Back in November 2013 (I can’t believe it was a year ago now, but it was), I reviewed my PDP (Personal Development Plan) to ensure that it was up-to-date. Well, in the last year things have moved on, and the plan needed reviewing again. My first job was to review the 2013 plan and see what I had (or hadn't achieved):
Of the eight goals on the list, I’ve fully achieved five of them, and partially achieved three. The five I’ve fully achieved are listed below:
1) Prepare an updated staff development hour session on open access, research data management the repository
I prepared this with my line manager in preparation for a session in May 2014. Whilst I wasn’t able to help run the May 2014 session, we updated it again for Open Access Week in October 2014, and this session I did run. I was able to learn more about research data management, learn how the newest version (version 5) of Turning Point works, and gain confidence in my ability to both present and discuss open access and research data management in detail with my colleagues.
2) Determine the best referencing managing software to store and organise my references (assess Zotero, Mendeley and RefWorks)
Not longer after I wrote my last PDP, I investigated a range of reference manager tools, and came to the conclusion that RefWorks was my preferred tool. I have been using RefWorks since, although admittedly somewhat sporadically…
3) Understand more about the new CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals) rules and regulations
Reading the new CILIP website, talking to colleagues and attending an online training event have all enabled me to understand the new CILIP rules and regulations in relation to both Chartership and Revalidation. You can see the proof of this in goals four and five…
4) Become a CILIP mentor with 1 or mentees
As of January 2014, I have been a CILIP mentor. I am currently mentoring two Chartership candidates, and hope that at least one of them will successfully Charter in the next six months.
5) Register for Revalidation
I have not just registered for Revalidation, but actually successfully Revalidated (as of November 2014). I’ve written more about my Revalidation experience (albeit before I discovered I was successful) at http://www.annaslibrarythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/recording-continuing-professional.html.
And the three goals I’ve been a little less successful with:
1) Keeping my cpd23 blog up-to-date
I wasn’t doing too badly with keeping this blog up-to-date. I was trying to write at least one post a month and, on the whole, I was succeeding. Or at least until August of this year I was. Since then I’ve only written one post (in October). This has largely been due to the nature of what’s been happening at work and in my personal life (more about that in a minute).
2) Engaging more with Twitter
I have actually been using Twitter more, but primarily for keeping up-to-date. I read a lot of other people’s post, and have begun to tweet and re-tweet more often – but certainly not once a week. It’s more like once a month on average. Some weeks I go mad and tweet four or five things; other weeks I’m deadly silent.
3) Learning more about research data management
I’ve certainly learnt a fair amount about research data management, both through working with it more closely on a day-to-day basis at work, and through a range of reading I’ve done (for example, reading Graham Pryor’s book Managing Research Data). I’ve also begun the RDMRose training module, but I’m barely half way through. And whilst I have found some other training materials, I haven’t had the time to work through any of them.
So, what next? Well, there are a couple of things affecting what now appears on my updated PDP. Firstly, I have a new job. I’m still working in the same team, but I’m now Research and open Access Librarian, rather than Research Repository Support Librarian (better know as the Repository Manager). Basically it’s a promotion with our Library Research Support Team. So my responsibilities have changed a little - I now have more of a focus on research data and open access generally, and less of an exclusive focus on the research repository.
Secondly, I’m due to go on maternity leave again in January 2015. So whilst there are plenty of things I’d like to do in the next 12 months, I know I need to be fairly realistic about what I’ll actually be able to achieve. Therefore, there are only six things on my PDP this time around – most with timescales somewhere between six and fourteen months away. In some cases, I’m also relying on partnerships with others to achieve the final goal. For example, one goal is to determine how the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) OA (Open Access) policy affects our current repository workflows, and update these accordingly. Whilst I can advise on our current workflows and whether or not the policy means they need changing, I’m unlikely to be in a position where I can oversee any changes.
I'll aim to come back and review the PDP on this blog next November at the latest - and write related posts about specific goals in the mean time...
Showing posts with label open access. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open access. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 November 2014
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
State of Play - Open Access: Extending the access to the research literature
Considering I attended this conference at the end of February, this blog post has been a little late in coming. But my recent attendance at the 37th annual UKSG conference, and subsequent blog posts about its content and the ease of networking at it, has reminded me that it’s not the only conference I’ve attended in recent months!
As with the UKSG conference, I wrote a blog post about this conference on open access for our library staff development blog. Whilst what appears below is, for the most part, what appeared there, I have included some perhaps somewhat contentious thoughts that are very much my own personal opinions. Whilst I could have stated these on our staff blog, I didn’t want to take the focus away from the content being discussed. Here, on my own blog, I’m happy for people to take away whatever they will from my own views!
A researcher writes their research. It is then sent off to an independent reviewer (such as a Learned Society) for peer review, before being published by the researcher’s university, which runs a campus-based publishing house.
Is this a nightmare scenario, a pipe dream, or the future as you see it? At the conference I attended entitled “State of Play – Open Access: Extending Access to the Research Literature” it was the ideal scenario that experts in Open Access came up with when asked “How would you ideally structure open access?”
The conference was excellent and fast-paced, with a lot of ideas and strong opinions on the topic of open access. Below I will talk about some of the main themes that captured my interest.
Gold Open Access
This is where the author (or more normally, the funder or university) pays for a piece of research, usually a journal article, to be made freely available to read on the publisher’s website. In contrast to this, green open access is when a version of a piece of research is made freely available online, usually via an institutional repository (such as the UWE Research Repository).
The Head of Science Information at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) explained that the Research Council UK (RCUK’s) preference was for gold open access rather than green open access. This is because it gives immediate unrestricted access, and is then accessible to the widest audience possible. Articles on institutional repositories often have embargoes, and aren’t the final published versions. Whilst they are usually a good representative of the final version, I can see the argument against a system that provides delayed access to research.
In addition to this, green open access is helping to prop up an already broken subscription model. A number of speakers pointed out that whatever system we have in place, the business model for it needs to be sustainable. Whilst the green open access business model props up the current subscription model, the gold open access business model is scalable and therefore sustainable in the long run.
Not everybody agreed that gold open access was the way forward (although there was some discussion about how green and gold open access should not be mutually exclusive), but the speakers really got me thinking about, and have nearly managed to convince me, that gold open access is the best option.
This does lead on to some interesting scenarios though. If we do successfully implement a fully gold open access culture, there should no longer be any need for repositories or (dare I say it) Repository Managers. So I would be out of a job – as would a lot of other library staff who currently administer library subscriptions. However, I believe that a number of other jobs would spring up to replace them – there still needs to be an infrastructure in place to manage gold open access and article processing charges (APCS – see below), and I strongly believe this is a role librarians can take on. So perhaps it’s a case of different roles, rather than lost jobs.
