Library Resources for Music / Adnoddau Llyfrgell ar Gyfer Cerdd

This biliingual (English / Welsh) powerpoint presentation briefly outlines some printed and electronic library resources for music students:

Library Resources for Music Students / Adnoddau Llyfrgell i Myfyrwyr Cerdd

Read Full Post »

SENRGY Library Resources & Literature Reviews Presentation

This is the presentation for SENRGY postgraduates (forestry, land conservation, countryside management, etc) on library resources and literature reviews.

Library Resources and Literature Reviews for SENRGY Students

Read Full Post »

Information Hunting in a Range of Sources: Handout

This is the handout for Friday afternoon’s working on information hunting.
I am putting handouts on my blog to try and cut down on printing costs.

InfoSearchingRangeSources

Read Full Post »

E-Databases for Library Staff: Handout

This is the handout for Friday’s teaching session on e-databases for library staff.

EdatabasesforLibraryStaff

Read Full Post »

Lists of Library E-Databases

At the library, we have a large range of electronic databases. They can all be accessed by university members when online at the university, or from home by logging to databases using your university user name and password. To find a database, go to the library e-database search page, type the name of a database you are looking for into the “Database Name” search box, and press submit.

This first list is some of the e-databases listed by type (e.g. bibiliographic databases, dictionaries, historical source materials, maps, newspapers, etc).

ListEDatabasesbyType

This second list is a separate list of most of the e-journal databases (excluding a few with only 1 or 2 journals in), with around 124 databases on the list. Each e-journal database is a colletion of journals from a different publisher (e.g. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, American Chemical Society); and some databases may contain only 1 or a few journals, whereas others contain 2000 journals. In most cases, the library only buys some of the journals in the database, so you will only be able to access articles in journals we buy, others will not open or will ask you for passwords. A few databases cover most subjects, and are therefore nearly always worth searching when you are hunting for articles for your research, and other contain journals for particular subjects (health, law, science, etc); so the list divides e-journal databases by subject.

ListEjournalDatabases

Read Full Post »

November Information Skills Workshops

To register on these sessions email Penny Dowdney: p.j.dowdney@bangor.ac.uk with 1) your name, 2) your email address, 3) your level (1^st year, postgraduate, lecturer, etc), and 4) your subject area.

Please note that workshops book up quickly, but I will try and run extra workshops if demand is high!

Thu 12th Nov: Refworks for Beginners: BOOKING ESSENTIAL

Room 035, Deiniol Library, Bangor University

A two hour workshop for beginners, and people who have begun using Refworks but would like some more guidance.

Refworks is an internet based reference manager bought by the university library, which allows you to save your references to books, journals, articles and so forth online; access references from university and home; and use the references to print out reading lists or create bibliographies at the end of essays. Refworks can be used free of charge by university members for as long as they are at the university and afterwards. This workshop will show you how to register with Refworks, set up folders for references, save references to Refworks from different sources (books, electronic journals, etc), download the Write-N-Cite plug-in, access your references from Microsoft Word, and insert references into an essay and create a bibliography.

Thu 19th Nov: E-resources@Bangor: BOOKING ESSENTIAL

Room 035, Deiniol Library, Bangor University

A two hour workshop.

The Bangor University Libraries subscribe to a range of electronic resources, and this session will give you an overview of some of the things we get, and how to search them effectively. The workshop will look at online newspaper archives, electronic journal databases, which contain a range of full text journals; and at some of the bibliographic databases, which search a number of sources and list a range of useful articles (but do not contain full text articles).

Read Full Post »

How can your food choices help the planet?

Today’s library resources find is an interesting article in a journal called Environmental Science and Technology. I discovered the journal whilst hunting in the American Chemical Society e-journals database for articles I could use as references, as I am teaching a session to chemistry students next week about Refworks (an online tool which lets you save book and article references).

