For those of you who will not make it to the end of this announcement, the library staff would first like to thank you all -- faculty, students and visitors -- who have given us valuable criticisms and suggestions. They have been extremely useful in helping us design our systems and services.  Additionally, we want to give special thanks to Professor Patrick Donner for his former chairmanship of the faculty Library Committee and his oversight of the library as Associate Academic Dean. Throughout this period he has been a steadfast champion and supporter of the library's role in the university's academic mission.
And now, for the announcement: |
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New library premises, new library web environment
As is true of every department at WMU, the library is occupying a new premises. We have more attractive space, with more seating, and are working on building group work areas and comfortable reading areas.
At the same time, as we are excited to inform you, we are releasing a brand new e-library environment. I say "environment," because it is not simply a new web site, but a suite of web sites and new services that include: |
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Common look across systems!
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Single Search Box!
A single search box that searches the library web site of guides and tutorials, the library catalog of printed holdings, and about 75% of the full-text e-book and e-journal databases to which the library subscribes.
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Unified Discovery Service!
Indexes full-text and bibliographic content from multiple WMU and third-party resources. New data sources are being regularly added.
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"Checkout" e-books!
Users can "Checkout" e-books for offline reading on laptops and mobile device. These e-books are often optimally set for reading on a tablet, so patrons can hold the work in their hand and flip the pages with their fingers, just as they do with a regular book.
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Library help pages!
An array of library help documents and tutorials covering the fundamentals of database research as well as more detailed help for specific databases.
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Online request forms!
Online forms for materials requesting and sign up forms for library classes. We teach online research, APA referencing, automating bibliographies, statistics-gathering from maritime resources, chart making and workflow diagramming, collaborating on group projects using the latest cloud-based educational Apps, creating online surveys, as well as classes on the traditional uses of the library.
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New MSc readings pages!
Replaces the old "Recommended readings pages." Here, students can find lists of books and databases relevant to their specializations, as well as links to short loans, scanned materials and commercial e-content on their course reading lists. (Professors, you can continue to load content using the Academic Portal. The library will ensure accurate links to your readings.)
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Browse Databases A-Z
Databases A-Z is an alphabetical and searchable list of Databases that the library owns, or leases, or from which it otherwise has arranged to offer at least some of the accessible content.
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Publication Finder!
Ebsco's Publication Finder searches for e-book and e-journals in the library's collection. This tool is for known item searching rather than for topical searching. Type in an author, title or ISBN/ISSN in the search box. If the e-book or journal is in the library's online collection, the Publication Finder will provide a link to the appropriate resource.
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Browse e-content A-Z!
More than just a simple journal listing service, e-content A-to-Z is a powerful locator tool that helps researchers to discover all of the electronic resources offered at the library. Users can Browse through scores of thousands of titles.
The LinkSource finder offers a full complement of searchable data fields to help users search more precisely for articles, chapters, conference papers, etc.
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Proxy access!
Proxy access for IP restricted content, allowing users to access most restricted content from off campus
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Automated export of citations!
Automated export of citations from many of our data sources straight into reference management software |
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All of this has been rolled out incrementally, but we thought the inauguration of the new premises was an auspicious time to announce the systems and services that we have been working on for many, many months. However, as always, the library is a work in progress. |
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The next two major projects on the horizon are:
- A single-sign on system that will automatically create user accounts in our third-party databases, or log users in if they already have an account. This system will work with the library catalog, the Ebsco Discovery Service, Dawsonera, Ebrary, Science Direct, Springer, Ingenta and more. It will allow patrons to take advantage of advanced user services such as bookmarking, annotating and offline reading without having to remember a battery of login names and passwords.
- An Institutional Repository ("IR") of locally maintained digital content. This includes PDFs of student dissertations, commercial datasets and reports, and relevant government, NGO and IGO documents that library staff thought too important to trust their long-term safekeeping to the open web. The second phase or our IR rollout will include areas for storing --and when desired, publishing-- WMU research product: the grey literature, pre-pub works, raw data, images, etc. IR content will be searchable through the aggregated Discovery Service and optimized for retrieval in Google Scholar. Researchers can work with library staff to have their works indexed in other databases relevant to their disciplines, thereby extending their reach to their intended audience of scholars.
In the mean time, please have a look at the new library.wmu.se. Check out the links, try a few searches, and after you've had a chance to sample, please take our online survey. We strive to improve continually according to patron needs and requests.
Despite the work that remains to be done, we think this is a step in the right direction, and hope you will agree.
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