Christmas Vacation information

The following sites will close at 5pm on 24 December:

• Western Bank Library
• Health Sciences Library - Royal Hallamshire Hospital
• St. George's Library

These sites will reopen on 2 January at 9am

The Health Sciences Library - Royal Hallamshire Hospital will also open on Monday 30 December – Tuesday 31 December between 9am - 5pm (self-service only)

• The Information Commons will be open as usual 24 hours throughout the Christmas Vacation, but on a self service basis only.

Please remember; a valid UCard is required at all times to pass through the entrance turnstiles.

For information on how to get your Library PIN, please see http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/ucards/ucardpin

For vacation loan periods, please see http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/services/xmasloan

More information for students can be found at http://www.shef.ac.uk/students/news/christmas13-1.334315

British Library - Doctoral Open Days for PhD students

The British Library is running some Doctoral Open Days for this academic year and booking is now open for events taking place in 2014.
These events introduce new PhD students to the British Library and provide orientation regarding broader information environment for their subject. As well as days for students in History, English and Media, Cultural Studies and Journalism; this year an event for students in Environmental Science, and one for all students who want to know more about Digital Research have been added
The following events are now open to book:

• 13 January – Environmental Science
• 17 January - Digital Research
• 20 January - History 1
• 31 January - History 2
• 3 February - English 1
• 14 February - English 2
• 24 February – Media, Cultural Studies and Journalism

All events take place in the British Library Conference Centre, London and cost £5. Lunch and refreshments are provided. We recommend that to make the most of the day attendees get a free Reader Pass before the event. A small number of £20 travel bursaries are available for each event to students coming from outside Greater London. Further information and booking at: http://bit.ly/1iZvmmg

New improved BoB launching January 2014

A new version of Box of Broadcasts (BoB) - the online off-air TV and radio recording service – is due to be launched on 6 January 2014. The service is being upgraded as the result of a project between BUFVC, JISC and the BBC. Planned changes include a fresh look and feel together with improved searching and navigation. There will also be new content, including access to more than 800,000 new BBC TV and radio programmes from the BBC archive and an additional 13 foreign language channels.

As this is a substantial upgrade, BoB will be offline from 13 to 23 December 2013 to prepare for the new system. This means that you will not be able to access BoB during this period. The new system should be available over the Christmas holiday period, but will be unsupported prior to the official launch in January.

For more information on the upgrade, see 'BoB National is getting an upgrade' or follow @bufvc_bob on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest news on the launch.

Christmas Vacation Loans

Before you go home please check your myLibrary Account in StarPlus to make sure that your items have been renewed over the vacation and return any that need to be brought back sooner. (don’t forget you can also renew the items yourself)

	Issued/Renewed	Due for return
Normal vacation loans for non-requested items	From Monday 9 December	Monday 20 January
Vacation loans for books already requested	From Monday 16 December	Monday 20 January

If an item is not requested we will continue to automatically renew it beyond 20th January but any that are requested during vacation will need to be returned on that date.

Please cancel any requests that you no longer need.

NB These loans do not apply to external borrowers

MyPC Booking service

CiCS have taken the decision to turn off the MyPC booking service. In the last few weeks they have received numerous reports of this system logging students out, causing an increasing risk of the loss of unsaved work.
This means that the following computers within the Library can no longer be prebooked:
Information Commons - all levels
Western Bank Library - Level 6
St. George's Library - PCs 31 to 42

Please note that we do have a Laptop loan service available at all sites; Please see http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/laptoploans/ic for more details.

For more information on this decision and any future updates,  please see the CiCS blog http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/news