Currently reading

With leading characters including Subandrio, Sugandhi, Sugijono, Suharto, Sujono, Sukarno, Sukatno, Sukendro, Sumpeno, Supardjo, Suparno, Suprapto, Surabaya and Sutjipto, End of Sukarno: A Coup That Misfired: A Purge That Ran Wild, by John Hughes, is not a book you can speed read without completely losing the plot.  Sukarno was the President of Indonesia from 1945 to 1967.  There was a failed coup in 1965, which this book describes.  In the following two years there then followed the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Communists within Indonesia, and following this, Sukarno’s eventual eclipse.

Sukarno was also known as Bung Karno, Soekarno, Pak Karno, and variations of Achmad Sukarno.  A confusing man in a confusing place.  If you read the book carefully, however, it is not confusing.  I did not know about the semi-organised killing of hundreds of thousands of communists in Indonesia during those years.

The other book I’ve beeen reading is Their Heads are Green, by Paul Bowles, which is mainly about Bowles’ travels in Morocco in the 1950s, amongst the Berber and Imochagh people.  He recorded local folk music during his trips.  This vimeo may give you a flavour.  We know the Imochagh as Touareg, but Bowles points out that the word is a term of opprobrium meaning ‘lost souls’.  Imochagh means the free ones.

Review of Scottish university library websites: Summary and ranking

In the past few days I’ve written seven blog posts reviewing what I found when I visited each of the Scottish university library websites in turn, looking for information or advice on keeping currrent.

Overall, standards have been IMHO very poor, with numerous broken links found in the short time I spent looking at these websites, faults with search engines, and very little quality advice about keeping up-to-date.

I now want to rank the websites, giving points for various things.

1 point if the various search services worked without problems.
1 point if the various search services were clearly labelled so that you know what you’re searching.
1 point if I didn’t find any 404s or broken links.
1 point if the site mentioned Zetoc.
1 point if the site mentioned JournalTOCs.
1 point if there was consistency (i.e. in terminology, or if one subject guide mentioned keeping current, then most others should as well)
1 point if I found any reasonably good advice on keeping current.
1 point if there was a current awareness service (that was not full of errors).

Looking through that list of eight pretty basic things, one would surely hope that a university library would at least score 7.

The scores.

Abertay University Library: 1 point (consistency (albeit consistently no mentions of keeping current, etc)).

University of St Andrews Library: 1 point (labelled search engines).

University of the Highlands and Islands: 1 point (mention of Zetoc).

University of Dundee Library & Learning Centre: 2 points (no 404s found, mention of Zetoc).

Queen Margaret University Library Services: 2 points (mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs).

University of the West of Scotland Library: 2 points (searches work OK, mention of Zetoc).

University of Aberdeen Library: 3 points (searches work OK, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc).

University of Glasgow Library: 3 points  (labelled search engines, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc).

University of Edinburgh Library & Museum services: 4 points (searches work OK, labelled search engines, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc).

Robert Gordon University Library: 4 points (searches work OK, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs)

University of Strathclyde Library: 4 points (no 404s found, mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs, advice on keeping current).

Edinburgh Napier University Library: 4 points (labelled search engines, mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs, advice on keeping current).

Glasgow Caledonian University: 5 points (labelled search engines, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs, advice on keeping current).

Heriot-Watt University Information Services: 6 points (searches work OK, labelled search engines, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs, advice on keeping current).

University of Stirling Information Services: 6 points (searches work OK, labelled search engines, no 404s found, mention of Zetoc, mention of JournalTOCs, advice on keeping current).

At least they all avoided ‘nil points’.  Heriot-Watt and Stirling came out best.  Both Heriot-Watt and Stirling didn’t score points for consistency or having an actual current awareness service, so no library reached my reasonable expectation of 7 points.

If I’ve made any errors in the above or in any of the reviews, please let me know.

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness – Part 7

I hope there will be fewer problems with the other Glasgow based universities.

The University of Strathclyde Library website has a list of Electronic Databases, and each database has a helpful description.  The list includes Zetoc, but not JournalTOCs.  You can search what I think is the University website from the Library homepage, rather than the Library website (no indication is given of what is being searched).  When I searched for ‘journaltocs’ this is what happened:

Do people really also search for , , ? I don’t think so.

