eReader Prize Draw

As (hopefully) you’ll be aware we’ve been running a pilot ereader loan scheme in our libraries, which came to end in November. An Amazon Kindle and Sony eReader were loaded with content and loaned to customers in exchange for feedback as part of an evaluation project. Those who took part in our survey were entered into a prize draw to win their own ebook reader!

The prize draw
The prize draw event was held in the Western Bank Library Exhibition Gallery on 6 December 2010. We were delighted to welcome Joe Oliver, Sheffield Students’ Union Education Officer, to introduce the event and pick out the names of two lucky winners. Prize draw entrants were invited along and the event was also attended by Martin Lewis, Director of Library Services, Heather Thrift and Tracey Clarke, the Associate and Assistant Library Directors, and the ebook reader evaluation project group members.

The winners
The lucky ebook reader winners are from the departments of Philosophy and Automatic Systems & Control Engineering, winning an Amazon Kindle 3G and a Sony Reader Touch respectively. Neither of the winners were able to attend the draw, though we’ve since contacted them with the good news and they’re very pleased!

Thank you!
Many thanks to everyone who took part in our eBook reader evaluation. The results of the survey will be made available shortly on the Library web site.

More photos can also be found on Flickr.

QR Code Competition

During October/November 2009 the university library ran a competition (sponsored by JISC) to win an iPod Touch. Students were asked to comment on the library blogs, suggesting ways the library could use QR codes to support services. The range of responses we received has given the project group plenty of food for thought and they would like to thank all for your participation.

The lucky winner, Dami Bakare (a third year dental student), was drawn out of a hat by Paul Tobin, President of the Student Union, before Christmas and was presented with his prize early this week.

To read more about QR codes - what they are and how to use them - take a look at the library news page and have a practice with the codes found on our blogs. Any further comments about the library's use of QR codes are always welcome or if you'd prefer to email suggestions you can contact us at library@sheffield.ac.uk.

For more photos of the presentation have a look at our Flickr photostream and check out the article in Forge Press.

Fancy winning an iPod Touch?

The image on the right is a QR or 'quick response' code. Originating in Japan they were initially used by companies as tracking devices. Unlike traditional barcodes QR codes are two dimensional and are able to store both alpha and numerical content (up to 7000 numerical or 4300 alpha-numerical characters long). The information stored within these codes can be anything from urls, to telephone numbers, to addresses or even entire poems.

The QR code above converts into the Library homepage. For you to be able to read this you’ll need a mobile camera phone and reader software. Some of the later Nokia phones already have the software installed and for iPhones it’s easy to pick something up from the app store, like BeeTagg or Quickmark. You could try Googling your phone’s make and model to find out what software you need or alternatively try some of the following:

• Kaywa ;


• Upcode ;


• Quickmark;


• BeeTagg.

To read the code you just need to take a photograph with your phone’s camera and allow the reader software to do the rest. For those of you with Internet enabled phones you’ll be directed straight to the URL via your mobile browser. To find out more about QR codes visit the library news page and for details on connecting your phone to the university’s wireless network have a look at the instructions via CiCS.

The University Library is currently piloting the use of QR codes and we are keen to discuss your ideas on how we could be making use of this technology to support our library services. Some suggestions have included codes which link to the library catalogue and our library blogs for mobile bookmarking purposes or the inclusion of codes on catalogue records to save bibliographic details. We are also working on attaching QR codes to a sample of our paper journal runs to link users to their electronic equivalents via Find it @ Sheffield.

If you have any ideas about how we can use QR codes in the Library we'd like to hear them. By leaving a comment against this blog post you'll automatically be entered into our competition to win a brand spanking new iPod Touch.

The deadline for entries is 30 November and the competition is open to all University of Sheffield students, via the four library blogs:

• Science & Engineering;


• Arts;


• Social Sciences;


• Medicine, Dentistry and Health.