Category Archives: Service Announcements

Borrowing Books Over the Christmas Vacation

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With Christmas and the end of term looming, we’ve already received several enquiries asking when our Christmas vacation loan period begins.

From Friday 7th December all Long, Week Loan and Leisure Reading books borrowed or renewed can be kept over the Christmas vacation.

1st & 2nd Year Undergraduate loans will then be due back on Wednesday 9th January.

Finalist & Postgraduate loans will be due back on Friday 11th January.

Book recalls will also be suspended from Friday 7th December, resuming again on 4th January, meaning as usual we will NOT be recalling books over the Christmas vacation, although please note that any books requested & borrowed from our Hold shelves with outstanding requests on them will still only issue for one week.

Essential Email and Groupware Maintenance, 27th November

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Working with Microsoft, IT Services will be carrying out some essential maintenance work on part of our email infrastructure in order to maintain a resilient and supported email and groupware system. This work has the potential to be disruptive so IT Services have discussed and agreed the timing of this work with stakeholders and colleagues around the University. The work will take place on 27th November 2018 from 08:30-10:00am.

From 8:30am email sent to staff and students from outside of the University will be queued in order to prevent loss of email.  From this point you will not receive email from outside the University, nor email that is sent to email aliases and lists email addresses e.g. @lists.lboro.ac.uk, @dept.lboro.ac.uk until the work is complete.

Email within Office 365 i.e. between staff and students plus some types of groups, will continue to work as normal.

All other email to and from external recipients, including certain types of University mailing list and corporate applications, will be queued and delivered once the work is complete.

It is planned for work to be complete by 10:00am.  Further communication will be sent if the work extends beyond this and into the agreed 2 day ‘at risk’ window.

Once complete the work will provide us with a more reliable supported email and Groupware infrastructure for staff and students.

There is a possibility that this work will overrun, but IT Services will communicate this if this occurs. If you have further questions or queries please contact IT Services via IT.Services@lboro.ac.uk or telephone 01509 222333.

PC Clinic and Software Downloads Module page on LEARN

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Want to keep track of the latest IT developments across campus, as well as news about software and hardware upgrades? Self-Enrol onto the PC Clinic and Software Downloads Module page on LEARN.

The PC Clinic page features essential information while highlighting the key IT services available to students such as printing and computer lab availability. Including tutorials for Printing and connecting devices to the Wi-FI.

The Software Downloads page features download links to a range of different software with FREE access to Microsoft Office 2016 also, including specialist software such as MatLab and SPSS.

While You’ve Been Away… Changes in the Library Over the Summer

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A warm welcome back to all of our returning students! As usual we haven’t been resting on our laurels during the long summer break, and we’ve made a few changes since June…

Single Sign On. Over the summer we’ve begun work on streamlining access to our electronic resources by moving away from Athens authentication to a single sign on process using the University username & password. The project is ongoing and so you need to be aware that there are:

  • Some resources which have moved from Athens log in to Single sign on
  • Some resources are in progress
  • Some resources are still Athens authenticated.
  • You can keep up to date on developments through our news link here.

Self Collection of Hold Requests. We have started storing hold requests on the shelves in the High Demand section on Level 3 so that users can collect them and issue them without having to ask for them at the main desk. This only applies to our stock – Inter Library Loans will still be stored in the office behind the desk.

It’s very easy to use – books can be found in alphabetical order on the shelves filed under the first three letters of the user’s surname and the last three numbers of their ID. For example, our own Matt Cunningham would be CUN331. Where a user only has two letters in their surname, just use those two letters followed by the last 3 digits of their ID number.

New Decor. All the old workstation desks on Levels 1 & 2 have been replaced with new ones. We’ve added plasma screens displaying booking details outside of every Group Study Room in the Library, and the Help Desk on Level 4 has been removed to expand the study area.

Wifi Upgrade. IT Services completed their upgrade of the Wifi coverage throughout the building, so hopefully you won’t encounter any more dead spots!

Oh yes – and as you can see from the picture above, we had the Red Arrows fly over for the Graduation Ceremony. As the old police recruitment poster used to say – “Dull it isn’t!”

Library Car Park Closures During Freshers’ Week

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New students will be arriving for the start of term on Tuesday 25th, Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th September. To assist with their arrival into halls various car parks will be open only to arriving students on these days, including the Library car park on the following days:

  • On Tuesday 25th September half of the Library car park will be closed.
  • On Thursday 27th September the entire Library car park will be closed.

