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.