Happy New Year!

Today marks the Chinese New Year - this year is the Year of the Horse!  Dublin is celebrating with the 7th Dublin Chinese New Year Festival.  And here's some recommended reading for the fortnight ahead!

Fiction
 - My life as emperor
 - The bone setter's daughter
 - Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress

Travel
 - China 
 - Red dust: a path through China


Non-fiction
 - Mao: the unknown story
 - The art of war
 - Ken Hom's Chinese cookery

Placing core texts on short loan

Have you ever noticed that some of your core texts can only be read in the library?  And that some are 1-week loans instead of 2-week loans?

This week, we have been busy changing some of the core texts, for Semester 2, to short loan.  We do this to increase the number of students who can access the books in the lead up to assignments/exams.

At the start of the semester, we ask your lecturers to tell us which books will be core texts for their subjects. The first copy is changed to "library use only" and all other copies are changed to "1-week loan".  Read more here.

If you think this is a good system, remind your lecturer to send us their core text list!

Planning to spend some evenings in the library this term?

Are you planning your studies for Semester 2?  

Good news - from next Monday (3rd Feb), there will be two extra shuttle buses each evening, Monday - Thursday, at 7.10pm and 8.10pm.  

Perfect timing for library users!

(image: “Wheeled School Bus-Right Front” by Bill Ward via Flickr)

New semester: what do you need to know?

Last semester, there were over 9,500 visits to the ITB Student Hub.  The most viewed posts were:


1. Student email: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=491

2. Previous exam papers: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=62

3. Accessing the Student Share off-campus: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=1791

4. Moodle: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=489

5. ITB wireless network: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=1628


What information do you need at the start of this semester?  And have you checked to see if it is available on The ITB Student Information Hub: http://itbstudenthub.ie/

Some new books in the library...

Here are some of the newest additions to the library shelves...

005.265 WHI	Idea to iPhone : the essential guide to creating your first app for the iPhone and iPad / Carla White.
005.437 WEB	Beginning Kinect programming with the Microsoft Kinect SDK / Jarrett Webb and James Ashley.
005.74 SAS	SAS certification prep guide : base programming for SAS 9 / SAS Institute Inc.
006.312 HOF	RapidMiner : data mining use cases and business analytics applications / edited by Markus Hofmann and Ralf Klinkenberg.
006.6 HEL	Microsoft Visio 2013 : step by step / Scott A. Helmers.
155.26 DAN	The essential enneagram : the definitive personality test and self-discovery guide / David N. Daniels and Virginia A. Price.
155.26 DAN	The essential enneagram : the definitive personality test and self-discovery guide / David N. Daniels and Virginia A. Price.
303.482 BEN	Basic concepts of intercultural communication : paradigms, principles and practice / Milton J. Bennett.
305.8 VAN	The first R : how children learn race and racism / Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin.
306.8 ALL	The sociology of the family : a reader / edited by Graham Allan.
306.85 CHE	Sociology of family life / David Cheal.
306.850973 MCK	Families and change : coping with stressful events and transitions / edited by Sharon J. Price, Christine A. Price and Patrick C. McKenry.
370.117 DER	Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves / Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards.
370.117 DER	Anti-bias curriculum : tools for empowering young children / Louise Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force.
372.19 PUG	Contemporary issues in the early years / edited by Gillian Pugh and Bernadette Duffy.
372.21 MAC	Doing Foucault in early childhood studies : applying poststructural ideas / Glenda MacNaughton.
372.21 MAC	Shaping early childhood : learners, curriculum and contexts / Glenda MacNaughton.
378.19829 AHM	On being included : racism and diversity in institutional life / Sara Ahmed.
378.415 INS	Teaching and learning innovations / edited by Daniel McSweeney.
613.2 DUN	Fundamentals of sport and exercise nutrition / Marie Dunford.
616.8982 EME	Challenging behaviour / Eric Emerson and Stewart L. Einfeld.
618.92 SAN	Child development / John W. Santrock.
618.92 STA	Think good, feel good : a cognitive behaviour therapy workbook for children and young people / Paul Stallard.
618.97 SEG	Aging and mental health.
621.43 AHL	The Haynes small engine repair manual : 5.5 HP through 20 HP four-stroke engines / by Alan Ahlstrand and John H Haynes.
635.9 LAM	Nursery stock manual / J. G. D. Lamb, J. C. Kelly, Peter Bowbrick.
657.42 DRU	Management and cost accounting / Colin Drury.
658.404 MIC	Microsoft official academic course : Microsoft Project 2013.
794.81526 MCM	Scratch programming in easy steps : covers Scratch 2.0 and Scratch 1.4 / Sean McManus  foreword by Mitchel Resnick.
796.077 MAR	Successful coaching / Rainer Martens.
P 363	A mobile tracking web application for Android / Keith Sheridan.
P 364	Lecturer grading system / Martin Gray.
P 365	Investigate the effectiveness of Honeypots against hacker attacks / Juri Lossov.
P 366	Motion controls versus tradition controls in an XNA video game / David Enriquez.
P 367	Android application for Hospital Management System / Shereen Iqbal.
P 368	Student oriented online dynamic resource sharing (class-share) / Emrah Rizvanovic.
P 369	Wind visualisation on the Google Map API / Thanh Chi Nguyen.
P 370	An Android implementation of an augmented reality learning interface for use in Early Education / Kevin Joyce.
P 371	Portable virtual classroom Instant Messaging / Samson Rukundo.
P 372	Java based teaching tool / James Power.
P 373	Arduino autonomous power / Sebastian Poenar.
P 374	Android application for learning biology / Sonia Hafeez.
P 375	Interactive book application for children / Mark Mitchell, Shane McCarthy and Shane MacMathuna.
P 376	ITBSOCIAL : a hybrid website of social networking and e-learning / Jonathon Daly, Neil Foran and Adam Geoghegan.
P 377	Computer Vision using Open CV / Simon Lomax and Chris McNulty.
REF 320.9	The Phoenix annual.
REF 612	Principles of anatomy and physiology / Gerard J. Tortora, Bryan Derr

