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 repository. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repository. 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.
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!
Saturday, 19 October 2013
Reviewing my Personal Development Plan
If you've been a reader of this blog for a while, you may remember (if you have a really good memory) a post I wrote back in October 2011, two years ago. It was the final post I wrote as part of the 23 Things course (the reason, in fact, that this blog exists in the first place). In that Oct 2011 post, I talked about a Personal Development Plan (PDP) I had put together, and how and when I hoped to achieve the goals on that PDP.
Then, in December 2011 I wrote a brief update post, stating that I hadn't yet achieved any of those goals - but that according to my timescale, I wasn't yet due to, so that was OK.
A lot has happened since then. Not least of which is the fact that I spent from Aug 2012- Sept 2013 on maternity leave, and didn't really think about work all that much during that period. However, now I've been back at work for a month or two, and I'm starting to think about this sort of thing again. So I've gone back and had a look at that original PDP...
... and was relatively happily surprised. Sure, there are some actions I've totally failed to complete, but others that I've actually completed, and even moved on from a little. Here they are, in order, with how far I've progressed:
1) Prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi. Due to complete by Jan 2012.
The preparation for this was actually completed on target, in Jan 2012. However the actual sessions were delivered between Jan and March 2012. I did also write a blog post specifically about this at the time, just after I ran the first session. Things have moved on a little since I created that Prezi, and I suspect I will be creating something similar, but updated, in the not too distant future.
2) Keep my cpd23 blog up-to-date. Review Feb 2012.
I've had partial success here. I was doing relatively well with this up until July 2012, usually managing to post at least once a month, and often more than this. Then I went on maternity leave and the blog died something of a death, there being no posts between August 2012 and Sept 2013. In some ways I feel I have a valid excuse for this (and certainly didn't have enough work-related things to talk about), but now I'm back I'd like to keep the blog going!
3) To engage more with Twitter. Review Feb 2012.
Nope. Utterly failed here. Again, I was doing OK up until July 2012 (although I was posting more like once a month than once a week, which is what I had specified). Since then, I've tweeted once. Apparently that was 117 days and it wasn't even work related. I do still read Twitter posts, so perhaps I need to make more of an effort with this one.
4) Engage more with the LISNPN site. Review Mar 2012.
Sorry, failed again. I haven't actually looked at the LISNPN site in a very long time. This was clearly one of those 'seemed like a good idea at the time' actions which I was, in all honesty, probably never going to do. Perhaps one action to remove, I'm afraid.
5) Create a screencast of uploading an item to the repository using Jing. Due April 2012.
Yes! Something I've done! [And even blogged about a little - although I've just discovered it's still appearing as a draft... I'll update it to make it clear when it was written, then post it after this post and link to it!] Back to the issue at hand: Although the screencast wasn't completed until Aug 2012, and I didn't actually use Jing for it. I used Camtasia as that's the software we have at work, and it does offer a little more functionality than Jing. (Having said that, I did help another collleague use Jing for their screencast).
My colleague and I put together a screencast of uploading an item to the repository back in August 2012. To be fair, this then had to be updated by my colleague after I went on maternity leave becasue we updated the way the UWE Research Repository looks. His work, and the result, can be seen on the UWE Library YouTube channel. But I did show him how to use Camtasia! And we have actually just completed a shorter, one-minute, Quick Deposit guide. When that appears on the YouTube channel I'll probably blog about it...
6) Become a CILIP Mentor. Due May 2012.
Again, achieved. Although very late - and still in its very early stages. I made the decision not to become a mentor before I went on maternity leave, not knowing how much time or effort I'd be able to put in during the year. Looking back, I wish I had become a mentor at the time - it would have been a great way to keep in touch with the profession whilst being away from the workplace, and to give something useful back to people who needed a bit of my time. But then, seeing into the future is tough.