Article Processing Charges (APCs)
In order to achieve full gold open access, universities have begun to pay publishers article processing charges, or APCs. If the research is RCUK funded, RCUK will often pay these APCs (via the university). However, speakers at the conference were mindful of how these charges worked, and more than once they warned against allowing big subscription deals to morph into the Big APC Deals. There was a suggestion that, instead of paying APCs per piece of research, we should be paying for each of the specific services that publishers carry out, such as peer review, separately.
The other difficulty with APCs is the complexity of the decision making steps that authors have to go through each time when applying for funding. The decisions they have to make at this stage (such as which Creative Commons licence to choose, what type of copyright agreement to sign) are different to decisions they have had to make in the past. Whilst library staff can help with this, if the infrastructure isn’t in place to enable this to happen, it could get very confusing for the author.
Open Access Infrastructure
Over the past ten years or so, an infrastructure has grown to support open access. This includes services such as SHERPA ROMEO (which provides information on publisher copyright policies), SHERPA FACT (which links together funder and publisher policies), and DOAJ (the Directory of Open Access Journals). All these services were originally set up as projects and are still being run on project money. This means that none of these services have robust sustainability plans, but are incredibly well used in the open access community. We therefore need to find a way to assess and select the critical services we need to support open access, and then determine how we will sustain this infrastructure.
The above topics weren’t the only ones discussed. Other areas of debate included Creative Commons Licenses, the current peer review system, and how other universities run their institutional repositories. I came back from the conference with a number of questions and ideas: “Why don’t we keep those stats? Why have we never tried to run a webinar? Do I really have a preference for gold or green open access?” Overall, an incredibly thought-provoking conference which has given me lots of good ideas to take forward. Not to mention lots of potentially unanswerable questions.
As with the UKSG conference, I wrote a blog post about this conference on open access for our library staff development blog. Whilst what appears below is, for the most part, what appeared there, I have included some perhaps somewhat contentious thoughts that are very much my own personal opinions. Whilst I could have stated these on our staff blog, I didn’t want to take the focus away from the content being discussed. Here, on my own blog, I’m happy for people to take away whatever they will from my own views!
Conference Report
A researcher writes their research. It is then sent off to an independent reviewer (such as a Learned Society) for peer review, before being published by the researcher’s university, which runs a campus-based publishing house.
Is this a nightmare scenario, a pipe dream, or the future as you see it? At the conference I attended entitled “State of Play – Open Access: Extending Access to the Research Literature” it was the ideal scenario that experts in Open Access came up with when asked “How would you ideally structure open access?”
The conference was excellent and fast-paced, with a lot of ideas and strong opinions on the topic of open access. Below I will talk about some of the main themes that captured my interest.
Gold Open Access
This is where the author (or more normally, the funder or university) pays for a piece of research, usually a journal article, to be made freely available to read on the publisher’s website. In contrast to this, green open access is when a version of a piece of research is made freely available online, usually via an institutional repository (such as the UWE Research Repository).
The Head of Science Information at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) explained that the Research Council UK (RCUK’s) preference was for gold open access rather than green open access. This is because it gives immediate unrestricted access, and is then accessible to the widest audience possible. Articles on institutional repositories often have embargoes, and aren’t the final published versions. Whilst they are usually a good representative of the final version, I can see the argument against a system that provides delayed access to research.
In addition to this, green open access is helping to prop up an already broken subscription model. A number of speakers pointed out that whatever system we have in place, the business model for it needs to be sustainable. Whilst the green open access business model props up the current subscription model, the gold open access business model is scalable and therefore sustainable in the long run.
Not everybody agreed that gold open access was the way forward (although there was some discussion about how green and gold open access should not be mutually exclusive), but the speakers really got me thinking about, and have nearly managed to convince me, that gold open access is the best option.
This does lead on to some interesting scenarios though. If we do successfully implement a fully gold open access culture, there should no longer be any need for repositories or (dare I say it) Repository Managers. So I would be out of a job – as would a lot of other library staff who currently administer library subscriptions. However, I believe that a number of other jobs would spring up to replace them – there still needs to be an infrastructure in place to manage gold open access and article processing charges (APCS – see below), and I strongly believe this is a role librarians can take on. So perhaps it’s a case of different roles, rather than lost jobs.
Article Processing Charges (APCs)
In order to achieve full gold open access, universities have begun to pay publishers article processing charges, or APCs. If the research is RCUK funded, RCUK will often pay these APCs (via the university). However, speakers at the conference were mindful of how these charges worked, and more than once they warned against allowing big subscription deals to morph into the Big APC Deals. There was a suggestion that, instead of paying APCs per piece of research, we should be paying for each of the specific services that publishers carry out, such as peer review, separately.
The other difficulty with APCs is the complexity of the decision making steps that authors have to go through each time when applying for funding. The decisions they have to make at this stage (such as which Creative Commons licence to choose, what type of copyright agreement to sign) are different to decisions they have had to make in the past. Whilst library staff can help with this, if the infrastructure isn’t in place to enable this to happen, it could get very confusing for the author.
Open Access Infrastructure
Over the past ten years or so, an infrastructure has grown to support open access. This includes services such as SHERPA ROMEO (which provides information on publisher copyright policies), SHERPA FACT (which links together funder and publisher policies), and DOAJ (the Directory of Open Access Journals). All these services were originally set up as projects and are still being run on project money. This means that none of these services have robust sustainability plans, but are incredibly well used in the open access community. We therefore need to find a way to assess and select the critical services we need to support open access, and then determine how we will sustain this infrastructure.
The above topics weren’t the only ones discussed. Other areas of debate included Creative Commons Licenses, the current peer review system, and how other universities run their institutional repositories. I came back from the conference with a number of questions and ideas: “Why don’t we keep those stats? Why have we never tried to run a webinar? Do I really have a preference for gold or green open access?” Overall, an incredibly thought-provoking conference which has given me lots of good ideas to take forward. Not to mention lots of potentially unanswerable questions.
Saturday, 26 April 2014
UKSG conference blog post report
Last week I attended the UKSG conference in Harrogate as a first timer. UKSG is a three-day long conference looking at all things serials-related. In recent years this has meant a focus on research support and open access, which is why I was in attendance. As you can imagine with an intensive 3-day conference, there is a lot of information to take on board. I’ve tried to pull out some of the things that struck me as main themes at the conference, especially ones that my team and I have a specific interest in (many of these themes are therefore quite research support focused).
