Three hundred plus law librarians andsixteen conference sessions over three days -with no time off for sightseeing - may not beeveryone’s idea of an exciting weekend, butas a new law librarian I found the British andIrish Association of Law Librarians’ AnnualConference really worthwhile, providing mewith plenty of inspiration for my work in thenew academic year.

The keynote speaker caught the mood of theconference and set the tone for much of whatfollowed. David Snowden from the CynefinCentre for Organisational Change talkedabout ‘Understanding your Organisation.’ Hisinitial question - How many routes between10 dots? (3.4 trillion apparently!) - wasdaunting, but his exploration oforganisational change by means of sense-making, networking and narrative techniqueswas riveting - I have immediate empathy withsomeone who believes that ‘the human braindoes not work logically’. David’s comparisonof organising user education programmeswith organising a party for teenage boys,that is know your learning objectives butwork on the attractors which make the eventenjoyable, and the boundaries which need tobe set to make it work, also echoed stronglywith me. His vision of information and libraryworkers acting as vital conduits andconnectors in organisations was particularlychallenging. The message that will lingerwith me is the need to counteract the humantendency to circulate stories of failure by

actively looking for narratives of success,which can be analysed and applied.

One of those success stories was that of SusanMansfield from the Treasury. As might beexpected, she dwelt on activity-based costing,performance indicators, benchmarking andstakeholder mapping. However, she alsoshowed examples of single-sided A4 reportsbased on the Achievement, Benefits,Concerns, Do pattern used by thedepartment, which I have already used asmodels. She also emphasised the need to flagup milestone events in reports and I cameaway with the determination to developsome ‘lift speeches’. The vision of herbuttonholing Gordon Brown for a 60 secondpitch on information policy certainlychallenged the stereotypical image oflibrarians!

Perhaps Shona McTavish’s story of ‘LegalStreet’ served to counteract the positiveattitude of the two other speakers. She hasresearched the information-seekingbehaviour of legal trainees. The extent towhich she found legal trainees relying ontheir peers for advice and guidance onunfamiliar sources made me realise howimportant it is to equip our students with areal understanding and experience of a goodinformation service before they leaveuniversity. Certainly, I hope no student wouldleave Portsmouth thinking that aninformation query was ‘disturbing the library

staff’. Shona’s accounts of the pressures andconstraints placed on trainees are going toinform some of the induction work Iundertake with students.

Finally, on a more prosaic note, Adrian Dale’spresentation on ‘back to the future’underlined the positive benefits to all libraryservices of exploiting their role incommunication, learning and action withinan organisation. Although his talk includedtips on the ‘judo principles of management’,it also offered some guidance to thoseinformation professionals working with legaltrainees on how to improve take-up of theirservices.

As well as these presentations, theconference gave the opportunity to catch upon developments in legal information atworkshops on the LORD and Lawpathsprojects, the use of Managed LearningEnvironments for legal education and newapproaches to user education. I was able torenew my contacts with several law librarianswho have offered me help and advice overthe last year as well as make new contactswith law librarians in a similar position tomyself. I am sure our Library will reap thebenefits of what was an enjoyable,stimulating and rather exhausting trip.

Linda JonesSubject Librarian (Law)linda.jones@port.ac.uk / Ext.3240

OUR NEW WEB-BASED LIBRARYCATALOGUE – PRISM

UNIVERSITYLIBRARYNEWSLETTERHarvest

Once a search has been performed, the search results are formattedlike those of a search engine. The user can immediately see the numberof copies of a title and the physical medium (book, disc etc.) is shownby an icon. The results are initially sorted by title, but may be resortedby date or author.

Each result may be opened up to see detailed copy information, whichgives the location of each item on the shelves. The user can also chooseto email, print or save to disk a list of the search results.

Keyword searching is a very effective way of searching for items on aparticular topic, but it does miss those items that don’t have the soughtkeyword(s) in their title. This is where ‘browsing’ the Subject Index canbe very useful. Browsing uses the Dewey Decimal Classification schemeto gather together books on the same subject, irrespective of the wordsthat they have in their titles. An example of browsing the Subject Indexis shown below, where the user is looking for all books on a very broadtopic – chemistry.

