Need some exam preparation tips?

The Library has lots of books with good advice for exam revision. Look on our shelves at classnumber 371.3 for titles like:
How to pass exams / by Fred Orr.
Good study guide / by Andrew Northedge.
Revision strategies.
Student’s guide to exam success / by Eileen Tracy.
Sail through exams! : preparing for traditional exams for undergraduates and taught postgraduates / by Peter Levin.
and lots more…..

Good luck!

Gill McDonald
Reader Services Manager

New books in the Library - 29 November

Added to the library recently have been books on the mechanics of materials, photovoltaic science, human resource development and several other topics.

Some choice titles include Blended learning: tools for teaching and training, by Barbara Allan, and Franchising: an international perspective, edited by Frank Hoy and John Stanworth.   Both have been added to Riccarton Library.  You can search inside “Franchising..” at Amazon.

Green is the new black: how to change the world with style, by Tamsin Blanchard is a new title which has been added to 3 Hour Loan in the Library at Galashiels.

For the full list of new books, go to the New Books section of the Catalogue.

Information on how to place a reservation for a book is available.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Around the blogs

Here are a few things found via other blogs which should be of interest to members of Heriot-Watt University.

1. Via the Englibrary blog, I noticed news about Bentham Publishers, who are launching more than 200 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. The list of journals by subject shows a number of titles relevant to subjects taught at Heriot-Watt, including The Open Civil Engineering Journal, The Open Construction & Building Technology Journal, and The Open Chemical Engineering Journal, to name but three. Content is already available in some cases. Open Access means that all articles are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication.

2. Science Library Pad, a blog written by Richard Akerman, reviews the new free 2collab service from Elsevier which is currently in the news. Akerman writes, “A strength of 2collab is the ability to create an manage groups”.

2collab is a social bookmarking site where you can store and organize your favorite internet resources – such as blogs, websites, research articles, and more. Then, in private or public groups you can decide to share your bookmarks with others – stimulating debate and discussion. Members of groups can evaluate these resources (by rating bookmarks, tagging and adding comments), or add their own bookmarks. You can browse public groups and bookmarks, but must register (your name and email address) to access the full functionality – such as creating groups, adding comments, and adding bookmarks.

3. Via the Update blog from the University of Worcester, I noted the Creative Review blog, from the writers of Creative Review, which is a print journal held at the Scottish Borders Campus Library (more details here).

4. Finally, I noticed a story about Scitopia, mentioned previously in a June spineless? post, in a news item from the Information World Review.  Scitopia is a federated search gateway to more than three million science and technology documents, and has been officially launched. Scitopia can be used to find publications from 15 societies, such as the Acoustical Society of America, American Society of Civil Engineers, SPIE, etc.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

New and noteworthy websites, new academic blogs, etc

Well, we may not be getting many votes for this blog in the Edublog Awards, but that’s OK - it’s a privilege to have been shortlisted.

If you’re interested in new and noteworthy websites, news from the scholarly publishing industry, new academic and library blogs, and much more, then check out the December issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter.

The newsletter is edited by Marion Kennedy, Catherine Ure and myself.  It’s monthly, and its free.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

This blog is a finalist in the Edublog Best library/librarian blog 2007 Awards

We’re absolutely delighted to see that this spineless? blog is a finalist in the Edublog Awards in the Best library/librarian blog 2007 category.  If you think we’re worthy, you can vote for us here 

There’s a number of categories in this year’s awards, as you can see from the Award website.  They include Best individual blog, Best group blog, Best new blog, Best resource sharing blog, Most influential blog post, Best teacher blog, Best library/librarian blog, Best educational tech support blog, Best elearning/corporate education blog, Best educational use of audio, Best educational use of video/visual, Best educational wiki, Best educational use of a social networking service, and Best educational use of a virtual world.

The Edublogs Awards (Eddies) is an annual event where the best education blogs of the year are decided.

spineless? is almost one year old.  You can read more about it, its purpose and the people who have put it together in the About page.  Basically, we’ve tried to keep the design of the blog as simple as possible, so that there’s less distraction from the information in it.  As well as common categories of posts, such as new book alerts, and opening hours, we’ve tried on occasion to introduce a little humour and creativity. Sometimes the posts have not even been about the library.

Our library is not boring, and neither should be its blog.

Some favourite posts include Who is this man and what has he to do with the library? and Do you know what we did this summer?

In the last year, we’ve received more than 16,000 hits, which I think is not bad at all, and we’ve tried to keep our readers up to date, as well as sometimes providing more general information posts, such as Open Access - some pointers and It’s amazing what you can get for free!

A big thank you if you vote, and also to all who have contributed to spineless? over the past 11 months.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

eBooks for sports science and psychology

Members of the University now have access to a further 10 eBooks set up as part of the JISC national e-book observatory project.   The aim of the project is to assess usage and impact of eBooks in higher education.