- The changing role of libraries
Both Stockholm University and Utrecht University Libraries were also very clear that they don’t try to bring users to the library/ website – they simply want to provide them with the tools to access the info they need. Whilst Stockholm stated that their EBSCO Delivery Service is just one tool among many, Utrecht have gone one step further and taken away their library catalogue completely. Their users use Google and Google Scholar, so this is what they’ll support. However, a warning came from the audience here: Google is a commercial service. It can be removed at any time. Bill Thompson from the BBC stated that it would be best to support open-source initiatives, which have a community behind them, instead of a corporation, as these services can’t just be removed. But can we really dictate what services our users should use in this way?
- The purpose of scholarly communication
The four original (and still relevant today) purposes of scholarly communication were to register research findings, review and clarifying findings before publication (still achieved through peer review), disseminate new knowledge and preserve a record of those findings. The Royal Society states that research today should be accessible, intelligible, assessable and usable.
- How we communicate research
Ernesto Priego took this one step further by suggesting that publishing is where content goes to die. Perhaps proving his point, his slide stating this went viral on social media almost instantly. If he’d published this point in a journal article, would anybody have noticed? Ernesto felt that research should be the beginning, not the end, of a conversation. Instead of being encouraged to publish against one another, researchers should be encouraged to read, and to talk, to each other. The aim should be for collaboration, not competition, and a culture of sharing should be developed.
- The importance of re-usability, not just open access
Even HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) recognise the importance of re-usability. Whilst not mandatory for the post-2014 REF (Research Excellence Framework), HEFCE have stated that they will give credit to institutions that enable re-use rights and text mining on the research they produce.
- New challenges in open access
The sheer size and volume of datasets (sometimes as many as 6 million data points) in the digital age
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| Enjoying the sunshine in a Harrogate park during a lunch break |
In contrast to this, almost everybody in attendance seemed to be in agreement that monographs should be made open access. But, again for the post-2014 REF, HEFCE stated that whilst monographs should be OA, the business models are too immature, and the lead times for publishing monographs are also very long – it’s already too late for the next REF. However, credit will be given to institutions that do make monographs openly available. There are already projects looking at this very issue. One example is Knowledge Unlatched, a project which is getting libraries to share the costs of making books open access. The library pays a title fee with a fixed cost, and books are then made open access with a Creative Commons licence.
As well as all of the above, there were a number of breakout sessions around article processing charges (APCs), the HEFCE Open Access policy, research data management and bibliometrics (and other things!) that left me full of ideas, questions and studies that I can take back and use in my day-to-day work. I found UKSG to be an incredibly useful, if rather intense, conference.
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Thoughts on the Survey of Academics 2012
I've just finished reading the Ithaka S+R/ JISC/ RLUK UK Survey of Academics 2012 (released in May 2013). I admit I'm a little behind in reading this, but it's still an enlightening report and worth at least a skim read (at 92 pages, it's long, but there are a lot of graphs and charts).
As I reached the last 20 pages or so, a few things started to, if not concern me, at least get me thinking:
Firstly, one question asked "How important to you is that your college or university library be the provider of each of the functions listed below...?" One of those functions is to "provide active support that helps to increase the productivity of my research." Only between 25 and 40% of academics (depending upon the discipline) thought that this was important, and of the functions listed it was considered to be least important. This concerns me a little as this is (partially) what the Research and Knowledge Exchange team (which I'm a part of) sets out to do.
Having said that, the question is worded in such a way that it doesn't consider what other active support librarians could provide researchers with. Perhaps they feel that help with other areas of their research, such as information on alternative publishing models, or ways in which to search more effectively, are much more important functions of an academic library. In fact, a number of the other functions are closely related to research ('the library pays for resources need'; 'the library serves as a starting point or gateway for locating information for my research') are considered of much higher importance. So perhaps I'm worrying unnecessarily here. Or perhaps this is simply a case of educating researchers about the broad variety of services that a library can (and does) offer, showing that they are constantly changing to keep abreast of the changes in communication and publishing.
My second big concern is that when choosing where to publish, academics don't see making articles freely available, or accessible to readers in developed nations, as a high priorty. Instead, their primary concern is whether or not the 'current issues of the journal are circulated widely, and are well read by academics in your field'. 'The journal has a high impact factor or an excellent academic reputation' doesn't follow far behind. To some extent this makes perfect sense, and I can't blame an academic for wanting their paper to reach the maximum amount of people it can within their discipline - and believing that a journal which is widely circulated and has a good reputation is the way to do this.
However, the survey also determines that approximately 40% of researchers do want help 'making a version of their research output freely available online in addition to the formally published version'. So it seems that academics do really want their research to be made freely available, and as accessible as possible. However, they don't view this as more important than which journal they choose to publish with. The survey also states that 'When an item is not held in the library collection, the highest share of respondents report that they look for a freely available version online, while the second highest share gives up'. This seems to be a case of educating researchers about how they can make their research freely available online, even if it has been published in a high-end journal, to ensure that it reaches the widest audience possible. So perhaps there is a job for all us Repository Managers/ Open Access advocates/ Research Librarians after all!
As I reached the last 20 pages or so, a few things started to, if not concern me, at least get me thinking:
Firstly, one question asked "How important to you is that your college or university library be the provider of each of the functions listed below...?" One of those functions is to "provide active support that helps to increase the productivity of my research." Only between 25 and 40% of academics (depending upon the discipline) thought that this was important, and of the functions listed it was considered to be least important. This concerns me a little as this is (partially) what the Research and Knowledge Exchange team (which I'm a part of) sets out to do.
Having said that, the question is worded in such a way that it doesn't consider what other active support librarians could provide researchers with. Perhaps they feel that help with other areas of their research, such as information on alternative publishing models, or ways in which to search more effectively, are much more important functions of an academic library. In fact, a number of the other functions are closely related to research ('the library pays for resources need'; 'the library serves as a starting point or gateway for locating information for my research') are considered of much higher importance. So perhaps I'm worrying unnecessarily here. Or perhaps this is simply a case of educating researchers about the broad variety of services that a library can (and does) offer, showing that they are constantly changing to keep abreast of the changes in communication and publishing.
My second big concern is that when choosing where to publish, academics don't see making articles freely available, or accessible to readers in developed nations, as a high priorty. Instead, their primary concern is whether or not the 'current issues of the journal are circulated widely, and are well read by academics in your field'. 'The journal has a high impact factor or an excellent academic reputation' doesn't follow far behind. To some extent this makes perfect sense, and I can't blame an academic for wanting their paper to reach the maximum amount of people it can within their discipline - and believing that a journal which is widely circulated and has a good reputation is the way to do this.
However, the survey also determines that approximately 40% of researchers do want help 'making a version of their research output freely available online in addition to the formally published version'. So it seems that academics do really want their research to be made freely available, and as accessible as possible. However, they don't view this as more important than which journal they choose to publish with. The survey also states that 'When an item is not held in the library collection, the highest share of respondents report that they look for a freely available version online, while the second highest share gives up'. This seems to be a case of educating researchers about how they can make their research freely available online, even if it has been published in a high-end journal, to ensure that it reaches the widest audience possible. So perhaps there is a job for all us Repository Managers/ Open Access advocates/ Research Librarians after all!
