News and events from the Veterinary Medicine Library

May 01, 2012

Veterinary Medicine Summer Hours

tulips_sm.jpgSpring & Summer Hours Begin Today for most branch libraries. Check the Library Hours page for full details.

Veterinary Medicine Library's Spring & Summer Hours:
Monday to Friday 8:00 to 4:00
Saturday & Sunday Closed

April 17, 2012

Study Tip #1: Keep Your Energy Up

photo of nutragrain bar and juice box

Your brain needs calories to stay alert. Pack some healthy snacks and
watch for library staff who will be coming around with treats.

Good luck with your exams.

April 02, 2012

Extended Hours during Exams in April

Following are the hours of opening for the Veterinary Medicine Library during exams from April 9 - 29:

Monday - Thursday
8:00 am to 10:00 pm
Friday
8:00 am to 8:00 pm
Saturday (no change)
12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Sunday (no change)
12:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Also the herbarium will remain open during the night for additional study space.
Good luck on your exams!

March 26, 2012

Current Protocols and International Tables for Crystallography now available!

Current Protocols: a collection of ebooks on laboratory protocols for health sciences and veterinary medicine is now available; as well as International Tables for Crystallography: the interactive version of the International Tables for Crystallography, and the definitive resource and reference work for crystallography. Check out their links here, or you can access them through the Databases A-Z list.

March 23, 2012

USearch will be down due to maintenance

ATTENTION:
Due to maintenance, USEARCH may not be available Saturday, March 24 from 9 pm to 5 am, Sunday morning.

You will still be able to use the Catalogue, Articles & Databases and E-journals tabs. We apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause.

Wiley Online Library

This message is to alert you of an interruption in the online service for Wiley Online Library.

Due to essential site maintenance, access may be interrupted during the indicated date and time.

DATE:
Saturday, March 24, 2012

TIME:
-- beginning --
6:00 am New York
10:00 am London (UTC/GMT 10:00)
18:00 Singapore

DURATION:
up to 4 hours

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

March 21, 2012

Current Protocols and Crystallography Tables now available!

Current Protocols and International Tables for Crystallography are now available! Check out their links here, or you can access them through the Databases A-Z list.

March 08, 2012

Get Help with Endnote!

Check out our new guide that walks you through all the steps for using Endnote X5 - a great citation management program that lets you manage all your references for assignments and papers, and creates instant bibliographies in the citation style (APA, Vancouver, MLA, etc) of your choice. See here for the Endnote handout.

RIP: RWA (The Research Works Act) is now officially dead.

As reported in this blog back in January, the RWA is a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representations in December 2011 that would repeal the National Institutes of Health's Public Access Policy - and cause a severe setback in the Open Access movement.

The introduction of this bill ignited a firestorm of opposition online, led by Micheal Eisen who also exposed the major contributions made by Elsevier to the election campaigns of the sponsors of the bill.

This revelation seemed to be the spark that finally spurred action among academics. The Cost of Knowledge boycott, initiated by Tim Glowers and Tyler Neylon, enlisted more than 7000 researchers who pledged not to support any Elsevier journal (publish, edit, review).

On February 23, 2012, 11 Research University Provosts signed an essay on Values and Scholarship in InsideHigherEd that provided strong support for the signatories of the Cost of Knowledge boycott.

In addition to individual researchers, publishers also started to publicly oppose the RWA (Peter Suber and Richard Poynder maintained lists of these).

All of the negative press accumulated to a point that Elsevier finally backed away from its support of this bill on Feb 27, 2012, and within hours, Representatives Issa and Maloney withdrew the bill.

February 15, 2012

Welcome to Brenda Butler

Welcome to Brenda Butler who is our new supervisor for student assistants and circulation. Brenda will also provide reference services in person and through instant messaging. She can be reached at:

Phone: 966-1760
Email: brenda.butler@usask.ca

Happy Family Day!

The Veterinary Medicine Library will be closed February 18-20. We will be open 8:00-4:00 Tuesday February 21 - Friday February 24. We will be closed February 25-26 as well.

Regular hours commence again on February 27th.

Have a lovely break!

February 14, 2012

Thank you!

The Veterinary Medicine Library would like to extend our appreciation to those in the college who participated in our survey on library hours. We enjoyed a huge response and are grateful for the time and energy it took to answer the survey.

