IS News Blog

Information Services has released a newsletter on the New Library project which includes an update on the New Library project; information about extended library opening hours and tips to help you get the most from the Interim library service. Click here to view the newsletter

 

Our Facebook page is regularly updated and includes photos of the Library before and during the early stages of the building work – this will be added to as the project progresses.  There are also lots of useful links and a feed from our project blog: http://newlibrary.wordpress.stir.ac.uk/blogs/

 

To find us on Facebook, search for ‘University of Stirling New Library Project’ or follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/University-of-Stirling-New-Library-Project/52701324641

 

Information Services

http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/newlibrary/index.php

HeinOnline is a great place to look for full text articles for LLB and BA law essays, but its large size can make it difficult to find articles about Scots Law.  A new feature in HeinOnline makes this much easier – you can now ask HeinOnline to only show articles published within Scotland.

 

To do this:

• Log in to the portal, go to the A-Z List of Online Resources and choose HeinOnline.
• Click on Law Journal Library, and then click on the Search tab.
• Choose field search from the menu at the left of the screen and enter your keywords in the search boxes. 
•  Tick the “Run as Faceted Search” option next to the search button, and then click on search.

 

Using faceted search displays a list of options alongside your results.  One of these new options is “Country Published”.  If you click on the link for Scotland HeinOnline will only list articles from journals based in Scotland.  (You might have to click on “more” under the list of countries to see the option for Scotland.)

 

Using this new feature will exclude articles about Scots law if they have been published in other jurisdictions.  It will hide the useful articles outlining Scots law topics that often published by American university law reviews, and any Scots law articles from journals based in England, but it will be useful if you are struggling to locate Scottish material.

 

Kirsty Thomson

Subject Librarian

Everyone knows how annoying it is to receive lots of Junk Email. Many people are aware how important it is to protect their online identity such as bank account numbers and passwords. However, few people have considered that the two issues can be related, or realise that their University computer account details are also valuable to criminals.

 

Traditionally, Spammers have harvested email addresses in order to create lists of people to send junk email to, and other online criminals have fraudulently obtained account details and passwords in order to steal money. A recent innovation is the use of a victim’s stolen computer account to send out spam.

 

The advantage to a spammer is that, for a short while at least, the source of the emails is a reputable organisation so that the messages are less likely to be filtered out by spam detection software. Of course, if one organisation is repeatedly targetted in this way, or sends out a very large number of spam messages in a short period of time, it will soon become known as a source of spam and will be blacklisted.

 

A blacklist operated by a single Internet Service Provider (ISP) will prevent messages from the listed organisation reaching all of that ISPs customers. Other blacklists such as SORBS (http://www.us.sorbs.net/) are widely used to prevent the delivery of spam and can make it virtually impossible for an organisation to send out any email if they are listed. The University uses multiple blacklists as part of its spam detection regime.

 

The University suffered an incident of this nature in August when a staff email account was compromised and 5,312 emails were sent out to a total of 918,484 recipients over the course of a single weekend. This resulted in the University being blacklisted by a single ISP, Hotmail, for 48 hours, disrupting email communication for many members of staff and students. There was also a loss of reputation for the University as demonstrated by the large number of responses from people who had received the spams indicating “concern” and “disappointment” that we were the source of them.

 

Since then there has been a rapid increase in this form of misuse and at least one staff or student email account is now compromised and used in this way every week.

 

To protect the University, Information Services have developed a automated process which checks the volume of outbound emails from each user account over time and disables any account which appears to be sending out spam. The threshold for this has been based on levels of activity monitored over a few weeks so that the process should not interfere with legitimate use of email. Any user whose account has been disabled for this (or any other) reason should contact the IS Information Centre to request reinstatement of their account.

 

Members of staff who need to send bulk email from their University account, or who supervise students who need to do so as part of their academic activities, should contact the author for advice.

 

This article does not address in detail how the userids and passwords that are being misused in this way have been obtained. The simplest way to protect your account is to never give your user name and/or password to anyone else for any reason at all. There are no legitimate reasons for sharing this information and it is strictly against the University’s IT Use Policy for you to do so.

 

Unfortunately there are many sophisticated technical ways that the information can be obtained through email, websites, and malware (viruses and keyloggers) on unprotected computers. IS will therefore tend to be lenient with users who appear to have fallen victim to a scam but does expect users to be vigilent when they use any computer system other than the ones provided by the University.

 
Alan Richardson
Systems and Network Services Manager

A set of six new artworks directly inspired by the archives of John Grierson and Norman McLaren have gone on display in the University of Stirling’s Pathfoot Building. Positioned opposite the entrance to the J corridor the works were produced by the artists Luke Fowler and Katy Dove. The artists were invited to explore the archives and use material from the collections to inform and inspire new work. These collages are a result of this exploration. To accompany these new works a selection of original artwork from Norman McLaren and photographs from his archive are on display along the J corridor. For further information see:

 

http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/libraries/collections/spcoll/NMcLexhibition.php

 

Karl Magee

University Archivist

The Library Catalogue will be unavailable due to essential maintainance between 7:30 am and 8:30 am on 13th November. During this time it will not be possible to search the Library Catalogue, or use the online renewal or booking services. Also WebBridge links from databases to journal articles and Talis Lists will be unavailable. We anticpiate that normal service will be resumed by 9 am. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

 

David Gardiner

Manager, Lending & Enquiry Services.

