| Newsletter 11, February 1996 |
The Beckett Park Learning Centre is well on its way, and the infrastructure of the two-floor infill of the quadrangle is now in place. The first phase of the project is scheduled for hand-over at Easter 1996.
Library users have been tolerating cramped conditions, shortage of user spaces, a poor study environment, and long walks down dimly-lit corridors to find materials. A display in the corridor of the library has been provided to keep readers up to date with how the work is progressing. But, now, it is possible to look through the doors and windows on the first floor and see the extension being prepared for occupation.
We apologize for the poor conditions and the need to withdraw services at short notice over the Christmas vacation. We do appreciate the difficulties which staff and students are experiencing in making use of the facilities but, please, be patient with staff. They are doing their best despite the numerous difficulties and setbacks which have been faced during the building works.
The first phase of the extended Learning Centre will be occupied over the Easter vacation. This will involve some decanting of facilities which currently surround the new infill so that these areas can be refurbished in Phase 2 of the project. The completed Learning Centre is scheduled for hand-over towards the end of August 1996.
Norma Thompson, Philip Payne
There have been a number of developments in the IT Suites since the last Newsletter.
There are still a number (far too many!) of older "386" machines in the labs, and these are now somewhat under-powered for the Windows applications now available. This year, we have continued our rolling programme of replacement and, as well as the new kit at Beckett Park site reported in the last Newsletter, there are now brand new machines — high-powered HP Vectras — in C603, Calverley Street, and G4, Woodhouse Lane.
We shall be looking to continue replacing the older machines over the next two years.In the meantime, please be aware that some labs will be particularly slow loading Windows and running Windows applications, and these should be avoided when booking for classes.
In order to speed up the process of logging in to the machines in the labs, we have made the virus checking more efficient.
Windows Applications is now the first entry on the Applications menu, as befits the increased usage of Windows software.
There have been some problems with students commandeering a machine for up to a whole day and leaving it idle whilst other students are waiting. In order to address this and allow more students access to the finite number of PCs in the labs, we have implemented a system of automatically logging out machines that have not been touched for 20 minutes. Messages will appear on the screen to warn students that the system will log them out if the machine is not used in the specified period.
There are posters in the IT Suites advising of all these changes.
John Taylor
Access to the Internet, the world-wide network of computers linking education, research and business, is now available in the Library. The service will offer the World-Wide Web (WWW) search tool to provide a simple graphical interface to the Internet with hypertext and a multi-media capability. Initially, the service is in the form of 3 bookable high-specification dedicated workstations in each Library, and 10-station teaching clusters at the Calverley Street and Beckett Park Libraries.
Tutor librarians have been identifying useful sites available via the Internet, and have created subject guides to relevant information resources. They will be seeking to incorporate Internet information resources into their information-handling skills sessions for students, and into documentation on subject-based information resources. In the meantime, the support that we can give to individual users will be relatively limited, although some basic documentation on using Netscape to access the Internet is available.
Philip Payne
A pilot inter-site loan service has been offered since 8th January. The pilot service is available to all LMU staff, part-time students, and postgraduate research students. Reservations can be placed at one site for material held on the shelf at another site. You can choose to collect such items at another site. The service excludes Short Loan items and audio-visual items.
Items are generally dispatched on the next working day and are available for collection by late afternoon. However, if you use the service you should be aware that we cannot guarantee availability, even if an item shows on the catalogue as being available. This is because the shelf-check to retrieve requested items takes place on the morning of the next working day after the request is made, and the item may have been borrowed in the intervening time or may be missing. A notice is generated to advise that the item is available for collection. If you require the item urgently, you are advised to check your borrowing record on LIBERTAS to find out whether the item has arrived, since it will generally take at least another day for the printed notice to arrive.
If you are in one of the categories mentioned above, you can also choose to collect any of your reservations from another site. You can also return items at other sites (but not Short Loans or audio-visual items).
Betty Downing
Learning Support Services continues to run the weekly minibus to the British Library Reading Room at Boston Spa. It runs on alternate Mondays and Wednesdays during term time. Scheduled dates for the service during the Spring term are:
The minibus leaves from outside the front entrance of the James Graham Building at Beckett Park at 9:00am, and also picks up passengers at the Calverley Street Entrance to the Calverley Street buildings at 9:15 am. It returns from Boston Spa at 2:00pm.
The service is available to all LMU staff and students.
The minibus has a capacity of 15 seats. LMU staff and students who wish to use the service need to obtain a ticket from one of the site libraries. The fare for the return journey is £2.00, payable at the time of booking. Tickets must be purchased in advance and cannot be purchased on the day itself.
Jane Broadhurst
The Library has been selected to take part in the trial of a new document delivery service from the British Library. The system will allow staff to request, using their own PC, the complete text of journal articles via an electronic link to the BL Document Supply Centre at Boston Spa. Initially, material will be posted or faxed back to the requester, but electronic delivery is planned as an early enhancement.
The Library is eager to make progress towards new ways of providing materials, and we are very pleased to have been asked to help develop this service. Information about how you might use the service will be available in a few months' time, after its commercial launch.
