Are you on placement at the moment?

If you are a Social Care student, and currenly out on placement, remember...

• you can renew your library books online
• you can reserve library books if they aren't available when you are on-campus
• you can book a library PC for when you are on-campus
• you can search for scholarly information online via One Search
• you can contact us with queries at LibraryInfo@itb.ie

The thief of time

Do you ever find yourself putting things off until the last moment?

Procrastination can be the curse of student life!  This short video looks at why people postpone the inevitable and some tricks for being more productive.  Have a look!

History of the English language

Have you ever wondered how the English language has evolved or where particular words come from?  The Open University have created 10 one-minute videos illustrating some of the highlights!

The videos range from from Anglo-Saxon ("or whatever happened to the Jutes") to the English of science ("or how to speak with gravity") to Internet English ("or English reverts to type").  Let Clive Anderson entertain you as he reveals who coined the words hob-nob, fopdoodle and faucets over the centuries...

 

See the other 9 here!

Are you giving a presentation this semester?

Are you giving a presentation this semester?  How do you feel about speaking in front of a group of people?  Public speaking can be daunting for a lot of people, but here are a few hints that may help you feel better prepared and less nervous.

Know your topic: it is important to be familiar with the topic of your presentation so that you can feel confident speaking about it and answering questions.  Reading your slides, or reading from notes, is not very engaging for the audience.  Use your slides to state your core points but tell your audience about any supporting information or examples.  They could read your slides at home; if people have turned up at your presentation it is because they want to hear what you have to say!

Rehearse: as well as knowing your topic, it is very helpful to know how you sound before you stand in front of an audience.  Even if it feels odd, practice your speech aloud.  Consider how you appear to an audience: are you shy and mumbling or are you confident and clear?  Time yourself to ensure that you can fit the whole presentation into the time allowed.  Rushing the end of your presentation, or running over-time, makes a poor impression.

Know the environment: always turn up early to ensure that the room is organised in the way you want it to be.  Ensure your laptop/USB/projector works in that room; if you need sound, ensure that there are speakers.  Solve any technical difficulties before your audience arrive.

Do you know how to renew your books?

Save yourself the hassle of library fines, be sure to renew any books that you want to keep past their due date.  You can renew books, up to two times, provided that they are not already late and they have not been reserved by any other student.

You can renew your books in these ways:

(1) Bring your student card to the library desk.  You do not need to have the books with you; we can renew the books using your student card alone.

(2) Renew your books at the self-issue machine.  Just re-issue them to yourself.

(3) Renew your books online.

Questions?  Not sure what your library PIN is?  Contact us at libraryinfo@itb.ie!  

Need to book a PC?

The library is very busy these days. If you have an hour free between lectures, and you want to be guaranteed access to a PC, be sure to book in advance.



Not sure of your library PIN? Email us at libraryinfo@itb.ie

Writing a literature review?

After looking at this quick tutorial, you should be able to:

• describe what a literature review is
• understand the purpose of a literature review
• demonstrate an understanding of how to write a literature review

http://millennium.it-tallaght.ie/screens/litreview/player.html

 

(with thanks to ITT Dublin Library)

Today is World Hello Day. Hello!

In fact, it is the 40th annual world hello day.  You can participate by greeting 10 people today; these greetings demonstrate the importance of personal communication in perserving good relations.

ITB has students from around the globe.  Here are just some of the ways we greet one another:

Do you say hello in any other language?
   

Including images, illustrations or tables in your assignments?

Do you need to reference them? 
(hint: the answer is yes if you took them from a book, a journal, a website etc!)

If you took the image, illustration or table from a book...

Template
Author surname, First initial. (Year of publication) Title: Subtitle. Place of publication: Publisher, Page number of illustration, illus. 

Example
Morrissey, T. (2008) Life in nineteenth century Wexford. Dublin: Macmillan, p. 645, illus. 

 If you took the image, illustration or table from an online source...

Template
Title of image. (Year of publication) [online image] available from: URL, [date accessed]. 

Example
Children swimming. (2010) [online image] available from: http://www.irishtimes.com/summer/children_swimming.html, [accessed 16 November 2012].

If you are using a photograph or a slide

Template
Photographer surname, First initial. (Year of publication) Title. [Medium]. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example
Lockwood, P. (2007) Snow Geese. [Photograph]. Sunderland: Centre for Visual Effects. 

 

These are examples for the Harvard Referencing System.  You can see the full library guide here!

Looking for online academic information?

The library subscribes to a range of databases that contain information that is relevant to your studies. And now, it is easier than ever to search!