And now for something completely different...

Lots of you are returning your books to the library today as you finish your final exams.  It's a good day to read something entirely different from Java / E-commerce / Community Development or anything else you've been busy reading lately!  Check out our fiction section (on level 1 by Kopikat 1 and 2).

With over 750 fiction books to choose from - there is something for everyone!

I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it... Fever Pitch / Nick Hornby

Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsanm performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation... Captain Corelli's Mandolin / Louis de Bernieres

Mr L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didnt know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so jugled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L. Posser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a prediliction for littel fur hats... The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy / Douglas Adams

The lobby of the Delano Hotel was like a designer's hissy fit on the set of Alice in Wonderland. Everything was too big, too small, the wrong colour, or in the wrong place... Olivia Joules and the overactive imagination / Helen Fielding

The green WELCOME TO ABBA TOWN sign that led off the expressway would have been easy to miss because it was so small. Papa turned onto the dirt road, and soon I heard the screech-screech-screech of the low underbelly of the Merceded scrapping the bumpy, sun-baked dirt road. As we drove past, people waved and called out Papa's title: "Omelora!"... Purple Hibiscus / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Testing, testing. One, two, three. Maybe this is working. I dont know. If you can even hear me, I dont know. But if you can hear me, listen. And if youre listening, then what youve found is the story of everything that went wrong. This is what you would call the flight recorder of Flight 2039. The black box, even though its orange, and on the inside is a loop of wire that's the permanent record of all that's left. What you've found is the story of what happened... Survivor / Chuck Palahniuk

A pair of enormous purple toads sat gulping wetly and feasting on dead blowflies. A gigantic tortoise with a jewel-encrusted shell was glittering near the window, Poisonous orange snails were oozing slowly up the side of their glass tank, and a fat white rabbit kept changing into a silk top hat and back again with a loud popping noise... Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban / J. K. Rowling

Simon greeted her at the door of the Westbury Hotel function room with an affectionate kiss on the cheek. Dressed in a dark suit, which made his sandy hair appear almost blond, he looked palely handsome and Evie felt that flicker of pleasure that sometimes washed overher when she realised she was going to marry him... Never too late / Cathy Kelly

The end is in sight...

As the exams draw to a close, here are some useful reminders...

Library:

• The library will close at 6pm on Thursday 23rd January
• Remember to drop your library books back on time so that you don't face overdue fines

Student Information Desk:

• If you missed an exam, and you wish to sit the Repeat Exam in August, you will need to fill out an application form. See details here: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=501
• For dates of the Repeat Exams, please see here: http://itbstudenthub.ie/?p=1835

(Image: "The Start and Finish Line of the 'Inishowen 100' Scenic Drive" by Andrew Hurley via Flickr)