Mike Berrington
Some changes have been made to the way you log in to the Library Catalogue from your networked PC. The introductory text that you see as you first connect has altered, and you are asked to use a username that corresponds to the Site Library you normally use. So, if you are based at Beckett Park, you should type in BECKETT; if based at Brunswick, type BRUNSWICK; and type CALVERLEY if based at Calverley Street. Do not use LIBRARY any more: this is intended for people outside LMU. Type EXIT at any menu to leave.
Betty Downing
Computing Services has recently purchased the rights to reproduce “Soft Options” manuals for sale at the Computing Help Desks. These are “Plain English” Guides and Reference Guides to Windows and the Microsoft Office packages. Prices will be set to cover our reprographics costs plus the cost of the licence, and will generally be between £2 and £4.
These manuals are in addition to the range of Computing Services introductory-level documents, which will continue to be available free of charge. However, the Soft Options Guides cover the subject matter in considerably greater depth.
Mike Ford
The existing CLA photocopying licence has been extended until July 1996. Negotiations are continuing between the CVCP and the Copyright Licensing Agency on a replacement licence. The existing CLA licence permits the following amount of copyright material to be copied in connection with any one clearly defined course of study:
Separate arrangements are in place for reproducing copyright material as course readers. Further details are available from Philip Payne, Library Services Manager, on extn 5966.
The licence covers publications from the UK, USA, France, Spain, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and english language material published in the Netherlands. The following categories of material are excluded from the licence: newspapers, maps, printed music, examination papers, industrial house journals, correspondence material (except OU and Open College), bibles and liturgical works, computer software manuals, and unpublished works.
Philip Payne
The Specialized Learning Resources room (C313a) contains a collection of books, pamphlets, files and folders covering topics related to study skills, dyslexia, disability and higher education. It also houses some specialized equipment, such as a braille printer, scanners, and special software for study skills and scanning documents. The use of the room is aimed primarily at students with disabilities. However, “drop-in” sessions will be organized later this term, and these will be open to others (staff or students) interested in the resources available in this room.
Induction sessions for the use of this room were arranged for part-time students with dyslexia during the week beginning January 18th. Shirley Lawrie (Tutor Librarian) ran these sessions, which were organized in consultation with Viv Anderson (AIS Developmental Studies Manager) and Stuart Walker (Learning Support Technician, Dyslexia). Depending on the result of these sessions, further inductions will be offered to a wider group of students with dyslexia and/or other disabilities later in the term.
Stuart Walker provides support for students with dyslexia in the use of the equipment in C313a, and also conducts assessments of the technical requirements of students diagnosed as dyslexic in relation to the demands of the course on which they are enrolled.
Kate Ramsden (Learning Support Tutor, Dyslexia) will be co-ordinating the preparation of learning needs assessments, and providing individual study support, where this is part of the learning needs assessment plan. She plans to offer these sessions at both Beckett Park and Calverley Street this semester.
Shirley Lawrie has special responsibilities regarding the Library’s service to students with disabilities, and co-ordinates the use of Room C313a as well as giving inductions to students on the facilities on offer and keeping the documentation in the room up to date.
All the above are also on email.
Shirley Lawrie
| The AV refit of Brunswick Lecture Theatre is now complete, with
new audio and control systems and a data/video projector for computer
outputs at VGA (640×480) resolution. This theatre has the
following facilities:
|
| To book use of these facilities, please call the Media Loans Counter at Brunswick on extn 4000, or Calverley Street on 3449. |
This theatre is quite recent (1991), and so most of the audio-visual equipment does not need replacing. However, this theatre currently uses ceiling mounted monitors for video playback and does not have built-in data projection facilities
The plan is to remove the ceiling monitors and fit a video and data projector. This will allow video images from VHS and computer data at resolutions of VGA (640×480) to be displayed on the large screen. A separate OHP projection screen will also be fitted to allow the projection of slides, data or video and OHPs at the same time. A “Call Technician Help” system is also planned. This will link theatres B1, B2 and B3 to the Media Loans counter in G108 where assistance can be called over an intercom. A similar system is installed in the Beckett Park theatres and has proved useful.
The existing television monitors will be reused and wall mounted in classrooms, reducing the need for playback trolleys to be wheeled into classrooms.
John Lynch
The Staff Laboratory (Room C508 at Calverley Street) now has an improved range of Optical Mark Reading facilities, including Speedquest software, which enables the easy creation and automated analysis of surveys, questionnaires, evaluations etc. No cost is involved in using this, apart from the purchase of blank response forms. Please ring extn 3288 for more details.
The next LSS Event will focus on the relationship between the Web and teaching, information and corporate issues, and is expected to be scheduled for late March. Please look out for further information about this in the near future.
Four Pentium machines with World-Wide Web access are available in the Staff Laboratory (Room C508 at Calverley Street). All University staff are welcome to use these facilities at any time, either for access to the Web or to create associated materials. Booking is not necessary, but please ring extn 3288 if you want to confirm availability before arriving.