However, I have now sent off the form to CILIP (as of last week), officially stating I want to be a mentor. Whilst this means I don't, as yet, have any official mentees, I do have an informal arrangement in place with a colleague who is studying for their MSc. I've been helping out for a while now, since (I think) early in 2012. And I'm really enjoying being able to help - and hopefully the mentee is gaining something from this relationship too!
7) Use Zotero to store and organise my references. Due June 2012.
Nope. Not even looked at Zotero. I had intended to use this to add any references that might be useful to any Revalidation I chose to do, so it's not actually been much of an issue yet. I haven't read anything that might be valid to Revalidation... and as the criteria are changing now anyway, who knows if I'll need this or not? I have a suspicion it might still be useful though, especially as I'm currently reading Managing Research Data (edited by Graham Pryor), and have a few other books and articles on my reading list...
So, all in all, 4 of 7 actions completed or partially completed. And another one or two which I definitely want to work on. My next action, should, I suspect, be to go away and update my PDP. I can already think of a few additions: Learn more about the new Chartership regulations (I'll need to know these if I'm mentoring Chartership candidates); Register for Revalidation (when I know what the new regulations are, I'm allowed and have done enough CPD hours).
I suspect there'll be an update in the (hopefully not too distant) future...
Then, in December 2011 I wrote a brief update post, stating that I hadn't yet achieved any of those goals - but that according to my timescale, I wasn't yet due to, so that was OK.
A lot has happened since then. Not least of which is the fact that I spent from Aug 2012- Sept 2013 on maternity leave, and didn't really think about work all that much during that period. However, now I've been back at work for a month or two, and I'm starting to think about this sort of thing again. So I've gone back and had a look at that original PDP...
... and was relatively happily surprised. Sure, there are some actions I've totally failed to complete, but others that I've actually completed, and even moved on from a little. Here they are, in order, with how far I've progressed:
1) Prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi. Due to complete by Jan 2012.
The preparation for this was actually completed on target, in Jan 2012. However the actual sessions were delivered between Jan and March 2012. I did also write a blog post specifically about this at the time, just after I ran the first session. Things have moved on a little since I created that Prezi, and I suspect I will be creating something similar, but updated, in the not too distant future.
2) Keep my cpd23 blog up-to-date. Review Feb 2012.
I've had partial success here. I was doing relatively well with this up until July 2012, usually managing to post at least once a month, and often more than this. Then I went on maternity leave and the blog died something of a death, there being no posts between August 2012 and Sept 2013. In some ways I feel I have a valid excuse for this (and certainly didn't have enough work-related things to talk about), but now I'm back I'd like to keep the blog going!
3) To engage more with Twitter. Review Feb 2012.
Nope. Utterly failed here. Again, I was doing OK up until July 2012 (although I was posting more like once a month than once a week, which is what I had specified). Since then, I've tweeted once. Apparently that was 117 days and it wasn't even work related. I do still read Twitter posts, so perhaps I need to make more of an effort with this one.
4) Engage more with the LISNPN site. Review Mar 2012.
Sorry, failed again. I haven't actually looked at the LISNPN site in a very long time. This was clearly one of those 'seemed like a good idea at the time' actions which I was, in all honesty, probably never going to do. Perhaps one action to remove, I'm afraid.
5) Create a screencast of uploading an item to the repository using Jing. Due April 2012.
Yes! Something I've done! [And even blogged about a little - although I've just discovered it's still appearing as a draft... I'll update it to make it clear when it was written, then post it after this post and link to it!] Back to the issue at hand: Although the screencast wasn't completed until Aug 2012, and I didn't actually use Jing for it. I used Camtasia as that's the software we have at work, and it does offer a little more functionality than Jing. (Having said that, I did help another collleague use Jing for their screencast).
