World AIDS Day 2012

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. Every year since 1988, 1^st December has been the day when people across the world unite to remember those who have died from or are living with HIV and related conditions. It’s also a chance to celebrate the progress that has been made in the fight against the disease and a reminder that there is still more to be done.

You can find out more about World AIDS Day, including Facts & Stats and How to Get Involved, on the official website. You’ll also find lots of information on the World Health Organization (WHO) website, which has links to their strategy and operational plan documents for tackling HIV.

Health students, and anyone else with an interest in this area, might like to take a look at the Websites page of the Health subject area on the library website (just scroll down our homepage and click the Health tab near the bottom). Health & Social Care librarian Samantha Scoulding has gathered together a number of reputable websites that you might find useful in your studies. From there, you’ll also be able to see a selection of excellent Databases for Health students. CINAHL Plus and Science Direct in particular might be very helpful if you’d like to find out a bit more about issues surrounding HIV and AIDS. Both of these databases offer full-text access to articles from academic journals. Just type your keywords in to find an article you like and then you can print it out, save it, or read it on the screen!

More help using library e-resources!

Further to my earlier post, tomorrow (27th November) the Counselling & Psychology librarian (Suzanne Taylor) and the Education librarian (Philippa Price) will be holding drop-in sessions for Counselling & Psychology students, in the Townhill Campus computer room TK149.  They are holding the sessions from 10 a.m. until 12.30 p.m. and then again from 2.00 p.m. until 4.00 p.m.

There are lots of resources available through the Library web site and there’s also the new Digital Library, which is a great place to start your search. So, if you’d like help finding e-books or journal articles, please drop in anytime during the times listed, and your Swansea Met librarians will do their best to help!

Drop-in session on library e-resources for Art & Design

The Art & Design Librarian at Dynevor campus (myself!) is holding a drop-in session on library e-resources for Art & Design students & staff on Wednesday 5th December. It will take place in Lecture Theatre 1 on the Dynevor campus, starting at 12.30pm.

The session will last around an hour, and will look at how to access electronic journal articles, e-books, images and newspaper articles (amongst other things). Everyone studying on/teaching an Art & Design course is very welcome and you will see the benefit of knowing more about these resources.

For staff/students not within Art & Design, do contact your Swansea Met subject librarian if you would like to have a similar session, plus we are also happy to see individuals one-to-one.

I therefore look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible a week Wednesday!

More freebies from Emerald!

You may remember our blog post earlier this month which told you about Emerald’s Journals of the Week which gives you free access to articles from two journals each week. (If you missed it, find out more here.) Well, it seems as though Emerald likes a freebie nearly as much as we do! For a limited time, you can also download articles from three new journals: International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Journal for Entrepreneurship and Public Policy and Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies. Articles from these journals will be available until the 1^st December from the Emerald website. An early Christmas present for us all!

Is it a bookcase? Or a secret passageway...

Something a little frivolous for a Friday, but still book-related! Take a look at this blog post we stumbled across, how cool would it be to have one of these in your house/library?

http://bookriot.com/2012/11/02/10-kick-ass-secret-passage-bookshelves/

We love... the Bridgeman Education database for beautiful images

Bridgeman Education is the digital image database for the Bridgeman Art Library. It gives you access to thousands of pictures for free! Our subscription allows you to search and download these images to use for educational purposes (please don’t use them for commercial reasons or you’ll get us all in trouble!). So, if you’re looking for examples of Paul Cezanne’s work, or would just like to find a picture of a Yorkshire Terrier (well, why not?), Bridgeman Education is the place to go! All images are of the highest quality, so much so that you can even zoom in to admire the brush work on the paintings.

You can access Bridgeman Education on or off campus from the library website’s database pages. If you need any help accessing this or any of our other resources, please ask your friendly librarian. We’re happy to help!

Library social media competition winner!

We are pleased to announce that the winner of our library competition from earlier on in the term (for new students to follow our Blog, Facebook or Twitter sites) is Education student, Lucy Arkless.

Lucy’s name was chosen at random by Art & Design library rep Howard Riley, and her prize was a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

The aim of the competition had been to encourage new Swansea Met students to follow our library social media sites. Swansea Met librarians had been busy at their library induction sessions promoting the sites, and we have been pleased by the increase in followers!

Pictured below is Lucy (left) receiving her gift voucher from Assistant Librarian Suzanne Taylor earlier this week. If you are reading this post and haven’t signed up to our Blog, followed us on Twitter or liked us on Facebook yet, why not do so now! It’s a great way of finding out more about the resources and services Swansea Met libraries have to offer you.

National Stress Awareness Day

Today is National Stress Awareness Day! We thought we would bring this to your attention, as we understand that being a student (or member of academic staff) can bring along its own set of stresses.

For more information about the day and the organisation behind it see the following link:

http://www.isma.org.uk/national-stress-awareness-day/

Also don't forget the library is here to help you, with its resources and services to make your student/staff life that bit easier. We have four libraries at Swansea Met, and amongst many things can offer you physical space/peace to work, knowledgable subject librarians to guide you through our resources both print and electronic, and also convenient access to the latter off-campus 24/7.

So do pop in to your nearest Swansea Met library and see what we have to help you :-)

Freebie journal articles from Emerald

Everyone loves a freebie and with Emerald you get two per week! Emerald is a company which publishes academic books and journals covering a whole host of subjects. Each week, they choose two ‘Journals of the Week’ and offer free access to articles from recent issues. There’s no catch, so it’s well worth a look! Current and upcoming journals of the week are:-

5/11/12           EuroMed Journal of Business

                        Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy

12/11/12         Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning

                        Journal of Organizational Ethnography

19/11/12         Quality in Ageing and Older Adults

                        Journal of Children’s Services

26/11/12        Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal

                        Management Research

3/12/12          Smart and Sustainable Built Environment

                        British Journal of Forensic Practice

10/12/12        International Journal of Emerging Markets

                        Critical Perspectives on International Business

17/12/12        Social Care and Neurodisability

                        Safer Communities

Something for nearly everyone! You can find out more from Emerald’s Journal of the Week web page.  These journals will only be available for a week each, so be quick if you want to take a look at any articles! Remember, though, some of these titles are available to you anyway as part of the library’s database subscriptions. To check, just search our catalogue for the journal title you’re interested in.