The Manchester College encourages students to use online resources where appropriate. Some of these resources are freely available over the internet and others are paid for by subscription. In order to use some of the services you will need to use a validation service called Athens. Our Online resources are listed below but you might also wish to look at the following five headings as well:
BOB
BoB is an off-air recording and media archive service. This is a fantastic resource, allowing access to an extensive archive of over 45,000 television and radio programmes. Users can also record TV and radio programmes that are scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days and retrieve programmes from the last seven days from a selected list of recorded channels. (Please note: You must have an Athens account in order to use this service.)
Newspapers
Links to the main daily newspapersReference Sources
A collection of encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference "books"Search Engines
A useful collection of search enginesUsing Search Engines - Tutorial
A quick tutorial about maximising your effective use of search engines
Online Resources: Study Skills and IT help
Skills4studycampus
skills4studycampus is an interactive e-learning resource, focusing on four of the core study skills, offering you a stimulating mix of activities to help with your learning. You need to use this with your Athens password at all times. Please select the Athens Authentication option.
Smart PC Guides (Microsoft Office)
Online guides to Word, Excel and Powerpoint 2007 and 2010 versions; available at foundation, intermediate and expert levels. Please note: these guides are only available inside College.
Online Resources: E-book collections
Myilibrary (ebooks)
Myilibrary is a growing collection of electronic books or "ebooks" available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The full texts of these books are available electronically and the collection is expanding all the time. (Login with Athens when you are off site.)Ebrary
The collection of Further Education e-books supplied by JISC. (Login with Athens when you are off site.)
Bookboon
A collection of 500+ books available to download for free! Subjects covered focus on Business, Economics, Engineering, Natural Sciences and I.T.
Online Resources: Database subscriptions
Care Knowledge
A gateway for up-to-date information about social care issues in England.EBSCOhost Research Databases
EBSCOhost is an online reference system with a variety of popular full text databases ranging from general to subject specific ones. (Login with Athens when you are off site.)e-Law Student
A comprehensive resource for law students; featureslectures, articles, cases, statutes and revision notes. (Login with Athens when you are off site.)Essential Articles online
A comprehensive reference source addressing contemporary social issues. Some of the many subjects covered are: Abortion, Bullying, Cloning, Euthanasia, Homeslessness, Refugees and Vegetarianism. (Only available within College. You will need to obtain a username and password from the LRC staff to use this resource.)Gale Databases
The College Library subscribes to a large number of electronic journals and magazines through a service called 'Gale Databases'. If you have never used 'Gale Databases' and need help here is a short user guide. (Login with Athens when you are off site.)Hairdressing Training
Several haircuts are featured witha photographic step-by-step guide, a quick textual guide and a few simple questions to test your understanding of the material. The lessons section of the site covers much of the theory behind the haircuts, whilst the products section looks at the equipment and hair care products that the student will need to know as part of their education. This is an ideal reference resource for students on the NVQ Level 2 course.IHS (The Construction Information Service) Login from INSIDE College
IHS (The Construction Information Service) Login from OUTSIDE College with your Athens Password
Previously known as Technical Indexes, IHS is a leading edge supplier of standards, regulatory, product and supplier information to industries worldwide including consturction/engineering, aerospace/aviation, government/defence, health and safety and environment, energy, rail/transport.Intute Virtual Training Suite
This is a collection of free Internet tutorials to help you learn how to get the best from the Web for your education and research.
From end of July 2011, the Virtual Training Suite has been taken over by TutorPro, who will host the new site and tutorials and work with the content providers to keep the content up to date whilst moving the whole project forward into the world of smartphones, tablets and mobile devices. Access these via their KnowledgeBank section or vial the link at the start of this section.
ILRT will continue to host the popular Internet Detective tutorial, as well as the three JISC Digital Media tutorials.