My colleague and I put together a screencast of uploading an item to the repository back in August 2012. To be fair, this then had to be updated by my colleague after I went on maternity leave becasue we updated the way the UWE Research Repository looks. His work, and the result, can be seen on the UWE Library YouTube channel. But I did show him how to use Camtasia! And we have actually just completed a shorter, one-minute, Quick Deposit guide. When that appears on the YouTube channel I'll probably blog about it...
6) Become a CILIP Mentor. Due May 2012.
Again, achieved. Although very late - and still in its very early stages. I made the decision not to become a mentor before I went on maternity leave, not knowing how much time or effort I'd be able to put in during the year. Looking back, I wish I had become a mentor at the time - it would have been a great way to keep in touch with the profession whilst being away from the workplace, and to give something useful back to people who needed a bit of my time. But then, seeing into the future is tough.
However, I have now sent off the form to CILIP (as of last week), officially stating I want to be a mentor. Whilst this means I don't, as yet, have any official mentees, I do have an informal arrangement in place with a colleague who is studying for their MSc. I've been helping out for a while now, since (I think) early in 2012. And I'm really enjoying being able to help - and hopefully the mentee is gaining something from this relationship too!
7) Use Zotero to store and organise my references. Due June 2012.
Nope. Not even looked at Zotero. I had intended to use this to add any references that might be useful to any Revalidation I chose to do, so it's not actually been much of an issue yet. I haven't read anything that might be valid to Revalidation... and as the criteria are changing now anyway, who knows if I'll need this or not? I have a suspicion it might still be useful though, especially as I'm currently reading Managing Research Data (edited by Graham Pryor), and have a few other books and articles on my reading list...
So, all in all, 4 of 7 actions completed or partially completed. And another one or two which I definitely want to work on. My next action, should, I suspect, be to go away and update my PDP. I can already think of a few additions: Learn more about the new Chartership regulations (I'll need to know these if I'm mentoring Chartership candidates); Register for Revalidation (when I know what the new regulations are, I'm allowed and have done enough CPD hours).
I suspect there'll be an update in the (hopefully not too distant) future...
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
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Getting published: Repository metadata for diverse collections
I've always loved writing. But the last time I had something published was back when in 1997. As a teenager, I loved to poetry and had a couple of poems published in local magazines and the like. But I'm actually only any good at writing poetry when I feel angst. And other than a couple of years in my mid twenties (when I started writing poetry again...), I've been lucky enough to not really feel any angst since I was a teenager.
So I guess I'm lucky to be in a job where part of it actually involves writing - even if it is mostly reports and long-winded e-mails. I had actually been putting off writing anything for publication though, due to a fear of commitment (both in terms of time and energy) and possible failure. I did know that, if I ever did decide to write something, my colleagues and workplace were likely to be supportive - the potential of me getting something published had been discussed before. I also know how lucky I am to work for a library service who are keen for me to do this sort of thing, and willing to give me the time and space to work on it.
So, about a month and a half ago a call was sent out on a repository mailing list I'm signed up to, asking if people would be willing to write an article on some aspect of metadata in institutional repositories. Well, I'm no cataloguing expert, but I have spent the past two and a half years managing an institutional repository, and have read up a fair bit on the associated metadata issues- and experienced a fair few of them first hand. I also knew that my Repository Administrator had written an essay on that very subject for his Library MSc, not too long ago. So it seemed like a good opportunity to make a start - and also to give my administrator a similar experience, as he had never published anything before either.
After discussing it with my Repository Administrator, who thankfully was also enthusiastic, I got in touch with the editors and asked if a) they were interested and b) when they needed the article by. The answers were a) yes and b) in about two weeks. Which didn't give us long to actually get something down on paper. Although we used my administator's essay as a starting point, it did get quite heavily adapted and no longer bears much resemblance to the original essay (bar maybe a paragraph or two).
At the end of June the article was published in Catalogue and Index. The published version isn't available on open access, but as all dutiful repository managers should, I've put the final PDF on the institutional repository (and yes, I do have the publishers permission). If you want to read it, it's at http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/16971/.
