Just a minute video - Teaching Practice Collection

A new just a minute video is available to watch about the Teaching Practice Collection at Polhill Library, Bedford.

Take refuge in the Teaching Practice room

Polhill Library is cold today (there is a problem with the heating) but the Teaching Practice room on the 3rd floor is the warmest spot in the building. It has space for laptops and an interactive whiteboard so, if you are too cold in the Silent Study area, there is a cosy, quiet spot up top.

A complicated world

Systematic reviews of education research

The Campbell Collection has systematic reviews on education, crime and justice, and social welfare topics. This international collaborative research network aims to help people make well-informed decisions by preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews.  

For more information see this leaflet.   It is clearly trying to emulate the renowned Cochrane Collaboration which has been at the forefront of evidence-based medicine innovations.

Journal survey at Polhill

If you have a few minutes to spare could you complete our survey about the current journals on display in Polhill Library. We are trying to establish whether these journals are well known and whether they do get used.

The survey is available online here

Ebooks - the findings of the JISC National Ebooks Observatory project

The findings of the year long National Ebooks Observatory Project are now available to read online.

The project made 36 e-course texts available across four subject areas (Medicine, Business, Engineering and Media Studies) to 127 UK universities. This is the largest study of its kind, and involved observing the behaviours of over 50,000 participants to see how they use a selection of academic electronic textbooks.

I would recommend listening to a very interesting podcast (only 13 minutes) featuring Caren Milloy and Ian Rowlands who discuss the project and the findings. To briefly summarise they found that people consume these ebooks differently - fact checking, power browsing and average time spent reading an ebook is 13 to 14 minutes. Ian Rowlands makes the interesting point that we don't really know much about student behaviour regarding print copies (in terms of how long they read, what pages they look at etc).

Education Research Complete: on trial now

We are currently evaluating a new digital resource which offers indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full text for more than 1,200 journals. It also includes full text for nearly 500 books and monographs, and full text for numerous education-related conference papers.

This coverage partially overlaps with the full-text journals we have through Academic Search Elite and the electronic titles for which we have subscriptions but mainly incorporates lots of titles which are indexed by ERIC or British Education Index but not currently available in the University.  Full details about what is included are provided here.

This trial will run until the end of term.  To try out this new product, use the library catalogue to link to EBSCOhost Research Databases where you find the list of current trials appears in a box on the right hand side of the screen.

Please contact hilary.johnson@beds.ac.uk or adele.robinson@beds.ac.uk if you have any comments, positive or negative about Education Research Complete Information.  

PGCE student wins Library Survey prize

Rebecca Chapman, one of the University’s PGCE Primary students won the prize draw from nearly 200 entries to win print credits worth £10.00.  Over 40% of the entries were from education students - which is a great response rate.

To enter the competition students were asked to offer their thoughts and recollections on the Library Induction sessions which were run at the beginning of the term. Education librarians Hilary Johnson and Adele Robinson presented Rebecca with her prize and were delighted to receive such positive feedback from the survey.

Rebecca said, “I wouldn’t have been able to find and use the resources if I hadn’t attended the Library induction”. She also had some kind words to say about the resources on offer at Bedford Polhill library “It’s great that I can use most of it them home and the Teaching Practice collection long loan is particularly great, and helps me prepare for my own lessons”.

This marks the beginning of a number of monthly surveys in Learning Resources where all students who take part will be entered into a draw to win a variety of different prizes.

To have a chance of winning this month’s prize (£15 of iTunes vouchers) take a couple of minutes of your time to fill in our current survey and tell us about how you use the LRC/Library for studying.

Cambridge Primary Review

We now have five copies available in the Library of the Cambridge Primary Review.

Click here for full details: Children, their world, their education : final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review

Award winning SEN book

Professor Janice Wearmouth, Head of Department of Education Studies and Director of the Institute for Research in Education, has won the 2009 National Association for Special Educational Needs (NASEN) book award in the category promoting professional development.  

Polhill Library has four copies of the award-winning book, A beginning teacher's guide to special educational needs, or you can read it online or download it for up to three days.  

Janice has also written many other books which the library has also bought.

