To all students, staff, visitors, readers, users, customers, patrons, colleagues, and friends…
From everyone in Library & Learning Resources at all campuses of the University of Lincoln ~ may we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy 2010.
Cue some festive links:
We look forward to supporting you in the new year!
Please note a change to our Christmas vacation hours next week:
The University will close at 3 o’clock p.m. (15.00) on Tuesday, 22nd December.
Desk services in the GCW University Library will finish at a quarter to three (14.45) – the library building will remain open until 10 o’clock p.m. (22.00).
Services at Riseholme and in Hull will finish at 14.45; the centres will close at 15.00 (there are no library desk services in Holbeach on Tuesday).
University of Lincoln cataloguers have processed the first half dozen books for the new Theology Reading Room in Chad Varah House, launching the newest of the University’s library collections…
The very beginnings of a whole new collection in uphill Lincoln.
Six down, several rooms' worth of Theology books still to be processed...
...and plenty of empty shelves to fill! (a librarian's dream?)
The new reading rooms have some interesting features, including several fireplaces... (But no naked flames this close to the collection, please!)
...including these appropriately-Old-Testament fireplace tiles. (Who is the figure up the tree? Any Biblical scholars able to tell us?)
“I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…” You can’t help but notice a warm fuzzy feeling inside when you hear the opening lines of this famous Christmas song. Michael Kurtiz’s classic Christmas film has been viewed by millions every December for the last 55 years. You can’t help but sing along with the songs, tap your feet to the music and shed a little tear when Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) save a man’s business and bring his friends together for Christmas.
Wallace and Davis leave the Army after World War II and form a top song-and-dance act. Davis plays matchmaker and introduces Wallace to a pair of beautiful sisters Betty and Judy who also have a song-and-dance act. After helping the sisters out when they get into a sport of bother, Wallace and Davis find themselves on a train travelling to a Vermont lodge where the sisters are booked to perform over Christmas. On their arrival they discover that the owner of the lodge is non other but their former commander, General Waverly (Dean Jagger), and that his business is suffering due to the lack of snow. On hearing his predicament the four performers decide to help the General. What follows is nearly two hours of incredibly well choreographed dances and songs and a heart warming story about comradeship and love, culminating in the performance of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”
White Christmas was the first feature length film to be filmed in widescreen VistaVision and Technicolor and also used the new Perspecta directional sound system. However, it was not the film to debut the title song. Holiday Inn, produced 12 years earlier premiered Berlin’s song and was made famous by Crosby, spending 11 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts in 1942. Crosby, however, never saw his role in the success of the song as important, claiming that anyone could sing it. I’m sure that many listeners and viewers of the film would disagree.
If you’re feeling in a Christmassy mood then you can borrow White Christmas from the University Library, Find it at 791.4372 whi on the ground floor in the off-air DVD collection.
Q1. This famous person is a relative of one of the main stars of White Christmas and shares the same surname. Name the star of White Christmas and their relative.
Q2. Which Saint ensured that the fir tree was used to symbolise Christmas and the Christian faith?
No cheating. No Google. No Wikipedia.
Freemind is mind mapping software to freely download to use at home -
It doesn’t have quite the same functionality as the University package ‘Inspiration’, but it is good for mind mapping. Download it here -
While the normal login for Creative Club is playing up, here’s an alternative way of getting in to the site:
We hope to be able to reinstate normal login, via the Portal, soon.
We apologise that there seem to be some problems with our access to the Creative Club service via the University Portal. The login page is ‘hanging up’ and not allowing anyone in.
We’ve reported the problem and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s been fixed.
RefWorks have announced the end of their familiar red-and-grey design, and the introduction – early in 2010 – of a new, simpler user interface. (Don’t worry – they’re going to give us 6 months get used to the change!)
“RefWorks 2.0 provides a cleaner, more streamlined interface for our users, using intuitive Web 2.0 conventions and contemporary design elements.”
You can see some previews of the new interface, along with some FAQs and a sneak-preview of their new logo on the RefWorks 2.0 website.
We’ll do our best here in Library & Learning Resources to steer you through the changes ahead. Watch this space for updated help guides and news of next year’s ‘RefWeek’ training workshops.
A number of students and staff have asked for help with the – slightly tricky – process of logging in to a particular journal title within the LexisLibrary legal and news sources package, via the e-journals A-to-Z site.
So, we’ve created a step-by-step help guide which explains the process, with screenshots of each step. There’s a link to the help guide next to each LexisLibrary title on the A-to-Z.
LexisLibrary is a…
…legal and news/current affairs database providing access to a range of case law, legislation, commentary, current awareness, and newspaper services. Includes the full text of volumes 1-50 of Halsbury’s Laws of England (an authoritative narrative covering every aspect of English statute and case law), up-to-date legislation containing over 18,000 full text acts, and the All England Law Reports. LexisLibrary also provides access via a “News” tab to full-text newspaper articles from national, local and regional UK newspapers.
(We’ve also created a similar guide for accessing ScienceDirect journals from off-campus, which can be similarly troublesome.)
Q: which other e-journal packages do you find tricky to access?
Let us know, and we’ll try and demystify the process!
