UJ Librarians News

IATUL 2011 presentations

2011-12-05T16:36:00.001+02:00

Libraries for New Generation Learners, 27 October 2011
The annual IATUL Seminar was held in Melbourne and jointly sponsored by IATUL and La Trobe University Library and featured both International and Australian perspectives on the seminar topic.

Presentations

Useful Articles for Librarians

2011-11-21T12:34:00.001+02:00

I'm receiving everyday e-mails with links to useful blog posts, reports. I don't have any more time to read, to bookmark them or just save. So today I just decided to post on the blog a few that of interest and I will remember at a later stage, where to find and read:

Embedded Librarianship: new research is published by David Shumaker
LILAC (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference) 2011 Presentations
Reality-based Librarianship for Passionate Librarians
Standards for Libraries in HE revised
Research Supervisors and Information Literacy
Student Induction, Libraries, Prezi, and Interactive Maps (blog post, practical examples)
Latest Project Information Literacy Report Now Available (Oct 2011 report)
Know Thine Audience. At Sustainable Scholarship Conference, academic librarians and publishers discuss why understanding readers is more essential than ever in the digital age.
Marketing Academic Libraries, by Ned Potter.
Guide to Reference Services
Google Scholar Citation open to all
Interview with Steven Bell — Keeping Up With the Things That Matter for Academic Libraries

Pavlinka Kovatcheva, UJ Faculty Librarian: Sciences
Follow me on Twitter: ujlibscience
UJ Sciences Librarian Portal

Internet Librarian International 2011 Conference

2011-11-12T19:59:00.004+02:00

Recently I attended the Internet Librarian International Conference in London, 26-28 October 2011. I also presented on the 28th October in C204: New Skills for the New Normal.

New Roles & Skills for the New Normal: the multi-skilling academic librarian in action.

The presentation focuses on how the role of the academic librarians changes from traditional, to technological & social, to mobile and embedded librarian. To adapt to the changing environment the librarians need to adapt and develop new skills and play new roles. I'm providing some practical examples from my experiences.

Overall the ILI 2011 was a very successful and enlighting conference.

If you want to learn more about the ILI topics, discussions, links to presentations, etc. these are some useful blog posts, tweets, slide share presentations, statistics, etc.:

ILI 2011 official presentations website

The Library is everywhere: some key themes that emerged at ILI 2011 (2 pages)

Technology Trends to watch (Brian Kelly)

Thoughts from the ILI 2011 (blog post by Gary Green)

Closing Panel: The new normal needs you (blog post by Emma Cragg)

ILI 2011 presentations, blogs, etc. by scoop.it!

ILI 2011: Lanyrd.com (The social conference directory)

Networking at ILI 2011

#ILI2011 Twitter archive (view what we talked & shared on Twitter in regard to ILI 2011)

Visualising the ILI 2011: Twitter archive

Librarians: agents of Social change (SLA Europe blog post)

Productivity for Librarians (blog post by Jo Alcock)

Evidence base blog post

Internet Librarian International: Day 1; Day 2 (blog posts by Karen)

Future Ready panel discussion at SLA Europe event, 26 Oct 2011

Being Future ready in uncertain times (SLA blog)

Academics do not have full understanding of Open Access

Those who did not attended the ILI 2011 Conference can have a good grasp of what was discussed, emerging trends, practical tips and new networking possibilities

Pavlinka Kovatcheva (pkovatcheva@uj.ac.za)

Infographic: Anatomy of a Librarian

2011-05-05T09:22:00.002+02:00

Have a look at this interesting article:

Infographic: Anatomy of a Librarian

Peer Review Guide for Researchers

2010-04-03T10:03:00.002+02:00

The Research Information Network has published in March 2010 a Guide to provide researchers with an understanding of the peer-review process and some of the current issues surrounding the debate about peer review.

Download the Peer Review: Guide for researchers (16 pages)

Read more about the Guide

Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access and Dissemination

2009-10-13T11:07:00.004+02:00

Greetings from Trieste, Italy. I'm attending the workshop on Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access and Dissemination @ the ICTP (International Center for Theoretical Physics)
Visit the web page for more information and video casting of the presentations

Visit the Workshop web page.

