Academic staff at ATU Sligo recommend resources for their students to read or consult. They may mention items in class, provide lists, or create series of links in Moodle. The resources may be available through the Yeats Library, or the students may be expected to purchase them, or they may be freely accessible online. Use of resources on campus is expected to be within the terms of the copyright legislation and the Institute's licence from the Irish Copyright Licencing Agency.
Many of the print books regularly used by students on Institute programmes do not have an electronic licence available for purchase. Where licences are available, they may be of different types with different prices: single simultaneous user, 3 simultaneous user, non linear lending (325 loan days total per year), unlimited site access.
Sometimes, the latest edition will be available in print but and earlier edition will be available as an ebook.
The Library will need the advice of academic staff in choosing the most appropriate licence for a particular title.
Where an electronic licence is not available, it may be possible to choose an alternative title.
Freely available online collections such as Openstax may include suitable books for use.
In the leadup to the new academic year, academic staff might wish to review their resource lists and possibly replace print items with suitable online alternatives. In doing so, they will need to be aware of copyright as well as the availability of suitable licences for online items.
In many cases, Academic staff provide their resource lists to students in the form of links on Moodle. This can sometimes raise technical issues where links are not stable or the resource they point to has moved. Some library resources include permanent links to individual items which may be used.
The Yeats Library has a software package called KeyLinks which manages resource lists. This was provided as part of a national rollout to institute of technology libraries. It has been integrated as a link into Moodle and will soon be available to academic staff to manage their resource lists, if they wish.
The Yeats Library divides its acquisitions budget each year between print and online resources. Online acquisitions are in the form of individual ebook purchases and ejournal subscriptions. There are also subscriptions to larger databases of ebooks, ejournals, standards and other material. Licenced access to Yeats Library online resources is authenticated using staff and student logins. A single search facility is provided on the Yeats Library website, branded as EOLAS. Because online learning will form a significant part of all programmes for the foreseeable future, the Yeats Library anticipates it will be moving an increasing proportion of its budget from print to the acquisition of online resources. The library will need the advice of Academic staff to ensure that its budget is directed in the most effective way.
Please email library.sligo@atu.ie if you wish to discuss library resources for the coming Academic Year.