Professor Ian Wright will provoke a discussion on International University rankings. Come and take part!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1505269199605651/

Kia ora!

Please be my guinea pigs for a first teach of a course!

Unsure what an API does?  Why would you want to learn to code?  What is Linux, anyway?

This three hour session is an interactive workshop that will bust the jargon that site between you and knowing how to leverage computer systems to your advantage.  Firstly it will be a discussion of acronyms, terms, and ideas, and then it will focus on the most powerful search language of all time, Regular Expressions.

The laptop trolly laptops will be available, but please bring a laptop if you have one.

Book at: https://canterbury.libcal.com/event/5122786

Lessons at: https://librarycarpentry.org/lc-data-intro/

Do you need to send a big file, bigger than email will allow, to someone on or off campus?  Does someone want to send you one?

IT have set up a test service called “Dropbag”.  It’s a secure way to lodge a file from on or off campus.  As long as either the sender or receiver have a  UC email address, it will work.

You can access it at https://dropbag.canterbury.ac.nz

There are  a number of ways to use it:

• You can send a file to someone as long as you have their email address
• You can get a file from someone by creating a link and sending it to them
• Or someone can send you a file as long as they know your email address

This is a test, so the service might go away.  If you do use it, I’d be really interested to hear what you think of it!

Anton.

I was going to write this post, but Richard from Otago did, and better than I could!  So I stole it. Anton.

Happy New Year to you all

1 January each year is not only New Year’s Day it’s also Public Domain Day. That is, because under NZ law copyright in a work exists until 31 December of the year 50 years after the author died, all works expiring in a given year become free for any kind of reuse on 1 Jan of the following year.

2019 is particularly significant because it is the first time in 20 years that any works created in the United States have entered the public domain. This is because the ‘Sony Bono’ extension Act in 1998 extended the copyright term for many works by 20 years. It is worth remembering that this is exactly what will happen to us in New Zealand if our copyright term is extended, as it was to be under the original TPP agreement.

The following blog post by Duke University is too technical for most but does list the most significant US works to be entering the public domain this year, including works by Wodehouse, Lawrence, Frost, Woolf, Christie, and others; films by Cecile B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton; songs like ‘Yes, we have no bananas.’ https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

This Wikipedia page attempts to list all the authors/artists whose work fell into the public domain on 1 January, with the list divided into life+50 and life+70 jurisdictions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_public_domain

Many of the works listed on the Duke blog post will have been out of copyright already in NZ because our term is different but being out of copyright in the US makes it ‘safer’ to use them if you were to post them on the web.

Richard White, Copyright Office, University of Otago.

Kia ora all!

I’d like YOU to be my first students in the Library Carpentry Python for Absolute Beginners class.

8th November, 9am-4pm  Poutama.

Please drop me a line if you are interested and I can fill you in on the details.  It expects no previous programming knowledge, but those who have some it will be a good introduction to python from a library perspective as well.

Anton.

You can set ‘F’ keys, the function keys along the top of the keyboard, to answer incoming calls, or to ring the number you cave copied onto your clipboard.

Right click on the busylight icon in your task bar

Select “Lync, SfB tools”

I used F3 for Fast Dialout, which uses the number you cave control-c copied onto your keyboard to dial out with, and F4 to answer calls.    If you use Horizon, or another app that uses Function keys, you might want to select the windows key in conjunction with it.

We have started rolling out invitations for researchers to link their ORCID records to the university through the Royal Society’s ORCID hub.

The ORCID hub is glue that lets researchers give us permission to write verified employment details to their records.  It’s far cooler than it sounds, and if you want to know any more about it, or get any inquiries, don’t hesitate to send them my way.

Anton.

Venue: Level 4, Puaka
Time: 12:30
Bring: your lunch and a picnic blanket

Bring your lunch and munch on a rug on level 4 of Puaka, James Hight in our annual (we’ve done it EVERY YEAR since last year) picnic.

Kia ora,=

The UCRR is going to be unavailable tonight as urgent repair work is carried out.

It seems that the backup system for it failed last week, and in order to get reliable backups working we need to have it unavailable while the IT server team work on it.

Anton.