According to library managers, the remit for these Inside Out blogposts is to “write whatever you want about anything to do with whatever you want”. Kind of restrictive, huh? Typical managers. So, within these draconian confines I have, with much mental manipulation, managed to find a few topics where, loosely and with many mistakes, I can colour between the lines…

“Science”
I’ve initiated a “scientific” experiment on Level 5 in the LTR area: each week we consume two cakes of chocolate: a Cadbury’s and a Whitakers’ of the same flavour. So far we’ve compared five flavours (hazelnut, fruit & nut, black forest, coconut, and milk chocolate), and there are a few more milk chocolate flavours to go before we switch to dark chocolate. At the end I will create a chart that summarizes the findings.

Joint Library | R&I | ITS meetings
The description of this monthly meeting is deceptive and makes it sound bigger than it is. It’s really a research support meeting, not including people involved in research funding. So it’s LTR, Helen, four staff from R&I, and John Edwards and Francois Bissey from ITS. But it’s an excellent forum for sharing what’s been happening in the research support area in the previous month, and what’s coming up. Everyone contributes and discusses. Topics in the last few months have included:

• Software like REDCap, Jupyterhub, ImpactStory
• Research analytics systems like SciVal and Dimensions
• University rankings like THE, Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), and QS
• The Researcher Advisory Group
• Events like the Ōtautahi Editors’ Symposium
• The UC Research Repository, and Elements
• Open Access, transformative agreements, and the OA Fund
• The Research Compute Cluster (RCC), and RCC v2
• Computer storage for research data
• The PBRF, where should researchers publish, and Scopus-indexed journals

Other joint Library and R&I things
We also collaborate with R&I on other things. Each month we provide a joint research support report to the UC Research Committee, we take joint workshops on publishing and impact, and we undertake joint projects, such as the Research Lifecycle and research data management. Also, we collaborate a lot, and increasingly, on bibliometrics and publications data. Kiera works closely with Pip Hawkes from R&I on various data reports, including university ranking stats. Now that we have SciVal we are working together on creating a reporting framework for it.

Every fortnight I meet with Rebecca Hurrell, R&I’s Research Delivery Lead, to talk about issues common to both our teams. We also gossip quite a lot.

Postgraduate stuff
We’re involved with the Postgraduate Research Office as well in that we’ve helped them think through the Doctoral Development programme (which is a rebundling of the research workshops we already do), and with 3MT (3 minute thesis) and the Doctoral Publishing Prize.

It is handy being on the UC Postgraduate Committee because it keeps me up to date with new initiatives with postgraduates and puts me in touch with the student representatives. And that has led to a regular meeting between LTR and the reps from PGSA, UCSA and Te Akatoki, and the Shut Up & Write sessions that we host for the PGSA.

PM
I’ll mention one more thing. It’s internal to the Library, it’s procedural, it’s not exciting, but it’s really helped how we do our work. Project Management. You’ll be aware that we changed the way we do projects about 2 years ago. The library used to have 4,367 ‘current’ projects, all using differing methodology, with none of them ever ending. Now we have about 7, with clear purposes and schedules and constant monitoring. The Project Board (made up of the UL and the two AULs) meet bimonthly to monitor progress on all active projects. The Project Action Team (PAT) (Gabrielle, Brian, Kim and me) look after the project framework, folders and templates, and are available to assist anyone with their project.

And that, as they say, is a wrap. Perhaps a quick joke for the road: My friend said to me “Do you like wearing that Hi-Viz jacket all the time?” I said “I wouldn’t be seen without it.”