Wednesday, 24 October 2007

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.

Friday, 12 October 2007

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!