Resources

Monday 4/3/19 Leisure reading for all: Gems of the Kimberlin

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As part of the DMU Festival of Teaching events students, staff and members of the public were invited to come and explore the wealth of reading available through Kimberlin Library. Refreshments were offered and the chance to chat about books, share thoughts favourite reads. Kaye Towlson and Carol Keddie staffed the event and Ann Collick created the display with books selected by herself, Carol Keddie, Gareth Glover, Chris Peach, Cress Burston and Dips Patel.

Leisure Reading displays in Kimberlin Library

Students attending commented that they had never thought of the library as a place to borrow books for reading other than for their course and were impressed by the wide range of materials available. They said they used to read for pleasure but now focus on their course reading. Some students expressed an interest in “self-help” books, particularly those advising on career success or financial gain. Reads recommended ranged widely from Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman through to the Darren Shan Cirque du freak series.

The session promoted reading as a core skill enabling social inclusion, social justice and civic participation. Leisure reading has a big contribution to make to the development of this essential life skill and has many benefits: academic, social, health and wellbeing. This spoke to the themes of the DMU Festival of Teaching.

Society Digimap

Mitchell Dunkley

DMU Library has set up trial access to a new online collection via its subscription to EDINA’s Digimap service. The new collection is called Society Digimap.

Society Digimap allows you to explore a range of demographic data, providing a wealth of census and socio-economic information for Great Britain. The processing required to visualise census and other demographic datasets can be a barrier to use for many people interested in the value of the datasets. By providing these datasets as layers to visualise along with high quality Ordnance Survey (OS) data, the rich information can offer valuable insights without the need to learn how to use a GIS.

Today, the mapping facility, Society Roam is available. A full data download application is under development, which will offer the ability to download both the census data and the corresponding boundaries together.

Access to Society Digimap is available until 31st July 2019.

Trial access to Society Digimap is available until 31st July 2019.

Society Digimap can be accessed via the following access URL https://edina.ac.uk/Login/digimap?idp=https://login.library.dmu.ac.uk/oala/metadata. You will be asked to verify access using your DMU Single Sign On account and then accept terms and conditions on the Digimap platform.

DMU Library provides subscription access to the following Digimap collections: Ordnance Survey (OS), Aerial and Lidar.

DMU Library provides trial access to the Global and Society Digimap collections. Coverage to these two collections will end on 31st July 2019.

Library Access browser extension

Philip Adams

Have you ever been looking for journal articles while researching for an assignment, found the ideal article and then been blocked by the hefty charge that the website is asking before you can view the article? That can be frustrating, but it is even worse when you discover that you could have viewed the article for free all along.

DMU Library has subscriptions covering hundreds of journals where the article is available, just not from the publisher’s own website. You can find these articles through Library Search if you are starting from the Library website, but not everybody does start there.

Library Access from Lean Library (https://www.leanlibrary.com/) is a browser extension that helps to overcome this problem. It requires that you login as a member of DMU, using your Single Sign On details. Then the extension helpfully pops up whenever it finds articles where the content is available elsewhere. Both subscriptions and open access resources are covered, making it easier to discover the articles you need for your research.

There is a video that explains how this all works.

New to Library Search – Citation Trails

Mitchell Dunkley

A brand new feature has been added to our Library Search service for February 2019.

Citation Trails allow you to explore a topic and collect material by following a chain of articles that cite each other. This new search feature enhances serendipitous discovery and will hopefully help you to better understand the academic context of your sources.

Citation trails work in two directions:

  • Cites – Articles that this article cites.
  • Cited by – Articles that cite this article.

Citation trails can be found by clicking on the Cites or Cited by links that appear below individual Library Search item records:

Citation trails can be accessed via Library Search item records.

Selecting a citation link in the item record opens up a page that lists the records that match the type of citation your have selected: Cites or Cited by. The following example below lists the articles that “The genetic theory of adaptation: a brief history” record cites:

Citation trails list potentially useful reading material linked to your original search term.

