Information Skills Resource

9-13 November 2009 is information literacy week

How do you know that?
How do you know it is right?
How are you going to use that information?
Will you act ethically?

How highly would you rank your information literacy skills?

Did you know that students who can demonstrate the skills of information literacy not only perform better academically but also have better career prospects? Many students learn these skills from the University of Sheffield Library’s online tutorials.

Be an information literate graduate by learning how to:
Define a search question
Search for information
Evaluate information
Synthesise information
Cite and reference information

Visit the tutorials at:
www.librarydevelopment.group.shef.ac.uk

OECD iLibrary trial

We have another new trial running. This one is  to the OECD iLibrary which is available to registered staff and students of the University of Sheffield until December 2009. Although it's a preliminary version and not yet fully complete nor functional, do take a look and let us have your feedback. There is a Guided Tour of the OECD iLIbrary to help you.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is one of the world's largest sources of comparable statistics, and economic and social data. As well as collecting data, OECD monitors trends, analyses and forecasts economic developments and researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more. This trial provides access to all their books, statistics and journals.

Many OECD publications are also freely available online. They can be found either from the OECD website,  via a 'Contains' search on Find it, or from the ESDS International database in MUSE.

Western Bank Library redevelopment - update

Just to let you know that Level 4 (formerly Stack 4) of the Western Bank Library is now open.  On this level you will find printed journals, audiovisual material and study space.

There is still minor finishing work taking place so please continue to take care when visiting Level 4. 

For more information about the redevelopment of the Western Bank Library and regular updates please take a look at the library web pages.

Book galaxy

Fed up with the limitations of keyword searching on Star? An imaginative University of Southampton undergraduate computer science student has just won a JISC-funded competition with his 'Book Galaxy' entry.  The JISC website explains the idea behind it:

"Alex Parker’s space-age entry presents library data in three different ‘galaxy’ views where library books are represented as moving stars that change speed and location according to how popular they are within a given course.  They also join together in constellations to show books on connected topic, while orbited by meteors representing the courses of the students using those books...He explains:  'The main reason I entered this competition is that I think that doing a keyword search and presenting lists of books to users is not always the best way to find what you want in a library, especially if you're not sure what you're looking for.  I had an idea that if you linked similar books together in a 'web' and did that for every book in the library interesting patterns would emerge.' "

Find out more and explore the Book Galaxy from the JISC website.