Anyway, of the three results, two don’t mention journaltocs, so I don’t know why they appeared in the results.  The other one, however, is a good: Where do I start – Keeping up-to-date with research leaflet, which does include information about JournalTOCs, and there are links to this leaflet from Library Support for Researchers, and some of the LibGuides (e.g. Library resources for Computer and Information Sciences), but not others.  No consistency, then.

If you search the University of Glasgow website for ‘zetoc’ you get three results.  None of these three are to this page, which is the University of Glasgow Library record for Zetoc and should surely be part of the website search.  I found that page by following the link from Information types–which one and how to evaluate, which I found from the main university website search.  There are zero results when you search for ‘journaltocs’.

There’s a Keeping up to date guide, and despite it’s opening statement that, “It is important that you stay up to date with new developments in your subject” the guide is so basic, and has no links, that it is not very helpful.  Some of the Subject Guides link to Zetoc, but many don’t.  That’s about it, although there may be information in their moodles, to which I don’t have access, and which may not be indexed by the site search.

Search the Glasgow Caledonian University website for ‘journaltocs’ and you get two results.  Both results are to exactly the same page, and if you keep going, you get to this page about alerting services.  Zetoc, but not JournalTOCs, is mentioned on a Searching for RSS feeds, which is part of a PILOT (Post doc Information Literacy Online Tutorial).  I also found this out of date page by searching the GCU site for ‘Zetoc’ and once again getting duplicate results.  JournalTOCs is included in the Database A-Z, as is Zetoc.  The various subject guides have lists of all relevant databases, e.g. All Databases for Psychology and All Databases for Health but many of these don’t include Zetoc.

After a fair bit of rummaging around the Robert Gordon University website, I found a mention of JournalTOCs and Zetoc on the library’s Training (CM) (RefWorks and Literature Searching – PH4014) page.  Zetoc is included in the A-Z of databases, but JournalTOCs is not.  Zetoc, which includes 52 million article citations and conference papers, isn’t included in many of the lists of databases by subject.  They did have Researcher workshop on keeping current in March, and again in July of this year.  That’s about all I could find.

With respect to the University of the Highlands and Islands, which is the last of the universities in my reviews, what is the name of their library search service?

Is it Multi-search, or Multisearch?

And is Multi-search / Multisearch different to MultiSearch (with a capital ‘S’) or MultiSearch Plus?  Strewth!  Four names for what I think is the same thing (their Summon database from Serials Solutions).  Actually, maybe not.

When I search MultiSearch from this page:

I get 611 results. But when I search Multisearch from this page:

I get 613 results!  This is intriguing, because when I search again, I get 611 results.

What IS going on?  Anyway, I know fine well that this is searching for articles, rather than what I’m actually looking for – I simply thought I’d give it a go to see what happened.  I wish I hadn’t bothered with Multi-search / Multisearch / MultiSearch / MultiSearch Plus.

Zetoc is listed in their A-Z.  JournalTOCs isn”t.  I can’t see any advice on keeping current, apart from a brief mention about Zetoc Alert in the A-Z, the link to which is, unfortunately, 404 Not Found.

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness – Part 6

I’ve been shocked by how many errors I’ve been finding during these reviews of Scottish university library websites.  Doesn’t anyone check that basic hyperlinks from the main library pages work?  The worst one, so far, has been the LibrarySearch at Napier.  The ‘Find subject guides’ link still doesn’t work today, and I’ve just noticed that the ‘Library on student portal’ link fails today as well.

The University of the West of Scotland home page loads fine on my tablet and phone, but on my two laptops with different operating systems it displays with a slightly cut-off graphic about the library on the right-hand side:

Part of the home page, as seen on both of my laptops

Same page from a mobile device

I know it’s only a missing ‘s’, but why does this happen?  Maybe I should be applauding the fact that there’s both a link to the library, and another one to library e-Resource(s).