Admittedly, it is baby steps. The article hasn't been peer reviewed, it's most definitely a co-author job (I have no hesitation in saying we both contributed pretty much exactly 50% of the work), and it's a publication that isn't likely to be seen outside of the library world (or, possibly, even the cataloguing one). But it is a start, and I feel more proud than I expected to, to finally have something professional in print.
So I guess I'm lucky to be in a job where part of it actually involves writing - even if it is mostly reports and long-winded e-mails. I had actually been putting off writing anything for publication though, due to a fear of commitment (both in terms of time and energy) and possible failure. I did know that, if I ever did decide to write something, my colleagues and workplace were likely to be supportive - the potential of me getting something published had been discussed before. I also know how lucky I am to work for a library service who are keen for me to do this sort of thing, and willing to give me the time and space to work on it.
So, about a month and a half ago a call was sent out on a repository mailing list I'm signed up to, asking if people would be willing to write an article on some aspect of metadata in institutional repositories. Well, I'm no cataloguing expert, but I have spent the past two and a half years managing an institutional repository, and have read up a fair bit on the associated metadata issues- and experienced a fair few of them first hand. I also knew that my Repository Administrator had written an essay on that very subject for his Library MSc, not too long ago. So it seemed like a good opportunity to make a start - and also to give my administrator a similar experience, as he had never published anything before either.
After discussing it with my Repository Administrator, who thankfully was also enthusiastic, I got in touch with the editors and asked if a) they were interested and b) when they needed the article by. The answers were a) yes and b) in about two weeks. Which didn't give us long to actually get something down on paper. Although we used my administator's essay as a starting point, it did get quite heavily adapted and no longer bears much resemblance to the original essay (bar maybe a paragraph or two).
At the end of June the article was published in Catalogue and Index. The published version isn't available on open access, but as all dutiful repository managers should, I've put the final PDF on the institutional repository (and yes, I do have the publishers permission). If you want to read it, it's at http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/16971/.
Admittedly, it is baby steps. The article hasn't been peer reviewed, it's most definitely a co-author job (I have no hesitation in saying we both contributed pretty much exactly 50% of the work), and it's a publication that isn't likely to be seen outside of the library world (or, possibly, even the cataloguing one). But it is a start, and I feel more proud than I expected to, to finally have something professional in print.
Thursday, 10 May 2012
What does a librarian do all day?
A few weeks ago, I was reading a report on open access. Part of the report discussed the work we do as librarians to promote and advocate it. This got me thinking - how many of my family and friends actually know what it is that I do all day? Sure, they know I'm a librarian, and some of them may even know I'm a Repository Manager - but do any of them have any idea what that means? So I posed the query on Facebook. Here are the responses I got, and the professions they came from:
So, they have some idea. But I thought it might be worth pointing out a few places where people can learn more about what a librarian actually does. Firstly, the 23 Things course that I did (which is where this blog all started) pointed me towards a good place that it's worth taking a look at if you want to know what a librarian does. Library Day in the Life goes in rounds, and gives librarians a chance to blog (or tweet, video, animate, take photos, or anything else you can think of) about their day or week at work. I contributed to this via Twitter in July 2011 - these were my tweets then.
July is an odd time for me work-wise though, as things usually quieten down significantly over the summer. So I had a think back over the things I had done at work today, and it seemed like a pretty representative day that gives a good flavour of all the kind of things that I'm involved in. Here's a run-down:
9-9.30am: Time to check my e-mails before the first meeting of the day. Significant ones included:
1pm-2pm: Working on the Help Desk answering student's queries. Obviously the questions can vary a lot depending upon the time of year, but today most queries were around:
4pm-5pm: To finish the day, I arranged an appraisal meeting and got together all the appraisal documents I will need for the Senior Library Assistant's appraisal, who I line manage.