Monday, 16 July 2012
OR2012: Being there when you can't be there
This was my first real experience of 'attending' a conference without actually going to the event. In previous years I have been aware of the Open Repositories conference, but because it's always taken place in a foreign country attending it has never been a realisitic option. This year OR2012 took place in Edinburgh, so I was paying more attention to the build-up than in previous years. Initially I was planning to attend in person, but being 7 months pregnant meant I was less than keen to spend a week at the other end of the country.
So whilst a colleague went for a couple of days in my place, I still wanted to know what was happening. Which inspired me to look online to see what was going on. During the week, the best ways to keep abreast of what was happening (at least for me personally) were to keep up with the Twitter feed and read the live blog posts. These are both social media platforms I'm used to using, and not having to learn a new platform was a big bonus! I have to say a big kudos here to the conference organisers for putting all this together, along with a bunch of other social media options. Not all conference organisers are so proactive.
I was amazed, and quite pleased, to find that doing a search for #OR2012 on Twitter, and following the comments as they appeared, turned out to be my preferred way to follow the conference. Because it works like a conversation, you get access to the parts of a conference that you'd usually miss out on by not being there - namely the conversations around the talks, rather than the talks themselves. You can usually catch up with the talks themselves via e-mails or future blog posts after the conference has taken place, but not attending conferences means you miss the immediate reactions from attendees. With Twitter, this doesn't happen on quite so significant a scale. You can even ask questions of the attendees, and get immediate answers (I have to admit that, for me, this was a step too far for my first experience like this, but I like that you can. I did retweet some of my favourite tweets though)!
Interestingly, it was the live blog posts that I found least useful. I'm a relatively avid blog reader, and tend to find posts helpful and a good way of keeping very up-to-date with the latest developments. But live blog posts take away the element of reflection, and/ or explanations of how people have put certain things to use, that I find to be their most useful qualities.
Of all the OR2012 live blog posts I've read so far (there are a lot and I still have 5 or 6 to read from the last couple of days), I did find the one on Name and Data identifiers (a Weds 11 July session) most useful. I think this was primarily due to the fact that I already knew most of the information, having read about it previously - and, in one case, participated in one of the projects (if nothing else, the post acted as a reminder that I need to chase that particular project and see where things have got to, because I've heard nothing since March...). But when it came to the final talk on creating citable data identifiers, which I have less knowledge of, I still got a little lost. I found a more reflective post, written by a UKCoRR member after he left the conference on the Wednesday, much more readable and meaningful.
One final thought on keeping up with conferences in this way - make sure you give yourself the time to do it. My decision to keep up with this conference online was pretty last minute, and it took up a lot of my working week. Luckily I was able to do this as it wasn't a particularly busy week at work, but if something major had come up I would easily have fallen behind with what was happening. Just because you're not travelling away from the office, this doesn't mean you don't need to ensure you have the time to 'attend' it. Obviously this is less of an issue for a day-long event, but OR2012 is a big, week-long conference - the biggest annual one for repository folk that there is. Because of that, there's a lot of information to take on board. Just keeping up with tweets alone took up a significant part of my day, especially mid-week (when the majority of the talks happened). All this is proven by the fact that I still haven't finished reading all those blog posts yet!
So whilst a colleague went for a couple of days in my place, I still wanted to know what was happening. Which inspired me to look online to see what was going on. During the week, the best ways to keep abreast of what was happening (at least for me personally) were to keep up with the Twitter feed and read the live blog posts. These are both social media platforms I'm used to using, and not having to learn a new platform was a big bonus! I have to say a big kudos here to the conference organisers for putting all this together, along with a bunch of other social media options. Not all conference organisers are so proactive.
I was amazed, and quite pleased, to find that doing a search for #OR2012 on Twitter, and following the comments as they appeared, turned out to be my preferred way to follow the conference. Because it works like a conversation, you get access to the parts of a conference that you'd usually miss out on by not being there - namely the conversations around the talks, rather than the talks themselves. You can usually catch up with the talks themselves via e-mails or future blog posts after the conference has taken place, but not attending conferences means you miss the immediate reactions from attendees. With Twitter, this doesn't happen on quite so significant a scale. You can even ask questions of the attendees, and get immediate answers (I have to admit that, for me, this was a step too far for my first experience like this, but I like that you can. I did retweet some of my favourite tweets though)!
Interestingly, it was the live blog posts that I found least useful. I'm a relatively avid blog reader, and tend to find posts helpful and a good way of keeping very up-to-date with the latest developments. But live blog posts take away the element of reflection, and/ or explanations of how people have put certain things to use, that I find to be their most useful qualities.
Of all the OR2012 live blog posts I've read so far (there are a lot and I still have 5 or 6 to read from the last couple of days), I did find the one on Name and Data identifiers (a Weds 11 July session) most useful. I think this was primarily due to the fact that I already knew most of the information, having read about it previously - and, in one case, participated in one of the projects (if nothing else, the post acted as a reminder that I need to chase that particular project and see where things have got to, because I've heard nothing since March...). But when it came to the final talk on creating citable data identifiers, which I have less knowledge of, I still got a little lost. I found a more reflective post, written by a UKCoRR member after he left the conference on the Wednesday, much more readable and meaningful.
One final thought on keeping up with conferences in this way - make sure you give yourself the time to do it. My decision to keep up with this conference online was pretty last minute, and it took up a lot of my working week. Luckily I was able to do this as it wasn't a particularly busy week at work, but if something major had come up I would easily have fallen behind with what was happening. Just because you're not travelling away from the office, this doesn't mean you don't need to ensure you have the time to 'attend' it. Obviously this is less of an issue for a day-long event, but OR2012 is a big, week-long conference - the biggest annual one for repository folk that there is. Because of that, there's a lot of information to take on board. Just keeping up with tweets alone took up a significant part of my day, especially mid-week (when the majority of the talks happened). All this is proven by the fact that I still haven't finished reading all those blog posts yet!
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
The Finch Report
I'm probably a couple of weeks behind most by commenting on The Finch Report. It is a government-commissioned report suggesting that the best route to open access is via the gold route, where funding bodies and/ or libraries pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) in order for academics to publish their research. Institutional repositories would, in turn, be used more for grey literature such as reports and theses. Although the report is long (140 pages) the executive summary (11 pages) gives a good overview.
The reason it's taken me a couple of weeks to blog my thoughts on the report is that I wanted to have some time to read it, and try to come to a relatively unbiased opinion, before I read the immense amount of e-mails that had coming flooding into my in-box on the topic.
