EXAM REVISION: late night opening at HSL-RHH

EXAM REVISION: late night opening at HSL-RHH

The importance to students of late-night opening of the Health Sciences Library at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital has been raised by many Medical and Dental Students and in particular by your MedSoc Student Reps. As a result, the Library is extending the opening hours of HSL-RHH, over the coming examination period, as follows:

Monday 1 December to Friday 5 December, open till 21.30
Monday 5 January 2009 to Friday 9 January, open till 21.30
Monday 26 January 2009 to Friday 30 January, open till 21.30.

On all other weekdays the Library will close at 19.00; Saturday and Sunday opening is unchanged.

The periods are offered as 'revision opening', providing access to books, journals and computers. The Library will be unstaffed apart from a porter.

We will monitor usage of the Library at these times.

Good luck in your exams

Vic

 

iComment Competition to win an 8gb iPod Nano or another fantastic prize

iComment Competition to win an 8gb iPod Nano or another fantastic prize :-) Open to all staff and students in the Medical School (a similar competition is taking place on the Librarians' Blog for Dentistry).

To enter simply comment here or against any of the blog entries. Comments should either respond to what is being said on the blog or could be about how well you think information literacy is supported in the Medical School or indeed about any aspect of the University of Sheffield Library service. Nothing offensive though ;-)

Ten of the best: 4 Behind the headlines

 

Ten of the best: 4 Behind the headlines

Last week I had an unplanned trip to the GP due to the experiment my nine year old had decided to do with a 20 pence piece (yes it does fit down the oesophagus). Given that he wasn't blue or anything, I figured he was probably ok and so took the opportunity to do a bit of people watching.

Sitting across from me were two middle aged women and a similarly aged chap, who was, for some inexplicable reason, and much to the envy of the nine year old, drinking one of those intriguingly coloured slush drinks (purple). He didn't contribute much to the conversation beyond 'aye, you can't be too careful.' The women, on the other hand, were intently studying a copy of the Daily Mail and discussing, in hushed tones (not all that hushed), the adverse effects of HRT. It transpired that one of the women was planning to question her treatment with the GP, in response to what they were reading in the paper.

I suspect that, for GPs up and down the country, this is a familiar situation and one that I'm sure you, as student doctors, will face sooner or later. Are you equipped with the skills to respond?

One resource that you may find useful is the 'Behind the headlines' service. The brainchild of Sir Muir Gray, Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS, Behind the headlines provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news.

This is how is works:

• Each day the NHS Choices team selects health stories that are making headlines.


• These, along with the scientific articles behind the stories, are sent to Bazian, a leading provider of evidence-based healthcare information.


• Bazian's clinicians and scientists analyse the research and produce impartial evidence-based assessments, which are edited and published by NHS Choices.

Behind the headlines can be found on the National Library for Health:

www.library.nhs.uk

or connect directly at:

http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsArticles.aspx

If you want to use the service to keep up with health stories in the news you can set up an RSS feed or use the auto-alert function.

and remember ... just because it's in the Daily Mail, doesn't automatically mean it's wrong ;-)

Vic

Need help with referencing?

For those of you adding the finishing touches to your History of Medicine SSC I thought that a bit of advice on formatting your references might be timely.

This assignment requires the use of Vancouver referencing and you may find the attached resource, provided by the BMA, useful:

http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/LIBReferenceStyles

The Library has designed some further referencing guidance available at

http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/useful/refs.html

and don't forget the online tutorial, written specifically for the UofS Medical School. Here is how to connect:

Step 1 Login to MUSE

Step 2 Connect to MOLE (My Online Learning Environment)



Step 3 Connect to the Library-Information skills tutorials



Step 4 Select subject specific tutorials

Step 5 Select Medicine

Step 6 Connect to the Vancover referencing tutorial





Vic :-)

Library fines … and how not to pay them …

Library fines … and how not to pay them … Exclusive interview with Lynn Greenwood, Head of Lending Services at the Univ of Sheffield Library



One issue which crops up repeatedly on the library blogs is that contentious matter of library fines and book loan periods. Vic went along to meet Lynn Greenwood, the Library's Head of Lending Services, to find out why on earth library books can only be borrowed for a week and why students can accumulate £15.00 worth of fines quicker than they can shout 'give me the directions to Blackwell's.'

Lynn has the unenviable responsibility of ensuring that the library stock circulates effectively and she has the ultimate power to decide on loan periods, library fines and indeed all matters to do with lending services.

Vic: Lynn, thank you for agreeing to contribute to the Library Blogs. With around 25,000 students and over 1.3m items in stock, it must be no mean feat to ensure that the books circulate effectively amongst our students.

Lynn: That's right, the Library issued 1.6m books last year so it is big and busy business, especially in the Information Commons where much of our undergraduate borrowing takes place.

Vic: One of our students has commented that the Library at the University of Leeds has loan periods of 12 weeks. Why are our books issued for just a week at a time?

Lynn: This particular student was undertaking an intercalated research year and as such will have benefited from the longer loan periods afforded to researchers. The University of Sheffield also grants longer loans to our research students. Leeds issue all books on student reading lists for one week only and their loans policy appears to be fairly consistent with our own.

Vic: So why do we issue books to undergraduates for just one week at a time?