Monday, April 23, 2018

Choose the books we buy - and access them anywhere

More books is running again from 23rd April to 13th May! Tell York which books you'd like them to buy no matter where you're based -  books are bought in eformat unless you specifically request print, so they're available to you in York, Hull, Scarborough, Grimsby, Scunthorpe....

See https://www.york.ac.uk/library/news/2018/morebooks-summer/ for links and details.



Image: Samoff, Tim. Big books https://flic.kr/p/4Xevm CC licence.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Buried Treasure: rediscovering the York County Hospital Medical Library

York County Hospital opened in 1740, and established a library in the early 1800s. 
The York Medical Society rare books collection at the University of York contains a number of titles which originated from the York County Hospital Medical Library (YCHML).  An exhibition based around the history of the YCHML, its holdings, and its link with the York Medical Society and the development of the York Medical School is currently available in the Harry Fairhurst corridor at the University of York Library until the end of June.

Image: original in the Borthwick Institute,  University of York, RET/8/6 under Creative Commons licence (CC-BY-NC). Taken from http://informationdirectorate.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/mortal-remains-life-death-and-medical.html

Monday, April 9, 2018

Difficulty accessing resources from one institution because you're at another?


"Have spent a very frustrating 15 min trying to get OUP to forget I am York so I can access a JNCI article via my Hull account from a York network machine.
What is the best way to get systems to forget which university you are part of?"


Sound familiar? If so read on for some suggestions of how to get round the multi-institutional abundance of HYMS:

Tactic 1: use different browsers and go incognito
Browse Incognito to use the internet without your browser remembering the sites, pages you’ve visited or saved user accounts you may normally have.
Example: have Google Chrome open as normal for your York resources and Firefox open for Hull. Enable Firefox Incognito by going to the three line option in the top right hand corner and simply selecting the New private window option.

Tactic 2: discover VPN and the HYMS portal
VPN access allows you to access the desktop you would have via that institution no matter where you are. It will also therefore give you any automatic on-campus access for resources which you would normally have. You can find out more details regarding the:

HYMS portal at https://itservices.hyms.ac.uk/
University of Hull VPN at https://share.hull.ac.uk/Services/ICT/SitePages/VPN%20-%20Working%20Remotely.aspx
University of York VPN at https://www.york.ac.uk/it-services/services/vpn/


Tactic 3: Always follow the path (whether you've used tactic 1 or 2)
Remember when searching for ejournals to use the Unicat available at http://libguides.hull.ac.uk/medicine. There can often be several different routes/platforms from which a title can be available from. This means that even if you know we hold a title but you search for it directly on Google et al you will not necessarily be taken down the correct access routes which we subscribe to. So, stay on the path (http://libguides.hull.ac.uk/medicine) and don’t wander when out.


Image from the Wellcome Collection: A girl pretending to be frightened by a young boy in a fox mask. Colour woodcut by Yamamoto Shoun, 1906. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/b95j7juv.