So the work I do is nothing if not varied! Maybe that's why librarians find it so hard to explain what they do- not because "all we do is stamp books and take fines", but because it's so varied we don't know where to begin. And if you're still not sure what we do, or don't believe me that it really is this varied, take a look at the CILIP Body of Professional Knowledge draft for consultation. It's currently being updated (and is already much improved from the old, incomprehensible version), so it is only in consultation form at the moment, but it gives a really good overview of the range of skills a librarian might have. Looking through it, I probably have somewhere between 50 and 75% of those skills.
As a final thought, maybe the comments above from my friends mean we should spare a thought for those working in other professions too. Do you know what an accountant does? Something to do with maths and money, right? Although in all fairness, they tend to get paid a lot more than us librarians to do it and people to not quite understand it... :)
- Researcher: Not really, I imagine there's some cataloging involved.....
- Banker: I know you're a librarian and I know you don't speak to people who want to borrow books. This leaves me confused.
- Teacher: I thought on late night working days you were forced to communicate with book borrowers?
- Accountant: No-one seems to know what I do. And when I start telling them they stop listening! :-)
- Engineer: Not really. Going out on a limb, I'm guessing it involves some sort of split between sitting in front of a computer and going to meetings.
So, they have some idea. But I thought it might be worth pointing out a few places where people can learn more about what a librarian actually does. Firstly, the 23 Things course that I did (which is where this blog all started) pointed me towards a good place that it's worth taking a look at if you want to know what a librarian does. Library Day in the Life goes in rounds, and gives librarians a chance to blog (or tweet, video, animate, take photos, or anything else you can think of) about their day or week at work. I contributed to this via Twitter in July 2011 - these were my tweets then.
July is an odd time for me work-wise though, as things usually quieten down significantly over the summer. So I had a think back over the things I had done at work today, and it seemed like a pretty representative day that gives a good flavour of all the kind of things that I'm involved in. Here's a run-down:
9-9.30am: Time to check my e-mails before the first meeting of the day. Significant ones included:
- An e-mail from a librarian at Sheffield Hallam asking if I could provide more info the Research Data Management event some of my colleagues are organising in a fortnight's time. Our university library currently has funding for a pilot project to create a repository for researcher's research data (as opposed to their outputs, or publications), and I'm on the project team for this (because my day-to-day job is running the publications repository).
- An e-mail from an IT colleague letting me know that the references on the outputs repository now conform to the university's referencing standard - something we were working on together last week to improve
- Composing an e-mail explaining a plug-in for the repository which should enable it to store more data that it is relevant to the REF (Research Excellence Framework). The REF is the way the UK government currently assesses the quality of research in universities.
- The e-learning repository we are planning on setting up to store e-learning materials (such as videos explaining how the library works - something else I'm involved in creating). This is another project team I am involved in, as it will likely use the same software as the outputs repository.
- How the library can work with the marketing team more effectively
- How to use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to the best effect to promote the library
1pm-2pm: Working on the Help Desk answering student's queries. Obviously the questions can vary a lot depending upon the time of year, but today most queries were around:
- Helping students to find journal articles using specific databases
- Helping students to find books that weren't where they should be on the shelves
- Taking fines (it's that time of year!)
- Explaning how the photocopying and printing system works
4pm-5pm: To finish the day, I arranged an appraisal meeting and got together all the appraisal documents I will need for the Senior Library Assistant's appraisal, who I line manage.
So the work I do is nothing if not varied! Maybe that's why librarians find it so hard to explain what they do- not because "all we do is stamp books and take fines", but because it's so varied we don't know where to begin. And if you're still not sure what we do, or don't believe me that it really is this varied, take a look at the CILIP Body of Professional Knowledge draft for consultation. It's currently being updated (and is already much improved from the old, incomprehensible version), so it is only in consultation form at the moment, but it gives a really good overview of the range of skills a librarian might have. Looking through it, I probably have somewhere between 50 and 75% of those skills.