As last semester, the Library will have extended opening hours for the exam period.  They will commence Monday 16th November and continue until the night before the last exam, which on the draft schedule will mean Sunday 20th December.

 

Both the Interim Library and the Study Zone will open until 2am every morning and they will reopen at 9am.

 

During the extended hours, the library will be self service only.

 

David Gardiner

Manager Lending and Enquiry Services

If you want to read what Prof David Nutt (ex government advisor on drug policy) actually thinks about drugs and the harm they cause, then you can read his speech.

 

“Estimating drug harms a risky business?”  Eve Saville Lecture July 2009
http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus1714/Estimating_drug_harms.pdf

 

This comes via the Crime and Justice Students website.

 

Valerie Wells

Senior Subject Librarian

There will be an Information Services Open User Forum on Thursday 3 December at 2.00pm, room still to be confirmed, Stirling Campus. 

 

All are welcome.  IT and Library representatives in Academic and Administrative Departments and Students’ Union representatives are especially encouraged to attend.

 

The agenda will include Update on Library Transformation Project, IS Service Change and Office 2007.  Please send any further items for the agenda to IS Office (isoffice@stir.ac.uk) before the meeting, and if possible, by noon on Wednesday 25 November.

 

There will be a further email nearer the date with an agenda, previous minutes and any papers to be tabled at the meeting.  The room will also be confirmed at this time.

 

Michelle Millar

Senior Assistant

Information Services Office

There are many online primary sources about the First World War. The Great War Archive contains over 6500 items such as letters, diaries and photographs relating to personal experiences of WW1. The Great War Poetry Archive contains images, audio visual materials and texts relating to the War Poets such as Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves. The National Archives WW1 online exhibition  contains multimedia sources and historical documents from the collections of the Imperial War Museum and the National Archives. For more online resources relating to World War 1 see Intute’s First World War collection. For more information about finding general historical resources see Stirling University Library Subject Research Guide for History.

 

Sarah Kevill

Subject Librarian

Information Services like other areas of the University is facing a significant challenge in meeting its budget reduction commitments resulting from the implementation of Future Directions. Following recent staff changes, there will be some changes to services and the types of delivery of services to reflect better the current skills and capacity of Information Services. These will mainly affect IT support for staff; there should be little effect on IT support for the vast majority of students; other services of the department such as library, e-learning and classroom support will be largely unaffected.  Information Services is committed to making its full contribution to the implementation of the University’s Information Strategy and providing a good service to support the core strategic priorities of the University.
 
Below are the major service changes for an interim period starting at the beginning of November while Information Services adjusts to this reduced level of staffing and implements a re-structuring.

 
Overall
The majority of current IT support services provided by Information Services will remain unchanged. The Information Centre will continue to be the first point of contact for queries and to report problems; this service will help diagnose problems and aim to maintain its high level of immediate resolution, although in some cases there may be longer response times and there may be some queries where there is insufficient capacity to resolve satisfactorily. Technical staff from Information Services will continue to attend to and fix hardware problems and resolve software installation and configuration problems. Support for WebCT, reading lists, STORRE, Stirgate, library catalogue, Turnitin, classroom management systems and corporate administrative systems such as the student record and finance systems will remain unchanged.
 
All IT support enquiries should be directed to the Information Centre in the first instance.

 
Software Support
There are a number of core desktop software packages commonly used throughout the University:
•         Windows and MacOS operating systems
•         Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
•         Internet Explorer
•         Symantec Anti-Virus
•         CounterSpy

 
Broadly, Information Services will provide support for such software which will cover: installation of software; investigation and resolution of technical and configuration problems; endeavour to help with basic use problems (although you may be directed to relevant online services);  convenient access to appropriate online support services.
 
Levels of support for corporate learning & teaching, research and management systems such as WebCT, Agresso, SAP, STORRE etc will be unaffected.
 
There will be changes to the levels of support for other desktop software such as SPSS, Minitab, Nvivo etc..In general terms, the type of software support that Information Services will be able to provide for such software is: installation of software; initial software configuration; in event of technical and configuration problems a service of re-installation and resetting initial configuration; where available and appropriate, links to online support materials.

 
IT Training
Information Services is replacing its face to face IT training by providing convenient access to relevant online materials. Examples of these can be found in the “Get Started” ribbon of Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007. Work is underway to make online training and support materials easier to find on the IS web site. You may find the following link helpful for a range of training materials for Microsoft Office 2007, for example:
http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/itsupport/software/OnlineTraining-Office2007.php
Other materials are available in the “My Learning” course in WebCT in the “IT & Information Skills” section.
 
Information literacy sessions organised for staff and students remain unaffected.

 
Support for Staff’s Own Personal IT Equipment
Information Services’ support for staff’s personal IT equipment which areused to University activities is being consolidated into the general University’s laptop surgery service with support fees now waived for all staff. This service will provide advice and help on connecting to the University’s network and installation of the University’s anti-virus software. Contact the Information Centre for more details and to make appointments.

 
IS Web Site
The IS web site is being updated to reflect these changes. This may take a few weeks to complete so please be aware that the web site might not fully reflect the services being delivered during this period.

 
Information Centre
Please remember that all IT support enquiries should be directed to the Information Centre in the first instance. The telephone number is 01786 46(7250) and the email address is: infocentre@stir.ac.uk . During semester, the Information Centre is open 8:45-9 Mon-Thurs, 8:45-7 Fridays, and 11-4 weekends.
 
Mark Toole
Director of Information Services