Friday 29 February 2008

Travels in the W & SW - microfiche list continued

For anyone tracking our progress with the online list of uncatalogued fiches in the Travels in the West and Southwest collection, we have just hit our limit of 250 items on the list. We have therefore started a second list for the remaining fiches which can be viewed at: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/vhllib/lists/54202. Both are linked to from our website.

Tuesday 26 February 2008

WISER sessions coming up

WISER Social Sciences: E-books.
Monday 3 March 2008 (week 8), 12.30 -1.30 Social Science Library IT Room, Manor Road.
An overview of the ebook packages that are currently available and how to access them. This session is aimed at students, researchers and academics considering using e-books to resource their courses. There will be time for hands-on practice.
Kate Williams and Hilla Wait.
No need to book.

WISER General: Theses and dissertations.
Friday, 7 Mar (week 8), 12.30 -1.30, OUCS, Banbury Road.
This session offers guidance on finding theses, both those held in Oxford University Libraries and those from other institutions in the UK and abroad. It will demonstrate how to exploit the main sources of information for theses and dissertations: OLIS; Index to Theses (UK andIreland); Dissertation Abstracts International (America).
Mat Andrews and Rob Wilkes.
Book at:http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TFZ4

Full programme at: http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/training
All enquiries to: usered@ouls.ox.ac.uk

Thursday 21 February 2008

Travels in the West and Southwest - list of uncatalogued microfiches now available

Last year, we found a large set of microfiches from the Travels in the West and Southwest collection which had been purchased back in the 1970s and had never been catalogued. We purchased catalogue records for approximately half of the fiches in the summer and loaded them into OLIS, but were unable to obtain records for the rest. It may take us a while to get these catalogued, but we have just found an interim solution to make a list of the titles available for browsing so that these fiches are accessible. We are using My WorldCat to create an online list which is available for viewing at: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/vhllib/lists/52208. It may take us a couple of weeks to get all the titles on there - if you are keen to follow our progress you can even subscribe to the feed and be notified of our progress as we add more!

Once we have completed the list, we will put the fiches out in the drawer at shelfmark Micr. USA 454 (with the catalogued ones), and be able to add the titles to our subject and title lists.

New computers - now 6th March

Good news - we've just heard that our new reader PCs are coming on Thursday 6th March. As before, if you have anything saved on any of the old ones, please make sure you have retrieved it by then!

Monday 18 February 2008

WISER sessions coming up

WISER Social Sciences: Bodleian Modern Political Papers.
Monday 25th February (week 7), 12.30 - 1.30, Social Science Library IT Room.
An introduction to the Bodleian Library collection of modern political papers including the Conservative Party Archive. Modern Papers offer a fascinating collection of original source material for historical and social science research especially for political researchers.
Helen Langley and Jeremy McIlwaine.
No need to book.

WISER Humanities: Early Printed Books: Part 2.
Thursday, 28 February (week 7), 12.30 - 1.30, OUCS, Banbury Road.
Continuing from Pt 1, this session aims to give readers further training in the use of EEBO and ECCO and introduce other key full-text e-resources for early printed books which are relevant to humanities subjects, esp. Making of the Modern World (MOMW) and Early American Imprints Ser. I (Evans). Hands-on practice will be offered.
Isabel Holowaty.
Book at:http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZC22

WISER General: Remote access.
Friday, 29 February (week 7), 12.30 -1.30, OUCS, Banbury Road.
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. Information is also available in the guide "Access to online resources..." (see guides).
Judy Reading and Peter Higginbotham.
Book at:http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZWH

Full programme at: http://sers018.sers.ox.ac.uk/services/training/wiser
All enquiries to: usered@ouls.ox.ac.uk

Friday 15 February 2008

Delay to new computers

We have just been informed that we won't be getting our new PCs next week after all. ICT explain the reason for this as follows: "The Dell PCs need an upgrade patch to be installed and we have taken the decision to suspend the remainder of the rollouts until we can apply this patch in advance to save a further visit to the PCs post installation. THE PLANNED INSTALLATIONS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE PCs HAVE THEREFORE BEEN SUSPENDED." There's no news on when they will be replaced, but as soon as we hear we will let you know.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

Skype + webcam available in the group study room

We have installed Skype and a webcam on the PC in the group study room. If you would like to use these facilities (for academic purposes, not just to call your aunt in Australia!), please email us to book the room. The PC in the group study room has sound enabled, unlike the main library PCs, so can also be used for looking at audio-visual resources (again preferably for academic purposes, tempting as Star Wars Kid or those guys on the treadmills may be...).

Monday 4 February 2008

WISER sessions coming up

WISER Social Sciences: Online resources for International Relations.
Monday 11th February (week 5), 12.30 - 1.30, Social Science Library IT Room.
An overview of full-text, bibliographic, archive, and data sources for international relations including: World Political Science Abstracts, Columbia International Affairs Online, Digital National Security Archive, e-books, e-journals, and international relations data resources.
Mark Janes.
No need to book.

WISER Humanities: Historical newspapers print and e-collections.
Thursday, 14 February (week 5), 12.30 - 1.30, OUCS, Banbury Road.
A one hour course which will give an overview of historical newspaper collections in Oxford including online full-text resources and finding aids.
Mat Andrews.
Book at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZF8

WISER General: Finding quality information on the internet.
Friday, 15 February (week 5), 12.30 - 1.30, OUCS, Banbury Road.
This session will help you to develop effective web searching techniques for use with a variety of search engines and web directories. It will also look briefly at strategies for evaluating resources and give some guidance on how to cite electronic resources.
Angela Carritt and Penny Schenk.
Book at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZWF

Full programme at: http://sers018.sers.ox.ac.uk/services/training/wiser
All enquiries to: usered@ouls.ox.ac.uk

New computers

We will be having new PCs installed in the library on Wednesday 20th February, to replace our very old (and excessively large) ones.

If you have anything saved on any of the current machines that you don't want to lose, please save it elsewhere before then!

Friday 1 February 2008

New books for January

The list of new books acquired in January is now on our website and LibraryThing page (with feed available). This month I've experimented with tagging the books in our LibraryThing catalogue, so you can view new accessions by subject if you choose - please let me know if you find this helpful and something worth me doing each month!