Spring 2005

A new version of the Library Catalogue, called Prism, has beenintroduced this year, and this has now completely replaced the oldweb-based catalogue. It offers a more modern search interface, morefunctionality and will evolve new features over the next few years.Prism offers the ability to search for material using a number of accesspoints: author, title, keyword, classification, ISBN or any combinationof these.

Two search screens are offered: standard and advanced. The standardsearch screen is configured with the most popular search options; theadvanced search screen offers more complex searching facilities andthe ability to limit the search by language. It also offers the ability tobrowse an index such as the author, subject or classification index.

The Borrower Info section of the catalogue has also beenimproved and renamed My Account. On successful loginthe system will display details of the user’s loans, fines,reservations and inter-library loans. Users can easily renewtheir books, cancel reservations or inter-library loans andalso view details of previous loans or requests.

Future developments: there are a number of developmentsin the pipeline, which include the ability to search otherlibraries’ catalogues and the Internet. We are also lookingat being able to place purchase orders and interlibrary loanrequests via Prism. It will be possible to access externalresources without having to enter extra passwords; forexample, to access Athens authenticated resources viaPrism without having to enter your Athens password.ProCite and other bibliographic management softwareusers will be able to download search results directly intotheir own databases.

Dave BrimagePhysical Sciences Librarian / Systems Librariandave.brimage@port.ac.uk / Ext.3235

In September 2004, the opportunity arose to resume our links with theLibrary of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, in the region ofThuringia, Germany. In 1991, Roger MacDonald, who was at that timeour Languages Librarian, first visited their Library. Since then, he andseveral members of staff from both Libraries have made reciprocalvisits.

This year Dr Thomas Mutschler, a trainee librarian at Jena, spent aweek with us at the beginning of September and I timed my visit tocoincide with a Library Conference that took place later in the month.

For Dr Mutschler, one week was too short to examine the work of alibrary in detail, but long enough to meet a great team of librariansand broaden his horizons by observing the work of the FrewenLibrary. The exchange gave him the chance to gain an insight intosubject enquiry work, and exchange ideas and experiences. He wasvery impressed by the tutorial work done by the Subject Librarians inthe field of user education and information skills. The e-learningactivities were of particular interest to him, especially the servicesoffered for distance learners. As a trainee librarian it was alsoimportant to gain an insight into general library workflows andcataloguing and classification. He was very interested to learn aboutthe Athens authentication system: ‘very useful for everybody whowants to use central services of the library from external locations’.

I was very impressed with facilities in the new University Library inJena where every student workstation is connected to the Universitynetwork. There are many individual study carrels and several groupstudy rooms, both very popular with the students. An efficient book

transportation system carries books around the library between thedifferent floors and the despatch room. Of particular interest was thework of the legal deposit section who claim copies of all publicationsrelating to the state of Thuringia, and my visit to the historicalarchives at the Beutenberg Campus.

The conference I attended was on ‘The Multimedia Library’. It wasinteresting to learn about the development of the Virtual Library inHalle and Berlin and some of the initiatives in electronic documentdelivery services, such ‘Scan on Demand’, Subito and DOD II.

Janet WilmotReference Librarianjanet.wilmot@port.ac.uk / Ext.3228

JENA EXCHANGE 2004

BIALL ANNUAL CONFERENCE,EDINBURGH 2004

OPENURL LINKER SERVICE

The New Year saw the introduction of a newself-service system, Q-Jump, to the FrewenLibrary. Purchased from Plescon (a supplier oflibrary security systems), Q-Jump is used in anumber of UK academic libraries to enablelibrary users to issue and return their ownloans. More details can be obtained fromPlescon’s website: http://www.plescon.co.uk

Initially we hope that the new terminal willreduce queues at the Issue Desk at busy times.Library staff will be promoting the newsystem by encouraging users out of the queueand over to the Q-Jump terminal, which hasbeen sited near the Issue Desk on the ground

floor of the Frewen Library. In the long-term,we’ll be looking at extending the service toenable the issue and return of loans at timeswhen the Issue Desk is not staffed.

How to Q-Jump

• Use the touch screen to select issue orreturn, then follow the on-screeninstructions. When you place a book on theterminal it is both issued to you and thendesensitised (so you won’t set the securityalarm off!).

