Assignment drop-in sessions

Need help finding information for your assignment?

Having trouble accessing journal articles?

Confused by all the information out there, and don't know where to start?

Don't panic!! Just drop-in to one of our sessions on the ground floor of the Library next week, and a friendly Information Specialist will be on hand to answer all your questions.

Monday 2nd November to Friday 6th November 12-2, see you there :-)

Library Matters Live Success!

was the title of our Library Introduction Sessions for all new Aston students. This year Aston welcomed 3,692 new University students, and staff in the Library met 2,313 of you during Welcome Weeks one, two and the first week of term!

Many of you were introduced in person to your Information Specialist and the majority of you were able to see at first hand Library Catalogue, self service machine and printing demonstrations. At the end of each Library Matters Live session those present were asked to fill out an evaluation form with entry to win £100 Bullring shopping centre voucher; a winner has now been chosen and notified.

From analysis of the forms filled in 72% were happy with the content of these sessions. We had hundreds of positive comments about the practical demonstrations that we gave for the first time this year and many comments regarding wanting to know more about Library facilities and resources.

Now that we are settling into Term 1 we hope that this introduction has given you a good starting point in the use you can make of the entire Library. Don’t forget to look out for future Library sessions that appear on your timetable and remember we are here to help you make the best use of all the resources available so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you need any further help.

Web of Knowledge web tools, gadgets and widgets

The Web of Knowledge (or ISI Web of Knowledge) is a search interface that allows you to search databases of journal articles across a wide range of subject areas simultaneously. The databases/subjects included are:

* Science Citation Index Expanded (1970-present)
* Social Sciences Citation Index (1970-present)
* Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present)
* MEDLINE for biomedicine and life sciences, bioengineering, public health, clinical care, and plant and animal science (1950-present)
* Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (1990-present)
* Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (1990-present)

The Web of Knowledge have just released a number of web tools, gadgets and widgets to allow you to search the Web of Knowledge from a toolbar in your browser, a search box in your web page, your iGoogle page, or your desktop via Yahoo! widgets. Visit this information page to find out more.

Safari Tech Books Online Logging in problems update

The login to Safari has now been fixed. All access is via this URL http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/?uicode=UKFederation-member@aston.ac.uk. Select UK Federation Users Login at the bottom of the screen, select Aston University (Shibboleth v2) from the drop-down list and then login with your usual Aston University network username and password.

When linking through to indivudal e-books from the Library catalogue, you will initially see a "preview" screen. You should click on UKFederation Users Login and enter your Aston University network username and password to access the full e-book.

Access to e-Library from student residences

There has been a problem getting on to the e-Library from student residences since the beginning of this term. ISA have informed us that this has now been resolved. If you continue to have problems, please comment on this post, stating which residence you are trying to access the e-Library from.

Safari Tech Books Online: Logging in problems

We are experiencing problems logging in to Safari Tech Books Online. You may see this error message when you attempt to log in:

Invalid Account

Your account is currently not valid. Please contact customer service for assistance.


We are in contact with the suppliers about this and hope to have it resolved soon. This post will be updated (check the comments underneath) when the problem has been fixed.

Problems logging in to online resources

We are currently having technical problems with logging in to online resources. Many people are seeing the following error message when they attempt to log in to many of our electronic resources:

The Authentication Point was unable to process this SAML assertion. This may be due to a temporary network problem, server failure, or invalid request.

We are looking into this problem as a matter of urgency and hope to have it resolved soon.

Browsing APA Journals within PsycARTICLES

We have recently received comments that not all issues are properly displayed for each journal title within the PsycARTICLES database, accessed via CSA Illumina. This affects all journals published by the APA.

We have contacted the provider and they have said:

"There is a known issue in the Browse tab where not all the years are being displayed for every journal in PsycARTICLES. We are currently working on a solution and I will send you an update once it’s been fixed. I do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

In the meantime, you can still find the article by searching for it instead."

If you are trying to access a particular journal article and the issue you require is not listed, scroll down to the bottom of the page to "Search Within" your journal title. A couple of keywords from the title (use AND between them) should be enough to locate the information you need.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any problems.