I'm not going to repeat any of the explanations or (rather lengthy) arguments here in any depth, as enough people have done that already. What I will do is point you towards what, I think, are some of the most useful sources and blog posts that have appeared so far.
As ever, The Times Higher Education Supplement is probably one of the best places to go for a good short overview of the report, a relatively balanced opinion, and no incorrect media spin. A more recent article gets opinions from both sides - a publisher who is pro gold open access and a vice-provost for research who is pro green open access (and if you don't really understand the difference between gold vs. green, you'll probably have a much better understand after reading any response at all to The Finch Report).
Some posts that are somewhat more biased, but reflect my own opinions on the subject, come from UCLs Vice-Provost for Research, David Price. It's admittedly written from a Russell University perspective, but effectively argues the reasons university have concerns about the Finch report. UKCoRR (UK Council for Research Repositories) has also blogged a response detailing the possible impact the report could have on repository managers. It is, of course, a very repository-focussed article looking at the pluses and minuses of the Finch report. As a repository manager I do, of course, agree with the UKCoRR stance- but also acknowledge that it doesn’t cover all of the issues that may be present in such a complex open access debate.
Finally, this Guardian piece includes a lot of misunderstandings and half truths (especially amongst the comments), but I couldn't not point out the very final comment, which I love! These are all comments I've heard from other academics working in physics and maths, so I don't think it's too far from the truth.
Having said I wouldn't repeat any of the arguments above, I'm now going to include a few of my initial thoughts upon having read the report. It's probably worth mentioning here that I'm a Repository Manager at a university, so my viewpoint is likely to be rather biased...
•Fundamentally universities (and their libraries) are paying publishers for work their researchers/ employers are doing - people they are paying to do this work in the first place.
•Charging APCs is all well and good, but it should only cover the cost of the administrative effort put in by the publisher. Yes, they organise peer review - but they don't carry it out. The researchers do this for free - often over and above their other work, and outside of their normal working hours (my hubby is an academic and regularly reviews papers at the weekend or midnight)
•Where are all these savings for HE/ other sectors coming from? The report keeps mentioning savings, but not where they will come from
•The report does have some good suggestions. I have no problem with repositories promoting grey literature, or with journals being the ones to make articles open access and freely available - if this is a sustainable practice that doesn't force universites, and their libraries, to spend even more money that they don't have. However, the good suggestions are hiding some pretty controversial ones that will cost the government, and publically funded services, more money.
•Publishers are a corporate enterprise and need to move with the times; not force government services to pay them for the privilege of doing things that aren't necessary
The reason it's taken me a couple of weeks to blog my thoughts on the report is that I wanted to have some time to read it, and try to come to a relatively unbiased opinion, before I read the immense amount of e-mails that had coming flooding into my in-box on the topic.
I'm not going to repeat any of the explanations or (rather lengthy) arguments here in any depth, as enough people have done that already. What I will do is point you towards what, I think, are some of the most useful sources and blog posts that have appeared so far.
As ever, The Times Higher Education Supplement is probably one of the best places to go for a good short overview of the report, a relatively balanced opinion, and no incorrect media spin. A more recent article gets opinions from both sides - a publisher who is pro gold open access and a vice-provost for research who is pro green open access (and if you don't really understand the difference between gold vs. green, you'll probably have a much better understand after reading any response at all to The Finch Report).
Some posts that are somewhat more biased, but reflect my own opinions on the subject, come from UCLs Vice-Provost for Research, David Price. It's admittedly written from a Russell University perspective, but effectively argues the reasons university have concerns about the Finch report. UKCoRR (UK Council for Research Repositories) has also blogged a response detailing the possible impact the report could have on repository managers. It is, of course, a very repository-focussed article looking at the pluses and minuses of the Finch report. As a repository manager I do, of course, agree with the UKCoRR stance- but also acknowledge that it doesn’t cover all of the issues that may be present in such a complex open access debate.
Finally, this Guardian piece includes a lot of misunderstandings and half truths (especially amongst the comments), but I couldn't not point out the very final comment, which I love! These are all comments I've heard from other academics working in physics and maths, so I don't think it's too far from the truth.
Having said I wouldn't repeat any of the arguments above, I'm now going to include a few of my initial thoughts upon having read the report. It's probably worth mentioning here that I'm a Repository Manager at a university, so my viewpoint is likely to be rather biased...
•Fundamentally universities (and their libraries) are paying publishers for work their researchers/ employers are doing - people they are paying to do this work in the first place.
•Charging APCs is all well and good, but it should only cover the cost of the administrative effort put in by the publisher. Yes, they organise peer review - but they don't carry it out. The researchers do this for free - often over and above their other work, and outside of their normal working hours (my hubby is an academic and regularly reviews papers at the weekend or midnight)
•Where are all these savings for HE/ other sectors coming from? The report keeps mentioning savings, but not where they will come from
•The report does have some good suggestions. I have no problem with repositories promoting grey literature, or with journals being the ones to make articles open access and freely available - if this is a sustainable practice that doesn't force universites, and their libraries, to spend even more money that they don't have. However, the good suggestions are hiding some pretty controversial ones that will cost the government, and publically funded services, more money.
•Publishers are a corporate enterprise and need to move with the times; not force government services to pay them for the privilege of doing things that aren't necessary
Saturday, 14 April 2012
Teaching on the UWE MSc Information and Library Management (ILM) course
Once again, I haven't posted on this blog for a while... that's not because I've done nothing of any interest at work (or at least I hope it's not), but simply because life outside of work has been, well, busy, to put it mildly!
But I do have a couple of work-related things I wanted to share...
Firstly, about a month ago I was asked to contribute to a teaching session for the Masters students studying towards their MSc in Information and Library Management at UWE. I've always been curious about these sessions, as I didn't study for my MSc at UWE (I studied at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to gain my MSc). So when I was asked if I would help to put together a session on the repository and open access for the course, I was keen to find out what these sessions involved. However, I was also nervous. Now, I spend quite a lot of my time teaching students library-related material and running repository training sessions for university staff, but somehow this was different. This was "proper" teaching... But hey, I thought, it won't be for a while yet, I don't have to worry about it - it will be future Anna's problem. Then I was told the session was in a week and a halfs time. So not only did I now have to think about the session properly, I had a week to write the content for it as well.
Thankfully writing the content was easier than I anticipated. I already had a lot of material ready as part of other training sessions and talks (it turns out a "proper" teaching session isn't very different to a library teaching session - which will hopefully come as no surprise to people who teach library sessions. I wish I was more confident about these things!). Even finding relevant articles and information for the students wasn't too difficult.