Have a look at this short prezi introducing you to One Search...

A guide to 'One Search' at ITB Library on Prezi

You need to have a library PIN to access these articles. If you don't know what your library PIN is, email us at libraryinfo@itb.ie

What are you reading?

Besides Java: how to programme or Project management: a managerial approach!

Picture 1:  The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Picture 2: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Picture 3: The Talmud

Picture 4: Utopia by Thomas More

Picture 5: How to be Be Black by Baratunde Thurston

Picture 6: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Picture 7: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

Picture 8: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Picture 9: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Picture 10: Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

Need a simple guide to paraphrasing?

Battling your plagiarism demons!

We have a double-challenge for you today! Can you recognise examples of plagairism while battling an invasion of plagiarism goblins?

Test yourself at Lycoming College's tutorial:

Critical thinking

Information surrounds us all.  We use information to work and study, to inform ourselves, and to entertain ourselves.  Critical thinking is a central part of how we deal with this information. 

Most of us don't accept all information at face value.  When an advertisement suggests that a particular breakfast cereal will help us to look gorgeous in a red dress, we are quite savvy about how we interpret that information.  In college, good critical thinking skills are very important.  College is where we start to think about ideas: evaluating them, contrasting them, building upon them...

The Learning Development section of The University of Plymouth have devised an excellent model to help us think critically about college subjects and assignments.



They encourage us to think about academic subjects or ideas in 3 categories:
(1) Describe them: what? -- when? -- who? -- where?
(2) Analyse them: why? -- how?
(3) Evaluate them: what if? -- so what? -- what next?

(click  on image to enlarge)

You can read more here!

Want to borrow a DVD?

Here are some of your choices!

Amelie: an innocent and naive girl in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way, discovers love....

Band of Brothers: the story of Easy Company of the US Army 101st Airborne division and their mission in WWII Europe from Operation Overlord through V-J Day....


Bleak House: a suspenseful tale about the injustices of the 19th-century English legal system....

Cinema paradiso: a filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist....

City of God: two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer....

Dirty pretty things: an illegal Nigerian immigrant discovers the unpalatable side of London life....

Italian for beginners: several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives....

Life is beautiful: a Jewish man has a wonderful romance with the help of his humour, but must use that same quality to protect his son in a Nazi death camp....

Volver: after her death, a mother returns to her home town in order to fix the situations she couldn't resolve during her life...


DVDs are located on level 1 near Kopikat 1 and 2.

Graduation Day

Congratulations to all the ITB Graduates who are celebrating their achievements today!  

The Library and Student Information Desk staff wish you the best of luck in the future.

Your reading history

Here at the library desk, students frequently ask us the name of books that they have borrowed and returned. Previously, for data protection reasons, staff could not access lists of books that have been borrowed in the past. Once a book was returned to the library, and removed from a student's account, that was that!

However, you can now access your own Reading History when you log on to your online library account.

• Go to the library catalogue
• Click on My Account (right-hand menu)
• Enter your name, student number and PIN (if you don't know your PIN email us at LibraryInfo@itb.ie)

If you currently have library books, click on the My Reading History button
If you do not currently have library books, your Reading History will probably appear by default

Stress awareness day

Today is National Stress Awareness Day!  It's a good day to stop and reflect on the ways in which stress impacts on our lives. 

Students, in particular, can have a lot of demands on their time and energy.  Mind have some great, straightforward guides that cover issues such as coping with exam stress, meeting new people, and looking after yourself in a new environment.  Click on the image below to read more...

http://www.mind.org.uk/help/diagnoses_and_conditions/stress_of_student_life

What makes an article a scholarly article?

And why is it important to use scholarly articles?

Kimbel Library demonstrates how to recognise scholarly articles and explains how the peer-review process works in just over 3 minutes (and even have time for tips on how to make a mean bowl of ramen noodles!)


What is a Scholarly Article? from Kimbel Library on Vimeo.

Presentations

Will you be creating a presentation this semester?  Visual aids, such as MS PowerPoint or Prezi, can add an important dimension to your presentation.

Here are some of the ways in which you can best use these tools:

Using MS PowerPoint
Creating a presentation
Testing and printing your presentation
MS PowerPoint is available on all ITB PCs.

Using Prezi
Getting started with Prezi
Grouping and layering with Prezi
Sharing your Prezi
You can find Prezi online here

Are you working on group projects this semester?

Working in groups can be a challenge! But you will probably be involved with group projects throughout your working life. So now is the perfect time to get some tips...

ITB Library study guide: group work on Prezi