Friday, March 30, 2012

Take a walk in the park day!



Today is Take A Walk in the Park Day!  As the sunshine has given us all a new appreciation for picnics and frisbees, this weekend is the perfect opportunity to visit the park!

Not only that, but this year The Phoenix Park is celebrating its 350th anniversary!  Have a look at the variety of events that they are holding throughout 2012...



Thursday, March 29, 2012

Opening hours during mid-term

 
It's nearly time for your Easter holidays but don't forget, that over the next two weeks, the library will be open as follows:
  • Mon 02 April      09:15 – 20:00
  • Tue 03 April        09:15 – 20:00
  • Wed 04 April      Closed
  • Thurs 05 April     09:15 – 17:00
  • Fri 06 April         Closed
  • Mon 09 April      Closed
  • Tues 10 April      Closed
  • Wed 11 April      09:15 – 20:00
  • Thur 12 April      09:15 – 20:00
  • Fri 13 April         09:15 – 17:00
  • Sat 14 April        10:00 – 16.00      

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Doodling

Do you doodle as you work?  Well, if so, you are in good company!  Many creative people, not least of whom is Samuel Beckett, express themselves visually as well as in writing...

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Monday, March 26, 2012

The life of an encyclopedia



Last week it was reported that, after 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.  Paper volumes will be replaced by online subscriptions.  So, is it the end of an era?  Or does accessing information online just make more sense?

As far back as 2005, the media were comparing the accuracy of Wikipedia and printed encyclopediae.  They raised issues such as accuracy, providing references and writing styles versus convenience, timeliness and cost.   MSNBC.com suggest that we must trust but verify the information we find on Wikipedia; information taken from Wikipedia, for academic purposes, should be verifiable, i.e. the author must be able to backup what they are saying by providing a reference to the original source.

What do you think?

Friday, March 23, 2012

March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day!



John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. After his death, Tolkien's son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature —or, more precisely, of high fantasy.



We have some of Tolkiens work here in the library and its just waiting to be borrowed. Be sure to check out our fiction section. It’s on the ground floor, adjacent to the issue desk.

Tolkiens work can also be read online here
      

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Clever search strategies!

The library databases are an excellent source of information when you are writing an assignment.  Our library databases are made up of hundreds of thousands of online journal articles.  When you search a library database, you are searching the words within those articles. 

So, the search engine does the legwork.

You, however, need to do the thinking!  While the search engine is very good at locating search terms within articles, it isn't particularly intuitive.  The search engine relies on your search strategy to find results.  Therefore, the better your search strategy, the more likely you are to retrieve relevant articles!

With this in mind, have a look at this video from Berry Memorial College Library - Boolean Operators: little words, big difference...


Boolean Operators from Emily G on Vimeo.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

A day for the dreamers

Today is World Poetry Day so here is a little treat from Raymond Carver...

This morning

This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.
Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
for a walk -- determined not to return
until I took in what Nature had to offer.
I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
Crossed a field strewn with rocks
where snow had drifted. Kept going
until I reached the bluff.
Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
the gulls wheeling over the white beach
far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
began to wander. I had to will
myself to see what I was seeing
and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what
mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
it crowded out the usual musings on
what was right, and what was wrong -- duty,
tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat
with my former wife. All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back i didn't know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. And flew
in the direction I needed to be going.


... and from Joe Kane ...


The boy who nearly won the Texaco Art Competition

he took a large sheet
of white paper and on this
he made the world an african world
of flat topped trees and dried grasses
and he painted an elephant in the middle
and a lion with a big mane and several giraffes
stood over the elephant and some small animals to fill
in the gaps he worked all day had a bath this was saturday

on sunday he put six jackals
in the world and a great big snake
and buzzards in the sky and tickbirds
on the elephants back he drew down blue
from the sky to make a river and got the elephants
legs all wet and smudged and one of the jackals got drowned
he put red flowers in the front of the picture and daffodils in the bottom corners
and his dog major chewing a bone and mrs murphys two cats tom and jerry
and milo the milkman with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth
and his merville dairy float pulled by his wonder horse trigger
that would walk when he said click click and the holy family
in the top right corner with the donkey and cow
and sheep and baby jesus and got the 40A bus
on monday morning in to abbey street to hand
it in and the man on the door said
thats a sure winner



Browse a range of fantastic poems here!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Fingal Film Festival



The first Fingal Film Festival kicks off this week, from Wed 21 - Fri 23!  