Ebook collection growing

Over the past couple of months the Library has purchased lots of new ebooks to complement the print collections. They can be found on the library catalogue. Do a search as normal, and if we have an ebook available, it will have a red ebook symbol in the material column. Or you can limit your search to ebooks only if you drop down the menu 'view entire collection' and select electronic books from the list.

Our two big providers of ebooks are Dawsonera and Netlibrary. Follow these links to browse the ebooks available by each provider.

Children, their world, their education

I've just ordered five copies of the Primary Review publication 'Children, their world, their education: final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review' (2009).

Details can be found here. http://www.enterbooks.com/pdfuploads/Cambridge%20Primary%20PCD%20with%20logo.pdf


It should be in the library in the next few weeks.

Student email account

The new University email is provided by Google Mail. As well as an email account you also have access to a calendar, collaboration tools and instant messaging.

Your email address will be: firstname.lastname@study.beds.ac.uk

The web address is mail.study.beds.ac.uk

Login with your University registration number in the username box and your University password is your six digit date of birth (DDMMYY) or the one you have changed it to.

If you need further help click on the online guide - http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/help/materials/gmail1

Document delivery to your desktop

If you are an academic or researcher you may now receive electronic delivery of document supply requests. During the past year we trialed this using the British Library's Secure Electronic Delivery service with a small number of staff. If you want to start using the service now, please follow the instructions below.


- Download Adobe Digital Editions, which can be found on the British Library website http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/atyourdesk/docsupply/productsservices/sed/

- When ordering the an inter library loan you still need to fill in the same form (downloadable from the Learning Resources website http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/libinfo/servforstudents/inter-lib ) and take it to the library issue desk (or send it in the internal mail).

- Make sure you specify 'Secure Electronic Delivery' on the form, otherwise it will come as hard copy.

-You will receive e-mail with a hyperlink to the document and it can accessed only once and printed only once.

If you have any questions about this service or problems downloading the software, please contact Valerie Allison, Senior Info Assistant (ext 4202).

Please note: The electronic delivery service is not available to students yet. It is likely that it will be made available to M-level groups in the next phase of service development.

Getting the RefWorks Group Code

When you access RefWorks off campus you will be asked for the Group Code. You will find this is the registration email you received when you created your Individual Account.

To register for an Individual Account, you need to be using one of the networked computers on campus and register with your student email account. It does not accept Yahoo, Hotmail, NTL or any other accounts. The address has to include the domain "beds.ac.uk".

After you have received the email confirming your account has been successfully created, you can access RefWorks from any internet-connected device.

RefWorks for Alumni

The University's reference management software, RefWorks, has just announced that all Alumni of UoB are entitled to lifelong access to the resource (for as long as an institution subscribes to RefWorks).

If you would like to find out more about

• how to set-up your personal reference database
• how to use the WriteNCite option to create in-text citations and bibliographies with MS Word
  
• how to use RefGrabIt to bookmark websites

have a look at the Quick Start Guide, watch a tutorial or contact Hilary or Adele.

Waterstone's - staying an extra week

The Waterstone's stall in Polhill Library has proved so popular that they have decided to stay another week.  So, if you still want to take advantage of the 12.5% discount on reading list texts, make sure you get to the stall by the end of Friday 16th October.  

Interactive Whiteboard

The interactive whiteboard in the Teaching Practices room is now working. You can find instructions on how to use this resource here. You need to get the remote control from the Customer Service Desk.  The whiteboard is bookable for 2 hours at a time.  If you experience any problems using the system, please contact the Helpdesk.

Alteration to Putteridge Bury Library's opening hours

From 28.09.09 to 16.10.09 the library opening hours at Putteridge Bury site will be altered slightly.

Mondays Closed 
Tuesdays 9 - 1 & 2 - 6.30
Wednesdays 9 - 1 & 2 - 6.30
Thursdays 9 - 1 & 2 - 6.30
Friday 9 - 1 & 2 - 5

Remember you can always check the opening hours of all the sites by looking at http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk.

Waterstone's at Polhill site

Monday 28th September to Friday 9th October (stall closed Saturday & Sunday)

Waterstone's are offering 12.5% discount on core texts. They will have a stall in Polhill Library between 9.30 and 5 (Monday to Friday). Credit cards will be accepted.