New library catalogue

Summer is a busy time for academic libraries! We've been able to implement a new library management system (behind the scenes system that should improve our efficiency and record-keeping) which comes along with a shiny new library catalogue. Visitors to the ILS homepage should have seen it and used it already but for those of you who haven't, here is a little snapshot:

Isn't it great? You should see improved relevance with books ranked highest in your list of results. Quite a few graduate researchers spent a good chunk of time with us, working out some of the bugs and optimising the look and feel in May of this year, so thanks very much to you for that. For those of you who miss Discover and want to keep searching there, you can still find it from the 'Databases' page, which is linked to from the ILS homepage.

At the moment, we're still working on a few aspects relating to article search (or 'search everything' as it appears in the catalogue). You may well find that the catalogue is not a great place for you to look for articles, and in that case, we would encourage you to go to straight to your discipline-specific scholarly databases. Though there are some advantages of searching with a federated search tool like our catalogue (looking across disciplinary lines, saving a bit of time by searching from all providers at once), there are many more advantages of searching in the correct databases. You will get much more precise search results and be able to search in discipline-appropriate ways; things that can be eroded when databases are merged into one interface.

Search strategies and high-quality databases are just the type of thing that make your academic liaison librarian's eyes glow with joy. Please book a tutorial  if you'd like to make sure you're getting the most out of the resources we subscribe to.

Masculinity in Literature

In an effort to bring added value to their scholarly articles, Routledge have created a cross-journal collection of articles which address 'masculinity in literature'. The publisher describes it thus:

This collection looks at the construction of manhood alongside sexual orientation, race and class, and within specific historical situations. The featured articles explore a range of media, regions and time periods as the authors contend with the concept of masculinity and how it has been defined in popular culture.

 All articles in the collection are free to access until October 2015 and might be of interest to those of you whose research addresses gender. Enjoy!

Open access and institutional repository requirements

HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) recently announced changes regarding deposit of research outputs for eligibility in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) excercise in 2020.

Rest assured, however, that YSJ's policy on depositing in RaY has not changed!

Google Scholar Button for your browser

Looking up a highlighted citation with the Google Scholar button

In April of 2015, Google released a Google Scholar plug-in for an internet browser. After a few months of testing, I think it seems stable and useful for looking up citations without necessarily needing to leave the webpage you're currently looking at or opening a new tab.

If you decide to install the button in your browser, you should be able to highlight text on a page (either a citation in an online bibliography or text from an actual article), click the button and instantly see where the full text might be available open access or via the library. Scholar is far from failsafe when checking our collections, so if it doesn't find it at YSJ, it's always best to double check from the library's website (or with your librarian) whether we may have the item in our collection.

Looking up a highlighted quote the Google Scholar button

You can also type into the button a snippet of text from an article or book you'd like to cite, and then see results of articles where those words appear. This might be useful if you handwrite a quote into a notebook but fail to take the full citation at the time (not that any YSJ scholar would fall prey to such bad habits).


The browser button is available for Chrome and Firefox. Happy searching!

Upcoming research support session: Capturing audio and video for research

The next research support session will be run by Ian from our Digital Training Team and will focus on some options available to you in capturing audio and video when collecting data for your research. ILS has a bank of 50 iPad Minis, which are available to borrow, and he will use these to introduce some of the features that could be useful to you.

It will take place on Wednesday 5th August, 2pm, FT114.

For more information about the Digital Training Team and the work they do, check out their blog.



Lego Photographer by Nathan Rupert. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Available from https://flic.kr/p/f6oFCx

Upcoming research support session: Keeping Track of Your Reading

This week, Clare will be running a session on keeping track of your reading for researchers.  Would you like to know more about the tools that different search services offer to make it easier to be alerted when research articles are published in specific journal titles?  Or to receive an email when a key author has written another piece of work?  Or are you struggling to keep effective records of what you have read or found? These issues and more will be covered.  Pop along to DG102 at 11am on Friday 24th July.

Keeping track of your reading from Information Learning Services, York St John University

Creating a researcher profile on RaY

Not only is it possible to track downloads and 'top authors' using RaY's statistics page, as we wrote about last week, it's also possible to create an author profile page on RaY, which allows a YSJ author to display all their research outputs in one place, alongside an author photo. It looks pretty nice, doesn't it?

An author's view of her MePrints page on RaY

To create a profile page, first log in to your RaY account (your normal YSJ login will work). Your MePrints page has automatically become your RaY homepage. Click the 'Edit Profile' button to add any professional biographical information that you'd like along with a photo. Not only will you be able to upload your work easily from this page, you can track which of your outputs is most viewed and see your latest additions.

This page is an automatically updated public research showcase, and it will eliminate the need to manage and add to other publication lists you might maintain on other websites.

What a MePrints page looks like to the public on RaY

ILS will be offering further drop in workshops on RaY in the Autumn (schedule coming shortly!) but we're also available to do bespoke training at the departmental, program or individual level. Please be in touch if this might be useful to you. If you would prefer to get started on your own, we've created a few 60 second video tutorials and a handbook.