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ERC, IS and LIBRARY NEWSLETTER - Issue 3, May 2010

As from 19 April 2010 the LRC will be open 24/7.

This will be welcome news for those with looming assign-
ment deadlines or who want some extra study time.

During semester time the LRC will still be staffed from 9am to
9pm Monday to Friday and from 9am to 5pm at the weekend.
Outwith these times however you will be able to carry on us-
ing the LRC for study and self-service.

For your safety there will be a few restrictions on where you can go during unstaffed hours. You will have full
access to the open area and the 80+ terminals in front of the LRC Service Desk. The Academic Reserve room
(1-162) will also be open so that you can access the Short Loan collection and the 17 Quiet Study spaces.
None of the other rooms will be accessible. And whilst you may visit the east end of the LRC to collect books
from the shelves, you must bring them back to the LRC Service Desk area to read them.

Access to the LRC is by smartcard. If you do not have your smartcard you will not be able to access the facili-
ties (as required by Fire Regulations).

Any items that require to be issued by staff will not be able to be borrowed during unstaffed hours – e.g. DVDs,
items on hold or inter-library loans. However, we are in the process of implementing a new Library Manage-
ment System which should enable us to extend the services available during unstaffed hours. Vending ma-
chines will also be appearing soon in the LRC to give you access to cold drinks and snacks.

Please let us know what you think of this innovation. You can send an email to LRCHelp@qmu.ac.uk or com-
plete a “You said, we said” comments slip (available from the Suggestions Box on top of the Service Desk).

Terminal shutdowns Voice Activated Directory

power substantial savings
QMU has been able to achieve sig-
nificant savings in energy usage by
programming thin client terminals
to shutdown automatically at night.
Each terminal uses approximately 15 watts of power
every hour that it is powered on. Assuming that it is
turned off for around 13 hours overnight, this works
out to a saving of 71.175 kilowatt hours each year
for each terminal.
For every 100 terminals that are powered off in this
way, QMU will be able to reduce annual CO2 emis-
sions by over 3,784kg. This equates to around
1,033kg of carbon or the equivalent of 10,000 miles
in the typical family car. (http://is.gd/bqVFc)
The associated financial savings will vary, depend-
ing on the cost of electricity at the time of billing.
IS are in the process of testing the
latest version of the Voice Activat-
ed Directory (VAD), and hope to be
able to roll this out as a replace-
ment to the existing service in the
near future.
The major enhancement of this version is the abil-
ity to cancel a transfer if the VAD misinterprets your
request – background noise, poor call quality and
noise on the line can occasionally result in a transfer
to the wrong place or person; this new feature ena-
bles you to say “Cancel” if this occurs, at which point
you can either repeat the request or transfer to the
Operator by dialling “0”.
The VAD is an application developed by Nuance,
who are a leading provider of speech and imaging
solutions for business and consumers around the
world – they also develop Dragon Naturally Speak-
ing, a well known Speech Recognition application
for PCs and mobile devices.

Did you know …?
That QMU is now part of the gov-
ernment-led Procurement Scot-
land group http://is.gd/bABEK? This lets us
benefit from centrally negotiated contracts
for the supply of IT hardware and other
equipment, which will make the items we
need to buy much cheaper than before.
Did you know …?
That Information Services offers
a dedicated procurement service
for all IT-related hardware, software and
related items? For advice and quotes
contact itpurchasing@qmu.ac.uk with your
requirements.
Business Intelligence
Enhancement Project
The Project is steered by a cross-institutional BI Project Board, chaired by Rosalyn Marshall, VP (Resources and
Development) with project work being managed by IS and undertaken by our BI Coordinator, Ranjit Nagubandi.
Please do not hesitate to contact Ranjit (RNagubandi@qmu.ac.uk) or Evelyn Marshall (EMarshall@qmu.ac.uk)
if you would like any further information regarding any of the above.
YouthWire
http://is.gd/bqVzZ
The YouthWire application is a
student-based platform for ena-
bling access to educational and
social resources, the latest stu-
dent news, offers and opportuni-
ties. Queen Margaret University
is trialling the application this se-
mester and if successful, will use
it permanently. For this phase,
the Learning Resource Centre
and the Students' Union will be
delivering up-to-date information
on the services they offer and
news and events.
1000th deposit in eResearch
The repository team is delighted
to announce that the 1000th de-
posit in eResearch was reached
in January. The open access arti-
cle was co-authored by Rebecca
Horn, a researcher from QMU’s
Institute for International Health
and Development.
Horn, Rebecca and Charters, Simon and Vahidy, Saleem (2009) The
victim-witness experience in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Inter-
national Review of Victimology, Vol. 15. pp. 277-298. ISSN 0269-7580
http://is.gd/bABOt.
As Rebecca is currently working in Sri Lanka, Barbara McPake (Direc-
tor of the Institute for International Health and Development) accepted
a bottle of champagne on her behalf.
Business Intelligence (BI) is the gathering of cross-organisational data in
order to acquire the understanding necessary to drive informed strategic
and tactical business decision-making. It employs a range of information
technologies that enable business users to store, retrieve and analyse
data in an accessible way.
QMU’s BI Enhancement Project is using the data from QMU’s core cor-
porate systems to generate comprehensive integrated management in-
formation which is then presented out via the Business Objects reporting
tool. More information on this key strategic project can be viewed here:
http://is.gd/bqVCE. In addition to gathering requirements, report develop-
ment and the provision of a central repository of corporate management
information reports, we are undertaking a training exercise empowering
key staff to undertake a significant proportion of routine report-writing
themselves.
Replacement of Reference Manager
The LRC currently provides the Reference Manager application to all
staff and students to manage their bibliographic references and to inte-
grate with Microsoft Word for the production of reference lists in docu-
ments.
As a result of perceived shortcomings in this product, a project has been
undertaken to investigate other available applications to see whether
any cost savings and enhanced features can be found. The initial phase
of research has now completed and three possible alternatives have
been highlighted for further investigation:
• Mendeley
• RefWorks
• Zotero
Get more information on these alternatives here: http://is.gd/bqVwV
Are you one of the 5016? Did you know…?
So far this year the Liaison Serv- .… That you can access more than 130
ices team have delivered over 480 databases, 8000 full text electronic jour-
hours to an audience of over 5016 nals, over 5000 titles of additional full text
staff and students. Our sessions material such as market research reports,
cover all of the electronic resourc- company reports and profiles etc and over
es, journals and books, how to use 44,000 electronic books.
traditional print resources, and soft-
ware such as Reference Manager. Did you know…?
…. That the LRC staff have over
Keep an eye open for our workshop 220 years of QMU service between them!
timetable on the LRC website http://
is.gd/bABK2 or ask your tutor if you Our congratulations and thanks for all his
have a session scheduled with us. hard work go to David Oliver, User Servic-
If not then you can always come es Manager, who reached 25 years service
and see us at the subject enquiries on 1st April 2010.
point at the LRC Service Desk.