For the Universities, the World-Wide Web is not just a means of accessing enormous quantities of information, it is a mechanism for providing our students with a comprehensive learning environment, tailored to meet their needs in relation to individual courses. This is achieved by the creation of Web sites with appropriately-structured student areas, and much of the responsibility for assembling these subject-based student areas will fall to teaching staff in the corresponding schools.
Because addressing this educational design issue is an important task, we are expanding the range of LSS Educational Development Courses to include a module dealing with the creation of Web-based learning environments. Please ring extn 3288 to enrol or for more details.
All of us are aware that pressures on teaching staff make it increasingly difficult to devote time to the creation of teaching and learning materials, and we intend to enhance our service in this area by providing a specialist production service. This will make it possible for staff to commission the production of a wider range of teaching/learning materials, including multimedia and other "new-technology" forms. Charges will be made for consumables only (as with existing video, graphics and other established production services). The new service is expected to be available in the summer term, but staff are invited to assist in the planning of this provision by discussing likely requirements with the Learning Systems Consultant (tel. extn 3288).
Dennis James
Library Services will be repeating the workshop on Information Resources for Research on Friday 22nd March 1996 at 2pm in Tutorial Room 1, Calverley Street Library. The workshop is being delivered by Philip Payne, Mike Berrington and Max McMurdo, and is part of the series of workshops for researchers being organized by the Research Development Office. The workshop will provide an opportunity to find out about the range of library services available to researchers, with demonstrations of some of the new electronic information sources available. Further details are available from Max McMurdo, Tutor Librarian with special responsibility for library support of research, on extn 3280.
Philip Payne
Leeds Metropolitan University Library is one of 5 university libraries being used to test a decision support tool which will allow comparisons of costs of different information-delivery options available to libraries. The project is being funded under the FIGIT (Follett Implementation Group on IT) Electronic Libraries Programme. The design work is being undertaken by a consultancy team from The Information Partnership. Other libraries involved are Aston, East Anglia, Leeds and Stirling.
Philip Payne
Following changes in tutor librarian staffing, the revised subject responsibilities of the tutor librarians are:
| Mike Berrington | Engineering |
| Isabel Buxton | Sport & Leisure |
| Carolynn Rankin | Construction, Quantity Surveying, Civil Engineering |
| Marianne Dee | Education |
| Katherine Everest | Computing, Information & Library Studies |
| Maggie Fleming | Health & Science, Chemistry |
| Diane Jackson | Health & Science, Chemistry |
| Shirley Lawrie | Hospitality, Service Sector & Consumer Services Management, Tourism |
| Sandra McDowell | Art & Design, Film, Women’s Studies, Combined Studies, Clinical Language Sciences |
| Max McMurdo | Social Sciences, Nursing |
| Anne Martin | Environmental Health, Urban Development |
| Barbara Price | Accountancy & Finance, Human Resources Management, Public Relations, Economics & Public Policy |
| Marie Scopes | Languages & European Business |
| Stuart Smith | Business & Management |
| Chris Stone | Architecture, Landscape Design |
| Norma Thompson | Computing |
| Liz Waller | Law, International Business & Finance, AIS Courses |
These changes allow greater harmonization between the responsibilities of tutor librarians and the University’s faculty structure, and we hope that they will enable the Faculty Support Teams (FASTs) to work more effectively.
Philip Payne
There have been some changes to the composition of the Faculty Support Teams since they were last published. The current make-up of these is as follows.
(LS = Library Services; MEDS = Media and Educational Development Services; CS = Computing Services; * = Co-ordinator.)
| Marianne Dee* | LS |
| Ed Bruce | CS |
| Isobel Buxton | LS |
| Dennis James | MEDS |
| Shirley Lawrie | LS |
| John Lynch | MEDS |
| Sandra McDowell | LS |
| John Taylor | CS |
| Ted Barber* | CS |
| Dennis James | MEDS |
| Patsy Lalfam | CS |
| Barbara Price | LS |
| Andrew Quickmire | CS |
| Marie Scopes | LS |
| Stuart Smith | LS |
| Liz Waller | LS |
| Esmond Wyatt | MEDS |
| Chris Stone* | LS |
| Mike Ford | CS |
| Barbara Irek | CS |
| Dennis James | MEDS |
| Anne Martin | LS |
| Sandra McDowell | LS |
| Carolynn Rankin | LS |
| Angus Orde | CS |
| Esmond Wyatt | MEDS |
| Derek Charlwood* | CS |
| David Butler | MEDS |
| Maggie Fleming/Diane Jackson | LS |
| Dennis James | MEDS |
| Sandra McDowell | LS |
| Max McMurdo | LS |
| Jenny Smith | CS |
| Norma Thompson* | LS |
| Mike Berrington | LS |
| Alan Boodson | CS |
| Katherine Everest | LS |
| Dennis James | MEDS |
| Gerry Kearns | CS |
| Azmat Khan | CS |
| John Lynch | MEDS |
| Marie Scopes* | LS |
| Mark de Groot | CS |
| Dennis James | MEDS |
| Gerry Kearns | CS |
| John Lynch | MEDS |