A Vision of Students Today

2009-08-19T20:36:00.001+02:00

I have seen this video sometime ago, and today I have spot it on Twitter. Do we understand the students today? Find out for yourself.

A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

2009-04-02T20:42:00.001+02:00

A must see video. (You Tube is blocked on Campus)

Google Docs in Plain English

2009-04-02T18:15:00.001+02:00

Now is the best time to start sharing: Library newsletter on "Google docs"

Web Search Strategies in Plain English

2009-04-02T18:10:00.001+02:00

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

2009-04-02T18:06:00.001+02:00

UJ Sciences Librarian on delicious: http://delicious.com/tags/sciencelibrarian

Video: RSS in Plain English

2009-04-02T17:59:00.001+02:00

Twitter in Plain English

2009-04-02T17:54:00.001+02:00

Follow me on Twitter: UJ Sciences Librarian (Kingsway Campus) daily life.
http://twitter.com/ujlibscience

Blogs in Plain English

2009-04-02T17:49:00.001+02:00

Wikis in Plain English

2009-04-02T17:46:00.001+02:00

Check this out

New Developments in support to Teaching, Learning & Research

2009-01-25T15:45:00.004+02:00

Two NEW Developments have been announced lately. I have made posts on my

UJ Sciences Librarian Blog:

"ticTOCs" will help you keep your lecturers, researchers and yourself up to date with Journals Table of Content ALERTs. Read MORE....

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online!

This is the largest ever publication of Darwin papers and manuscripts, totalling about 20,000 items in over 100,000 electronic images. Read MORE ... OR click HERE for access.

If you know of any NEW resources that can help with librarians work in support to learning, teaching and research, please let us know.

UJ Library: End-year function

2008-12-03T09:34:00.005+02:00

Who does not love end-year functions? It marks the end of the academic year and the start of the long summer holiday, Christmas shopping and the New 2009!

The library staff did enjoy their time off from work and have the most fun out of it.

Dancing competition

Small talk ladies?

The tables were nicely arranged

Meet the Social team

Congratulation for organising this event.

To all library staff have a good holiday and Happy New Year!

Faculty Acknowledge Blogs Contribute to Scholarly Communication

2008-12-03T09:23:00.005+02:00

Faculty Acknowledge Blogs Contribute to Scholarly Communication

By noreply@blogger.com (Eric Schnell) on communications

One of my more recent hot topics is the need for librarians to expand how we define our own scholarly communications to keep up with changes in the practice of librarianship. A new report by the Ithaka Group being distributed by ARL explores how (non-librarian) faculty / scholars are making use of digital scholarly resources in the course of research. In the report entitled Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication, authors Nancy Maron and Kirby Smith detail the various digital resources that expands the definition of what is a scholarly resource. Such resources include electronic-only data, e-journals, and blogs.

The report states that blogs are “being put to interesting use by scholars” and contribute to scholarship by providing a forum for discussion. Faculty acknowledge that blog postings allow scholars to share research findings and open up a dialog that can help to further shape and refine their ideas. Blogs can add a layer of commentary to published literature and can give frequent updates of researchers’ opinions rather than just facts and can also attract well established, well known writers in specific disciplines.

While any scholar can use digital communications tools to post their ideas and share them with others, old traditions of establishing scholarly legitimacy through credentialing, peer review, and citation metrics still remain paramount. Although there have been many innovations such as open peer-review, many scholars still choose not to take advantage of these new innovations and continue to publish traditional articles.Issues of informality and not having a traditional peer-review process are still keeping blogs and scholarly social networks from being accepted as creditable scholarly communication. Still, blogs still can offer faculty / scholars the lowest cost model for quickly communicating their ideas and to receive quick feedback.

IQity Blog

2008-10-28T17:14:00.005+02:00

I'm introducing you to IQity Blog. The main focus of this blog is on Education Technology.

This week the IQity bloggers are attending the National School Boards Association: NSBA's T+L Conference in Seattle and you can follow through their posts the latest news from the presenters.

The IQity Blog latest post are:

- Which Educational Goals Should Be important?

- Technology-Savvy Students

- Web-Based Learning

P.S.: Link to this blog is available through "Useful Blogs".

