Help and Training
Free online training
Take part in an
online training event which will allow you to
experience an instructor led session on how to find social services
information from your desk. Find dates for these events here.
Training guides
Access our guide to searching on
SSKS and managing your results and our two part guide
to accessing full text journal articles:
Visit our Training and Promotion
page for access to training and promotional materials
designed to help you raise awareness of SSKS in your own
organisation.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is SSKS?
Social Services Knowledge Scotland (SSKS) is a portal to a
wealth of knowledge and evidence relevant to social services policy
and practice. You will find a rich variety of high quality
materials from leading UK and worldwide research and educational
institutions.
SSKS is built upon NHS Education for Scotland's established
information technology and was developed in partnership with the
Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services
(IRISS).
What
is The Knowledge Network?
The Knowledge Network, evolved from the NHS Scotland
e-Library into a comprehensive framework for finding, managing
and sharing knowledge and for collaborative working in health and
social care. The main features are:
- A wealth of 12 million information and learning
resources from more than 100 providers. These resources
are brought together to search through one integrated access point
- a kind of "Health and Social Services Google".
This includes collections of articles, books and journals,
guidelines, policy documents, resources for patients and service
users, evaluated websites and e-learning courses.
- A personal webspace. You can create your own
collections of content and features to create your own home page.
Here you can choose Quick Links, e-Learning, Journals, and many
other services. A Feeds Library allows you to choose newsfeeds to
help you to keep up to date in your area of interest in the
Keep up to Date tab.
- "What is here for me?" allows you to choose
collections of resources defined for different workforce groups and
topics. My Resource Space also allows you to save
and organize your personal collections of resources and to share
them with others via email or tagging.
- Online community toolsto help groups of health
and social services staff and partners to work and learn together
using tools such as wikis, blogs, discussions forums, tagging and
personal profiles.
Do I need a password?
Much of the material on SSKS is freely available but for
licensing reasons some materials, particularly journal articles,
are password protected. SSKS uses a password protection system
known as Athens.
How can I
register for an Athens Account?
All social services staff employed in Scotland are eligible for
an Athens password. Go to /login.aspx and
fill in the form. Your Athens password and username will be sent
you within a couple of days. If you have any difficulties, please
contact the SSKS team ssks@nes.scot.nhs.uk
Access the Athens registration guide here.
Where do I
login?
The Login / Register link is in the middle of
the top bar on the SSKS homepage.
Do I have to log in
to access everything on SSKS?
You will need to log in with your Athens password to view
articles and journals, and to save your preferred resources to your
resource space.
You can quickly and easily access the resources you find using
the search box on the homepage without
logging in - but you will need to log in with your Athens password
to save records to your resource space.
What does the search box
on the homepage search?
The search box searches evidence summaries, e-learning materials
and more. Please note that the search box does not
search across books and journals. This is to give you quick and
easy access to searchable bite-sized chunks of information.
Please use the Journals & Books finder to search for
journals, articles and books.
How can I save/filter
my results?
From the search results screen, you can mark records to save to
your resource space, email to a colleague or print. Click
Mark Record, and the record will be added to the
Save and Share box on the right hand side of the
screen.
You can also re-order your search results alphabetically or by
date.
Please note that you do not need to log in to view these
resources, but you will need to be logged in with your Athens
username to add a resource to My Resource Space -
this is recommended to make it simpler for you to keep your
favourite resources in one private space.
How can I find a journal
article?
Click on Journals and Books in the menu bar. In
the Journals and Books widget, select
Journals, Articles or
Books and type your search terms into the search
box. Click search. Click on the title of a
resource to see the options for viewing.
What does
this screen mean? What is Shelcat? What is RefWorks?
This means that the resource you have selected is not available
online. If you have your Shelcat membership card (see above) select
option 2 to make a request for a hard copy of the item from the
Health Management Library.
If you do not have a Shelcat card, select the
following link and you will be prompted to fill out a membership
form
Access our guide to searching on
SSKS and managing your results and our two part guide
to accessing full text journal articles:
What is Save &
Share?
The Save and Share widget
allows you to select a resource from a list of search results and
either save it or share it.
To transfer a resource to Save and Share, click
Mark Record. This option will be present from any
resource list.
By clicking Mark Record, the resource will
appear in the Save and Share widget.
Save options
Providing you are logged in, you can now save the resource to
My Resource Space. You can also save the resource
as a text file on your computer, email it to yourself or print
it.
By adding it to My Resource Space, you can add
tags so that you can find it again more easily in future.
Share options
When you add a resource to My Resource Space
and tag it with keywords, it will also become visible to other
users in the public tag clouds.
This is a good way of sharing important resources and
contributing to the overall organisation of The Knowledge
Network.
You can also email a selected resource to a colleague.
Tagging:
You can tag a selected resource from Save and Share. You can
either do this for individual records or you can apply the same
tags to a batch of selected records.
NOTE: You must be logged in to SSKS use My
Resource Space. You must also accept the community rules if you
want to be able to use tagging.
What is My Resource Space?
My Resource Space is an area in the Knowledge
Network where you can bookmark resources and access them later
on.
