The Book is dead; long live the Book.

Nineteen years ago I attended a workshop organised by the British Council in Manchester. A facilitator at the workshop predicted the death of the “book” before the turn of the next century. Two decades on and the “book” still lives, albeit wearing different cloaks, one of which is the “e-cloak”. There is no doubt that e-books, i.e. digital versions of text-based materials, have captured the imagination of our society and impacted on the relationship between library users and information service providers.

Exam Skills - 'What We Really Think'

A two part video created to support the Exam Skills event run by Information Services. Students talk about their examination experiences and study preferences.

Top 10 items in CADAIR - January 2011

1. Acid damage to vegetation following the Laki Fissure eruption in 1783 - an historical review (Grattan, John et al) (2160/225) Full Text viewed 307 times

2. 'No Longer Lost for Words: Antigone's Afterlife' (Forsyth, Alison) (2160/2435) Full Text viewed 256 times

3. Redesigning health administration for the medical profession (Preston, Hugh et al) (2160/1814) DOI accessed 243 times

Work smarter – study skills for students in BlackBoard

Undergraduates looking to refresh their study skills can now enrol on a non-credit bearing BlackBoard module and choose classes from the Undergraduate Study Practices programme.

Library induction and learner transition

I joined Aberystwyth University in September this year. In my previous job at the University of Leicester, I was involved in a project which investigated student transition into higher education. One major finding of the project was students' characterisation of various types of information presented to them before and during their first few days in University:

• Objective, highly structured formal information = Cold Knowledge
• Less structured, semi-formal information = Warm knowledge
• Informal, less structured and subjective information = Hot knowledge (1)

From PLACES to SPACES: Learning environments that inspire.

The imaginative design of spaces to shape learning behaviour is a topic that has always fascinated me. I grew up in an era where the idea was promoted that learning occurred only in a PLACE (Pupil, Lessons, Authority of the teacher, Classroom and Examination). Over the past decades there has been a paradigm shift which now promotes the idea of learning environments as SPACES (Social, Participatory, Adaptable, Collaborative, Enhanced-technologically and Sharing).