As a final thought, maybe the comments above from my friends mean we should spare a thought for those working in other professions too. Do you know what an accountant does? Something to do with maths and money, right? Although in all fairness, they tend to get paid a lot more than us librarians to do it and people to not quite understand it... :)
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!
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!
Sunday, 4 September 2011
23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #16
Hmm... advocacy - something I do much of? Just a bit... you try being a Repository Manager and not advocating your service! I do it every day, every hour, all the time. Every time I talk to somebody, every time somebody asks me what I do, every time I meet someone new - I tell them how great the repository is, why they should use it, how it could change the world for the better if everybody bought into the idea... and I believe in it 100% (although on my off days I wish I didn't have to try quite so hard).
Of course, it's not just informally that I advocate what I do. The most current, obvious example of the more formal side of advocacy is probably the activities we're planning for Open Access Week at the end of October. I'll spend that week uploading interviews I've carried out with researchers who have really bought into the idea of open access, making my presence felt by appearing at drop-in sessions on all of our campuses, and running training sessions for researchers, amongst other things.
That's all on top of telling people how great libraries, and librarians, are more generally. I've not specifically got involved in any high profile library advocacy campaigns (sometimes the shouting I do about how great we are in my day-job feels like more than enough for one person), but I'm always willing to back up the claims those guys are making, because of course they're right!
One thing I haven't really engaged with is getting published. It's not so much that I find the prospect daunting (I love writing), but just that there doesn't really feel like there's enough time in the day to write something properly good. We are in the process of trying to put together a blog about the UWE Research Repository to let people know what we're doing, and that we're there if they need us - which I guess is a start! If that leads on to some more official writing, I'd be happy with that - but for now, I think it's one step at a time.
Of course, it's not just informally that I advocate what I do. The most current, obvious example of the more formal side of advocacy is probably the activities we're planning for Open Access Week at the end of October. I'll spend that week uploading interviews I've carried out with researchers who have really bought into the idea of open access, making my presence felt by appearing at drop-in sessions on all of our campuses, and running training sessions for researchers, amongst other things.
That's all on top of telling people how great libraries, and librarians, are more generally. I've not specifically got involved in any high profile library advocacy campaigns (sometimes the shouting I do about how great we are in my day-job feels like more than enough for one person), but I'm always willing to back up the claims those guys are making, because of course they're right!
One thing I haven't really engaged with is getting published. It's not so much that I find the prospect daunting (I love writing), but just that there doesn't really feel like there's enough time in the day to write something properly good. We are in the process of trying to put together a blog about the UWE Research Repository to let people know what we're doing, and that we're there if they need us - which I guess is a start! If that leads on to some more official writing, I'd be happy with that - but for now, I think it's one step at a time.
Sunday, 24 July 2011
23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #7
So, what about face-to-face networks then? I'm a member of a couple of professional organisations - the most obvious one being, of course, CILIP.
But perhaps the organisation I engage with most, and I find most useful in my day job, is UKCoRR (the UK COuncil of Research Repositories). That, combined with the RSP (Repositories Support Project) is where the majority of my opportunities for networking come from, along with a lot of training and development opportunities.
I've been able to attend a number of UKCoRR and RSP training events, and I've learnt a lot from other repository managers and speakers at all of them! Sometimes it's just confirmation that I'm not the only one with a specific problem. Other times it's good ideas on how to improve the repository and make it more valuable to our researchers. I'm pretty certain that without these organisations my day job would be a lot tougher. I'd also feel a lot more isolated than I do, as I've met a lot of other repository staff via these events, and that can really help when you're the only person at your university doing your job.
I use CILIP more for professional support with gaining qualifications (I've just submitted my Chartership portfolio), and for the publications which give me the chance to learn about what is happening in many different types of libraries, not just academic ones. The CILIP events I have attended - especially those related to my Chartership - have been really helpful, and a great way to meet people going through the same thing as you.
