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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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Developing the staff of the future: training librarians in 2017
2017 was an exciting year for training our library community. As well as continuing to cover the basics of research support, the OSC was able to introduce new topics and new methods of delivery to ensure that Cambridge library staff have all the information they need to support the research community. In this blog post our Research Support Skills Coordinator Claire Sewell reflects on the successes of the past year and her plans to make 2018 even better. This time last year I was reflecting on my first full year in my role, having started in November 2015. After more than two years in the role some things have remained…
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Next steps for Text & Data Mining
Sometimes the best way to find a solution is to just get the different stakeholders talking to each other – and this what happened at a recent Text and Data Mining symposium held in the Engineering Department at Cambridge. The attendees were primarily postgraduate students and early career researchers, but senior researchers, administrative staff, librarians and publishers were also represented in the audience. Background This symposium grew out of a discussion held earlier this year at Cambridge to consider the issue of TDM and what a TDM library service might look like at Cambridge. The general outcome of that meeting of library staff was that people wanted to know more. Librarians at…
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Service Level Agreements for TDM
Librarians expect publishers to support our researchers’ rights to Text and Data Mining and not cut access off for a library if they see ‘suspicious’ activity before they establish whether it is legitimate or not. These were the conclusions of a group who met at a workshop to discuss provision of Text and Data Mining services in March. The final conclusions were: Expectations libraries have of publishers over TDM The workshop concluded with very different expectations to what was originally proposed. The messages to publishers that were agreed were: Don’t cut us off over TDM activity! Have a conversation with us first if you notice abnormal behaviour* If you do cut…
