Library opening hours - 24/6 commences Monday 2 December

Dear staff and students,

You will be pleased to know that the Library will be open 24/6 from Monday 2nd December for the revision and examination period.  Throughout 24/6 the Library only closes at 18:00 on Saturday evenings and re-opens at 11:00 the following Sunday morning.

The Library will be open 24/6 through to 24 January but we will be closed for the Christmas vacation from Saturday 21 December 2013 - Wednesday 1 January 2014 inclusive.  Please check the Library web site for details.

We hope that you can make good use of the Library during this period. If you need a quiet place to study, then you can go to third floor which is for single silent study. If you have any problems with noisy neighbours in the Library, or if you need help with finding resources, then please do not hesitate to speak to staff at the Help desk on the Ground floor or email: library@aston.ac.uk

Please be aware that as well as entering the Library with your own uniCARD at all times, it is a University requirement for all staff and students to visibly display their uniCARDS within campus buildings (including the Library) during 'out of hours' periods.  Lanyards (and clips) for ID badges are available at Security, the HUB and the ARC. The 'out of hours' periods during term-time are between the hours of:

• 8pm - 8am Monday - Friday
• 6pm - 8am Friday - Monday

If you have any questions or comments, please let us know.

Best regards

Lydia Matheson
Public Services Co-ordinator (Customer Experience)
LIS

ebrary currently unavailable: NOW FIXED

**ebrary have now resolved this issue. Apologies for the inconvenience this caused**

ebrary are currently having problems with their UK Federation authentication. They are looking into this as a matter of urgency but at the moment all e-books on this site are unavailable. We'll update this blog post as soon as we hear that the problem has been fixed.

Passport (Euromonitor) - Access problems

Unfortunately, access to the Euromonitor database Passport is currently unavailable.  We are experiencing the following error message when we try and access the database on-campus or off-campus:

We are in contact with Euromonitor and hope to get access reinstated as soon as possible.  Updates will be provided by the Blog and via our Twitter feed @AstonLIS

Update:

You should now be able to access Passport whether you are based on campus or off campus.  Access Passport via the Databases link or the LibGuides .  The direct URL is : http://openathensproxy.aston.ac.uk/login?qurl=http://www.portal.euromonitor.com

We are still working with Euromonitor to rectify the original problem but thank you to the Library Information Resources Team for creating a work around.

Access problems have now been resolved.  21 November 09:00 (L. Matheson).

Aston University Library is a winner of a Go Green Award

Aston Go Green

This week, the Library were the winners of a 'Silver' Go Green award in recognition of the work carried out by the Library Go Green Project Team and implemented by Library staff. 
Our award was a glass bird made out of recycled glass. 

We would like you to join us in congratulating the Martin Luther King Centre who won the Bronze award and Catering who won the Gold award.

You can join in one of our Go Green Projects!  Have you got a pair of old spectacles sitting at home or in your office?  Bring them over to the Library and hand them over to the staff on the Help desk.  We are working with Vision Sciences and they will be recycled and sent to Charity.

Kind Regards
Go Green Project Team

Would you like to use Endnote when you are not on campus?

If you are regularly working off-campus and you would like to use the reference management software Endnote then it is available to purchase for your own devices (laptops, PCs) with a student discount. To get the discount you need to log into the Adept science website using your Aston account http://directory.adeptscience.co.uk/products/search/1/7/0/student.html The full details about buying EndNote directly are here http://www1.aston.ac.uk/ict/studentguide/software/software-for-home-use/ Alternatively there is a free online version available which doesn't have the full functionality of the desktop version but would be sufficent for Undergraduate students doing a Final Year Project https://www.myendnoteweb.com/

Wiley site down: problem now resolved

**This issue has now been resolved. Wiley apologise for any inconvenience caused.**

The publisher platform Wiley Online is down due to "network problems". They are investigating, and hope to have the site up and running soon.

Problems accessing journal articles via Proquest?

There are intermittent problems at the moment with access to PDF versions of articles via Proquest databases.  These databases include ABI Inform, Proquest Entrepreneurship, PsycArticles and IBSS.

The problems are occuring when you are trying to access the databases off-campus using your Univesity username and password.

Please be assured that the Library is working with Proquest to rectify the problems but in the meantime we have found these workarounds to the problems:

1. If a page has not loaded after 30 seconds please try clicking the "refresh" button.  This usually brings the page up a second time.
2. If you would like to view the PDF version of the article try clicking the Open in PDF Reader option
3. If you see this error message

 Please view the HTML version and choose "Export/Save to PDF" on the Proquest toolbar.

If you experience any difficulties with accessing journal articles please contact the Library Help Desk on 0121 204 4525 or email library@aston.ac.uk