When it came to actually teaching the students, I was quite nervous. I started off presenting the session quite hesitantly - not helped by the fact that my boss and one of the senior management team were in the audience. I hate presenting to people who are in charge of me in some sense, it makes me so much more nervous! Thankfully, once I got going I warmed up a lot, and the students seemed really interested. There were only about 7 of them, but they got pretty engaged and were happy to ask questions and be part of a discussion. The second half of the session involved them doing some hands-on exercises, and I got a lot more questions and interest at that point as well - including some questions my boss couldn't answer, which made me feel quite needed! Overall, it was a really rewarding, satisfying experience, helped massively by the interest and engagement that came from the students.
Which all leads me on to my next blog post, which is also about something I anticipate could be highly rewarding and satisfying to do - mentoring.
But I do have a couple of work-related things I wanted to share...
Firstly, about a month ago I was asked to contribute to a teaching session for the Masters students studying towards their MSc in Information and Library Management at UWE. I've always been curious about these sessions, as I didn't study for my MSc at UWE (I studied at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to gain my MSc). So when I was asked if I would help to put together a session on the repository and open access for the course, I was keen to find out what these sessions involved. However, I was also nervous. Now, I spend quite a lot of my time teaching students library-related material and running repository training sessions for university staff, but somehow this was different. This was "proper" teaching... But hey, I thought, it won't be for a while yet, I don't have to worry about it - it will be future Anna's problem. Then I was told the session was in a week and a halfs time. So not only did I now have to think about the session properly, I had a week to write the content for it as well.
Thankfully writing the content was easier than I anticipated. I already had a lot of material ready as part of other training sessions and talks (it turns out a "proper" teaching session isn't very different to a library teaching session - which will hopefully come as no surprise to people who teach library sessions. I wish I was more confident about these things!). Even finding relevant articles and information for the students wasn't too difficult.
When it came to actually teaching the students, I was quite nervous. I started off presenting the session quite hesitantly - not helped by the fact that my boss and one of the senior management team were in the audience. I hate presenting to people who are in charge of me in some sense, it makes me so much more nervous! Thankfully, once I got going I warmed up a lot, and the students seemed really interested. There were only about 7 of them, but they got pretty engaged and were happy to ask questions and be part of a discussion. The second half of the session involved them doing some hands-on exercises, and I got a lot more questions and interest at that point as well - including some questions my boss couldn't answer, which made me feel quite needed! Overall, it was a really rewarding, satisfying experience, helped massively by the interest and engagement that came from the students.
Which all leads me on to my next blog post, which is also about something I anticipate could be highly rewarding and satisfying to do - mentoring.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
UKCoRR Members Meeting
About a week ago, I attended the UKCorr 2012 Members meeting. I've been attending these meetings for the past 3 years now, and tend to get something useful out of them. The first meeting I attended back in 2010w as only a month or so after I started working with institutional repositories, so it was something of a baptism of fire. Since then, I've met a lot more Repository Managers and have learnt a lot more about open access and institutional repositories generally.
This meeting was no less useful than previous ones - although I was shattered by the end of it! It takes 2 1/2 hours to get from Bristol to Portsmouth (where the meeting was being held), so the 5 hours of travelling didn't make the day a short one. There was a lot here of interest to me though.
The day started off with a talk on the future direction of UKCoRR - with one of the questions being about whether UKCoRR should consider charging a membership fee in order to improve the services it can offer its members. It's currently free to join, but you have to work on a repository in some capacity.
I've had time to reflect on this a bit since the meeting, and I think that of the two professional bodies I'm a part of - CILIP and UKCoRR - UKCoRR is the one that is most relevant in my day-to-day job. The mailing list means I get answers to questions that are directly relevant to my work (sometimes before I even know I need an answer), and the meetings mean that I can always talk to other managers with similar ideas, thoughts and problems to me.
Being a member of CILIP means that I can officially call myself a Chartered Librarian, but I have to admit that I primarily use it to keep up-to-date on what is happening in the wider library world, particularly in other sectors. I do have other ways of finding this out - ex-colleagues, other people's library blogs, and Twitter are all good sources. And yet I pay CILIP a-not-unnoticeable amount of money every month.
So, in principle, I should be willing to pay UKCoRR some money every month for the benefit they give me in the workplace. In theory, I'd be willing to do so. In practice, I don't know if I could afford it. I don't want to let my CILIP membership lapse (having only Chartered last year, and putting in plenty of effort to do so), but I don't want to lose my UKCoRR membership either. So I probably would stump up the money if it came to it. But the point was made that this wouldn't be true for everybody - there are plenty of Repository Administrators out there for whom working on the repository is just a job, and why should they pay to be able to do their job? Which in turn might make UKCORR less useful for those members who were left... I don't have any answers, this is just where my thinking led me!
So onto the rest of the meeting... hearing from Repository Managers about the Kultur and Kultivate projects (both designed to improve repositories for art and design researchers), their marketing projects, and uploading etheses to their repository were all really interesting talks with some direct relevance to me. Whilst our repository is "Kulturised", I would love (and am planning) to improve the metadata elements for researchers in art and design. We're currently in the middle of a pilot phase for adding etheses to the repository, and marketing the repository is something that every Repository Manager is always thinking about!
The final talk of the day was on OERs, or open educational resources. This is something I have little experience in, and am unlikely to get involved in in any depth in the near future. I was pretty exhausted by this point and tempted to leave early, but decided to hang around for the talk. And I'm glad I did, because it was one of the most enjoyable ones of the day. I learnt a lot about what OERs are, what they hold and the (mass of) associated issues that go with this sort of repository. So if I ever do get involved with OERs, I'll at least have some knowledge about what I'm getting myself into!
This meeting was no less useful than previous ones - although I was shattered by the end of it! It takes 2 1/2 hours to get from Bristol to Portsmouth (where the meeting was being held), so the 5 hours of travelling didn't make the day a short one. There was a lot here of interest to me though.
The day started off with a talk on the future direction of UKCoRR - with one of the questions being about whether UKCoRR should consider charging a membership fee in order to improve the services it can offer its members. It's currently free to join, but you have to work on a repository in some capacity.
I've had time to reflect on this a bit since the meeting, and I think that of the two professional bodies I'm a part of - CILIP and UKCoRR - UKCoRR is the one that is most relevant in my day-to-day job. The mailing list means I get answers to questions that are directly relevant to my work (sometimes before I even know I need an answer), and the meetings mean that I can always talk to other managers with similar ideas, thoughts and problems to me.
Being a member of CILIP means that I can officially call myself a Chartered Librarian, but I have to admit that I primarily use it to keep up-to-date on what is happening in the wider library world, particularly in other sectors. I do have other ways of finding this out - ex-colleagues, other people's library blogs, and Twitter are all good sources. And yet I pay CILIP a-not-unnoticeable amount of money every month.