We’ve seen with other university library websites that there’s sometimes advice on current awareness in subject guides.  The UWS guides were particularly clearly written, but had nothing about keeping currrent.  I then checked the Information for researchers guide, but again found nothing.  The A-Z list of databases includes Zetoc, but not JournalTOCs.  The website is quite wordy, databases and services appear in various lists, but often there’s no indication about what these databases contain.

I can’t help but wonder whether, for example, ‘Springerlink Off-campus‘ without an explanation of content, will mean much to the average researcher, but it doesn’t really matter anyway, because the link didn’t work when I tried it.

So, nothing that I can find at the UWS Library website about keeping current, and one or two problems with the website.

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness – Part 5

It was a bit of a relief for me to be able to write, in Part 4 of these reviews, that Heriot-Watt University Library had some good, up-to-date information about keeping current on their website.  What about the Library & Museum services at the University of Edinburgh?

Its a massive site, full of useful information.  I can’t see anything relevant to current awareness on their A-Z list of IS services, and I can’t see any way to search only the library pages.  There’s a lot of Subject guides, some of which mention Zetoc.  Zetoc is included in the Databases A-Z list, but JournalTOCs isn’t.  I can’t see any advice about keeping current, though.

In the Resources for Medicine guide there’s a link to the Knowledge Network, which is an external website.  The Knowledge Network is not part of the University of Edinburgh Library & Museum services, but it does have a Keep Up To Date section, which in turn has a News section and a Sources section.

From this page I followed the instructions about the Knowledge Network Feeds Library:

But as you can see below, this didn’t work:

The Feeds Library looks interesting, and is some sort of current awareness service, but having spent some time looking at it, it is not obvious to me how it works.

So, as far as I can see, Edinburgh University Library doesn’t have any advice on keeping current.  On one subject guide there’s a link to the Knowledge Network, which leads to some relevant information, and that’s about it.  But its a large website.  I’ve only looked in the obvious places.

What about Edinburgh Napier University Library?  Crikey, I can’t see any relevant or likely links from their home page – there’s only links to Accessibility, cafés, Christmas opening, etc.

Ah, but on their LibrarySearch page, at the bottom left hand side, there’s a link to Subject Guides:

Clicking on that link, and I get:

What’s going on? You must be joking!

Unlike a lot of folk, I didn’t give up. I tried following the advice on the “Oops!…” page and did a search for ‘subject guides‘ but that didn’t work.

Somehow, and I can’t remember how, I got into some staff webpages, and found the list of Subject Guides.

And from this list I found: Arts & Creative Industries Subject Guide: Current Awareness and Contents Pages which has some useful information.

Just don’t ask me how to get there from the Napier home page.  I can’t even see a link to the library from that starting point.

And also, when I searched the unlabelled search box at the top of the Subject Guides A-Z page, I found this Keeping up to date page.

They could do with some spell checking at Napier, though:

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness – Part 4

When I started out to review Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness I thought it would be a fairly simple process.  I didn’t expect to find so many problems with the various websites.

I’ve been using these sites in a normal way, and certainly haven’t been looking for problems.

As far as I’ve found so far, only the University of Stirling Information Services has given any real advice on keeping current, and only QMU Library Services has provided any sort of alerting service, albeit one full of errors.

What about the other university libraries in Edinburgh?

Heriot-Watt University Information Services – I used to work at Heriot-Watt, and I don’t want this review to sound anything like “Eee lad…it were mooch better in my day” or alternately, “Eee lass…you ‘ave it so good, nowadays”.  I will try to be completely objective.

I know that, for a long time when I worked there, we had a terrible website, and then we developed a better one, but that one contained so much information that it was very difficult to keep it up-to-date.  Since then, they’ve produced another version, and as far as information on current awareness is concerned, on first glance it looks good.

But before looking at the current awareness links, I have to say – what is that enormous swishy light thingy graphic that takes up so much vital real estate near the top of the IS home page?

I don’t see it when I access the site on my phone or tablet.

Ahem – unless I look at it in landscape, anyway.  But then it is mostly hidden by a completely useless beige rectangle.

But that’s beside the point.  So, what information and advice do H-W IS give on keeping current?

