Drop-in sessions with subject librarians

"I thought Primo was rubbish, but it turned out I was just using it wrongly..."

This academic year the subject librarians have been running drop-in sessions and taking information skills support out of the library and into departments. These drop-in sessions are regular times when you can come along with any questions about library resources, conducting literature reviews, referencing, using Primo etc. No booking required! Just drop in. The sessions run weekly until the end of term unless indicated otherwise, and some of them are new, so do have a look at the table below.

Researching Welsh Law: What is unique in Wales?

An addition to New York University School of Law’s Globalex Foreign Law Research articles is Researching Welsh Law: What is unique in Wales? by Lillian Stevenson, Law Librarian & Academic Services Manager at Aberystwyth University & Dr. Catrin Huws, lecturer and Director of the Centre for Welsh Legal Affairs in the Department of Law and Criminology at Aberystwyth University. It is intended as an introduction to researching Welsh law and covers the following topics:

1. The Welsh Legal System
2. Legal Wales
3. Devolution and the New Legislative Bodies in the UK Bibliography
4. Sources for the legislative process
5. Sources of Welsh legislation: public domain
6. Sources of Welsh legislation: commercial
7. Sources of Welsh legislation in print
8. Referencing and Citing Welsh legal authorities
9. Welsh Law Journals
10. Law Dictionaries – English/Welsh
11. Law Schools in Universities in Wales

You can read the full article here.

The OER mix in higher education: purpose, process, product, and policy

The knowledge and network society of the twenty-first century is driven by the power of the Internet and digital tools. One of its manifestations is a new approach to the production of teaching and learning materials, enabled by participatory media called Open Educational Resources (OER). 

OER success has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OERs are in learning and teaching.

This article presents findings on the perceived value of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education and their potential for widening learners’ access to higher education as a direct response to the UK government’s agenda of social inclusion. Evidence was obtained from interviews and an online survey of students,academics, and senior managers.

The article concludes that for OER to have an impact on higher education in terms of learner benefit and social inclusion, institutions need to address the following issues:

• The purpose of Open Educational Resources
• Drivers for production of Open Educational Resources
• Processes involved in Open Educational Resource production that guarantees quality 
• Policies that promote the open sharing of Open Educational Resources

You can read the full article here.  

The More Books Campaign

Student surveys tell us you want more books. Now the More Books campaign is dedicating extra money to give you just that. So while academics remain the primary selectors of resources to be purchased for AU libraries you can have a voice too. Here’s how it works …

First check the Primo library catalogue at primo.aber.ac.uk.
Can't find the book you want?

If you can’t find the book you’re looking for, you can place a request via the online order form from the Primo home page. Please be aware, though, that a book can take between ten days and six weeks from order to its availability on the library shelves, depending on availability from our supplier.