Need a dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopedia?

Have you checked out Oxford Reference Online yet? It’s a collection of dictionaries and reference works which is accessible at any time from the database pages of the SMU Library website. It’s perfect for finding reliable information about people, places and events. For instance, if you’d like to know more about Winston Churchill (whose birthday it is today), a Quick Search of Oxford Reference Online finds entries from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, A Dictionary of Political Biography and the Oxford Companion to Military History among many other results.

It’s not just history buffs who will find this database useful. Oxford Reference Online has reference books for science, art, literature, computing, business, social sciences... The list goes on! And for the linguists out there, Oxford Reference Online includes language dictionaries for Welsh, French, Spanish, German, Irish and Latin, plus a number of English language dictionaries. So, if you’d like to know what a “logophile” is, try the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. (Go on, look it up!)

Music to their ears!

It was great to welcome so many new students to all three SMU libraries at the start of this academic year and it was encouraging to see lots of freshers completing our library quizzes at the end of their induction tours! This year, for the first time, we were pleased to be able to enter all correctly answered student quizzes from each campus into a free prize draw for the chance to win a £15 i-Tunes voucher. The winning entries were drawn earlier this month and we would like to congratulate our three winners: Video student Sally Stapleton (pictured), Performing Arts student Daniel Jones and Accountancy student Rubin Phan. Well done!

Christmas vacation borrowing

From tomorrow, Saturday 20th November, all ordinary loan category items borrowed or renewed by students will be due back in January! So you can take advantage if you wish to get lots of reading done over the Christmas vacation.

Other loan categories will also follow suit but nearer the end of term - please ask library staff if you would like more information.

Calling all Muggles!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part one) is released in cinemas this week. If you can’t wait to see it, or you just want to get yourself in the mood for the film, you can catch up with the adventures of Harry, Hermione and Ron at Townhill Library. We have all seven books in the series available to borrow from the Junior Fiction section of the Teaching Practice collection. You can even read about Harry in Welsh with Harri Potter a Maen yr Athronydd (the Welsh translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone). Perfect for some light relief when you need a break from all that studying! (Don't forget, if you can't make it to Townhill Library, you can ask for books to be sent to your home library at Dynevor or Mount Pleasant. Just ask at counter for details.)

Remembrance Day Display

To mark Remembrance Sunday this weekend, our SMU Records and Archives Officer, Gill Fildes, has put together a small display in honour of some of our past students who gave their lives for their country whilst undertaking military service during World War One. The exhibit is on view in the glass display cabinet at the Owen Library, Mount Pleasant Campus, until Monday 15th November. We also have Royal British Legion poppies on sale at the main issue desk for those wishing to show their support.

Drop-in session on library e-resources for Art & Design students (and staff!)

All Art & Design students and staff are welcome to attend a drop-in session at 2.00pm on Friday 12th November in Lecture Theatre 2 on the Dynevor Campus. We will be looking at our electronic library resources for Art & Design– how to access ebooks, e-journal articles, images, newspaper articles and more. The session will be informal, and suitable either as a refresher session or if you haven’t previously attended something similar!

New Datamonitor360

Marketline and Business Insights have a new name and improved interface. They are now combined in one database - choose Datamonitor360 from our list of databases on the library web pages and have a look! With the equivalent of over 200,000 pages of up-to-date business information at your fingertips, you can now access in-depth professional analysis of company, industry and country information and a full library of strategic management reports in one, easy-to-use format.