The Festival will offer workshops, seminars, master classes with critically acclaimed directors, writers and actors. Also screening Feature Films, documentaries, short films, animation and concluding with an Award Ceremony.

All on our own doorstep (and with student discounts!)

Friday, March 16, 2012

Finding books in the library



Our library has about 20,000 items, including books, journals, reports, audio-visual material and so on.  Organising 20,000 resources in a way that allows you, the library user, to locate one specific resource quickly and easily is something of a challenge!  Here at ITB Library we use two things to do this: a classification system and a database of resources.

The classification system refers to where we physically locate the books and resources.  We use the Dewey Decimal Classification System - each book is assigned a class number based on the main subject of the book.  These numbers range from 000 to 999.  For instance, language books have a class number between 400 and 499 (English books from 420 to 429, German books from 430 to 439, French books from 440 to 449, Spanish books from 460 to 469).  The books are shelved in order of their class number.

We also have a database of resources, or a library catalogue.  This catalogue contains important details about each resource such as the title, author, table of contents etc.  It also contains the class number of each book.  So, when we search the library catalogue for a specific book, we find the class number and can track the book to its shelf location. 

And that's how you find one specific item the middle of the 20,000 items in the library!


Thursday, March 15, 2012

IEEE Referencing

Are you writing assignments at the moment? Do you need to know about referencing? Well here’s a quick guide to the IEEE Referencing System!

As students you will spend most of your time listening to information, theories and ideas that experts in your subject area have come up with over the years. You will be asked to write assignments and projects that include these ideas. Students are expected to use other authors’ ideas in their projects and assignments; but, when you do use another author’s idea you must reference (or cite) it.

We reference information in order to give credit to the author who came up with the idea. We do it to allow our readers to follow up on our sources of information. We do it because our assignment or project is an academic work and we must be able to backup what we say.

So, what kind of information do we need to reference?
  • Quotations: when we take the words of another writer, place them in inverted commas and copy them exactly into our own assignment – we must reference this
  • Paraphrasing: when we take the idea of another writer, write it in our own words and include it in our assignment – we must reference this
  • Graphs & diagrams: when we take a graph, an image or a diagram, from a print or online source, and include it in our assignment – we must reference this

How does referencing work?
The IEEE Referencing System is a two-step system.

Step 1: short citation
Where: within the text of the assignment or project
When: when you are writing your assignment, include a citation immediately after any reference to information you read in a book, a journal, a website or any published work
How: [number]

Example: there are two citations in this example – the information in the first sentence came from an online journal by Hannah and the information in the second sentence came from two books by Hibbeler and O'Donoghue

Statics  
by Tom Ryan

In order to maintain equilibrium, a single force must be balanced by an “equal and opposite force acting along the same straight line” [1]. Therefore, forces exist in pairs.  In order for three forces to be in equilibrium they must be concurrent and all three must meet at a single point [2], [3].

Step 2: reference list
Where: at the end of the assignment or project
How: references look different depending on the source of the information; so a reference for information taken from a book looks different to a reference for information from a website or a DVD or a newspaper etc; this is because the reference acts as a map back to the source

Example: there are four references in this example – they are listed numerically in the order in which they appear in the text; this makes it easy to locate reference [1], [2] or [3], as necessary.


[1] J. Hannah, (2008, May).  "New standards in concurrency".  Journal of applied mechanics. [online]. 42 (6), pp. 22-24. Available: http://www.jam.com/426.pdf [12 Jan 2012].
[2] R.C. Hibbeler, Mechanics of materials, 7th ed. Singapore: Pearson, 2008, p.273 – 279.
[3] T. O’Donohue and P. West, Statics: an introduction. New York: O’Reilly, 2001, p. 54.
[4] P. James, “Investigating the use of high-speed applications among new computer users”, M.S. Thesis, University College Cork, Cork, 2007.