The article, Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States, by Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Mathews was published in April 2008, and is currently  the journal’s most read article. They compare the greenhouse gas emissions released by transporting food with greenhouse gas emissions released by food production, and conclude that producing red meat and dairy releases far more emissions than is produced by transporting food.

Therefore, they conclude that although eating locally is still a good environmental choice, the most effective way of reducing the climate impacts caused by your eating habits is to reduce the amount of red meat and dairy that you consume (I am a vegetarian, so that’s a good start, but I do like a bit of cheese…). I personally think that both dietary changes and eating locally are important, for various reasons, not just greenhouse gas emissions. Buying local food supports local food producers, the food often tastes good, and shopping in this way does contribute to reducing food transport pollution, even if the impact is small compared to food production impacts.

Members of Bangor University can find the article by selecting American Chemical Society from the list of Physical and Applied Science Databases, clicking on Environmental Science and Technology in the journals list, and then clicking on the tab at the top of the journal list of contents which says most read. At the moment, Food-Miles is at the top of this list.

If you’re not at the university, there are a lot of articles about the conclusions drawn in the paper available online, including this article on Food Miles versus Food Choice in The Ethicurean, which summarises the article, but also points out the importance of buying local food.

Read Full Post »

Alien Life and Astrobiology: some library resources

Are there other life forms in the Universe? I can’t answer that question, as I haven’t spotted any UFOs over North Wales recently, but I can direct you to some library resources at Bangor University where you can begin exploring this question.

There is a short article by Rami T.F. Rekola called Life and habitable zones in the universe, in the journal Planetary and Space Science, Volume 57, Issue 4, April 2009, in the Science Direct database, accessible from the library’s list of multidisciplinary resources (once into the database, type Rekola into the author search field at the top of the screen). “In order to establish habitability we must first define what constitutes life. This is not a trivial question. There are many definitions of life in the literature, and most if not all of them can be shown to have faults or at least be inconsistent with some existing forms of life. One might argue the question is partly philosophical.” (Rekola, 2009).

You could also consult an electronic book, which you can read in full online, at the university or from home, such as Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Louis N. Irwin’s 2008 book, Life in the universe: expectations and constraints, or Peter Ulmschneider’s 2006 book, Intelligent life in the universe: principles and requirements behind its emergence. Search in the library catalogue for the keywords “life” and “universe”.

Alternatively, search the library catalogue for astrobiology, the name given to this field of study, and you will find even more resources, including an article in a 2009 issue of the International Journal of Astrobiology (Vol 8, No 1, pp51-61), by Carlos F. Oliveira and James P. Barufaldi called Aliens are us. An innovative course in astrobiology. This is about a course in astrobiology taught to non science students at the University of Texas, using the subject of alien life in the universe to pique their interest in science. The journal is in the Cambridge Journals Online database, accessible from the multidisplinary resources list (once into the database, type Aliens Are Us into the search box on the top right).

Aliens Are Us summarises some of the thinking and teaching covered by the course, giving a fascinating overview of the relevant issues for non scientists interested in this subject. “The course starts with a historical perspective to understand how the idea of extraterrestrial life originated and evolved. Then, a series of factors, important in determining whether extraterrestrial life is possible, are examined. Next, the course focuses on the ‘search for aliens’ and ‘trying to contact them’, and the question of whether Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials is approached critically. Finally, the course discusses the importance of science fiction in society and its impact on the current extraterrestrial life framework.” (Oliveira & Barufaldi, 2009, p52).

Several more electronic books on the subject show up in the library catalogue when searched using the keyword astrobiology, or you can hunt for a large printed book housed in the university’s Deiniol Library, edited by Iain Gilmour and Mark A. Sephton, and called An introduction to astrobiology. You can also view sections of this book online via Google Books.

The library has a list of astronomy journals we subscribe to.

There are more articles and resources about alien life, astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to be found in the library collections, so if you’re researching this subject or just interested, email  v.zarach@bangor.ac.uk for more suggestions.

Read Full Post »