So, in principle, I should be willing to pay UKCoRR some money every month for the benefit they give me in the workplace. In theory, I'd be willing to do so. In practice, I don't know if I could afford it. I don't want to let my CILIP membership lapse (having only Chartered last year, and putting in plenty of effort to do so), but I don't want to lose my UKCoRR membership either. So I probably would stump up the money if it came to it. But the point was made that this wouldn't be true for everybody - there are plenty of Repository Administrators out there for whom working on the repository is just a job, and why should they pay to be able to do their job? Which in turn might make UKCORR less useful for those members who were left... I don't have any answers, this is just where my thinking led me!
So onto the rest of the meeting... hearing from Repository Managers about the Kultur and Kultivate projects (both designed to improve repositories for art and design researchers), their marketing projects, and uploading etheses to their repository were all really interesting talks with some direct relevance to me. Whilst our repository is "Kulturised", I would love (and am planning) to improve the metadata elements for researchers in art and design. We're currently in the middle of a pilot phase for adding etheses to the repository, and marketing the repository is something that every Repository Manager is always thinking about!
The final talk of the day was on OERs, or open educational resources. This is something I have little experience in, and am unlikely to get involved in in any depth in the near future. I was pretty exhausted by this point and tempted to leave early, but decided to hang around for the talk. And I'm glad I did, because it was one of the most enjoyable ones of the day. I learnt a lot about what OERs are, what they hold and the (mass of) associated issues that go with this sort of repository. So if I ever do get involved with OERs, I'll at least have some knowledge about what I'm getting myself into!
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Staff development hour on Open Access
At the end of the 23 Things for Professional Development course, I put together a Personal Development Plan (PDP) based on some of the things I'd learnt during the course and had decided I'd like to learn a bit more about. One of the actions was to prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi.
Well, today I delivered that session - so I'm pleased to say I've completed one of the goals I set myself! I devised the session with a colleague, and we used a mix of methods to deliver the session. This included some standard PowerPoint slides for basic repository info, a Prezi to show the process researchers go through when writing research (with some great Open Access videos embedded into it), and some quiz sections which we used Turning Point for (a voting system software the uni has), to try and make the whole thing a little more interactive.
It was all a pretty steep learning curve - this was my first "proper" Prezi. Also, although I'd used Turning Point before, this was the first time I'd used it to design the questions and see the process through from beginning to end. However, I was pretty excited about running the session because it was using new techniques (well, new to me), and I was interested to see if people would enjoy it. It was also great that it was a training session for library staff, so there were plenty of friendly faces. That helped a lot when I was being experimental.
I'm happy to say that the overall result was a pretty positive one. Although there was a slight technical hitch with the Prezi initially (it froze and wouldn't load), turning the PC off and back on again fixed that pretty quickly. Plus, it gave people a chance to feel a bit more relaxed and ask some initial questions.
After the session, the feedback indicated that the people who attended really enjoyed the mix of interactivity and talking, and felt that they learnt a lot about what open access was. In fact, the only negative comments were that people would have liked to learn more! Unfortunately, there's only so much you can fit into an hour long session. One other great outcome was that a colleague working on managing research data asked if she could use my research process diagram (the one that appears in the Prezi) for her work. So not only did the whole experience help me learn how to use Prezi and make for a more interesting staff development session, it also directly helped a colleague with her work.
We're booked in to run the session twice more at two different campuses, and I hope my other colleagues are as enthusiastic about, and enjoy the session as much as, my colleagues today.
If you're interested in what I put together, you can view the Prezi part of the presentation above. You might also learn a bit about the research process and how open access can help with it!
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Catching up
It's been a while since I posted on this blog, and I've been feeling a little guilty about it. I know it was one of the actions on my PDP that I put together as part of Thing 23 for the cpd23 course, so I had a look at the PDP to see how far I had got with the other actions...
I was relieved, and a little bit surprised, to find that things aren't as bad as I thought! Whilst I haven't completed any of the actions, I hadn't planned to by the end of the year. I must have been having one of those rare moments of realism I get occasionally when writing the PDP.
I was relieved, and a little bit surprised, to find that things aren't as bad as I thought! Whilst I haven't completed any of the actions, I hadn't planned to by the end of the year. I must have been having one of those rare moments of realism I get occasionally when writing the PDP.
One of the actions that I am working towards is preparing part of a library staff development hour on open access using Prezi. Another action is to create a screencast for an e-learning object.
Once I've delivered the staff develoment hour session I'll put a link to the Prezi on the blog, but at the moment it may well still need some tweaks before the session itself.
Although I won't be using Jing to create the screencast, it should use similar skills and get me started on the right track to create future screencasts.
Once I've delivered the staff develoment hour session I'll put a link to the Prezi on the blog, but at the moment it may well still need some tweaks before the session itself.
Although I won't be using Jing to create the screencast, it should use similar skills and get me started on the right track to create future screencasts.
I'm doing less well with keeping this blog up-to-date, and using Twitter more. Whilst I'm pretty good at reading tweets and taking away useful bits of info (often things I wouldn't have known otherwise), I'm totally rubbish at tweeting myself. I also tend to only up-date this blog when I have something specific to say - which I guess is OK, I just wish I had specific things to say a little more often! I'll try to be a little prolific in the New Year.
On an unrelated bright side, I've now had the results of the Information and Management Leadership Level 3 course confirmed by an external examiner, and I passed. I'm feeling quite smug that I got 100% on one of the three essays...
Friday, 28 October 2011
So that was Open Access Week...
...and I'm totally exhausted!
We ran a whole range of events this week, from drop-in sessions at all of our four campuses, to a lunchtime event on open access, to running a competition for the person who adds the most full text items to the repository in a week, to posting an interview a day on the UWE Research Repository blog.
It was hard work, and I'm glad it's over, but there were also some pretty positive outcomes so I think it was worthwhile.
We've had 85 deposits to the repository, 52 (approx. 60%) with full text attached - a significant amount more than in a normal week. My pessimistic side says this has something to do with academics being told to add their publications as part of a REF review that's happening over the next couple of months - but I'm going to choose to believe that some of it, at least, is down to our promotion!
As a result of the lunchtime event, we've been invited to go a couple of departmental meetings (which are rapidly becoming faculty-wide meetings) to give talks on open access, which is great news for us. Jackie Wickham from the Repositories Support Project came along to our event as a guest speaker, and she's written a great blog post summing up the key points, and providing a link to her slides.
Although the drop-in sessions weren't especially well attended, there was one very positive outcome - I've now been given a film to upload to the repository by a researcher in Creative Arts. It will be our first movie in the repository, so I'm keen to get it on there - but that's just one of the many jobs for next week...