In order to write a reference (step 2), you will need:
  • The source of information, i.e. the book, journal, website etc.
  • The templates (in this leaflet– also available in print opposite the library desk)
 
For instance, if I am writing a reference for this book – I find the template for a “book”, on my leaflet, and follow it exactly:


The template looks like this:
Author first initial. Surname, Title: subtitle, Edition, Volume number.  Place of publication: Publisher name, year of publication, page number(s).


My reference looks like this:
G. Elliott, Global business information technology: an integrated systems.  Harlow, England: Addison-Wesley, 2011, p. 91-93.

Harvard Referencing

Are you writing assignments at the moment?   Do you need to know about referencing?   Well here’s a quick guide to the Harvard Referencing System!

As students you will spend most of your time listening to information, theories and ideas that experts in your subject area have come up with over the years.  You will be asked to write assignments and projects that include these ideas.  Students are expected to use other authors’ ideas in their projects and assignments; but, when you do use another author’s idea you must reference (or cite) it.

We reference information in order to give credit to the author who came up with the idea.  We do it to allow our readers to follow up on our sources of information.  We do it because our assignment or project is an academic work and we must be able to backup what we say.

So, what kind of information do we need to reference?
  • Quotations: when we take the words of another writer, place them in inverted commas and copy them exactly into our own assignment – we must reference this
  • Paraphrasing: when we take the idea of another writer, write it in our own words and include it in our assignment – we must reference this
  • Graphs & diagrams: when we take a graph, an image or a diagram, from a print or online source, and include it in our assignment – we must reference this

How does referencing work?
The Harvard Referencing System is a two-step system. 

Step 1: short citation
Where: within the text of the assignment or project
When: when you are writing your assignment, include a citation immediately after any reference to information you read in a book, a journal, a website or any published work
How: (author surname year of publication)

Example: there are two citations in this example – the information in the first sentence came from an online journal by Hughes and the information in the second sentence came from a book by Berkerian.  

Psychological issues in the court room
by Jane Smith

Psychological issues arise at the pre-trial, trial and post-trial phases of the judicial process (Hughes 1998).  It is vital that staff members are properly informed of the rights of the defendant throughout the process.  Recent studies indicate that false confessions are “more prevalent among prior offenders” (Bekerian 2005)

Step 2: reference list
Where: at the end of the assignment or project
How: references look different depending on the source of the information; so a reference for information taken from a book looks different to a reference for information from a website or a DVD or a newspaper etc;  this is because the reference acts as a map back to the source

Example: there are five references in this example – they are listed alphabetically by author surname; this makes it easy to locate the Hughes reference or the Berkerian reference

Anderson, G. (1981) Criminal minds.  New York: Harvard University Press 

Bekerian, D.A. and Levey, A.B. (2005) Applied psychology: putting theory into practice. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press

Carroll, S. (2001) The criminal justice system in Ireland.  4th ed.  Dublin, Ireland: HarperCollins

Hughes, T. (1998) Hearing the voice of the prisoner.  Journal of juvenile offenders in the UK [online], 12 December 1998, 41 (2), available from: <http://www.jjo.com/123.htm> [accessed 24 February 2006].

O’Malley, M. (2006) An introduction to development education.  Irish journal of secondary education.  91 (3), pp. 41-46.

In order to write a reference (step 2), you will need:
  • The source of information, i.e. the book, journal, website etc.
  • The templates (in this leaflet – also available in print opposite the library desk)
 
For instance, if I am writing a reference for this book – I find the template for a “book”, on my leaflet, and follow it exactly:


 The template looks like this:
Author surname, First initial. (Year of publication) Title: subtitle. Place of publication: Publisher.

My reference looks like this:
Elliott, G. (2004) Global business information technology: an integrated systems approach.  Harlow, England: Addison-Wesley.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Free text books online


Lets face it: textbooks are expensive. Most students (and libraries!) struggle with the cost of their reading for their coursework.

