Christmas closing

The Library will close at 5pm on Friday 21st December, and reopen at 9am on Wednesday 2nd January.

We'd like to wish all our readers a very happy Christmas and New Year!

VHL on LibraryThing

As part of our VHL 2.0 experiment, we have created an account for the library on LibraryThing. LibraryThing, for anyone not already aware, is a social cataloguing site, and thus combines the power of 'proper' cataloguing with the collective knowledge of its users, who can add all sorts of spangly web 2.0 type things - tags, reviews, ratings - and link to each others' libraries to see what other people are reading, get recommendations and talk about books. A bibliophile's paradise, in other words! Now obviously, we do have a proper catalogue for all our books, but we thought that our readers might also like to have the access to the extra social data from the LibraryThing hive mind for books we have recently acquired. I have therefore just uploaded our new accessions list for November (also available with links to OLIS on our website), and this can be viewed on LibraryThing at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/vhllib, or via the lovely new blog widget on the sidebar here. Links will also be created directly from our webpage, and if you use RSS feeds, then you can subscribe to our new books with this url: http://www.librarything.com/rss/recent/vhllib.

As with all our web 2.0 experimental features, we'd love to get your feedback about whether this is useful, and also encourage any of our readers who librarything themselves to link to us.

New books in the library - November

November's list of new books is now available on our website at: http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/vhl/collections_and_services/accessions.

Photocopier update III: the saga continues

The photocopier is stubbornly resisting all attempts by the Xerox engineer to fix it. He is now calling in the expert photocopier repair man, who will hopefully be here in the next couple of days to see if he can do any better.

We apologise for the continued interruption to the service (needless to say we are just as frustrated as you are!) and we will continue to copy for you if you have urgent photocopying requirements.

WISER: Remote access to databases

Because of exceptional demand we are running the following session twice on Thursday. Booking for the second session at:
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZWH

WISER: Remote Access to Databases and Datasets
Thursday, 29 November 2007 2.00 - 3.00
OUCS, Banbury Road (week 8)
This session will help you to set up access to Oxford online resources from your home computer through passwords (Athens and Single-Sign On) and the Virtual Private Network.
Presenters: Peter Higginbotham (OUCS) and Judy Reading (OULS)

Information is also available in the guide "Access to online resources..." see http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/guides (or collect from your library or request from usered@ouls.ox.ac.uk). You should hopefully find if you read through the guide that you would not need to come to the workshop but all very welcome.

Information about the full WISER programme at:
http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/services/information_skills
All enquiries to: usered@ouls.ox.ac.uk

OLIS records for Evans

Records for the new e-resource Early American Imprints I: Evans 1639-1800 are being loaded into OLIS so titles in this collection can be searched for and linked to within the catalogue.

Photocopier update continued...

I'm sorry to have to report the photocopier is still not working. The engineer has been this morning with the new parts but the copier stubbornly refuses to come back to life, so he will be back tomorrow with more new parts. We're keeping our fingers crossed and praying to the photocopying gods for mercy...

Photocopier update

Mixed news for all of you waiting with baited breath for the resurrection of our dead photocopier. The good news is the Xerox engineer has finally come to look at it. The bad news is it needs new parts and so will be out of action for another couple of days. If you have urgent photocopying requirements, please let staff know - we have made arrangements with the RAI to use their machine in the meantime.

I'm sure you will all be delighted to hear that we are in the home strait with this ancient and cranky machine, and will be getting a new copier in January.

Online database tutorials

Two introductory tutorials for US Studies databases (America: History and Life and The New York Times Historical Archive) have been created by library staff and are available online:

• America: History and Life
• The New York Times Historical Archive

The tutorials are designed to take you through the first steps of running basic searches with the database, and therefore will only work within the Oxford network.

What's in the blog? You tell me!

One of the big advantages of having a blog like this one for library news is that it is so easy for me to post things. This means that I've been posting all sorts of different bits of information, but I have no way of knowing what you find useful or otherwise. So, in an attempt to find out, I've set up a quick poll on the sidebar of this page for you to vote on what kind of information you want to see here.

Please vote if you have a second, the feedback monster is hungry...