One other thing I would say about face-to-face networks is not to forget about the institution you work for. I'm lucky in that my institution provides a lot of really helpful training events (on how to give better presentations, how to give good appraisals etc.), and they're well used by the university staff. Which means that at these training events I've met staff from all over the institution - HR managers, people working in finance, academics, people from the Reseach Offices and Academic Registry, even other library staff I've not met before. Some of these contacts have turned out to be invaluable in my day-to-day work; and, because I have a one-track mind, have also been a great place to engage academics and let them know how great our repository is!
But perhaps the organisation I engage with most, and I find most useful in my day job, is UKCoRR (the UK COuncil of Research Repositories). That, combined with the RSP (Repositories Support Project) is where the majority of my opportunities for networking come from, along with a lot of training and development opportunities.
I've been able to attend a number of UKCoRR and RSP training events, and I've learnt a lot from other repository managers and speakers at all of them! Sometimes it's just confirmation that I'm not the only one with a specific problem. Other times it's good ideas on how to improve the repository and make it more valuable to our researchers. I'm pretty certain that without these organisations my day job would be a lot tougher. I'd also feel a lot more isolated than I do, as I've met a lot of other repository staff via these events, and that can really help when you're the only person at your university doing your job.
I use CILIP more for professional support with gaining qualifications (I've just submitted my Chartership portfolio), and for the publications which give me the chance to learn about what is happening in many different types of libraries, not just academic ones. The CILIP events I have attended - especially those related to my Chartership - have been really helpful, and a great way to meet people going through the same thing as you.
One other thing I would say about face-to-face networks is not to forget about the institution you work for. I'm lucky in that my institution provides a lot of really helpful training events (on how to give better presentations, how to give good appraisals etc.), and they're well used by the university staff. Which means that at these training events I've met staff from all over the institution - HR managers, people working in finance, academics, people from the Reseach Offices and Academic Registry, even other library staff I've not met before. Some of these contacts have turned out to be invaluable in my day-to-day work; and, because I have a one-track mind, have also been a great place to engage academics and let them know how great our repository is!
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.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
UWE BetterTogether awards
On Friday I attended the UWE BetterTogether awards ceremony along with other members of the UWE Repository Team. I don't normally go to big university events like this, but this time we'd been nominated for three awards, and shortlisted for two. The Library Repository Team had been nominated for an Innovation award, and shortlisted for an Excellence in Research award. Along with the Faculty Research Officers and members of the Research, Business and Innovation team (RBI) we'd also been shortlisted for the Vice-Chancellors award.
Sad to say, we didn't win either of the awards we'd been shortlisted for - a little disappointing, but we did all get a pretty Bristol Blue glass paper weight! To be fair, I'm not really sure how innovative we've been, and I'm not convinced we've contributed as much to excellence in research as, say, a researcher (or research group)! But I did think we had a chance with the Vice Chancellors award; I believe we worked really hard as a team last year to make the repository a success, and that includes members of the Faculty Research Offices and RBI.
Although we didn't win the award, I think that we have achieved what we set out to do to some extent - our full text count isn't much higher than most repositories without a mandate, but the view across the university of the repository is primarily a positive one. And at least there is a view across the university - most researchers know who we are and what we do!
Sad to say, we didn't win either of the awards we'd been shortlisted for - a little disappointing, but we did all get a pretty Bristol Blue glass paper weight! To be fair, I'm not really sure how innovative we've been, and I'm not convinced we've contributed as much to excellence in research as, say, a researcher (or research group)! But I did think we had a chance with the Vice Chancellors award; I believe we worked really hard as a team last year to make the repository a success, and that includes members of the Faculty Research Offices and RBI.
Although we didn't win the award, I think that we have achieved what we set out to do to some extent - our full text count isn't much higher than most repositories without a mandate, but the view across the university of the repository is primarily a positive one. And at least there is a view across the university - most researchers know who we are and what we do!
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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