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The art of software maintenance
When it comes to software management there are probably more questions than answers to problems – that was the conclusion of a recent workshop hosted by the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) as part of a national series on software sustainability, sharing and management, funded by Jisc. The presentations and notes from the day are available, as is a Storify from the tweets. The goal of these workshops was to flesh out the current problems in software management and sharing and try to identify possible solutions. The researcher-led nature of this event provided researchers, software engineers and support staff with a great opportunity to discuss the issues around creating and…
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‘Paperless research’ solutions – Electronic Lab Notebooks
The Office of Scholarly Communication started 2017 with a discussion about ‘going digital’ – on 13 January 2017 we organised an event at Cambridge University’s Department of Engineering to flesh out the problems preventing researchers from implementing Electronic Lab Notebook solutions. Chris Brown from Jisc wrote an excellent blog post with his reflections of the event* and agreed for us to re-blog it here. For researchers working in laboratories the importance of recording experiments, results, workflows, etc in a notebook is engrained into you as a student. However, these paper-based solutions are not ideal when it comes to sharing and preservation. They pile on desks and shelves, vary in quality…
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2016 – that was the year that was
In January last year we published a blog post ‘2015 that was the year that was‘ which not only helped us take stock about what we have achieved, but also was very well received. So we have decided to do it again. For those who are more visually oriented, the slides ‘The OSC a lightning Tour‘ might be useful. Now starting its third year of operation, the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) has expanded to a team of 15, managing a wide variety of projects. The OSC has developed a set of strategic goals to support its mission: “The OSC works in a transparent and rigorous manner to provide recognised leadership…
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Further developing the library profession in 2016
In this blog post, Claire Sewell, the OSC’s Research Support Skills Coordinator reflects on a busy year for the professional development of Cambridge library staff. Librarians are always learning and 2016 was a bumper year for training in the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC). The OSC has taken an active role in professional development since its foundation but things have stepped up since the dedicated training role of Research Support Skills Coordinator was established at the end of 2015. The OSC runs two parallel professional development schemes for library staff: the Supporting Researchers in the 21st Century programme (a continuous programme of training aimed at all staff) and the Research Support Ambassador…
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Electronic lab notebooks – a report from a SLA meeting
In preparation for our the “Electronic Lab Notebooks: Solutions for Paperless Research” we decided to re-blog this post* on the subject written by Niamh Tumelty, Head of STEM Libraries at the University of Cambridge. Roundtable on Electronic Laboratory Notebooks A significant part of my role involves research support, but so far I have not been involved with lab notebooks, electronic or otherwise. I registered for this session at the Special Libraries Association meeting in 2014 mainly out of curiosity, hoping to find out more about what products others are using, how they’re finding them and whether or not they would be of interest to my Department. What is an ELN?…