When I search for ‘Zetoc’ from the IS home page, the first result is a link to a Keeping up to date handout.  This is dated February 2015 and is very good and very helpful.  It mentions both Zetoc and JournalTOCs, and other sources for keeping up to date.  The links work – well done!  Also, I note that Zetoc (though unfortunately not also JournalTOCs) is mentioned in the Database A-Z list.

I don’t understand why there are two different, with differing designs, Subject Guides lists – there’s this one, and also this one, but when you click through to the same guides linked to on each list you sometimes, but not always, get advice on keeping current (a link to the good Keeping up to date handout mentioned above).

So, you get advice on keeping up to date if you’re looking for Chemical Engineering information, or Electrical & Electronic Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering, or Petroleum Engineering, or Renewable Energy, but not Computer Science and some other subjects.  Don’t computer scientists need to keep up-to-date?

I’m fairly impressed with much of the content of the H-W IS webpages.  Unlike some other university library websites I’ve been looking at, their LibGuide pages even indicate what it is that you’re searching when you use the Search box.

In my next post I’ll look at the remaining two university library websites in Edinburgh.

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness – Part 3

So far, my review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness has yielded disappointing results.  Not so much as a sniff of an actual service for current awareness; some websites that don’t even mention major services such as Zetoc or JournalTOCs, some pretty dreadful website designs with features that don’t work, inconsistencies, and often only the barest of information or advice for researchers and students.  So far, only the University of Stirling Information Services has a good website with information on keeping current.  Elsewhere, there is very little assistance offered.

I’ll now look at the four universities in Edinburgh, starting with Queen Margaret University Library Services.  Searching their website for ‘Zetoc’ produces some results – good!  The first one is to a Quick Reference Guide, dated 2003 – bad!  It explains how to log in – “From the Gateway to Resources Page (http://www.qmuc.ac.uk/resources/), click on the link for Library Web Pages.”

I tried following the instructions, by entering the URL for the Gateway, and here’s what happened:

I searched the site for ‘Journaltocs’ and there were two results – good!  The first link takes you to Research Resources, which lists various useful websites and services, including JournalTOCs – good!  But the list does not include Zetoc – Bad!

The link to Research Resources (circled in red, below) is on a page of Information for University Staff.

I noticed that on that same page, over to the left, there’s a link to ‘Information for Researchers’ (circled in green, above), so I clicked on that link.

There, on the Information for Researchers page (actually it now titles itself ‘Support for researchers’) is also a link to Research Resources.  But when I click on this link it takes me to a Research Support: Home set of pages, using a different template, which are quite different to the list of Research Resources.

What’s going on?

I couldn’t find any specific advice on current awareness, so I went back to the Library Services home page, and searched for ‘current awareness’.

There were 24 results:

I clicked on the first link, to Neurodevelopmental Disorders – Psychology – QMULibGuides at … and here’s what happened:

Eh?  This is not, I think, a fault with the QMU Library Services pages, but rather a problem with the QMU website as a whole.  But it’s not good, is it?

I’ve found the Subject Resources A-Z – sometimes, on other library websites, these guides have advice on keeping current, but I can’t find much in the QMULibGuides.  There’s a Search Box on the LibGuides pages, but no indication of what it is searching.  I think it is searching only within the LibGuides, rather than all of the Library Services pages, but this should surely be stated.  I can’t see a link to the Library Services home page from the LibGuides, which is weird, and when I click on the QMULibGuides link on any of the LibGuides pages, as shown below…

…Here’s what happens…

Hmm!  The website is in a mess, is my conclusion.

However, I eventually found a sort of alerting service on the Diabetes: New research page, and another one on the Diagnostic Radiography: New Research page, with a selection of alerts to recently published articles from core journal titles:

Unfortunately, as you can see above, some of these don’t work properly.

In fact, in some cases, most of them don’t work.

Finally, Zetoc is not listed included in the guide listing databases and other resources for use by staff and students at QMU.

I find all of these errors, inconsistencies and omissions in a univerdsity library website quite unsettling.

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness – Part 2

In my previous post I was disappointed to find so little information or help about keeping current / current awareness in the library websites for the University of Aberdeen, University of St Andrews and Abertay University.  No actual current awareness services, and little or no advice – barely even a mention of Zetoc, a very important UK service for researchers.