As you connect to other item records’ citations, you can view the trail by clicking on the View your citation path link. A pop-up box showing the number of citations in the current trail appears next to the link:

Previous linked citations can be viewed by selecting “View your citation path”.

From the citation path, you can return to a previous citation in the trail by selecting its individual record. To display your original search results, select the Search tab.

We hope that this additional citation tool will be useful when searching for academic content and enhance your experience of our online Library Search service.

Literature Online (LION) site migration

Mitchell Dunkley

The electronic resource Literature Online (LION) has recently migrated publisher websites. The database is now part of the portfolio of online databases that are accessed from the main ProQuest publishing platform.

Literature Online now appears on the main ProQuest platform

Literature Online provides coverage to online articles from over 400 scholarly journals, as well as content from critical guides such as Cambridge Companions to Literature and New Essays on the American Novel. Database coverage is also extended by the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL), one of the most important bibliographical sources for English studies.

You will now be able to cross-search Literature Online content with other electronic collections provided by ProQuest on its main platform. These online resources include ProQuest’s Arts and Humanities Database, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (The Guardian archive) and Early European Books.

You can access Literature Online on and off campus using a DMU Single Sign On account via https://search.proquest.com/lion/shibboleth?accountid=10472.

Library Search – new features!

Mitchell Dunkley

Two new features have recently been added to our online Library Search system.

Saving Library Search searches between sessions

You can now permanently save searches and filters you run, between Library Search sessions, to the cloud by using either a Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive account. Previously Library Search would only allow you to temporarily save items from a results page during a single session, although RefWorks can be used to export citation results from the service.

You can save a search, including any filters or facets you have selected to refine your search, by clicking on the small star icon as shown below:

The small star icon is located in the Library Search box itself:

You will then be given the option to permanently save the search by using a Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive account (you can also rename your search should you wish to do so at this point):

You will have to select one of the software options (either Microsoft or Google), sign in to your preferred provider and allow Library Search to connect to your personal drive account.

Once your Google or Microsoft account is linked to our Library Search tool, and you are correctly signed in to either of the drive accounts, you will be able to view permanently saved searches whenever you use Library Search.

You can view your saved searches in Library Search by clicking on the large star icon as shown below:

The number of saved searches is noted in small text next to the large star icon:

If you are not signed in to your Google or Microsoft drive account whilst using Library Search, you will only be allowed to temporarily store results in a single search session or export results to RefWorks (as before).

TinyURLs

When wanting to copy a Library Search result link, you can now take advantage of shorter URLs (provided by TinyURL) generated by the online service. These shorter URLs have replaced the long, encrypted Permalinks Library Search formerly created.

To save a Library Search result record, you click on the Permanent Link icon as shown below:

The Permanent Link icon is one of the actions available for you to select for each individual Library Search result. Once you have selected the Permanent Link option, Library Search generates a TinyURL which you can copy to create a permanent link to the citation record.

We hope that this new functionality will improve Library Search’s usability for DMU students and staff searching for electronic journal articles, e-books and other online library content.

Cambridge Companions to Literature

Mitchell Dunkley

Over the past year, the online database Literature Online (LION) from ProQuest has added more than 300 full text volumes of encyclopedias, dictionaries and companions to contextualise LION’s primary works and their authors.

 

Browse the Cambridge Companions to Literature via the LION interface

 

DMU students and staff can access the Literature Online (LION) online database via the following access link http://literature.proquest.com/marketing/shibbolethWAYFLess.do?entityId=https://login.library.dmu.ac.uk/oala/metadata. Students and staff will be asked to log into the resource by using their DMU Single Sign On username and password.

Once logged into Literature Online (LION) platform, the Cambridge Companions to Literature can be browsed by clicking on the Criticism tab.

 

Click on the Criticism tab on the LION site to access the literature companions

The Literature Online (LION) resource will be migrating to the main ProQuest platform during December 2018, so please look out for more information about this move when it occurs in the coming weeks. Watch this space!