The start of this academic year sees the official launch of IOE LibGuides  – your  guide to the Newsam Library & Archives.  IOE LibGuides  is a user-friendly, mobile-friendly site which has the latest information on library services and which provides you with the opportunity to interact with us.  IOE LibGuides are organised in three groups: guides to the various Collections, guides to the various library  Services  available to you and How to… guides.   

The Collections guides introduce you to the different library and archives collections highlighting resources that will be useful for your academic work.  For example, we have guides on the Curriculum Resources  which PGCE students will find useful.  The guides on Audio Visual Resources Online  point to free and subscription resources available on the Internet which you can use to spruce up your presentations.  A guide listing both the databases we subscribe to and freely available resources which will help you find journal articles for your literature review.  Additionally, a guide on resources relevant to International Education is available and guides on the Archives which the Newsam Library is well known for.  The Archives guide highlights the rich and distinctive collections that are held at the IOE and could potentially be very useful in locating primary source materials for your research.   All the guides also provide links to external resources selected by the librarians and so help aggregate information on a particular subject or collection  that are available externally.  A full list of guides that belong to this category is available to browse here: A-Z List of Collections LibGuides 

The How to … guides will help you get started on developing some of the skills that are useful for academic work.  The Getting Started guide, for instance, provides all the information you need on library and computing accounts, on Accessing Resources Remotely, on the best ways of Searching, on how to use RSS to set up alerts in order to keep up with your research and EndNote, Mendeley and Zotero which introduce you to the different bibliographic management software packages – some available to download for free.  There are many more guides in this section and you can browse the list of How to … guides on the site.

The Services LibGuides include instructions on how to request an Interlibrary Loan and/or how to use the Postal Loans and Photocopying Services.

Because LibGuides embeds new technologies and social media, we hope you will interact with us from the site – each box has an option for you to post your comments – and you can also submit links if you know of resources on another website we may have missed. Some guide creators would like immediate feedback from you on whether you found the information on the guide useful and so do add your comments or fill in the online polls.

All the guides link directly to our online enquiry service called LibAnswers  – you simply click on the  ‘Ask Us’ option and you will be taken to a knowledge base where frequently asked questions are displayed.  You can also submit your enquiry from LibAnswers or send us your query from your phone by  text to  +44 20 3322 1810  or via Twitter @IOELibrary.

The site is mobile in that you can access it on your  smart phone (a phone with access to the Internet) and/or on a tablet e.g. iPad.  We are giving away pens, bags and bookmarks with the web address for IOE LibGuides so that you can have it readily available when you are studying.  Do come into the Library and find out more about how to use IOE LibGuides if you have not already been to a LibraryInduction.  Oh, and do let us know what you think and how we can improve the site!  We’re always keen to hear from you.

Nazlin Bhimani