WISER sessions next week

WISER Humanities: Quality information on the Internet. Friday, 23 November 12.30 - 1.30 at OUCS, Banbury Road (week 7) This session will help you to develop effective web searching techniques for use with search engines and introduce you to strategies for evaluating resources. Some guidance on how to cite electronic resources will also be provided.
Johanneke Sytsema and Judy Reading
Book at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZC15
Information about the full programme at http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/information_skills

New quick database guides available

New quick reference database guides are now available in the library for the following OxLIP databases:

• America: History and Life
• Declassified Documents Reference System
• Early American Imprints I: Evans, 1639-1800

Online versions of OULS guides can be found at http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/guides.

The Library of the Future

A review of the VHL by Isis Magazine's Toast.

WISER sessions next week

WISER Humanities: Electronic journals and citation indexes. Friday, 16 November (6) OUCS Banbury Road 12.30 - 1.30 Electronic journals provide online, full-text access to journal articles. We will demonstrate the Oxford University e-Journals interface and also some key online journal citation indexes for the humanities including MLA, ATLA and Historical Abstracts Kerry Webb and Elizabeth Crowley Book at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZC21

WISER Social Sciences: Google and beyond. Tuesday 13 November (week 6) This session will help you to develop effective web searching techniques for use with search engines and introduce you to strategies for evaluating resources. Some guidance on how to cite electronic resources will also be provided.
Angela Carritt and Penny Schenk - Social Science Library IT Training Room - no need to book

Full details of the WISER programme at http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/information_skills/wiser

Information skills training

WISER (Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources) sessions next week:

WISER Humanities: Keeping up-to-date. Friday, 9 November (5) Make your own current awareness service. Discover ways of using electronic bibliographic resources to keep up with the literature in your field by creating personal research / interest profiles.
Kate Petherbridge and Judy Reading
Book at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZC13

WISER Social Sciences: Is IT all a bit much? Getting information to come to you. Tuesday 6 November (week 5) 12.30-1.30 at Social Science Library IT Room Make your own current awareness service. Discover ways of using electronic bibliographic resources to keep up with the literature in your field by creating personal research / interest profiles.
Katherine Melling and Clare Jarvis
No need to book

Full programme and further details at http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/information_skills/wiser

Also, advance notice of a session at the end of term:

WISER: Remote Access to Databases and Datasets Thursday, 29 November 2007 12.30 - 1.30 OUCS, Banbury Road (week 8) This session will help you to set up access to Oxford online resources from your home computer through passwords (Athens and Single-Sign On) and the Virtual Private Network. Presenters: Peter Higginbotham (OUCS) and Judy Reading (OULS) Book at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZWH
Information is also available in the guide "Access to online resources..." see http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/guides or collect from your library.

New books in the library - October

A list of new books which arrived in the library in October is now up on our website: http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/vhl/collections_and_services/accessions.

Wireless for external (non-University) readers

We are now finally able to offer access to the wireless network for non-University members. If you are an external reader (ie, your library card is any colour other than blue!) and you would like to be able to connect your laptop to the internet in the VHL, please ask at the desk and we will issue you with an account username and password. This will allow you access via the OWL-VISITOR network.

Things to note:

• Visitor accounts are short-term and all accounts issued will expire in December. If you want to continue using the wireless network next term you will need to re-register in January.
• Access to the wireless network will not guarantee you access to all the University's electronic resources. Most subscribed e-resources are IP-authenticated and therefore will not be available via the wireless network.
• There is effectively no technical support for this service as OUCS will not support non-University members.

Welcome and introduction to VHL 2.0

Welcome to the official blog of the Vere Harmsworth Library! We'll be using this to keep our users up-to-date on everything that's going on, new services, changes to existing ones, new resources, and anything else we think you might want to know about. You can use this to keep up-to-date by subscribing to our RSS feed, and can also let us know what you think about what we're telling you by commenting on the posts. We hope that it will be a valuable and dynamic new way of keeping in touch with our readers.

This blog is also an important part of our new experiment: VHL 2.0. We're expanding the library presence into social sites such as del.icio.us and Facebook, and are inviting you, our loyal readers, to join us as we take our first faltering steps into the brave new world of web 2.0. The library world has been much exercised recently by the possibilities offered by all these new online services, and so we thought we should take the plunge, give it a go, see whether it works. It's worth a try anyway, hey? However, we're not going to get anywhere very much without YOU! Yes, YOUR LIBRARY NEEDS YOU! Take a look at our del.icio.us page, where we're building a list of hopefully useful and relevant websites. If you use del.icio.us, add us to your network and save sites for us too. Join our Facebook group, and discuss issues with us and other users. And above all, let us know what you think!