IFLA Report, May 2008: Access to Libraries and Information

2008-10-20T11:44:00.001+02:00

Access to libraries and information: Towards a fairer world (IFLA/FAIFE World Report V. 7)

This is the 4th in a series of reports from IFLA/FAIFE on the state of intellectual freedom around the world. In this report, representatives from 116 countries provide information about intellectual freedom issues in their country. An encouraging sign is that this report contains reports from a number of countries that were not represented in prior reports.

In addition to providing basic statistical information related to libraries, including details about Internet access, the report provides information at the country level about anti terrorism legislation, freedom of information laws, violations of freedom of access to information as well as violations of freedom of expression. In addition to the country reports, several commissioned articles are part of the report as well. These provide extended background information on topics related to intellectual freedom, such as censorship in Arab countries, the USA Patriot Act and its impact on libraries, and the role of libraries in fighting corruption in Russia (Current Cites)

Library Management Systems Study: March 2008

2008-10-20T11:27:00.003+02:00

JISC & SCONUL Library Management Systems Study (March 2008)

Although published earlier this year, this report is just beginning to get attention outside the United Kingdom. While some would say that there is little new in this report, the value of this report is that it provides an additional perspective; one that confirmations what we see happening in North America is, in fact, a global phenomenon.

In the report, we find that like the US and Canadian LMS markets, the UK market is dominated by four vendors with relatively little product differentiation among the various systems. Libraries are slow to adapt ERMS (Electronic Resource Management Systems) and remain unconvinced of the value of federated search products. Additionally, libraries are not using the information they gather about user preferences in ways that help enhance the position of the library as their patron's first choice for resource discovery.

Finally, local OPACs are losing ground as preferred information discovery systems with the end result being the potential for the traditional LMS to become just a back-end system to other, more global and encompassing, resource discovery systems (Current Cites)

Elsevier Library Connect Newsletter: 6:3 August 2008

2008-09-18T14:29:00.003+02:00

This Elsevier "Library Connect" issue theme is "e-Learning".

"If anyone knows eLearning, it’s Generation Y, right? We thought it only fitting to launch Library Connect’s new Next Gen section in this issue, since next-gen’ers can practically eLearn with their eyes closed."

* Spotlight
Hear from Next Gen librarians as they discuss their experiences with eLearning.
- eLearning: Libraries increasingly help steer the ship, By Erika Bennett, Reference Librarian, Harold Abel School of Psychology, Capella University, USA
eLearning has traveled a long distance in a very short time. One can’t deny that, so far this Millennium, its impact has been enormous. In 2007, the Sloan Consortium reported that 3.5 million American college students (20%) were enrolled in an online course. The rise in online enrollments from 2005 to 2006 alone was 10%.
- eLearning 2.0, By Guofu Qian, Systems Librarian, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Library, China.
What is eLearning 2.0? This term refers to ways of thinking about eLearning which have been inspired by the emergence of Web 2.0. In my opinion, eLearning 2.0 is an eLearning environment based on Web 2.0 technologies. The most important characteristic of eLearning 2.0 is collective intelligence, which is also a core characteristic of Web 2.0.In the world of eLearning 2.0, eLearners can share their knowledge and experience by creating blog, wiki, photo, video and audio content freely and easily. This function gives eLearners an opportunity to become eTeachers, and vice versa. The bottom line? Web 2.0 technology makes all sorts of eLearning platforms easy-to-use.

* Librarians speak out
- How is your library implementing eLearning?

* Also in this issue
- Tsinghua University Library case study: Developing a virtual learning environment By Lin Jia and Wang Yuan, Tsinghua University Library, China
" eLearning can help students become active learners, and libraries should play a greater role in this process of transformation."

- Dr. Bakary Diallo explains how the African Virtual University is furthering higher education through hybrid offerings, Interview by Risa Blumlein, Library Marketing Intern, Elsevier, USA
"Coupled with frequent power outages, digital illiteracy, poor connectivity in some areas, lack of computer and telephone access, high operational costs of telephones and unfavorable ICT policies, the AVU (African Virtual University) had to refocus its strategy as one that would take cognizance of the different levels of technological and educational development throughout the African continent."