Growth of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL)

The LRC is pleased to report that, following successful negotiations by representatives of
SHEDL, three new publishers have joined the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library this
year. They are Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press and Berg Publishing and
between them provide full text access back to 1996, where available, for 288 titles.

Six publishers now provide material under SHEDL agreements with con-
tent from the American Chemical Society, Springer and Cambridge Uni-
versity Press being available since 2009. In total there are now 1876 titles
available through SHEDL.

The SHEDL consortium consists of all 19 HEIs in Scotland and has a

business model that all institutions should get the same access and at
costs not exceeding their existing spend with the publishers selected. If an
institution doesn’t have any subscriptions with a selected publisher then
their access to content is free of charge, for example QMU does not pay
for access to the material from the American Chemical Society.

First year usage statistics show an increase of 41.3% for 2009 compared
to 2008 across the consortium. For QMU our usage in 2009 for Springer
increased by 82.5%, for Cambridge University Press by 33% and for the
American Chemical Society by 100% as previously we did not have ac-
cess to their content.

The titles are all listed on our A to Z of electronic journals web page at:
http://is.gd/bqVHk

QMU shortlisted for two awards

We have been shortlisted in two categories in the prestigious Times Higher Education Lead-
ership and Management Awards 2010 which recognise outstanding achievement in higher
education.
QMU has been selected as finalists in the Outstanding ICT Team category for its work in using technology to
support staff, students and researchers within the university and as a major component of the new campus de-
velopment.

QMU has also been shortlisted for an award in the ICT Initiative of the Year category for the QMU smartcard
project. The smartcard is a multi-purpose card originally developed to provide security and access control, cash-
less purchasing and visual identification as the student matriculation and staff ID card. Following further develop-
ment the card can now also be used for library borrowing, print, copy and scanning, parking, gym membership
and cashless purchasing in all outlets across the university, including the Students’ Union.
 @@@
Systems integration for improved efficiency
IS are currently working on a number of projects aimed at improving
efficiency throughout QMU.

The Accommodation eBusiness project will implement a new online

application and contract generation facility for the student accommodation. This will streamline the application
process for students, as well as provide savings in staff time, printing and postage costs. Find out more here:
http://is.gd/bqVyH

A number of enhancements are also planned for the ISIS student records system.

IPP – Following the successful launch last year of an online application process for taught postgraduate courses,
it is hope to replicate this for online direct entrant undergraduate applications. It is planned that the new facility
will go live later this spring. This will be followed by a staged implementation of online enquiries, enabling QMU
better to manage and monitor all contact with prospective students, thus offering an improved experience for all
concerned.

Online Module Selection for Postgraduate Students - Online Module Selection is being developed to link ISIS
with Timetabling, thereby allowing students to select modules in advance of or as part of online matriculation.

Searching for journal articles…?

The ‘subject resources’ pages on the LRC website are a good starting point for journal article searches. These
pages pool together useful and key databases for different subjects. Start by selecting the subject page that suits
the subject you are researching or the course that you are studying on. The databases listed can be searched by
keyword, or phrase, and are powerful research tools providing references to journal articles based on the search
criteria you provide. Use the da-
tabase descriptions to choose the
best database for your search. If
you need help with choosing the
best database for your search or
with searching these resources ask
at the Subject Enquiries point at the
LRC Service Desk or sign up for an
LRC workshop (see http://is.gd/
bABK2).

UCISA Award for Got a question?

Excellence
For the second year running, we
have been awarded “Highly Com-
mended” in the UCISA Award for
Excellence for our smartcard
project. For a university of our
size, being Highly Commended
twice in a row is a major achieve-
ment.
Sponsored by Eduserv, the 2009
award was won by Canterbury
Christ Church University.
The librarians at Subject Enquiries
have, so far this year, answered
nearly 1000 questions.
If you’ve got an information question –
for example, you need to find good quality
references for your essays,
or are not sure how to use one of the LRC’s resources
(iLink, CINAHL, Emerald, Reference Manager etc.)
or need help with referencing,
or accessing an online journal or book –
then the librarian at the Subject Enquiries
point of the LRC Service Desk can help.

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