• For those of you with a burning desire topretend to be librarians, I’m afraid that

we’ve decided not to have little date stampsfor your own use on the terminal; instead, atill receipt is issued to you, confirming thedue date of the loan.

• A till receipt is also issued to you when yousuccessfully return a loan through Q-Jump.

• If the self-service transaction fails, there willbe messages on screen to explain why, aswell as suggestions for further action.

Kath ShakespeareAssistant Librarian (Loans)kath.shakespeare@port.ac.uk / Ext.3245

LIBRARY STAFF ENCOURAGE Q-JUMPING!

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed,at the start of the new semester, the staff on thecounter staring at their computer screens moreintently than previously, or muttering a hurried‘Now where has that gone…?’ when you askthem a question. All symptoms of having abrand new library management system!

Talis Alto is the major new version of the TalisLibrary Management System. This is a substantialupgrade, with a graphical user interfacereplacing the old text-based ‘blue screen’ Talis.Talis Alto has now been rolled out to 40 plusTalis customers around the UK, including theUniversity of Portsmouth Library.

Heads of section within the Library attended aseries of workshops in May 2004, in preparationfor launching the new system and cascading

training to library staff. Fortunately, we wereable to run Talis Alto alongside the old text-based version on each terminal, so that trainingcould be staggered through the summervacation and into the new semester.

Talis Alto was first adopted by the InformationDesk team and Issue Desk team in July 2004,closely followed by the Technical Services teamlater in the summer. Talis Alto will be rolled-outto the remaining teams this year.

Like any new system, Talis Alto is both loved andloathed! Some staff love its new colours andlayout, while others find the screens too ‘fussy’;some staff love the flexibility of using the mouseand the other Windows shortcuts, while otherspreferred the simplicity of using function keysand the keyboard only. It will take some time to

get used to the new interface, but Talis Alto isdefinitely the way forward!

Kath ShakespeareAssistant Librarian (Loans)kath.shakespeare@port.ac.uk / Ext.3245

At the start of this academic year we installeda new piece of software that links many ofthe Library’s bibliographic databases toelectronic journals. In fact, you may havealready noticed and used this software. Thesoftware uses a technology called ‘OpenURLlinking’, which has the ability to generateinformation from an article citation, checkour access to it and ultimately link directly tothe full text of the article, if available.

In a nutshell, when you search a bibliographicdatabase, (databases which contain articlereferences but don't contain the full text ofthe articles, e.g. Medline, Geobase, ASSIA)you may notice a ‘Locate Full Text’ button. Insome databases this button is located withinthe search results screen; in others it is locatedwithin the article details screen.

Clicking on this button searches theUniversity's list of available full text journals,identifying if you are entitled to access thefull text of the article in electronic form. Itthen opens another browser window anddisplays the results of the search in thatwindow.

At the top part of the screen, basicbibliographic details of the article you havesearched for are displayed, below which is an

area where you will see if any electronic fulltext has been located.

If electronic full text has been located ‘Datesof Coverage’ will show the date range forwhich we have access to electronic copies ofthe journal. ‘Links to Content’ displays linksthat will take you directly to the article, or ifthis is not available to the journal page. Youwill need to note the volume, issue and pagenumber to navigate to the full text within thejournal. The ‘Database’ link will take you tothe home page of the publisher who providesthe journal. In some cases this is the only linkavailable. Again, you will need to note thejournal title, volume, issue and page numberto navigate the site to find the journal andthe article.

If electronic full text is NOT available you cantrigger a search of our Library Catalogue tosee if the journal is available locally in hardcopy. Click on either the ‘Search by JournalTitle’ in the Library Catalogue or SearchLibrary Catalogue by ISSN links. The latter linkwill initiate a more specific search since it usesthe journal's ISSN (International StandardSerial Number) – unique to a particularjournal – rather than searching on title words,which may retrieve more than one matchingtitle.

If no hard copy of the publication is availablelocally you can generate an interlibrary loanrequest. The ‘Request an Interlibrary Loan’link will generate an interlibrary loan requestform with the article information alreadyinserted. You must then add your own detailsand print the form out. Please note thatinterlibrary loan requests depend onavailable funds and, in many cases, requestswill also require permission from your tutoror supervisor. All undegraduate requestsrequire countersignatures as do somepostgraduate requests.

