Access to printed journals during summer vacation

As part of the Library refurbishment project over the summer, it will be necessary to remove all printed journals from the 1st floor of the Library and place them in storage. Therefore, there will be no access to 1st floor printed journals from June 10th to October 6th. Please make use of our Inter-Library Loans service during this time.

Graduation 2010

If you are graduating in July 2010, you must clear all outstanding Library charges by 12th June. Failure to do so will mean that you are unable to graduate. If you have any queries about this, please contact library@aston.ac.uk or call 0121 204 4525.

Stepping Stones to Information Literacy

Information Specialists Georgina Hardy and Caroline Long have recently completed a CLIPP-funded project to create an Information Literacy Profile within PebblePad, Aston University's e-Portfolio system.

Information Literacy can be defined as “knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”. For this project a profile consisting of a set of 14 skills was created, enabling you to rate yourself against each aspect of Information Literacy, provide evidence of a skill where appropriate and build an action plan to improve if necessary. The profile can be revisited throughout your career at Aston University, as you develop your Information Literacy Skills through attending a seminar with your Information Specialist in the library or carrying out research.

You can access PebblePad via MAP - follow the link to "Aston ePortfolio" from your E-Learning Links container. The Information Literacy Profile is available to everyone across the University.

Georgina and Caroline presented their work at the Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference (LILAC) 2010, and details of their presentation can be found on Aston University Research Archive.

Preparatory work is due to start in the Library Building

During the last week of exam period (week beginning 7th June), some preparatory work needs to be carried out in the Library before the arrival of the building contractors on 21st June. This will involve stock removal on the 1st and 2nd floors of the Library. We hope to keep noise and disruption to a minimum, but people wishing to study in silence may wish to use the 3rd floor during this time.

Project timeline for Library refurbishment

A project timeline of the Library refurbishment is now available on our Library webpages. Keep checking our refurbishement webpages for updates throughout the summer.

Help name the Library

We had over a hundred suggestions submitted to our "Name the Library" competition. These have been short-listed to nine suggestions and you can now vote for your favourite. The results will be announced next month.

Voting closes at midnight on Sunday 13th June.

Off-campus access to PsycArticles

There is currently a problem with logging on to PsycArticles from off-campus. The database suppliers are looking into this as a matter of urgency and we will update this blog post as soon as it is fixed. Apologies for the inconvenience.