And I’m still getting “404 – File or directory not found.” when I try to search the Abertay University Library website from their home page (I also notice that it doesn’t actually say what it is searching (or rather not searching), either), and from some pages (e.g. A-Z Online Resources, even clicking on the Library Home page link doesn’t work because it requires authentication.

I am now hoping that I’ll experience a more user friendly and informative experience at the other library websites for Scottish universities.  I’ll try Information Services at the University of Stirling.

Immediate success! I searched the IS site for ‘Zetoc’ and found Keeping up to date.  This page has some useful information, explained in a fairly user friendly way.  It’s a pity that it is not particularly up-to-date itself (JournalTOCs today includes over 26,000 journals, rather than over 20,000 as stated).  And when I checked the Subject Research Guides, I found that many, but not all of them have a Keeping up to date section.  I wonder why some of them don’t.

No 404s, a Search which works, authentication not needed in order to find basic help, and advice (sometimes) on keeping up to date.  Well done Stirling University Library.

Now for Dundee.  At the top of the University of Dundee Library & Learning Centre website there’s a Search box and a Search tab.

I searched it for ‘zetoc’ and do you know what happened?  It didn’t search anything!  Instead it took me to another Search box where I again had to enter my search term.

What’s going on there?  Why have a Search box on the Library & Learning Centre home page that doesn’t actually search?

There are three Search links on the Library & Learning Centre home page (circled in red, above).  The one in the top right hand corner, as we have seen, doesn’t search anything.  The other two link to exactly the same page, and the search box, to the left of the ‘Search Library’ searches all types of academic content including the catalogue, ebooks, licensed journals, newspapers and more.

Despite this obsession with search, I don’t think it is possible to search the Library & Learning Centre’s website.  I’ve looked at many sections of this website and I haven’t so far found anything about Keeping current / current awareness.  Scrolling down the Search your Library page, under ‘Databases’ I see a link to Full list of databases, which does not include Zetoc, but this ‘Full list’ does include services such as Medline and SCOPUS.  Yet, when I go to the Resources for Life Sciences page, listed under Internet Databases are Medline, SCOPUS and ZETOC.  But Zetoc is not mentioned on some of the other Subject Resources pages (e.g. Education, and Geography). What’s going on?  This is all confusing.

But I finally found a very brief mention of Keeping up to date, on the Resources for Computing page, and it mentions Zetoc, and there’s a page for Zetoc, and Zetoc is also on the A-Z list – So why isn’t it mentioned in many of the Subject Resources pages or in the Full list of databases?

I don’t find this website consistent or very helpful, and there’s actually very little advice on keeping current.

I’m going to continue looking at other Scottish university library websites in Part 3.

Review of Scottish university library websites giving information about current awareness

I’ve been interested in current awareness services ever since I started work in a library – Room 605, Mountbatten Building, Grassmarket – where, amongst other things and a long time ago, I used to arrange new issues of print periodicals, and file the latest Extel updates.  Since then, I’ve been involved in various current awareness and alerting services, and whilst now retired, I still input into JournalTOCs, a service which helps researchers keep up-to-date with new scholarly papers.  I used to show Zetoc to students, but now that I’m not employed, I’m no longer eligible to use it.

I used to photocopy the contents pages of various journals and circulate them around academic departments at Heriot-Watt University.  I also produced the Internet Resources Newsletter, a popular alerting service about new websites, for many years.  Various other services I was involved with had current awareness elements, such as OneStep Jobs and OneStep Industry News, and I have given several presentations on keeping current, and new information resources.

I define current awareness as knowledge of recent developments in a field or topic, and not just keeping up with scholarly papers.  It can involve industry news, job vacancies, new books and in fact new information of any kind.  I think that current awareness – enabling students and researchers to keep up with the latest information in their fields of study – is an important area for libraries.  Librarians in universities are ideally positioned to help provide such information and services, or at least point their students, staff and researchers in the right direction to enable them to keep up-to-date themselves.

So, I thought that I’d look at how Scottish university library websites are providing current awareness services or information about keeping current.

This is slightly difficult, because current awareness can be called various things – keeping up-to-date; alerting services; news, etc.

