Swinburne Library Blog

The New Title lists have just been updated. Select from Subject / Location lists or ALL TITLES.

If you have any questions about using the software please contact the library.

Swinburne College student, Mr Kazi Arifuzzaman,  is the lucky prize winner of the 16GB iPod Touch.  Kazi  entered a draw for the prize after completing the recent "Did you find it?" library survey. 

Thank you to all who completed the survey. The information received from the survey will help us improve library processes in the future.

Kazi receives his iPod Touch prize from Mr Gary Hardy, Acting Director of Information Resources.

As we mentioned in an earlier blog posting we are now "going live" with our new Inter-Library Loan software which means a new look for the Inter-Library Loan web pages

Don't worry, all current requests are already in the new Inter-Library Loan system.

We hope the new pages will be an improvement for you but if you have any questions, or need help, please contact mwilkinson@swin.edu.au

We have a new name for SFX!

In March/April we conducted an online poll to find out what would be the best name for SFX. The options were Find it, Get it, Full text?, SFX, and What is SFX?. Out of the five options Full text? received the most votes. The library decided that using a button labelled as Full text? to link to a service which provides access to full text documents was more meaningful and increased usability.

What does this mean?

When you conduct a database search and retrieve a results page you will now see a full text button    instead of an SFX button. This full text button will link to the same services linked to by the old SFX button.

In some cases you may see results with a    button and a    indicator. In these cases the full text indicator with the tick will take you directly to the full text. The full text button with the question mark    will offer you additional services.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be making changes to our databases and webpages to reflect the use of the new full text buttons and indicators.

The New Title lists have just been updated. Select from Subject / Location lists or ALL TITLES.

Update: The Did You Find It? survey is now closed.  Thank you to all who participated.  To find out who won the iPod Touch, stay tuned to the Library Blog.

Have you looked for a book, or an article, or a video in the past week?  If you did, we want to hear about it, whether you found it or not--this helps us understand whether we have the things you need, and also how well our catalogue and databases and things work.

 As well as letting us know whether we have what you need, you can also enter the draw to win a 16 GB iPod Touch* by filling out our survey.  Best of all, the survey only takes about five minutes--you could do it while you're waiting for your printing.  You only have three days left to complete the survey and enter the draw though, entries must close at midnight on 31 May at 11:59 PM

Survey is closed

 * Terms and conditions apply

This survey is now closed.  The prize winner will be announced here on the Library Blog.

We want to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for in the library, and to do that we need to know what problems you're having now.

You can help us by filling out a short survey which should take about 5 minutes.

We'll ask you some questions about the first specific item you looked for today (such as a book, an article, or a movie where you knew the title of some other details about the item) to see how you went.

Start the survey now and be in the prize draw to win a 16GB iPod Touch! Terms and conditions apply.

Note: The survey is now closed.

Tuesday 26th May

3.30-5.00pm in the Library Conference Room

Level 3, Hawthorn campus library

Web of Science is a leading citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of  high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international conference proceedings.

This demonstration will include:

• Recent enhancements to the Web of Science platform
• Citation map feature providing graphical display of an article's backward and forward citations
• Endnote Web and how sharing can enhance collaboration among researchers
• Researcher ID allowing researchers to manager their publications and access citation metrics
• Demonstration of the features of Essential Science Indicators

All interested students and staff are welcome to attend.

MINT Global (Bureau van Dijk) Database Demonstration

Hawthorn Campus Library
  Conference Room HLB311
  10.20 for a 10.30 start
  Friday 1st May

Mint Global has information on more than 20 million companies from around the world. It provides access to a wide variety of high quality information covering companies, news, directors, and market research as well as providing access to original documentation and filings.
Demonstration will cover;  Background of BVD, How Mint Global came together, Who can use Mint Global, Company Information ? Where does it come from?, Basic searching, Expert searching,
Downloading from the system, Other modules.

If you have ever wanted to press a button and see the past in action, now you can. A set of archival films in Swinburne Image Bank has now been linked to 'swinvideos', Swinburne's YouTube channel.

You can see a slice of Swinburne history and watch people of your grandparents' generation going on excursions, playing up in the snow or jumping off the diving board. You can see the procession for the Hawthorn centenary in 1960 and smile at the floats entered by Swinburne students or look at the Swinburne girls marching proudly in their uniforms.

For more recent history, the wonders of technology links circa 1992 are displayed at the opening of the Mooroolbark campus when fingers were crossed that a link between politicians in Melbourne and Canberra would work; cutting edge then - old hat now. You may even see yourself in the procession for the installation ceremony for our Foundation Chancellor, Richard Pratt, in 1993. In fact you can be a witness to the Foundation Stone ceremony in 1960 for the recently demolished Ethel Swinburne Centre on Burwood Road. At that ceremony Gwen Swinburne, daughter of George and Ethel, laid the stone and "buried" the time capsule which was then unveiled at the 100 year centenary ceremony. A new time capsule was buried at the centenary, this time in the wall of the very first Swinburne building in John Street, the only building still intact in our 100 year history.

Look at fashion in the late 60s when the Governor General came to lay the Foundation Stone for the Engineering building and later, the Governor of Victoria officiated at the opening for the Engineering building. This is an era when the ladies still curtsied to the representative of the queen while the staff had fun performing a mock guard of honour. Note the very 70s fashion on a very hot day in 1972 when Malcolm Fraser opened the brand new library.

 

Seeing the stories in action gives us a wonderful view of our Swinburne forbears, the students, the staff and the wider Swinburne community in action. All you have to remember when watching and smiling at the videos is that what happened then was state-of-the-art, and that the most modern technologies were employed at our institution then, as they are now.

Learn how to cite and reference your assignments correctly!

• Why you write references for your assignments
• Avoid plagarism and produce professional assignments
• Cite books, journal articles, web pages and other information in the correct format
• Practice in class with real examples

Click here for dates and times of workshops

Essential Science Indicators is an in-depth analytical tool offering data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries, and journals.

Explore science performance statistics and science trends data, based on journal article publication counts and citation data, determine research output and impact in specific fields of research, and evaluate potential employees, collaborators, reviewers and peers.

Essential Science Indicators is available now as part of the Web of Knowledge.