New Year new portal look

Happy New Year to you all. Best wishes from us all at the Health Library, we are looking forward to our first year in the new build.

You will notice some changes to the University portal pages, the library now has its own page there making it easier for you to  search voyager through the portal and also click on my account and see what books you have out and renew them.

You will see a summary of your printing credit, see our latest tweets and blog feeds as well as quick access to find a pc and Ask a librarian.

Rare early books tracing the history of science and medicine

Free access to digitised content from the Wellcome Library is now available.
This free content is brought to you by ProQuest and the Wellcome Library as part of ProQuest’s Early European Books project.

Access the site at

http://eeb.chadwyck.com

Use your institutional login to sign in.

The 400 early printed works to which you have free access trace the history and development of science and medicine from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries and cover subjects from anatomy and botany to witchcraft and the occult.
Highlights from the collection include numerous examples of the ‘Book of Secrets’, including several reprints and translations of The Secrets of Alexis of Piedmont (1555). Alexis was the pseudonym of an Italian physician and alchemist whose book was a compendium of recipes for medicines, household remedies, perfumes, dyes and experiments.
Also included are books of prodigies such as Pierre Boaistuau’s Histoires prodigieuses (1568), an illustrated catalogue of monsters, demons, deformities, natural disasters and miraculous events.

Become a Google Master Searcher

 is a good starting point to your search, especially when you are just putting a toe in the water to find out what is out there.

We’d say normally to go to Google Scholar for better quality results (and a database search for a more systematic approach to the results you get)

Read Hack College’s INFOGRAPHIC  on How to Use Google Search More Effectively  to help you Brush up your skills by learning to search Google more effectively.

 

 

 

EndNote Web Training online

I’ll be demonstrating Endnote Web on the following dates and times:

Wednesday 7th December 12.30-1.15
Wednesday 14th December 1-1.45
Thursday 15th December 11-11.45

There will be many more sessions so don’t worry if you can’t make these. I’ll keep you posted on more dates here.

If you are interested in participating in one of the demonstrations please drop an email  to the distance learning service: dls@cf.ac.uk

To participate in the session you will need the latest version of flash. Headphones are useful but not necessary as long as you have sound on your computer.  There will be a demonstration of using the software (by me sharing my screen with you) with questions taken from yourself as we go along.

You receive confirmation of your place. On the morning of the session you will recieve a link to access the session.

Mari Ann

Sconul Survey – Win Amazon Vouchers

SCONUL the Society of College, National and University Libraries is surveying students, researchers and staff on their use of academic libraries.

The higher education library community wants to provide the best possible service to students, researchers and staff who, for all sorts of reasons, wish to access other academic and specialist libraries.

Please help us develop the services and access you need by completing this short online survey-it should take around 5 minutes to complete.

Take the survey now!

 Prize draw

You are invited to provide your email address if you wish to be entered in to our prize draw – your chance to win one of SIX £30 Amazon vouchers drawn at random.

To ensure your privacy, and in line with the principles of the Data Protection Act, the survey data will be stored securely by Sero Consulting Ltd and will not be disclosed in any way that can be traced to you as an individual.

Lastest Ebooks in our collection

Cantillon, P. Wood, D. ABC of learning and teaching in medicine 2010 2nd Ed

Long, M. Psychology of education 2011 2nd Ed

Selden, P.  Teaching portfolio a practical guide to improved performance and promotion/tenure decisions 2010 4th Ed

Johnstone, E.C. Companion to psychiatric studies 2010 8th Ed

Stevens, L. Psychiatry 2011 2nd Ed

 

Endnote Web Live Web Sessions

I’ll be demonstrating Endnote Web on the following dates and times:

Tuesday 8th November 1-2pm
Thursday 17th November 1-2pm
Wednesday 23rd November 12-1pm

 

These will be the first of many sessions so don’t worry if you can’t make these. There will be more.

If you are interested in participating in one of the demonstrations please drop an email  to the distance learning service: dls@cf.ac.uk

To participate in the session you will need the latest version of flash. Headphones are useful but not necessary as long as you have sound on your computer.  There will be a demonstration of using the software (by me sharing my screen with you) with questions taken from yourself as we go along.

You receive confirmation of your place. On the morning of the session you will recieve a link to access the session.

Mari Ann

SPSS

You can request a copy of SPSS v 18 software from us in the library.

If you are interested in obtaining a copy, please fill in these 2 forms and return them by post to the address below. We will then send you a copy of the disc.

Copyright software form

SPSS Copyright Form

Distance Learning Service
Health Library
Cardiff University
UHW
Heath Park
CF14 4XN

Learning Central

I recieved this message yesterday regarding learning central which may explain some problems that you have been experiencing:

As you may be aware we have been experiencing problems with performance on Learning Central.

This appears to be due to issues within the software as supplied by the manufacturer and appears to also be also affecting other universities.

We have been working with Blackboard to resolve the issue. Our Database and Applications team have been working hard to resolve the problems, and have come up with some fixes that appear to have fixed the issues pending a permanent fix from Blackboard. This fix has also been passed to the other universities who are also affected so they can work to resolve their problems.

The latest fix was applied Tuesday morning and since that time this issue does not appear to have reoccurred. There was however a slowing of the system today at 2.30pm, this was due to the Voyager system failing over onto the Learning Central servers. This was quickly resolved and now the system should be back to normal.

I would like to reassure you that we are working as hard as possible to keep the system stable and performing as it should. Once permanent fixes are available these will be applied to the system.

Please accept my apologies for any impact the performance issues may have had upon you and your schools at the start of term.

Should you experience any slowing of the system please do contact us via insrvconnect@cf.ac.uk and we will investigate as quickly as possible

Want relevant PDF’s fast? Try Pubget

Our new toy here in the library is Pubget. Its a database which aims to quickly retrieve results and link out through to the PDF.

The first instinct will be to type basic keywords in the blank box to quickly retrieve the first PDF files. It is indeed quick. But remember you can specifiy your results better in the advanced search area.

Search options in the advanced form are sufficient to satisfy most of us, with advanced search fields like PMID or DOI numbers, MeSH terms, etc..

Pubget say that their export format is compatible with Zotero, EndNote and RefWorks. But I have to say I have found limited functionality here on this score with the results only exporting one at a time. More testing needed- and feedback welcomed- Please comment.

The primary goal is to open PDF files as fast as possible. And I can testify that it does work pretty darn well at this.

To link out to Cardiff University material follow this quick vid.

http://www.screenr.com/embed/03Os