modules in the Handbooks series, the others being Business Management, Philosophy and Religion.  

If you find this resource helpful or would like a look at any of the other modules please let us know at info.library@spd.dcu.ie.

Even More From J-STOR

There was good news for scholars recently when our friends from J-STOR kindly opened their vault and made almost 500,000 articles from late 19th and early 20th century publications available free of charge. Better than a poke in the eye, as they say.

This open access content is from a corpus of scholarly articles published in the United States before 1923 and outside the US before 1870. You can see a full list of the free titles here, organised by discipline. Why not have a root around their archives and see what's available in your area? You won't even get dust in your eyes, or if you do you need to clean your keyboard...

 The video below gives a quick tutorial of how to tailor your search:

 You can link to J-STOR from the Databases A-Z on our website.

Get SmART with SmartHistory

SmartHistory (www.smarthistory.org) is an award-winning "web-book" which uses multimedia content - audio, video, images, text - as an alternative to the traditional textbook for students and teachers of art history.

The resource may be of interest to Education students taking the art elective, and it also features contextual discussions and articles concerning different aspects of english, geography, history and philosophy.

Even if you've only a passing interest in art history, it's worth a look to see how well multimedia can be used in an educational capacity.  The interface provides a number of entry points and navigation tools for the various topics, and offers related links depending on which area or era you find yourself delving into.

The site was started in 2005 by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker and has since grown to include contributions from numerous academics in art history - you can see the full list here.  Check it out!

Eneclann Display

We currently have a selection of Eneclann digital publications on display at the entrance to the main library. These titles are in CD-ROM format and contain digitised versions of various 18th, 19th and early 20th century works.

Titles available include:

• 1798 Rebellion, Claimants and Surrenders
• Pigot's Commercial Dictionary
• Slater's Commercial Directory
• Thom's Almanac & Directory
• The Dublin Almanac
• Confederation of Kilkenny
• Census Reports of Co. Dublin and Ireland
• and lots more...

Print editions of many of these titles are also in the Library and all of the CD-Rom versions are available to borrow as main lending items.

Maths Anyone Khan Do

Staff and students in our Mathematics and Education Departments may be interested in Khan Academy, a web-based collection of maths tutorials, videos and lesson plans aimed at helping learners both in the classroom and at home.

The resource was created by Sal Khan in 2008 and has since mushroomed in both size and popularity to the point where it now contains over 2,100 educational videos which have been viewed over 43 million times.

More recently the site received funding from Bill Gates and Google which has enabled the addition of some excellent interactive tools. These complement the video tutorials by gauging the level of each user and guiding them towards the next stage. They also enable the teacher to see live data on how their class members are progressing, what videos they have watched and what lessons they have completed successfully.

See the video below for an explanation of some of how the site works both for the learner and educator or go to the full website for more information.

Let's Get Politico(.ie)

We now offer access to Politico (http://www.politico.ie), an online resource dealing with politics and current affairs in Ireland from 1968 up to the present day.

As well as daily articles and videos on current issues, the site includes fully searchable archives of magazines such as Magill and The Village which can be accessed from the Magazines or Archive links on the main navigation bar and the search results link to full text digital facsimiles of the original articles.

The resource is available from the links above or via our databases a-z on our website.

If you have any problems, questions or comments about using this resource please let us know at our information desk or by phone/ email at 01-8842170 / info.library@spd.dcu.ie.

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.

JFK Online Archive

Scholars of American history (or anyone with a passing interest) may be interested in a new open access digital resource launched yesterday by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

The online archive of the 35th American president provides immediate access to hundreds of thousands of digital files such as documents, speeches, phone conversations and photographs.

A quick browse found an audio clip of JFK at Dublin Castle during his visit here in 1963, speaking about the importance of education to democracy and paying tribute to Ireland's educational heritage.

See an article in today's Irish Times about the resource here or go straight to the archive itself here.

Trial Access to Education Resource

Up until the Christmas break we have obtained trial access to British Education Index, an independent subject and author index of the contents of significant education journals published in the UK since 1975. The resource is hosted for us via Dialogue's Data Star resource at www.datastar.com.

The index contains bibliographic details of over 150,000 articles from education-related journals as well as conference papers, research reports and electronic texts.

While it does not contain full text versions of articles, the index acts as a useful filter for those researching specialised areas within education and looking for articles and publications relevant to their study. Article or journal references returned by the index may of course be available via one of our online journal databases or, failing that, by inter-library loan.

To access the resource you will require our trial login which can be obtained simply by contacting the Information Desk (info.library@mail.dcu.ie). Once you've entered your login details just enter BREI in the database field and click 'select' and you're on your way!

We'd be glad to hear any comments you have regarding the resource.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

As part of a government initiative providing the resource to all national schools, Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition is now freely available to members of St. Patrick's College.

To access the resource just click on the link above and enter your 8-digit College ID number for verification.

You can search the entire encyclopaedia or, alternatively, use the three sub-sites offered which filter material suitable for either primary school, secondary school or 'A-level' students. It also contains a Teacher's Resources section and Britannica Learning Zone for early learners.

Our thanks to Encyclopædia Britannica and also to NCTE for providing us with access to this excellent resource.

Ask About Ireland...

AskAboutIreland.ie is a free open access resource that could be useful for those studying in Education, English, History or Geography.

A couple of areas of particular relevance to St. Pat's are:

Learning Zone - online activities and games for primary school students

Griffith's Valuation - a digitised version of 19th Century land valuations

Excellent articles on Irish history, myth and culture can be found by browsing through the Reading Room - things like Ghost Stories of Dublin, Cúchalainn's wooing of Emer or the Seven Septs of Laois. There's an article on Irish Authors by Dr. Derek Hand from our English Department.

The site is an initiative of public libraries, museums and archives in Ireland to digitally preserve our cultural resources. It was founded in 2008 and resources are still being added to it as they become available in digital form.

The project is managed by An Comhairle Leabharlanna and supported by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government with funding from the Information Society Fund.