Many students will be pleased to know that there is a fairly extensive list of freely available textbooks compiled on the website textbooksfree.org. As well as text books, it also links to free lecture notes and online courses. The subject matter is very broad ranging, covering diverse subjects such as business, computers and economics. It also provides links to fiction books and general reading. The content is largely ebooks in HTML or PDF format and therefore much of its content may be downloaded to your computer for reading later on.

The material on offer here at ITB library has been collected in consultation with your lecturers and should therefore be your main source of reading during your time as a student. However, you may want to supplement this with further reading. After considering our online databases, websites such as this maybe useful to your needs. Check it out!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

One of the most common phrases we hear in the library...

... I wish I knew about this in first year!



Library staff regularly go to lecture theatres and classrooms to give demonstrations of our library databases, and we are often met with this response: I wish I knew about the databases earlier...

If you don't already use the databases to find information: today is the day to start!  Broadly speaking,
Academic Search Complete and Infotrac have information on a cross-range of subjects.

The library has leaflets for each (opposite the main desk) or have a look at our video tutorials (Science Direct, Academic Search Complete, Emerald Fulltext, Business Source Complete) .  If you have any questions, from off-campus access to constructing a good search, email us at LibraryInfo@itb.ie!

Monday, March 12, 2012

How to behave in a library

Here is an interesting article written by Sarah Carter at Howtodothings.com. The advice, though written in an American context, is applicable to library users everywhere and students of ITB should pay attention to it.



How To Behave in a Library

When you visit a library there are rules to follow; there is also a certain way that you should act. The librarian is there to help and assist you, but if you are loud and disruptive the friendly librarian might take a not-so-friendly tone and ask you to leave. To avoid the embarrassment of being asked to leave the library, follow these guidelines on the proper way to behave inside of a library.

Be quiet and respectful of those around you. If you and your friends are in the mood to gossip, then a library is not the place for you. People go to a library to study in a nice quiet atmosphere and not be disrupted by loud talking, giggling and laughing.

Turn off your cellphones and pagers. No one wants to be distracted by the constant ringing of cellphones or beeping of pagers. While you are in the library, either put your cellphone on vibrate or turn it off completely. Not only will your cellphone ringing distract those around you but if you choose to answer the phone call then your phone conversation will also bother the people around you.

Remember the library is a place to study, not a cafeteria. Eat your lunch or dinner before you head into the library. If you must have a snack, then take a break and go outside to eat your chips or candy bar. The crinkling of a chip bag and crunching of chips are a lot louder than you think when you are in a quiet environment.

You are not at home so don't kick off your shoes while you are studying. Keep in mind that there are other people in the library and they definitely don't want to sit there and smell your feet. Not only that but if you take your shoes off and have to get up to get a new book or drink of water you will be walking on a floor full of germs and risk getting athlete's foot or an infection of some type.

Many people have forgotten the proper way to behave in a library. Hopefully by reading this it will refresh those rules that you learned as a child and will improve the way many people act while visiting a public library.


Friday, March 9, 2012

A quick guide to borrowing books in ITB library...







  • Full time and part time students may borrow up to 5 books at any one time. Postgraduate students may borrow up to 10.
  • Books may be renewed twice, provided nobody else has reserved them and they are not overdue. After the 2nd renewal,  they must be returned. You  cannot renew a book if it is already overdue, so be sure to do this in good time. You can do this from home by simply logging into your library account from the library homepage.
  • If your books are late there will be a fine. You cannot borrow, renew, reserve or make a booking until all fines are cleared. Excuses or arguing with library staff will not be entertained.

  • Long Loans (2 weeks) - 40c for every day it is overdue
    Short Loans (1 week) - 70c
    for every day it is overdue
    Day Loans -
    €1 for every day it is overdue
  • Fines will only be waived if a valid doctors cert is presented.
  • If a book on your account goes missing, you will be held responsible for it until it turns up. Keep track of all the books on your account and keep an eye on the due dates. It is not advisable to allow somebody else to borrow something on your account – Remember that if it is lost, you are the person who will be held responsible. 
 
