Each terminal uses approximately 15 watts of power every hour that it is powered on. Assuming that it is turned off for around 13 hours overnight, this works out to a saving of 71.175 kilowatt hours each year for each terminal.

For every 100 terminals that are powered off in this way, QMU will be able to reduce annual CO2 emis- sions by over 3,784kg. This equates to around 1,033kg of carbon or the equivalent of 10,000 miles in the typical family car. (http://is.gd/bqVFc)

IS are in the process of testing the latest version of the Voice Activat- ed Directory (VAD), and hope to be able to roll this out as a replace- ment to the existing service in the near future.

The major enhancement of this version is the abil- ity to cancel a transfer if the VAD misinterprets your request – background noise, poor call quality and noise on the line can occasionally result in a transfer to the wrong place or person; this new feature ena- bles you to say “Cancel” if this occurs, at which point you can either repeat the request or transfer to the Operator by dialling “0”.

The VAD is an application developed by Nuance, who are a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for business and consumers around the world – they also develop Dragon Naturally Speak- ing, a well known Speech Recognition application for PCs and mobile devices.

During semester time the LRC will still be staffed from 9am to 9pm Monday to Friday and from 9am to 5pm at the weekend. Outwith these times however you will be able to carry on us- ing the LRC for study and self-service.

For your safety there will be a few restrictions on where you can go during unstaffed hours. You will have full access to the open area and the 80+ terminals in front of the LRC Service Desk. The Academic Reserve room (1-162) will also be open so that you can access the Short Loan collection and the 17 Quiet Study spaces. None of the other rooms will be accessible. And whilst you may visit the east end of the LRC to collect books from the shelves, you must bring them back to the LRC Service Desk area to read them.

Any items that require to be issued by staff will not be able to be borrowed during unstaffed hours – e.g. DVDs, items on hold or inter-library loans. However, we are in the process of implementing a new Library Manage- ment System which should enable us to extend the services available during unstaffed hours. Vending ma- chines will also be appearing soon in the LRC to give you access to cold drinks and snacks.

related items? For advice and quotes contact itpurchasing@qmu.ac.uk with your requirements.

The repository team is delighted to announce that the 1000th de- posit in eResearch was reached in January. The open access arti- cle was co-authored by Rebecca Horn, a researcher from QMU’s Institute for International Health and Development.

Horn, Rebecca and Charters, Simon and Vahidy, Saleem (2009) The victim-witness experience in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Inter- national Review of Victimology, Vol. 15. pp. 277-298. ISSN 0269-7580

Business Intelligence (BI) is the gathering of cross-organisational data in order to acquire the understanding necessary to drive informed strategic and tactical business decision-making. It employs a range of information technologies that enable business users to store, retrieve and analyse data in an accessible way.

QMU’s BI Enhancement Project is using the data from QMU’s core cor- porate systems to generate comprehensive integrated management in- formation which is then presented out via the Business Objects reporting tool. More information on this key strategic project can be viewed here:

The Project is steered by a cross-institutional BI Project Board, chaired by Rosalyn Marshall, VP (Resources and Development) with project work being managed by IS and undertaken by our BI Coordinator, Ranjit Nagubandi. Please do not hesitate to contact Ranjit (RNagubandi@qmu.ac.uk) or Evelyn Marshall (EMarshall@qmu.ac.uk) if you would like any further information regarding any of the above.

The YouthWire application is a student-based platform for ena- bling access to educational and social resources, the latest stu- dent news, offers and opportuni- ties. Queen Margaret University is trialling the application this se- mester and if successful, will use it permanently. For this phase, the Learning Resource Centre and the Students' Union will be delivering up-to-date information on the services they offer and news and events.

The LRC currently provides the Reference Manager application to all staff and students to manage their bibliographic references and to inte- grate with Microsoft Word for the production of reference lists in docu- ments.

As a result of perceived shortcomings in this product, a project has been undertaken to investigate other available applications to see whether any cost savings and enhanced features can be found. The initial phase of research has now completed and three possible alternatives have been highlighted for further investigation:

• Mendeley • RefWorks • Zotero

As Rebecca is currently working in Sri Lanka, Barbara McPake (Direc- tor of the Institute for International Health and Development) accepted a bottle of champagne on her behalf.

.… That you can access more than 130 databases, 8000 full text electronic jour- nals, over 5000 titles of additional full text

So far this year the Liaison Serv- ices team have delivered over 480 hours to an audience of over 5016 staff and students. Our sessions cover all of the electronic resourc- es, journals and books, how to use traditional print resources, and soft- ware such as Reference Manager.

have a session scheduled with us. If not then you can always come and see us at the subject enquiries point at the LRC Service Desk.

The LRC is pleased to report that, following successful negotiations by representatives of SHEDL, three new publishers have joined the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library this year. They are Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press and Berg Publishing and between them provide full text access back to 1996, where available, for 288 titles.

Six publishers now provide material under SHEDL agreements with con- tent from the American Chemical Society, Springer and Cambridge Uni- versity Press being available since 2009. In total there are now 1876 titles available through SHEDL.

The SHEDL consortium consists of all 19 HEIs in Scotland and has a business model that all institutions should get the same access and at costs not exceeding their existing spend with the publishers selected. If an institution doesn’t have any subscriptions with a selected publisher then their access to content is free of charge, for example QMU does not pay for access to the material from the American Chemical Society.

First year usage statistics show an increase of 41.3% for 2009 compared to 2008 across the consortium. For QMU our usage in 2009 for Springer increased by 82.5%, for Cambridge University Press by 33% and for the American Chemical Society by 100% as previously we did not have ac- cess to their content.

We have been shortlisted in two categories in the prestigious Times Higher Education Lead- ership and Management Awards 2010 which recognise outstanding achievement in higher education.