This service is still in its infancy. Many journalproviders and databases are still developingthis service so the number of databasessupporting OpenURL linking will continue togrow. Our current aim is to improve theservices we already have and continue todevelop ways to make searching moreeffective.

Problems: if you are experiencing problemswith this service please contact the ElectronicResources Helpdesk in the first instance –portia.help@port.ac.uk

Off campus users: off campus users should beable to use this service. However, when youtry to link to the full text, you will have toenter an appropriate password.

Enabled databases: we have set up thefollowing databases to be used with the LinkFinder software: WebSPIRS, CambridgeScientific Abstracts, Web of Knowledge andELSC – Caredata. More will be added as thedatabases become OpenURL compliant.

A-Z list of journal titles: this is an additionalservice that lists all the electronic journals wehave full text access to.

More information: visitwww.port.ac.uk/library/openurl

Sylvia GannonLibrary Web & Systems Developersylvia.gannon@port.ac.uk / Ext.3980

RUNNING IN, PLEASE PASS…

Two of our Subject Librarians presented papers at the UniversityLearning and Teaching Conference last December. Subsequently theirpresentations have been added to the University’s RADiCAL OnlineConference WebCT site. These are:

• Anne Worden (Librarian for Languages, Geography and SocialSciences) ‘Student awareness of dissertation research sources: do weassume they know more than they do?’

• Roisin Gwyer (Librarian for Health & Social Care) ‘Once is notenough: information literacy in the curriculum?’

Both presentations discuss the need for embedding information skillsin the curriculum throughout courses and beyond the inductionperiod. If any member of staff would like to find out more about howwe can work together on this please contact your Subject Librarian.Also read the RADiCAL papers!

Roisin GwyerAssociate University Librarianroisin.gwyer@port.ac.uk Ext.3221

UNIVERSITY LEARNINGAND TEACHING CONFERENCE

The use of personal reference managementsoftware has a long history at Portsmouth,being a feature of research support ever sincea colleague brought ProCite back from theUniversity of Connecticut in 1989. Shortlyafter this an Electronic Current AwarenessService (ECAS) was developed, whichprovided both the ProCite software andregular supplies of references – matchingresearchers’ interests – on disk. At its peakECAS had 250 users but over the years, withadministrative workloads eating ever deeperinto the time available for research, thenumber of staff using it dropped to singlefigures. ECAS was, therefore, shut down acouple of years ago, although the Librarycontinues to support ProCite users withregular half day training courses, bookablethrough the Department for Curriculum andQuality Enhancement. Ring ext. 3328 to makea booking.

And now there is another contender forpersonal reference management. Since thesummer of 2004, the reference management

program EndNote has been networked side-by-side with ProCite. As the three majorpersonal reference management programs(ProCite, EndNote and Reference Manager)are all owned by the same American softwarecompany, it seems likely that one or more will eventually disappear. Despiteprotestations to the contrary, ProCite – whichhas the smallest user base – seems to havebeen chosen to be culled, and to cover thiseventuality we are now networking EndNoteVersion 7 side-by-side with ProCite.

Even though the University is nownetworking EndNote, ProCite users shouldnot despair; we don’t plan to cut the groundfrom under your feet and we will continue tosupport the package alongside EndNote forthe conceivable future. EndNote, though aless powerful package than ProCite, is verypopular – it already has a band of contentedusers within the University – and has a hugeuser base worldwide. We are pleased to beable to provide this software side-by-sidewith ProCite, assuring a secure future for

personal reference management atPortsmouth. As with ProCite half-dayEndNote training courses are bookablethrough the Department for Curriculum andQuality Enhancement on ext. 3328.

ProCite vs EndNote: Are you a ProCite userwho would like to migrate to EndNote? If socontact me. There are minor compatibilityissues between ProCite and EndNote, mainlydue to the fact that EndNote limits the size ofits reference libraries, which ProCite doesn’t.Note too that if you need to store and handlereferences containing characters withdiacritics, EndNote is much better at doingthis than ProCite.

Andy BarrowHarvest Editorandy.barrow@port.ac.uk / Ext.3236

SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH PROCITE