  • If you choose to use the self-issue machine, be sure to watch the onscreen messages to ensure that your books are issued and returned correctly.  Sit the book completely in the cradle as shown on the screen and follow the insructions. Books circulated incorrectly will set off the security alarm and you will be fined €5. 
  • Books marked 'Library Use Only' can not be issued to students and cannot leave the building. Similarly, theses, student projects and hard copy journals are for use in the library only. 
  • If you look for a book in the library catalogue and it says 'Due dd/mm//yy'. This means that the book is currently out on loan and is due back on the date indicated. If the book says 'On Shelf', it means that is in the library, but may not actually be on the shelf - It may be awaiting re-shelving or is being used by a student without them having borrowed it. 
Please make yourself aware of these rules for a better library experience at ITB :-)



Thursday, March 8, 2012

Writing a literature review

Are you doing research as part of your course? An integral part of the research process is the Literature Review; that is reading scholarly papers which have been previously published on the subject. Writing the literature review can be challenging. Thankfully, there are plenty of excellent guides out there to help you with this. Take a look at the guide below, it was written by Dena Taylor at University of Toronto.



What is a review of the literature?

A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Occasionally you will be asked to write one as a separate assignment (sometimes in the form of an annotated bibliography—see the bottom of the next page), but more often it is part of the introduction to an essay, research report, or thesis. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries

Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic, writing a literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas
  1. information seeking: the ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books
  2. critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.

A literature review must do these things
  1. be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing
  2. synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known
  3. identify areas of controversy in the literature
  4. formulate questions that need further research

Ask yourself questions like these:

  1. What is the specific thesis, problem, or research question that my literature review helps to define?
  2. What type of literature review am I conducting? Am I looking at issues of theory? methodology? policy? quantitative research (e.g. on the effectiveness of a new procedure)? qualitative research (e.g., studies )?
  3. What is the scope of my literature review? What types of publications am I using (e.g., journals, books, government documents, popular media)? What discipline am I working in (e.g., nursing psychology, sociology, medicine)?
  4. How good was my information seeking? Has my search been wide enough to ensure I've found all the relevant material? Has it been narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material? Is the number of sources I've used appropriate for the length of my paper?
  5. Have I critically analysed the literature I use? Do I follow through a set of concepts and questions, comparing items to each other in the ways they deal with them? Instead of just listing and summarizing items, do I assess them, discussing strengths and weaknesses?
  6. Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my perspective?
  7. Will the reader find my literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?

Ask yourself questions like these about each book or article you include:

  1. Has the author formulated a problem/issue?
  2. Is it clearly defined? Is its significance (scope, severity, relevance) clearly established?
  3. Could the problem have been approached more effectively from another perspective?
  4. What is the author's research orientation (e.g., interpretive, critical science, combination)?
  5. What is the author's theoretical framework (e.g., psychological, developmental, feminist)?
  6. What is the relationship between the theoretical and research perspectives?
  7. Has the author evaluated the literature relevant to the problem/issue? Does the author include literature taking positions she or he does not agree with?
  8. In a research study, how good are the basic components of the study design (e.g., population, intervention, outcome)? How accurate and valid are the measurements? Is the analysis of the data accurate and relevant to the research question? Are the conclusions validly based upon the data and analysis?
  9. In material written for a popular readership, does the author use appeals to emotion, one-sided examples, or rhetorically-charged language and tone? Is there an objective basis to the reasoning, or is the author merely "proving" what he or she already believes?
  10. How does the author structure the argument? Can you "deconstruct" the flow of the argument to see whether or where it breaks down logically (e.g., in establishing cause-effect relationships)?
  11. In what ways does this book or article contribute to our understanding of the problem under study, and in what ways is it useful for practice? What are the strengths and limitations?
  12. How does this book or article relate to the specific thesis or question I am developing?

Final Notes:

A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question.

If you are writing an annotated bibliography, you may need to summarize each item briefly, but should still follow through themes and concepts and do some critical assessment of material. Use an overall introduction and conclusion to state the scope of your coverage and to formulate the question, problem, or concept your chosen material illuminates. Usually you will have the option of grouping items into sections—this helps you indicate comparisons and relationships. You may be able to write a paragraph or so to introduce the focus of each section

To help you further, North Carolina State University Libraries has created an excellent video guide on conducting a  Literature Review. It is available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2d7y_r65HU