Access Elsevier Library Connect issues on:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/librariansinfo.librarians/lc_home

Current Awareness Articles

2008-09-17T14:00:00.004+02:00

Selected links to various materials received by e-mail (Aug-17 Sep 2008) from D. Nicholson, WITS, Copyright Services Librarian ( see below her e-mail, if you would like to subscribe to her e-mail alert):

WWW/References/Resources/Search Engines/Directories/Google

The biggest World Wide Web university’s database
http://www.ullbe.com/
Google to bring internet to Africa
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-15-google-to-bring-internet-africa

WAN Communique on the Proposed Google-Yahoo Deal
http://www.wan-press.org/article17866.html

Google is digitizing newspapers
http://digitaleccentric.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-newspaper-digitization.html

World Wide Web Reference (very good, list with useful links)
http://www.wwwreference.info/
Student Research Resources (very good, list with links)
http://www.studentresearch.info/
Quick Reference Research (very good)
http://www.refdesk.com/instant.html

Alltheweb.com (Search Engine)
www.alltheweb.com

CompletePlanet (Deep Web Directory)
http://aip.completeplanet.com/index.jsp

The ‘Deep Web’: Surfacing Hidden Value
http://www.brightplanet.com/resources/details/deepweb.html

Searching Patents:
WIPO Patentscope
http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/
European Patent Office
http://ep.espacenet.com/advancedSearch?locale=en_ep
Google Patents
www.google.com/patents

Patent Information in Brief
http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/data/patent_information.html

Open Access/Open Source

- Institutional Repositories (IR)

Publishers allowing the depositing of their published version/PDF in Institutional Repositories
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PDFandIR.html

The evolving impact of institutional repositories on reference librarians
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet;jsessionid=6F15A54DE4BC3EF612B233E19E33EE64?Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/2400330305.html
3 articles on IR in developing countries
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/09/3-articles-on-irs-in-developing.html
World Archives Project
http://community.ancestry.com/wap/download.aspx

Open Access repositories begin to reap benefits for South African Science as CSIR research goes global http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/gray-area/2008/07/29/csir-research-goes-global

South African Libraries and Archives
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/rsalibs.html

How Open Repositories Enable Universities to Manage, Measure and Maximise their Research Assets http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14990/

Seven Academic Open-Access Repositories Compared
http://www.icommons.org/articles/oa-academia-in-repose

Many publishers do allow authors to deposit their works in institutional repositories. See: Sherpa/Romeo - http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.html

Directory of Open Access Repositories
http://www.opendoar.org/

- Open Access
Open Educational Resources
http://deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/emerging-technologies/open-educational-resources.html

Open Access – What is it?
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/scholcomm/openaccess.html

Directory of Open Access Journal growth rate nearly doubles in the past year
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/08/doaj-growth-rate-nearly-doubles-in-past.html
Open Access anxiety in the publish or perish world
http://www.plos.org/cms/node/397

Open, closed or ajar? Content access and interactions
http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1147

Newfound Press Business Plan, 2008-2011 (Open Access publishing)
http://www.lib.utk.edu/newfoundpress/nfpbusinessplan.pdf
Open Access – FAQs
http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au:9080/vital/access/manager/Faqoamq

Open Access in South Africa
http://www.sivulile.org/

Open Access: Good for Business!
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2005/09/open-access-good-for-business.html

Open access and the last-mile problem for knowledge
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-08.htm#lastmile

Scholarly Publishing

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/toc.htm

CreateChange – Digital Scholarship
http://www.createchange.org/
Researchers benefit from Sharing
http://www.createchange.org/modes/researchers.shtml
Bringing down the barriers (digital scholarship)
http://www.createchange.org/modes/bringing.shtml

Increasing Impact of Scholarly Journal Articles: Practical Strategies Librarians Can Share
http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n01/mullen_l01.html

Peer reviewing: privilege and responsibility
http://www.textjournal.com.au/april08/johnston_krauth.htm

Scholarly Electronic Publishing weblog
http://digital-scholarship.org/sepw2/2008/08/05/scholarly-electronic-publishing-weblog-august-5-2008/