Once you have logged in to SSKS with your Athens password, you
will be able to access your Resource Space and add resources to it
when you have searched in either the Journals and Books tab, or the
search box on the homepage.
- bookmark favourite resources
- organise them with tags in a way that makes sense to you
- access your tagged resources via a tag cloud
- save and share useful items
- control and manage the resources you have listed
You can also access your Resource Space from SSKS at any time
provided you are logged in by clicking on the link in the grey bar
at the top of the homepage.
Why can't
I get full text for all the articles?
Although SSKS contains references from a wide range of social
care journals, the full text (i.e, the entire article and not just
the abstract) is not always available. Often you will get access to
an abstract of the article but the full text might not be included
in SKKS's current portfolio of journal subscriptions. If a resource
isn't available online, you may be able to retrieve a hard copy
offline. You can make a request for hard copies of books, articles
and journals that aren't available online from the Health
Management Library - simply sign up for a Shelcat (Scottish Health
Libraries Catalogue) membership card here http://www.healthmanagementonline.co.uk/requests/become-a-member.aspx
. It's completely free and everyone in Social Services employed in
Scotland is entitled to one.
If you are already a member, you can request a resource here: http://www.healthmanagementonline.co.uk/requests/request-library-resource.aspx
NOTE: We do not guarantee that the Health
Management Library will be able to provide you with the resource
you request, however, they will search both their own resources and
those of all the health libraries. If the resource is not
available from any of these places, they will also check the
British Library, so although there are no guarantees, NHS Education
for Scotland and the Health Management Library have greatly
increased your chances of accessing a wide range of resources for
free.
I've found the full text of an
article, but I've been redirected to another website, why is
this?
When you search in SSKS the results are drawn from a number of
'bibliographic' databases, that is databases containing abstracts
and references to journal articles, reports etc. Sometimes these
databases provide a link to the full text, but sometimes they do
not. In these cases SSKS will endeavour to find the full text
within its portfolio of digital journal subscriptions. That is why
SSKS, through The Knowledge Network 'redirects' you to other
sources (e.g. Ebscohost, Proquest, ScienceDirect) and opens new
windows in your web browser. This is nothing to worry about; you're
still logged in to SSKS and can return to your original search
results page by clicking back into the SSKS window.
What other Library Support
is available to me?
Social Services staff in Scotland have the option to access
further free library support from several organisations with health
or care-related library services. Details of the institutions and
how to join are below:
Dementia Services Development Centre
(Shelcat)
Iris Murdoch Building, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9
4LA
dementia.library@stir.ac.uk
Policy: accepts membership requests from social services staff
working in Scotland, will source material from Shelcat libraries
and other health-related libraries in Scotland, will not request
from the British Library. Complete the online membership form or contact the
library.
Scottish Consortium for Learning Disability
library (Shelcat)
Adelphi Centre (Room 16), 12 Commercial Road, Glasgow G5 0PQ
library@scld.co.uk
Policy: accepts membership requests from social services staff
working in Scotland, will source material from Shelcat libraries
and other health-related libraries in Scotland, will not request
from the British Library. Contact the library for a membership
form.
ENABLE Scotland (Shelcat)
146 Argyle St. (2nd floor), Glasgow G2 8BL
library@enable.org.uk
Policy: accepts membership requests from social services staff
working in Scotland, will source material from Shelcat libraries
and other health-related libraries in Scotland, will not request
from the British Library. Contact the library for a membership
form.
PAMIS library (Shelcat)
University of Dundee, 15-16 Springfield, Dundee DD1 4JE
pamis@dundee.ac.uk
Policy: accepts membership requests from social services staff
working in Scotland, will source material from Shelcat libraries
and other health-related libraries in Scotland, will not request
from the British Library. Contact the library for a registration
form.
Borders region
Borders College, Scottish Borders Campus, Nether Rd., Galashiels
TD1 3HE
jmcintyre@borderscollege.ac.uk
The college's printed collections are open on a reference-only
basis to social care practitioners. For information on full library
membership and document delivery policies, contact the Further
Education Liaison Librarian at the email above.
What is Information
Literacy?
Information literacy describes a set of skills that help you
find, retreive, assess, manage and apply information. These skills
will help you use SSKS and to find what you need when you need it.
Find out more about the information literacy cycle here http://tiny.cc/vlikk. You can find
an online tutorial here http://content.iriss.org.uk/informationliteracy/
How can I
report a problem?
You can email us at ssks@nes.scot.nhs.uk to
report any issues that you are experiencing with SSKS or if you
have a question.
Can I
feedback or make suggestions for changes to SSKS?
Yes! We're keen to hear any feedback from
users. Use the Contact Form to send us your comments ssks@nes.scot.nhs.uk
Can I receive training on
SSKS?
Yes! Please contact ssks@nes.scot.nhs.uk if
you'd like to receive training on using SSKS. We are happy to adapt
this training to your needs, whether this means training you so
that you can show others how to use the site, or a group
session.
Would you like SSKS promotional materials? Contact ssks@nes.scot.nhs.uk to find
out what we can offer you.