News and Events

Electricity off from 8am Saturday 12th May to 4pm Sunday 13th May

To enable recabling as a part of the refurbishment this will mean no access to the ground floor “green room” with the high density shelving in the Blackstone building (Thompson Library) during this time.  If you know that you will need a book from the main collection during this time it may be advisable to obtain it prior to this date or put a reserve on it via the library catalogue and we will put it on the hold shelf for you to collect.

Thank you again for your continued patience during this refurbishment
To keep right up to date with all developments don't forget to keep checking our refurbishment web page

New software called BB FlashBack Pro 3 has recently been installed on staff image PCs.
BB FlashBack is an easy to use screen recorder which you can use for a variety of purposes such as supporting learning, training, knowledge transfer and publicity/marketing.

To help you learn how to use BB FlashBack two workshops have been arranged:
• Thursday 12 April, 2.00-4.00pm
• Tuesday 15 May, 2.00-4.00pm
Both sessions will be held in the Library Conference Room, Thompson Library Stoke.
If you would like to attend one of these training sessions please register via MyView.

If you are interested in BB FlashBack training, but cannot attend on these dates please add yourself to the waiting list to be notified when other sessions are arranged.
The University has a site licence for BB FlashBack allowing us to install this on all Staff PCs, as well as allowing you a copy for use at home. If you would like a copy on your laptop or home computer, or would like more advice please contact the IS Service Desk, 3800@staffs.ac.uk 
 

From Monday 16th April there will be a change of name for the Student AirNet Wireless Network, this means that AirNet-Student will be renamed to AirNet.

The service will remain exactly the same as before and will be accessible to both students and staff with a valid login.

Please remember  that the first time you connect to this network you will have to locate it on your mobile device. Instructions on how to do this are listed in the user guide on the AirNet web page at :-

http://www.staffs.ac.uk/airnet

If you have any queries about this please contact the Information Services Customer Support Centre
telephone 01785 353800, e-mail 3800@staffs.ac.uk or ask at your nearest IT help desk.
Thank you

With the ‘refine your search’ feature, it is easier to find what you are looking for. For example, you may wish to only look for journals, or DVDs. Simply choose the advanced search option and tick one or more of the ‘limit to any of the following’ boxes. http://libcat.staffs.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl

New study space now open.......
There have been some new developments in Cadman, D105 is now a study area.  This new space is designed for quiet study (with PCs and laptop plug-in areas) and is available 24/7. It’s on the landing from the main stairwell at the front of the building.

It will eventually become a bookable teaching room (as well as open access study space when not booked) when the Cadman redevelopment is complete, but there will lots of study spaces for you to choose from by then.

For more detail please see our library refurbishment page.

Information Services will shortly be releasing software that will allow you to reset your Windows password, should you forget it, without needing to call the IS help line. Initially this will be available on University Windows PCs, but later on a web version will be introduced as well.

When you go to your Windows login screen, you will see a “Reset…” button next to the password box. Clicking this will start the reset process.

Before you can take advantage of this, you will need to have registered, which you will automatically be invited to do when you log in. You will need to log in to the system with your username and current password, and then provide answers to a selection of questions, which will be used to confirm your identity if you should need to reset your password later (so you should choose questions that other people won’t know the answers to!).

More detailed information will be published soon.

With the changes we are making in the Cadman Building we realise it may be difficult to find your way around,  with that in mind we have created an interactive resource map of the building, called “Where can I find……?” this interactive screen is located in the reception area of the Cadman Building.

This allows you to select a floor and then check (using the options list to the left) where your chosen resource can be located (or not) on that floor. Animated arrows then indicate in what area on the floor the resources are to be found.

You can also use the  ‘flythrough’ guides shown on the Library refurbishment page which illustrate how to get to either the Core or Main book collections from the Cadman Reception area and will also have the latest news on the refurbishment.

Information Services are delighted to announce the availability of the lynda.com Online Training Library for all staff and students on and off campus. 

What is lynda.com?

lynda.com is a library of video-based training courses focused on software topics and business skills training.  These cover everything from commonly used software such as Microsoft Office to specialised applications in areas such as photography, web applications, audio and video, as well as more general topics such as collaboration, presentations and project management.The tutorials cover both Windows PCs and Apple software and are available for both beginners and more advanced users.

For more information please see http://www.staffs.ac.uk/lynda
 

BoB is an off-air recording and media archive service available to staff and students at Staffordshire University.

BoB operates specifically within the terms of the ERA+ licensing scheme offered by the Educational Recording Agency. The ERA+ licence operates only within the territory of the United Kingdom and relates to off campus access to content acquired under Section 35 of the UK's Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

For more information on what BoB can do for you please see BoB (Box of Broadcasts)  

The Helix Media library is a YouTube type experience to view, create, manage, organize and deliver video, but in a private and secure environment.

Staff can tag and upload their digital media for learning and teaching, marketing and publicity. Uploaded content is then automatically encoded for delivery to almost any screen, whether it’s desktop PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android or BlackBerry.
http://medialibrary.staffs.ac.uk

For more information please e-mail libraryhelpdesk@staffs.ac.uk

"Inform" (PDF, file size: 245.25KB) this is our latest 6 monthly news letter for staff. Watch out for the next edition in the summer.

A simple 3 step approach: search - refine - access.

The Summon™ discovery service enables a familiar web-searching experience of the full breadth of content found in all of our library collections—including books, ebooks, ejournals and digitised full text collections.

Through one simple search box to a unified index, the Summon service provides access to a vast majority of the library’s print and online collections quickly in one relevancy ranked-list, with powerful refinements possible to target specific research.

The power save initiative has been in operation since 20 December 2010. Since then, staff computers have seen a 15- 25% power saving, which in turn has saved the University between £4,000 and £7000.

Student computers have seen a 45-60% power saving which translates as £25000 and £33000 in monetary terms. As a result of the savings, we are scheduled to recover investment in approximately 12 months.

We are now looking to refine settings to further increase savings.

In October, as part of the first ever EU study visit to Croatia, Geoff Walton represented Staffordshire University and met President Ivo Josipovic – which was rather exciting and a great honour!

He secured a place on the study visit along with academics and educationalists from 11 other EU countries. Delegates from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden attended a weeklong programme of visits, meetings and
discussions on “Improving learning and teaching by institutional collaboration supported by ICT”. They visited universities and schools in Zagreb, Rijeka and Opitija to see how the Croatian educational system is addressing the needs of the 21st century learner in the digital age.

The visit was part of the EU CEDEFOP programme, open to academics, educationalists and teachers interested in lifelong learning.

If you would like more information, please contact Geoff at g.walton@staffs.ac.uk

(Photo courtesy of the President’s Office).

Information Services March Staff Newsletter (PDF, file size: 166.28KB)

Information Services produces two news letters a year for staff and students here are the latest students edtions for you to peruse.

March Student Newsletter (PDF, file size: 216.57KB)

October Student News (PDF, file size: 674.58KB)

(PDF, file size: 674.58KB)