February 01, 2012

Exciting News from Statistics Canada

CANSIM and other products are free for everyone to access from their web site.

stats_can.jpg

On February 1, 2012, self-serve standard products available on the Statistics Canada website—including CANSIM and census data products—will become free of charge.

Statistics Canada will maintain current pricing practices for products such as print publications, maps, CD-ROMs, and custom products and services.

Licensing restrictions for the use of Statistics Canada data products will be removed.

For more information, contact Media Relations at 613-951-4636.

The above change does not affect the dissemination of survey data files (microdata files) under the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) license. These files can only be accessed through either ODESI or EQUINOX. Please contact Data & GIS Services at refdata@library.usask.ca if you have any questions.

January 31, 2012

Library Survey

Please take a brief moment to fill out the short survey on the link below. We are considering making changes to the library, both structurally and in hours of operation. Your answers are extremely important and will help to inform these decisions.

https://survey.usask.ca/survey.php?sid=28371

We recommend that you participate in the survey using Firefox. You may have to copy and paste the link into your Internet browser. This survey will expire on Thursday, February 9th. A reminder email will be sent to faculty, staff and students later this week.

Thank you for your time and your thoughts.

January 10, 2012

Have you tried USearch?

usearch_blog_sm.jpg

Have you tried USearch?

USearch allows you to search for articles, books, images, etc., all in one place.

Try it for yourself at library.usask.ca!

January 09, 2012

AccessMedicine is up and running!

Access issues have been resolved for AccessMedicine, AccessPharmacy, AccessSurgery and AccessEmergencyMedicine collections!

December 21, 2011

New Hours Beginning January 3

The Veterinary Medicine Library will begin opening at 8:00 am Monday to Friday on January 3, 2012.

Our new hours are:

Monday to Thursday 8:00 am to 8:00 pm
Friday 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday 12:00 noon to 5:00 pm

December 01, 2011

Your Opinion is Needed

The University Library participates in a province-wide program, which purchases access to a number of electronic information resources (e.g. Canada Info Desk). Please provide your feedback on the resources purchased by this initiative by taking a 5-10 minute online survey. Closes December 16th.

September 12, 2011

Changes to Copyright Guidelines

The University of Saskatchewan’s copyright practices and guidelines are changing as a result of the university’s decision to opt out of the license agreement with Access Copyright. The agreement lapsed on August 31, 2011 and from that date on the university has adopted new fair dealing guidelines that will ensure we are compliant with copyright legislation. Those changes have caused the University Library to modify some of its services and procedures.

More information on how this affects library services is available at http://libguides.usask.ca/copyright
For detailed information about copyright and the University, click on http://usask.ca/copyright

September 07, 2011

Check out our New Books!

New items are regularly added to our collection. You can view our new resources by clicking on the "New Books" link at the left. This list is updated weekly.

After-Hours Access to Learning Commons

Students can have access to the Learning Commons computers even when the library is closed. After hours, these computers are added to a pool of computers which are accessible remotely. The site to access the Learning Commons Computer pool is http://uremote.usask.ca
More information regarding terms of use for these after-hours LC computers is available at
http://library.usask.ca/howto/URemote_LC.php

August 16, 2011

Fall and Winter Hours Begin August 29

Our regular library hours at the Veterinary Medicine Library begin on Monday, August 29, 2011.

Monday to Thursday 8:30 am to 8:00 pm
Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Saturday and Sunday 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm

The Library will be closed on Monday, September 5, 2011 for Labour Day.

July 11, 2011

Welcome to Susan Murphy and Erin Watson

The Veterinary Medicine Library is pleased to welcome Susan Murphy and Erin Watson. Susan Murphy is the branch head for both the Health Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Libraries. Erin Watson is the liaison librarian for veterinary medicine, toxicology and biomedical sciences. Both Susan and Erin will divide their time between the Veterinary Medicine and Health Sciences Libraries. For more information, please consult http://library.usask.ca/vetmed/Library%20Information/Library%20Staff.php.

October 27, 2010

Do you want to borrow a laptop?

Come and ask us for details. Borrow a NEW laptop for 6 hours at a time. Great for alone work or group work!

July 22, 2010

New University of Saskatchewan Library Website!

The launch for the new University of Sasktchewan Library website will be on Tuesday July 27th. Let us know what you think about our new homepage. Email us!