Laidlaw Library Summer Opening Hours

Summer hours 2011-12

  MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

FROM THE LIBRARY TEAM:

The Library will close for the year on Thursday 22 December at 5pm

and will reopen on Monday 9 January 2012 at 8.30am.

End of year due date for Undergraduate Students

Please be aware that the due date for undergraduate

students on ALL books issued from now onwards is:

25th November 2011.

Using the power of the internet

You may hear teachers, lecturers and academics admonishing the use of the internet for research purposes but there are ways to harness the power of the internet to find rich and relevant resources.

Search for definitions, facts, quotations, statistics using Google but always check the validity and authority of the site you are directed to.

You can limit searches to academic or government sites by choosing .ac .edu .gov .govt sites

Everyone is blogging these days; from blog posts you can gain an understanding of public opinion and controversies. If you want to use any information found always check the  ”about” section to ascertain the background and reliability of the blogger.

Internet forums and noticeboards may be useful in the early stages of research to identify concepts and expand your list of keywords. If you create a mind map or concept diagram the extra ideas that you find can help you organise and order your key concepts.

Wikipedia is quick and easy to use but always confirm findings in another source like Encyclopedia Britannica. To verify something it is recommended that you consult three different sources. If you need help with any information, ask at the Library’s Learning Support desk.

Do not rely on the internet but use it wisely to clarify components of the research process.

Today’s libraries can connect you to the best online resources and provide you with the academic material that you need. Try the databases available through the Deane Memorial Library or the extensive digital library accessible through Auckland Libraries. Happy searching.

Labour Weekend Library Opening Hours

 Yes! Labour Weekend 2011 is here!

 Remember the library will be CLOSED on Monday 24th October, re-opening at 8.15 on Tuesday 25th.

We will be open on Saturday between 10am and 2pm as usual.

Have a Safe and enjoyable weekend!

Help – all the books are out!

With so many students on the Auckland campus and many more studying through CDL, some library books are in great demand. The Library often has multiple copies of titles and to make sure they reach as many people as possible there may be a Desk Copy – 2 hour loan for use in the Library only; a Short Loan copy – one week loan: and one or more copies in the General Collection - for 3 week loan. This loan period will be shortened when a waiting list is generated.

If you need to borrow a book that is already out on loan, you can reserve a copy. The next copy to be returned will be tagged for you and you will be notified by email that it is ready to collect. Requested books can be recalled after one week to help the titles circulate to more people. So if a book is out, the first step is to reserve a copy – do this via the OPAC or ask at the Library desk.

The second way for Auckland students to get hold of some books is to check the public library catalogue.  Auckland Libraries has 55 local libraries in its system and all the books in all the libraries are available to all members. If a book you want is at a distant library you can request a copy and it will be delivered to your own library free of charge. You can also request titles that are out but they are on 4 week loan and will not be recalled. It may be worth browsing the shelves and searching the catalogue for other useful titles too – Auckland Libraries has an amazing collection of books. CDL students – check at your local library; you can find its catalogue online through the NZ Public Libraries site.

And a third way to find some writings by the same author or on the same topic as the books that are out is to search our databases for journal articles. You can use the author’s name, words from the title  or chapter headings as your search terms and you may find reviews of the book or articles that cover the same area of knowledge. If you limit your search to peer reviewed articles you will know that the results are authoritative.

Still need some help? Ask at the learning Support Desk in the Deane Memorial Library.

Why you need the Library!

Keep them close

Whatever method or system that you use, it is really important to keep a note of the books, chapters and articles that you have read so that you can easily refer to them in your written work or find them again for re-reading.

You can keep your own list or use Evernote – an app designed to keep track of all your ideas, things to do, things to see, things to remember, all in one place and accessed from various devices.

If you have Microsft Office 2007 or 2010 there is a Reference facility in Word that will add citations and bibliographies to documents.

 

Postgraduate students will benefit from the automatic downloads and the extra facilities available from Zotero, an open source, easy to use tool that helps you collect, organise, cite and share your research resources. It works within Firefox and links to Microsoft Office or Open Office.

Whatever method you choose, do get into the habit of recording everything – you never know when you might need that reading again!

e is for electronic

ebooks            ejournals             epubs

everything is electronic! How can you find your way through the emaze?

 The Library has a Kindle, an ebook reader, and it is loaded with 4 ebooks that are e versions of Desk Copy titles: Seized by truth, The Church, signs of the spirit and signs of the times, The House where God lives, The Art of Reading Scripture. If the Desk Copy books are in use, you may use the Kindle to read these ebooks in the Library.

 Reading books on the Kindle is easier on the eyes than reading books on your computer but through the Library you do have access to more electronic books. Go to the OPAC (the search facility of the Library catalogue) and click on the ebooks link in the left side bar. There are 18 books in our ebooks collection at the moment with more to be added. Becuase these are accessible through the Library catalogue – Login to activate the link – you can read these at any time, from any computer, anywhere!

Deane Memorial Library also provides access to 9 ejournals and to thousands of PDFs of articles from a wide range of  journals. Ask at the Library Learning Support Desk for further information and assistance with any e literature.

Journals? What’s the story?

Libraries can be so puzzling? So many words for the same thing! So many ways to find information! Take Journals for instance – this is a descriptive word for certain publications but is also often used as shorthand for the articles inside such publications. Herein lies the confusion but read on for some illumination.

Journals, also known as periodicals or serials, are published at regular intervals e.g. monthly, quarterly or annually, and include articles by many different people. In the Library the journals are shelved in alphabetical order of their title but they are in several sequences: the latest issues (see photo above) are by the entrance to the Library, previous issues (for the past 10 or so years) are on the Journals shelves on the ground floor and older back issues are held in the Libray Office. All of these journals are available to you for reading in the Library. You can find which Journals the Library subscribes to by clicking on the Serials Lists link in the main search screen of the Library catalogue OPAC.

Academic journals usually focus on a particular discipline or area of knowledge: for example Biblical Archaeology Review, The Christian Teachers Journal, Journal of Counseling and Development, Studies in Christian Ethics or they publish articles from certain groups: The Australian Wesleyan, The Muslim World, Youthworker Journal. If you have a particular interest in a field of study or a journal has been recommended to you, then browsing the printed copy of the journal in the Library will keep you up to date with articles being written and published.

However the main use of journals for study purposes is to locate specific articles relevant to your papers or research. In previous posts we have considered how to recognise references to articles and how to choose a database. More hints on these skills next time and look out for posts about journals online too.