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Where are we now? Cambridge theses deposits one year in
As the nights draw in and the academic year 2018/19 begins, we are preparing to enter our second year of compulsory e-theses deposits. Our university repository, Apollo, is close to holding 6000 digital PhD theses and it is the intention of the University that this valuable research asset continues to grow into the future. The Apollo repository will play a large part in making this happen. Until recently only hardbound copies of theses were collected and catalogued by the University Library. Users could read theses on-site in Cambridge or order a digitisation of the thesis, but the introduction of e-thesis deposit to Apollo has meant that University of Cambridge theses are more…
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From data curators to intellectual entrepreneurs: observations from IFLA
In this blog post, Clair Castle, Librarian, University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry reflects on her experience at the IFLA Satellite Meeting 2017 in Warsaw, Poland. Earlier this year I was invited by the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) at the University of Cambridge to present a paper on Data Curator’s Roles and Responsibilities: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. This was my first time writing a paper for a conference and presenting it; it was slightly daunting but exciting too! IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, the international body that represents the interests of library and information services and their users. It celebrates its 90th birthday in 2017. This conference was a…
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Shifting sands: notes from UKSG2017 workshop on skills
Library education needs to teach skills over knowledge to remain relevant into the future, conferences are a useful place to learn about scholarly communication and libraries need to employ a wider range of staff were some of the outcomes from two workshops held at the recent UKSG conference called “Shifting sands: Changing academic library skill sets”. The slides – which include notes from the discussions on both days – are available in Slideshare. The hashtag for the conference is #uksg17 The workshop was held twice, on Monday 10th April and on Tuesday 11th April. The audience on both days consisted of just over 50 people and were primarily library staff…
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“Become part of the research process” – observations from RLUK2017
When is a librarian not a librarian? Rather than a bad joke, this was one of the underlying interesting discussions arising from the 2017 RLUK conference held earlier in March. The conference Twitter hashtag was #rluk17 and the videos are now available. The answer, it appears is when we start talking about partnerships with, rather than support of, our research community. As always with my write-ups of conferences, these are simply the parts that have resonated with me, and the impression I walked away with. This write up will be very different from anyone else’s from the conference, such as this blog from Lesley Pitman, and the RLUK conference report. I have…
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Who is paying for hybrid?
In our related blog ‘Hybrid Open Access – an analysis‘ we explored the origins and issues with hybrid open access. Here we describe what funders are allowing or not in relation to payments for hybrid Open Access APCs. Funding agencies and hybrid Of the 179 Open Access funds listed in the Open Access Directory, 99 (55%) do not allow hybrid publishing; 78 (44%) do, or do not specify. The two remaining funds (1%) allow hybrid but either discourage it or require that the publisher have an offsetting scheme in place. This shows a strong move away from hybrid since 2014, when only 39% of funds rejected hybrid – a rejection…
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Consider yourself disrupted – notes from RLUK2016
The 2016 Research Libraries UK conference was held at the British Library from 9-11 March on the theme of disruptive innovation. This blog pulls out some of the highlights personally gained from the conference: If librarians are to be considered important – we as a community need to be strong in our grasp of understanding scholarly communication issues We need to know the facts about our subscriptions to, usage of and contributions to scholarly publishing We need high level support in institutions to back libraries in advocacy and negotiation with publishers Scientists are rarely rewarded for being right, so the scientific record is being distorted by the scientific ecosystem Society needs…
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Research Support Ambassadors – an insider’s view
In 2015 the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) started two related programmes. The Supporting Researchers in the 21st century programme is an ongoing series of talks, events and training sessions for the library staff in Cambridge. Some of these we have blogged to share the insights with the wider community – see: Openness, integrity & supporting researchers, Tips for preparing and presenting online learning, Evolution of Library Ethnography Studies – notes from talk, Libraries of the future – insights from a talk by Lorcan Dempsey, Software Licensing and Open Access, Open Data – moving science forward or a waste of money & time as a few examples. The second programme is the Research Support Ambassadors. This began as…
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Disruptive innovation: notes from SCONUL winter conference
On Friday 27 November Danny Kingsley attended the SCONUL Winter Conference 2015 which addressed the theme of disruptive innovation and looked at the changes in policy and practice which will shape the scholarly communications environment for years to come. This blog is a summary of her notes from the event. The hastag was #sconul15 and there is a link in Twitter. Disruptions in scholarly publishing Dr Koen Becking, President of the Executive Board, Tilburg University, spoke first. He is the lead negotiator with the publishers in the Netherlands. Things are getting tight as we count down to the end of the year given the Dutch negotiations with Elsevier (read more in ‘Dutch boycott…
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Tips for preparing and presenting online learning
This week we had a group of library staff contribute to a roundtable discussion about online training. We were lucky to have visiting Australian Tom Worthington* talk to the group. These are some notes from the wide-ranging discussion. Online approaches In face-to-face teaching, a unit in philosophy taught over a semester is very different to a single training session in how to find something in a library catalogue. However in practice in the online world they are the same. Tom noted that five years ago he decided to stop giving lectures and only deliver courses online. It has taken that time for him to feel comfortable with the online delivery.…
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Libraries of the future – insights from a talk by Lorcan Dempsey
There is no argument even from traditionalists that the library role is changing. But there is a great deal of confusion and sometimes fear about what that means, and what the future might look like. On 3 June, Lorcan Demsey* came to speak to staff at Cambridge University Library about how the role and purpose of libraries are changing. The slides from his talk are available on Slideshare. The one sentence headline from the talk was that research libraries are moving from licensing published content to managing workflow and research outputs – which means the print collection needs to be managed down to free up resources for the new roles.…