Here are some examples of university library websites elsewhere in the UK which list current awareness sources and services – I’m not saying that these are particularly good, or bad, examples, but they show the range of things that some university libraries list on their websites on this topic:

University of Leeds Library: Current awareness and keeping up to date – includes journal alerts, database alerts, Web alerts, connecting with other researchers, other ways to keep up-to-date such as conference alerts, research funding alerts and patents alerts.

University of Sheffield Library: Current awareness – lists three sources, plus the Library’s Netvibes Universe.  They also produce Current awareness bulletins for NHS Staff.

Bournemouth University Library: Current awareness – covers RSS feeds, conferences, researchers, current research, organisations.

University of Hull Library Services: Keeping up to date – covers periodicals, feeds, research, books, word-of-mouth, the Web, news, and official publications.

Manchester Metropolitan University Library: Current awareness services – a very brief list!

Hmm – just looking at the lists above, it is clear that various university libraries deal with current awareness in different ways.

How do the Scottish university libraries fare?

Some time ago I criticised the University of Aberdeen Library website in this blog post for the poor quality of some of the information.  But how do they do with respect to advising on current awareness information?  I can’t find anything in their Guides and FAQs list, apart from a link to one pdf file which has an extremely brief mention of current awareness.  I can’t find anything else, even in the Subject Resources lists.  If you ignore the library, and just search the university website for “current awareness” you get 6 results, but not the sort of thing I’m looking for.  As far as I can see, then, the University of Aberdeen Library doesn’t give advice on its website on current awareness or keeping up-to-date.

University of St Andrews Library website – Unlike the University of Aberdeen Library website, you can search the University of St Andrews website.  Why doesn’t every university library website allow this? I have no idea.  Unfortunately, the results of searching for “current awareness” give some weird results – the first link is about a workshop held in 2012 about Open Access.  The second link is to the same page!  There seems to be something wrong with the results – the following two links are to another single page.  I don’t know why.

Ah!  I’ve found a subject guide, for Chemistry, with a little information about Keeping up to date.  Not all of the subject LibGuides have the same sections.  Hmm – in the Earth Sciences guide I notice:

A library guide which can’t process its own library news feed doesn’t fill me with confidence, but anyway, there’s some other useful information in this guide, but nothing on keeping current.  As far as I can see, only a few of the guides have a Keeping up to date section, although there’s a list of Business News Sources in the Management Guide, and News Sources in the International Relations guide.

Using that weird Search of the University of St Andrews Library website and searching for either Zetoc, or JournalTOCs (two important UK based current awareness services for academics), produces no results.  So I think that the University of St Andrews Library doesn’t give much advice on its website on current awareness or keeping up-to-date.

The third Scottish university library website I’m going to look at is Abertay University.  Oh good!  There’s a facility for searching the library website.  Let’s go straight to searching it for Zetoc, a major UK current awareness service.

What?  Nothing happens!  Type in ‘Zetoc’ and press Enter, and nothing happens!  Who on earth has a Search box that you can’t type a word and press Enter?  Erm, Abertay University Library seems to.  So, I use my mouse and click on the Search button, and I get:

What’s going on?  OK, it seems to be a temporary fault.  I’ve searched again (though you can’t use Enter to search):

No pages found, Abertay University Library website, for Zetoc.  Not impressive, but I’ve found an Information for Researchers page, with a link to ‘Keeping up to date’ which looks promising.

What!  It requires authentication to read a page about Keeping up to date!

Oh!  This library website is driving me nuts.  However, I’ve found a list of Subject Guides that don’t require authentication.  All they seem to consist of is a rolling display of new book covers, a list of databases that Summon searches most of (most of – exactly which ones, though?), and lists of a few ‘Useful websites’.

I’ll continue with this review another day, when I’ve recovered from the disappointments of Aberdeen, St Andrews and Abertay university library websites.

The Dalriada

The Monkey Sessions entertained everyone at the Dalriada last night.

I was outside when a man came out and said, “Thon band is great.  They hivnae played a bum note a’ night.  Gie them a big sound system, twa babes backup singing, and a manager an they cud go far.”