Support for
Academic Staff

ATU Library is committed to working with academics to provide the best range of information resources to support you in your teaching and your students in their learning.

Library staff are always available to help, whether it’s to find books and other materials or to use any of the services in the Library help is provided at the issue desk.

Please ask a Library staff member for assistance if you need help.

If you are off campus you can contact us via Live Chat, email or by phone.

Checkout LibGuides, our online subject and information guides or our growing number of online tutorials.


Reading Lists

You can order a books, eBooks, and other resources for your students for teaching purposes using the online purchase suggestion form . Please note you need to click on ’If you have a Shibboleth account, please click here to log in’ and enter your ATU email address and network password to submit a suggestion.

Due to budget constraints there are limits on what can be ordered. Typically, one copy of an item is ordered for a module, depending on the type of item being requested, and the cost of the item. This can be adjusted and to determine how many copies can be purchased for see our Collection Development Policy .

You will be contacted when your orders have been entered onto our Library Management System and the requested item(s) should arrive on the shelves in a few weeks. We will contact you if an item is unavailable. If you have any queries about your order, you can email Library.GalwayMayo@atu.ie.


Linking to Library Resources from Moodle

Staff can use Moodle as an effective & efficient way to direct students to specific library resources, including eBooks and online journal articles. Owing to licensing restrictions our online databases and journal suppliers do not allow pdf downloads of articles to be uploaded to Moodle, consequently all library resources appearing in Moodle must be links to the eBooks, journals articles etc. and not the pdfs or scanned versions.

If you are linking your students to library online resources from within Moodle, it is important to ensure that those resources will be accessible at a later date and off-campus.

When linking to online articles or e-books it is important to use a ‘stable’, ‘persistent’ or ‘permalink’ URL – that is, a link that will remain constant. Most online resources including EBSCO, include session information in the URL that will expire after a period of time so these cannot be used to create stable links (thus, you cannot simply use the web address (URL) you get when you retrieve the article).

To create a link that can be used in Moodle, and works on- and off-campus, ensure the ‘stable’, ‘persistent’ or ‘permalink’ URL is used (see eBooks linking example). This will ensure that your students are prompted to login to ATU and so be recognised as authorised ATU users.

To add the link to Moodle:

  1. Go to Moodle and log in.
  2. Turn editing ON.
  3. Go to Week/Topic
  4. From the ‘Add a Resource’ drop down menu select URL’
  5. Enter a name for the resource (e.g. the journal title, etc).
  6. Paste the URL in the Location text field.
  7. Click ‘Save and return to course’.

Linking to library resources can sometime seem difficult. Please don’t hesitate to contact Library.GalwayMayo@atu.ie for assistance.


Subject Librarians

Each of the Institute’s schools has a designated subject librarian. The role of the subject librarian is to work with their designated School to help identify and meet the information needs of staff, researchers and students.

Your Subject Librarian is available:

  • To schedule a personal consultation for advice on how to best discover the literature related to your research area.
  • For advice on material selection and acquisition.
  • For guidance on information skills, including using the online library, database searching and evaluating information.
  • To give advice and support on using EndNote online to collect & manage your references.
  • To attend programme board meetings and school staff meetings where appropriate.
  • To meet with student representatives.

Information Skills

The Library is committed to ensuring that all our students gain the lifelong skills of Information Literacy.  We believe that these skills are best delivered within the context of the student’s academic programme of study.  Teaching in a variety of settings including library tours, tutorials and hands on workshops, we aim to help students develop the skills that will enable them to be successful learners and researchers. To find out more please see Information Skills.

To complement the mandatory first year Learning & Innovation Skills (LIS) module ATU libraries offers four standalone library instruction sessions which aim to provide students with the key competencies to learn information literacy skills.

The library covers the following standalone sessions:

  • Information Sources
    Primary &secondary sources, academic books, scholarly journals, peer review, comparison of Google and Library databases, Dewey and how to locate a book on the shelves.
  • Using the Online library
    Searching the library collections using Search + Find , explaining how facets work, inter-branch request forms online, brief outline of databases and evaluating resources.
  • Copyright & Plagiarism
    Definition of copyright and plagiarism, what they are, what you must do to avoid plagiarism.
  • Citation & Referencing
    Outline of the Harvard Style of Referencing the manual way.

See our Library Skills Support LibGuide for more information.

Booking requests can be made by staff for your students by contacting Library.GalwayMayo@atu.ie.


Document Supply

The Document Supply Service provides academic staff with access to information resources not held in our Libraries.  While we endeavour to provide for the most up-to-date information resources, it is not possible to stock everything. If you don’t have access to the items you need, we will be happy to help you locate them. If the item(s) you need are not available in the Library, please let us know through our suggestion page if you think it should be added to the Library’s print or online collections or contact your subject librarian.

See Document Supply Service for more information.

The contact person for document supply at your campus library is:

Dublin Road & Wellpark

Deirdre Geoghegan
deirdre.geoghegan@atu.ie
091-742792

Mayo

Anne O’Haire
anne.ohaire@atu.ie
094-9043119

Connemara

Suzanne Rushe
suzanne.rushe@atu.ie
095-41660