Library/Faculty

Ithaka’s 2008 report on its 2006 faculty and librarian surveys
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/ithaka-2008-report-on-its-2006-faculty.html
http://www.ithaka.org/research/faculty-and-librarian-surveys

World Library & Information Congress (IFLA) – Quebec 2008 - Papers
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/Programme2008.htm

Law/ Intellectual Property/ Copyright

Laws for Using Photos You Take at Your Library ((USA)
http://www.infotoday.com/mls/sep08/Carson.shtml

Access To Knowledge Conference Begins Addressing New Challenges With New Ideas
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1214

eIFL Handbook on Copyright and related issues
http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/services/eifl-ip/issues/eifl-handbook-on

(ACA2K) African Copyright and Access to Knowledge Project Blog
http://www.aca2k.org/index.php?option=com_idoblog&view=idoblog&Itemid=69

The impact of copyright on access to public information in African countries: a perspective from Uganda and South Africa
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/087-Nicholson_Kawooya-en.pdf

African Copyright and Access to Knowledge Alliance
www.aca2k.org (see Blog)

If you know of any persons who may benefit from this information, please ask them to email Denise.Nicholson@wits.ac.za with their name, name of institution/organization and contact details.

Open Access Day - October 14, 2008

2008-09-17T13:23:00.004+02:00

Celebrate Open Access Day on 14 October 2008.

Visit Open Access Day web page on: http://openaccessday.org/

What Is Open Access?
Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. Encouraging the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, the Open Access movement is gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers put their weight behind it.

Why Does Open Access Matter?
"Open Access helps scientists make the discoveries we need to improve health, provides the opportunity for their work to be more easily read and cited, enables integration of research with other resources, helps funding bodies evaluate the research they have funded, and ensures that the digital record of medicine can be preserved." Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust London, UK

"Universities, who support and produce research, can’t keep up with inflating journal prices and are forced to cut subscriptions. With Open Access, instead of cutting off access to information to professors and students, we are able to provide that knowledge without increasing the college’s costs." Diane J. Graves, University Librarian Trinity University (Texas)

"The critical aspect of Open Access for me is that increased discoverability and browseability will lead to greater efficiency of conducting research. Any savings in efficiency translate quite directly into savings for taxpayers and time savings for researchers. That ultimately means more discoveries, sooner, for less money." André Brown, Ph.D. Student University of Pennsylvania

How UJ Library can acknowledge this day?

- During the week of 13th of October we can promote Open Access Journals, Books and Institutional Repositories portals;

- Make promotional brochures

- Use the library and subject web pages , blogs as platforms

- Have a lecturer on the importance of Open Access

Useful links:

- Creative Commons: Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

- Directory of Open Access Repositories: OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories.

- Directory of Open Access Journals: Welcome to the Directory of Open Access Journals. This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 3651 journals in the directory.

- OA Librarian Blog

- Open Access News

- Open Students (very good)

- Open Science Directory

- Open J-Gate Journals

- PLoS Biology

- BioMedCentral

SAOUG AGM & "Wireless Africa" talk: September 2008

2008-09-17T12:52:00.006+02:00

On 10th of September 2008 in CSIR, Pretoria the South African Online User Group (SAOUG) had its AGM and talk "Wireless Africa: Towards Sustainable Development in Rural Villages" by Kobus Roux.

The presentation is available on:

http://www.saoug.org.za/Kobus_Roux,_Wireless_Africa_2008.ppt.

The new chair for SAOUG is Madelein Van Heerden from CSIR. Congratulations!

Three new members were included in the committee.

Pavlinka Kovatcheva from University of Johannesburg Library was also re-elected.

End of the year workshop!!!!!

You are cordially invited to Southern African Online User Group (SAOUG) end of year meeting

Stress management Workshop and Lunch

Date: Tuesday 11 November 2008

Venue: 13 5th street, Foxwood House, Houghton

Time: 08:30-late afternoon

Cost: R100.00 for members; R750.00 for non-members

For additional information and booking contact Christa Fourie:
E-mail: christaf@saonlineinfo.co.za

Visit SAOUG web page for more information: http://www.saoug.org.za/index.htm