Security recommend that visitors use the multi-storey car park next to the Engineering School, which is only a five minute walk to the Library. A full list of the car parks affected is available here – http://www.lboro.ac.uk/internal/news/2018/september/car-park-closures-for-freshers-arrival.html

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Changes to Accessing Online Resources

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The Library is currently working with IT Services to remove Athens authentication for accessing online resources and moving to Single Sign-On using your University username and password. This means that when you access resources that previously required your Athens username and password, you will be taken to a University sign on page and prompted to enter your University username and password.

Some resources have already switched including Box of Broadcasts and ProQuest resources. Over the course of the next few months we will be continuing to switch other online resources to Single Sign-On. In most cases you should notice no difference when accessing resources on campus. While we are in a transition phase, we recommend that you use the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client to access resources off campus.

We will update the list of resources that are changing on this post as they make the switch. If you have any queries or experience any issues with logging in to resources during the changeover please contact us at library@lboro.ac.uk

The following resources have made the transition:

2018 School Games on Campus – Advice to Library Visitors

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The 2018 School Games are being held on campus at the end of next week, from Thursday 30th August to Sunday 2nd September. Visitors to the Library should be aware that in order to allow for set up, operation and de-rig of the School Games, some car parks, roads and pedestrian areas across campus will be fully or partially closed. There are also likely to be increased noise levels on campus at certain times and in particular areas.

Specific to Library visitors, the top tier of the Library Car Park will be closed to visitors from Thursday 29th August to Sunday 3rd September, although the Library will remain closed over that weekend.

Further information about the even can be found below:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/internal/events/event/2018-school-games.html

We apologise in advance for any inconvenience.

Box of Broadcasts Moved to Single Sign-On Access

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As part of our ongoing project to move all of our resources to a Single Sign-On system from Athens authentication we have just completed transferring Box of Broadcasts (BoB) across to this new system, and we encourage users to take the following steps to ensure their access is uninterrupted.

  • Clear any cookies on your PC.
  • Either from the Library Catalogue, or from any other link, please update your BoB bookmark to: https://login.learningonscreen.ac.uk/wayfless.php?entityID=https%3A%2F%2Fidp.lboro.ac.uk%2Fsimplesaml%2Fsaml2%2Fidp%2Fmetadata.php&target=https%3A%2F%2Flearningonscreen.ac.uk%2Fondemand . This should enable you to link direct from on-campus without the need for any login and from off-campus would direct you to the blue Loughborough University login screen.
  • The first time you use this route you should be asked to re-register and then there should be a pop-up giving you the option to import playlists and so forth. This can be a bit slow in appearing, though some users may find that their playlists automatically migrate across.
  • Once you have re-registered and imported your lists subsequent access will be much simpler and quicker.
  • If you are using BoB for teaching purposes please re-register ASAP so that we can address any problems with playlists etc. before teaching commences.

August Bank Holiday & Special Assessment Period

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Just to remind all of our visitors that the Library will be CLOSED along with the rest of the University during the entire Bank Holiday this coming weekend, and that we will not be re-opening until 9am on Wednesday 29th August.

This will coincide with the beginning of the Special Assessment Period, when the Library will be temporarily extending its opening hours to 9am – 8pm on weekdays from Wednesday 29th August to Thursday 6th September. Please note that we remain closed at weekends. From Friday 7th September we return to our usual vacation opening times for the remainder of September.

Changes to Electronic Resource Password Authentication

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The University has set up a project group to investigate and implement the decommissioning of Athens authentication for accessing our resources and instead use a Single Sign-on system. This process already has begun with the resources among our Gale subscription being one of our first publishers to make the switch.

For Gale resources there should be no difference when accessing a Gale resource on campus but when accessing it from off campus, users not using the VPN will now be taken to the University sign on page (like the image at the top of this post)  rather than the Athens one. Once users have logged in they should be able to access the resource in the same way they can from on campus.

This week we have begun changing to this system for Proquest resources, including a number of databases and all of our Ebook Central ebooks. This means when users access a Proquest ebook they will no longer have to enter their Athens username and password but will instead be using their University details.

Over the next few months it is anticipated that all of our electronic resources’ suppliers will be switched over to single-sign on and Athens will be decommissioned. This will have the obvious advantage that users will no longer have to remember a separate password for off-campus or ebook access. There is no intention to switch off the Cisco AnyConnect VPN which will continue to work in the same way it does now (i.e. it allocates a campus IP address to the user utilising the VPN).

We will issue further updates as the project progresses. If you have any queries, or experience any issues with logging in to any resources during the changeover, please contact us for help and advice – Library@lboro.ac.uk