Friday 12 July 2013

Walk-in Access to Electronic Resources

A wide variety of fascinating online information resources have been made available to anyone visiting the Hugh Owen Library, not just to staff and students.  There are 27 different resources which can all be accessed through a simple interface on a dedicated Walk-in Access computer on the ground floor. We are delighted to provide selective access to these academic resources, many of which carry an expensive subscription, thanks to the terms and conditions within the publishers’ license agreements. You can explore a huge range of current and historical information, for study, hobbies or just for fun.

If you have an interest in History, Times Digital Archive, provides access to complete editions of The Times newspaper from 1785 (the year of the 1st balloon flight across English Channel) through until 1985 (the year of the Live Aid concert which raised over £100 million for African famine relief). A simple search can reveal a varied assortment of articles on the news and views of the last 200 years, or be limited to a search of the news on a particular day. You can browse through the headlines and (often amusing) adverts of yesterday.

Thursday 4 July 2013

Meet Your Academic Services Librarian #10

This year we will do a series of posts introducing you to the members of the Academic Services Team. This time it is the Graduate Trainee in Information Services.

Dan Smith
Library Graduate Trainee 2013/14


I’m Dan Smith and make up 50% of the Library Graduate Trainees employed by Information Services for the 2013/14 academic year. My time is split between four sections/teams within the library: Collections, Acquisitions & Resource Management; Academic Services; Lending and E-services & Communication. This gave me the opportunity to gain a wide variety of practical experience into the day to day running of an academic library, while giving the library a raw recruit, to try and train.

After my first brush with education ended at the age of 18, I worked for local government and was involved in the administration of teacher training throughout Powys. After a few years of arranging training for others, I started to think of returning to education myself and finally settled on the idea of trying to find a career which would allow me to order and sort things, so librarian.