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Opening Up the Research Support Ambassadors
This Open Access Week sees the launch of the fully open version of our popular Research Support Ambassador programme. This initiative has been running in Cambridge libraries since 2015 and has seen over one hundred staff from across the library network enhance their knowledge of scholarly communication. It has also been through several different versions, transitioning from a taught face-to-face programme to an internal online course. The time is now right to open up this content to a wider audience and launch the programme as a resource for anyone who wants to make use of it. You can watch an online trailer for the programme on our OSC YouTube channel.…
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Open Research at the University of Cambridge: What have we done so far?
At the start of 2019 the University of Cambridge announced its Position Statement on Open Research. This blog looks at what has been happening since then and the current plans for making research at Cambridge more open. Our Position In February 2019, the University of Cambridge set out its position on open research to support and encourage open practices throughout the research lifecycle for all research outputs. The Position Statement made clear that both the University and researchers have responsibility in this space and that there would be no one size fits all approach to how to be open. As part of forming a position on open research, the University…
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Having Information to Hand: Research Support Handy Guides
If there is one thing I’ve learnt over the last few years of training library staff it’s that they really love a handout! Whether it contains extra information or a copy of the slides, in print or as a digital document, they really want something tangible to take away from a training session and refer back to. However I’m also a realist and I know that many of these handouts end their lives in a desk drawer never to be seen again so I wanted to create something that would be both attention grabbing and useful. Our series of Research Support Handy Guides were born as a result. These short,…
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Text and data mining services: an update
Text and Data Mining (TDM) is the process of digitally querying large collections of machine-readable material, extracting specific information and, by analysis, discovering new information about a topic. In February 2017, a group University of Cambridge staff met to discuss “Text and Data Mining Services: What can Cambridge libraries offer?” It was agreed that a future library Text and Data Mining (TDM) support service could include: Access to data from our own collections Advice on legal issues, what publishers allow, what data sets and tools are available Registers on data provided for mining and TDM projects Fostering agreements with publishers. This blog reports on some of the activities, events and…
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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?…
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Show me the money – the path to a sustainable Research Data Facility
Like many institutions in the UK, Cambridge University has responded to research funders’ requirements for data management and sharing with a concerted effort to support our research community in good data management and sharing practice through our Research Data Facility. We have written a few times on this blog and presented to describe our services. This blog is a description of the process we have undertaken to support these services in the long term. Funders expect that researchers make the data underpinning their research available and provide a link to this data in the paper itself. The EPSRC started checking compliance with their data sharing requirement on 1 May 2015. When we first created the Research…
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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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Research Support Ambassadors – a progress update
On Thursday 19th November the participants of the Research Support Ambassadors programme presented their work to date. This blog from Yvonne Creba, a member of the Research Data Facility team in the Office of Scholarly Communication, summarises these presentations of their progress so far. A good start Attending the Research Support Ambassadors programme presentation I can only say how impressed I was with the amount of time and effort contributed by the participants of each group. This is even more notable considering that the following was achieved outside of their normal working hours. Each of the groups produced an informative and interesting session on each of the topics. What is…