For now, I'm off to not think about repositories or open access for (most of) the weekend!
We ran a whole range of events this week, from drop-in sessions at all of our four campuses, to a lunchtime event on open access, to running a competition for the person who adds the most full text items to the repository in a week, to posting an interview a day on the UWE Research Repository blog.
It was hard work, and I'm glad it's over, but there were also some pretty positive outcomes so I think it was worthwhile.
We've had 85 deposits to the repository, 52 (approx. 60%) with full text attached - a significant amount more than in a normal week. My pessimistic side says this has something to do with academics being told to add their publications as part of a REF review that's happening over the next couple of months - but I'm going to choose to believe that some of it, at least, is down to our promotion!
As a result of the lunchtime event, we've been invited to go a couple of departmental meetings (which are rapidly becoming faculty-wide meetings) to give talks on open access, which is great news for us. Jackie Wickham from the Repositories Support Project came along to our event as a guest speaker, and she's written a great blog post summing up the key points, and providing a link to her slides.
Although the drop-in sessions weren't especially well attended, there was one very positive outcome - I've now been given a film to upload to the repository by a researcher in Creative Arts. It will be our first movie in the repository, so I'm keen to get it on there - but that's just one of the many jobs for next week...
For now, I'm off to not think about repositories or open access for (most of) the weekend!
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #17
It's been a while since I've had a chance to look at any of CPD23 Things past Thing 16, as I've been on holiday followed by returning to a very busy start of term at the end of September. I'm going to make an effort to do the remaining Things in the next week or so though. I'm starting with Thing 17 - Prezi and Slideshare.
Before this Thing, I hadn't ever used Prezi before. I'd heard of it, but didn't really fully understand it. Having just had a play with it, I definitely think it's something I could use. I really like the idea, and I found it simple and intuitve to use (well, at least when exploring the basics). I'm keen to try and create something with it properly, but feel that I would need to do a fair amount of planning first. I've definitely got some ideas I'd like to try out when things calm down a little though...
My favourite idea is to use a Prezi as part of a staff development hour session I'll be running early next term. I'll be trying to explain to library staff the process academics go through when trying to get research published. In Prezi, I could use a large picture or chart to show the complete life cycle of a piece of research (e.g. from inception - writing - trying to get it published - getting peer reviewed - publishing - adding it to open access). Zooming in on each of these areas would give more explanation about the associated issues and pitfalls, and how each area relates to open access and the repository.
Another thing I am thinking of trying is adapting my current PowerPoint slides explaining the repository to academics. In Prezi I could group each element together, rather than having a selection of 3 or 4 slides. E.g. all the "FAQs" could be one section, "what is open access and why is it good?" another section. I could easily incorporate videos into this section on the benefits of open access.
So, on to SlideShare. This I have used, but only to look at presentations that other people have pointed me towards. I've never really searched it, or considered adding any of my own presentations to it. However, I can definitely see how some of my presentations and slides on open access could be useful to other people trying to promote the benefits of open access - or even as a way of selling open access to others. Having a quick search for open access presentations on SlideShare, I can also definitely see how it would be useful if I was looking for ideas or inspiration for future presentations, and may well use it more for this in the future - when I need some new ideas for something!
Before this Thing, I hadn't ever used Prezi before. I'd heard of it, but didn't really fully understand it. Having just had a play with it, I definitely think it's something I could use. I really like the idea, and I found it simple and intuitve to use (well, at least when exploring the basics). I'm keen to try and create something with it properly, but feel that I would need to do a fair amount of planning first. I've definitely got some ideas I'd like to try out when things calm down a little though...
My favourite idea is to use a Prezi as part of a staff development hour session I'll be running early next term. I'll be trying to explain to library staff the process academics go through when trying to get research published. In Prezi, I could use a large picture or chart to show the complete life cycle of a piece of research (e.g. from inception - writing - trying to get it published - getting peer reviewed - publishing - adding it to open access). Zooming in on each of these areas would give more explanation about the associated issues and pitfalls, and how each area relates to open access and the repository.
Another thing I am thinking of trying is adapting my current PowerPoint slides explaining the repository to academics. In Prezi I could group each element together, rather than having a selection of 3 or 4 slides. E.g. all the "FAQs" could be one section, "what is open access and why is it good?" another section. I could easily incorporate videos into this section on the benefits of open access.
So, on to SlideShare. This I have used, but only to look at presentations that other people have pointed me towards. I've never really searched it, or considered adding any of my own presentations to it. However, I can definitely see how some of my presentations and slides on open access could be useful to other people trying to promote the benefits of open access - or even as a way of selling open access to others. Having a quick search for open access presentations on SlideShare, I can also definitely see how it would be useful if I was looking for ideas or inspiration for future presentations, and may well use it more for this in the future - when I need some new ideas for something!
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Satisfied customer
Well, we may not have won any awards at the UWE BetterTogether ceremony, but at least our users appreciate us! Well, some of them anyway... one of our repository users has written a very glowing blog post about us, which I just had to mention! Self-promotion and all that.
I have to say, his positive view of the repository staff is entirely down to our Repository Administrator, who has been helping him to upload his work. Nothing to do with me!
Just an aside to this: At UWE we allow anybody with a staff log-in to enter their research onto the repository. In many cases, this includes postgraduate researchers. As Peter says in his blog post, this is a great way for researchers to get their conference papers out there quickly, and visible to the wider community.
Monday, 20 June 2011
23 Things for Professional Development: Why?
Firstly, a bit about me... I'm currently working as an Assistant Librarian at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. My specialism is working as the Repository Manager, organising and developing the university's institutional repository (it's sneakily called the UWE Research Repository). For those who don't know, instutional repositories are now being used by a number of universities (and other organisations) to promote the research that happens within the institution and, wherever possible (subject to copyright laws etc.), to give free, instant access to that research (for anyone and everyone) via the Internet. I strongly believe in the principals of open access, so it makes the job a fitting one for me.
As for how this blog came about, it's all because of the 23 Things for Professional Development course. When I received an e-mail telling me all about a free online CPD course this summer, I thought it sounded like an interesting thing to do. And I really liked the idea of having a chance to professionally develop myself without having to leave my desk!
Taking a look at the sorts of things on offer, I already felt like I had some knowledge of a lot of them. I already have an online presence, spend a fair amount of my time reflecting and networking, and (don't think) I'm too badly organised. But there always seems to be more to learn, and the things on presenting information and getting involved especially caught my eye.
Additionally, my online presence isn't currently geared specifically towards my professional self. I already have two blogs, but chose to start a new one as part of cpd23. This was so I'd finally have a place to point people I work with in the library world to. Much as I love watching and blogging about movies, it's not very relevant to my work!
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