The new titles are all published by Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins and are made available through Ovid online > Books@Ovid.   You can find them using the library catalogue  by searching on title or author or view all ten titles by typing in the search term ‘ovid’.

The titles are in the medical field and were selected for taught courses in medicine. However, the following will have relevance for Sports & Exercise Science and Applied Psychology subjects.

 

Merritt’s Neurology
Link to this eBook:
http://gateway.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&MODE=ovid&NEWS=n&PAGE=booktext&D=books&SC=00140037
Includes chapters on psychiatry and neurology (covering mood, anxiety and somatoform disorders) and environmental rehabilitation (including cognitive therapy) as well as sections on developmental abnormalities and dementias. Cognitive impairments of various neurological diseases and conditions are also covered. 

   

Textbook of cardiovascular medicine
Link to this eBook:
http://gateway.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&MODE=ovid&NEWS=n&PAGE=booktext&D=books&SC=00140011
This textbook has chapters covering preventive cardiology (including diet, nutrition, exercise, diabetes, metabolism and obesity).

  

Studying a study & testing a test: how to read the medical evidence
Link to this eBook:
http://gateway.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&MODE=ovid&NEWS=n&PAGE=booktext&D=books&SC=01223040
In depth critical appraisal techniques focusing on how to identify flaws and limitations in studies

Off-campus access is using Athens. Our eBooks webpage gives more information on Books@Ovid as well as our other eBook services.

Marion Kennedy
Subject Librarian

New books in the Library - 23 November

This week there are new books in the library on renewable energy, monetary policy, Scots law, taxation, fashion, solar energy, risk management, lighting, textiles and several other topics.

Added to Riccarton Library are two copies of the 3rd edition of Construction planning and scheduling, by Jimmie W. Hinze.  One is on week loan, and the other is a 3 hour loan.  There’s also a copy of Monetary policy in central Europe, Miroslav Beblavay.

New books in the Library at Galashiels this week include Swinging sixties; fashion in London and beyond 1955-1970, edited by Christopher Breward, David Gilbert and Jenny Lister, Textile surface decoration: silk and velvet, by Margo Singer, and The art of the Celts: origins, history, culture, by Iain Zaczek

For the full list of new books, go to the New Books section of the Catalogue.

Information on how to place a reservation for a book is available.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian

Just graduated with a PhD?

Congratulations!

What’s going to happen to your thesis now?

We will keep it safely locked in the Library store, and anyone visiting the Library will be able to read it, but….. why not let the whole world find out about your research?

We’re setting up a collection of digital theses, to be freely available on the internet. In future, all Heriot-Watt PhD students will be required to provide a digital copy of their theses, which we will make available directly from our web site.

Research shows that a digital thesis is consulted 10 times more often than the printed equivalent, so making your thesis available this way would make your research more widely known.

Be a pioneer and your thesis could be one of the first in the Heriot-Watt digital thesis collection.

Simply give us an electronic copy of your thesis and we’ll do the rest—within a few weeks your thesis could be there for all to see.

Interested?

Contact our Digital Thesis Project’s Content Manager, Iain Young, for more details about how to give your thesis to us.

Iain Young
Resources Manager
Heriot-Watt University Library
I.W.Young@hw.ac.uk
+44 131 451 3578

Final reminder - Standard Loans due back Friday 23 November

Undergraduates, Masters & Diploma students

All Standard Loan books which you have borrowed this term are due for return today, Friday 23 November.

If you wish to keep them for longer, you can renew them at any time before the end of the day by logging on to your Library record (via Patron functions) in the catalogue. Simply select the books you want to renew, and then click on the “Renew Items” button. Remember - you cannot renew a book if someone else has reserved it, if you have any overdue books, or if you have more than £2.00 outstanding in unpaid fines.

All Standard Loan books borrowed or renewed now are due for return in the first week of next term - by Friday 11 January 2008.

If you need help renewing your books, or of you have any questions about borrowing, contact the Service Desks in the Riccarton or Galashiels Libraries.

Gill McDonald
Reader Services Manager

Reminder - one week to return your Standard Loans

Undergraduates, Masters & Diploma students

All Standard Loan books which you have borrowed this term are due for return by Friday 23 November.

If you wish to keep them for longer, you can renew them at any time before the deadline by logging on to your Library record (via Patron functions) in the catalogue. Simply select the books you want to renew, and then click on the “Renew Items” button. Remember - you cannot renew a book if someone else has reserved it, if you have any overdue books, or if you have more than £2.00 outstanding in unpaid fines.

All Standard Loan books borrowed or renewed now are due for return in the first week of next term - by Friday 11 January 2008.

If you need help renewing your books, or of you have any questions about borrowing, contact the Service Desks in the Riccarton or Galashiels Libraries.

Gill McDonald
Reader Services Manager