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Archive for September, 2017

Induction week preparation

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 21 September 2017

Poster owl

 

Each morning we arrive to many requests for editing access to online reading lists; and teaching and support staff have been calling into our Wednesday drop-in for training in how to best use them.  Term 1 is only a few days away and there much preparation going on!

In the run up to induction week, site and subject liaison librarians have also been requesting support material to hand out in induction packs, or to refresh a notice board.

 

Poster Unusual Study habits 2

 

 

The images here are two posters that are available as pdf to print for your department, and also bundles of Owl postcards.  Please get in touch with TLS to request any of these.

 

To particularly help those Departmental Administrators, Librarians and other support staff, our webpages ReadingLists@UCL for Support Staff is being updated as we speak.  Please let us know if there is anything else that we can usefully add there to help you!

 

 

 

 

Linking to readings via Ovid

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 11 September 2017

Ovid is a large database which provides access to many journals, books and some audio-visual resources.  If you need to bookmark a journal article from here you will find the link is not stable: when you return to the reading the link may not work – and therefore is not helpful to your students.

The easy solution

Make a basic bookmark and the library will turn this into a stable link for you:

  • Bookmark the page as usual: in Ovid, this works beautifully so all the bibliographic data will pull through nicely.
  • Use the ‘Library note’ to flag that the link needs upgrading.
  • When you have completed your reading list, click ‘Request review’.  TLS will be notified to check your list and we will update the link to a stable link.

Request review

 

 

How is this done?

A surprising number of academics, learning technologists and librarians ask how they can do this themselves, so the following is for them:

  • Navigate to the article
  • First click on ‘Email jumpstart’ and from the popup box, copy the jumpstart URL (click on the image below for the screenshot)
  • Then bookmark as usual from the article, but replace the ‘Weblink’ with the ‘jumpstart’ URL.

Ovid jumpstart

 

 

 

 

 

For help with bookmarking from other specialist resources, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking‘. Or, of course, do get in touch any time.

 

Linking to articles in PEP-Web

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 11 September 2017

PEP-Web is a database for Psychoanalytic resources (books, journals, video etc.).   It used to be a little more tricky to bookmark from however when this was flagged to Talis, the software owners behind ReadingLists@UCL, they were able to create a fix so the two systems now interact well.

When you search through the library catalogue for a journal, and click ‘View online’ you

Different journal providers

Different journal providers

may be offered more than one journal provider:

 

PEP-Web has a good archive back to the 1920s and is very specialist, so it may be the only source for some readings. From this screen click on ‘Go’ and then navigate to the relevant reading.

 

Journal articles in PEP-Web do not have a DOI however the online reading list system will create a good bookmark despite this.

 

 

  • Click on your ‘Add to my bookmarks’ button as usual and the correct bibliographic data will be pulled through into the bookmark.
  • The weblink is also stable, so you need do nothing more than save the bookmark into a particular reading list!

 

If you are aware of any databases or resources that don’t bookmark well, please let us know so we can work with Talis to solve this.

For help with bookmarking from other specialist resources, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking‘. Or, of course, do get in touch any time.

 

Linking to Harvard Business Review

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 11 September 2017

Harvard Business Review articles are often key resources for students across UCL, particularly in the UCL School of Management.

UCL Library subscribes to this resource online, making it readily available to students.  It is available through the EBSCOhost platform. However academics wishing to direct students to readings will find that technical measures inhibit them from creating a durable link to an article.  This is to reinforce the licence terms which do not allow academic institutions to use HBR material in ‘electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources.’.

How to help students to key readings, whilst still respecting the licence restrictions?  You can signal to students which readings are interesting to read, and the library will turn this into a permitted link at the most granular level allowed.

  • Bookmark the page as usual, so enough of the bibliographic detail is saved to be clear which reading you are recommending. Even more helpful, add the ‘Accession number’ from the article into the student or library note.
  • Use the ‘Library note’ to flag that this is an HBR link which needs upgrading.
  • When you have completed your reading list, click ‘Request review’.  TLS will be notified to check your list and we will update the link to a stable link, from where students can reasonably click to search for the relevant article.

Request review

 

 

 

 

For help with bookmarking from other specialist resources, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking‘. Or, of course, do get in touch any time.

Summertime FAQs

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 1 September 2017

Everyone thinks summer is a quiet time in the library, however the TLS is at its most busy!  Along with most academic departments, we are preparing reading materials ready for term start and setting up new reading lists.

We have also had many excellent questions about reading lists.  Some are so useful or universal we thought it would be helpful to share them, along with the answers.

 

Q: I am a Departmental Administrator updating our course information. The titles of some of modules have changed and I wondered who to send the updated information to, so they can be amended on the online Reading Lists?

A: Email any module code / title changes to: readinglists@ucl.ac.uk  This account is checked by more than one person each day: we will update your lists as soon as possible and let you know when they are complete.  If a module code has changed, do also check that the link from Moodle to the reading list still works.

Q: I had some changes on my 2016/17 reading list that I didn’t publish. When the lists rolled forward into 2017/18 those changes were lost. I can’t recall what the changes were and don’t have the references anymore, is there any chance that there is an archived version of the list to look at?

A: I am pleased you asked because it is very easy for us to retrieve archived lists!  We have made the 2016-17 version available again: once you have looked over both versions let us know which one you prefer to keep live and we will archive the other version.

Q: Last year I used the Moodle tool ‘Reading List items’ to embed readings from my reading list more directly into Moodle.  After the Moodle and reading lists roll overs, not all these links are working well.  Do I have to re-embed them all?

A: Some teaching staff find this Moodle tool very helpful, to pinpoint sections or readings for specific weeks. The Moodle and ReadingLists@UCL teams have liaised to create some instructions: ‘Displaying your Reading List in Moodle’. They explain the most basic and stable way of linking from Moodle to reading list, using the ‘Library Resources’ block; they also show the more sophisticated integration, using the ‘Reading Lists Items’ tool.  Finally, there is specific note of Caution ‘What you need to do before each academic year’ which explains how to update any broken links.

 

We hope this helps. If you need help with any of the above or have your own questions, you are welcome to call us any time (020 3549 5729 or internal x65729), email, or drop in to our office in Senate House! The ReadingLists@UCL webpages also have further support and information.