This is the way Counterculture ends
This is the way Counterculture ends
This is the way Counterculture ends
Not with a bang but a simpler team collaboration application developed by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft 365 family of products, offering workspace chat and video conferencing, file storage, and integration of proprietary and third-party applications and services

Steinn Sigurðsson is Scientific Directorat arXiv, Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State Unversity, Science Editor at the Astrophysical Journal, Board Member at Aspen Center for Physics, and a Board Member at ScienceCast.

At this seminar Professor Sigurðsson will talk about open science/research and the “state of the arXiv”, followed by a Q&A session and afternoon tea.

UC Library and UC Meta are thrilled to host this seminar. Afternoon tea is brought to you by UC Meta.

It’s on Tuesday 19 March, 1.00-2.30, Puaka-James Hight Room 224 (next to the main entrance of Central Library)

See https://canterbury.libcal.com/event/5637904 to register.

• Do you want to know which chocolate block was the most popular amongst library staff* in 2023?
• Do you want to know how many times staff reviewed chocolate?
• Do you want to know whether Caramello was more popular than Creamy Caramel?

To find the answers to these important questions, and much much more, the stats from the chocolate survey forms on Level 5 are now recorded in a report.

Find it here (K:\Presentations\Chocolate), along with the previous paper on the chocolate-eating behaviours of UC library staff*. The report can also be found at https://infograph.venngage.com/ps/U6okENY08Ow/2023chocsurvey.

*Some library staff. Stats are in the report.

In previous episodes of LTR’s list of completed work (here, for e.g…), I’ve included a brief description explaining what the mahi was. This time I haven’t provided much detail: If you want further information about the item you can contact the person who did it.

You must understand, dear reader, that this work is the projecty, temporary, one-offy, infrequent, irregular tasks that we do alongside our regular day-to-day activities. And please note that some of these things were done as part of a larger Library effort.

PowerBI: basic publications and citations dashboard
May
Kiera, Anton

PowerBI: update most popular journals dashboard
May
Kiera

Standards for Engineering Drawing
June
Discover and support standards for teaching engineering drawing within the school of engineering.
Dave L

Science 100 Level Success Hui for Course Coordinators
June
The Library, along with many other UC support services, will be presenting to first year course coordinators and other interested academics from the Faculty of Science.
John, Lani, Margaret, Nick, Sara, Theresa, Tiresa

External panel review of the library
June
Sara, Stuart

Visualise Your Thesis
July
Rachel, Kiera, Brian, Roman

QS Stars & QS Sustainability Rankings
July
Kiera

EndNote subject guide review
August
Dave L, John, Margaret

Research support Subject Guides review
September
Anton, Dave L, Kerry, Nick, Stuart

Tai Chi for Student services Wellness month
September
Dave L

Open Day 8 Sept 2023
Kerry

Chocolate Cake Judging for Student Services
September
Dave L

Get Overton
October
Stuart

LLB Review
October
The LLB is to be reviewed in 2023. The Library fed into this…
John, Theresa, Sara

The Artificial Intelligence and Libraries Bibliography includes over 125 selected English-language articles and books that are useful in understanding how libraries are exploring and adopting modern artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It covers works from January 2018 through August 2023. It includes a Google Translate link. The bibliography is available as a website and a website PDF with live links.

Libraries have been exploring AI technology for a long time.
In particular, there was an active period of experimentation from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s that primarily focused on the use of expert systems. Many projects used expert system shells, which simplified development; however, some projects also used AI languages, such as Prolog. This period produced a significant number of library-related AI papers.

Subsequently, library interest in AI diminished until around 2018, when research activity increased.

The public release of generative AI systems in late 2022, such as ChatGPT, sparked a strong upsurge of interest in them and a rush to utilize their capabilities. Since these systems are relatively easy to use, this development may result in a significant new wave of library-oriented AI activity.

https://digital-scholarship.org/ai/ai-libraries.htm

“We are pleased to let you know that the recordings of the presentations from Research Support Community Day 2023 are now available from our RSC Day YouTube channel here (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw5U_dVzZWnXXfcD2Wtc1WHgLjj65LnFS).

If you’d like to know more about the Research Support Community Day event, or view recordings from previous years, please head to our website: https://rscday.info/ or email contact@rscday.info.”

Dorian Ghosh is starting work as a Research Assistant on the NZLPP-funded project on Monday 3 July 2023 and will be sitting next to Jess in the LTR area of Level 5. Please do welcome Dorian when they arrive and make them feel at home here.

Dorian will be working with the project’s participant data. They currently work as an Archivist/Content Expert at UC Arts Digital Lab, have been a Peer Tutor on the WRIT101/ENGL117 course, and an intern in 2021’s WORD Christchurch event.

Aptly for the NZLPP role, Dorian was a research assistant for the QuakeCORE project, taking responsibility for managing the master spreadsheet, communicating with participants, raw data analysis, transcribing interviews as well as sorting records.

In previous LTR finishes some things posts (here, for e.g…), I’ve listed the completed items from our visualisation board along with a brief description explaining what the mahi was.

This time it’s been so long since the last update, and we’ve been so productive that I’m just going to upload a list of work without any details. If you want further information about it you can contact the person who did it.

Note that some things are what we did as part of a larger Library effort.

And I promise to try to do this in a timely fashion next time…

Please join with me in congratulating Rachel Doherty on being appointed to the role of Kaitiaki Huawaere Ako | Open Education Librarian. Rachel will be starting in the role on 19 December and will be reporting to me.

This is a new role. It needs someone who can happily collaborate with academic staff and management, and can create a vision for this mahi and then actualise it. We’re confident Rachel is a great fit for the role.

Rachel has general library experience and qualifications, including an MLIS from VUW, and also has the ability to work as a partner with the different people and groups on campus. For example, she partners with the University Librarian and Library managers in her role as administrator, manages the (academic) personalities in the Library committee, and has formed strong collegial relationships with finance staff and her library colleagues. In addition, in previous roles she has wrangled Members of Parliament and their staff, and senior business people. She has shown her ability to deal equally with people from across the hierarchy and is not phased to take on contentious projects. She has shown, in her current role, the ability to take on, lead, and successfully complete tasks in a consultative manner. Rachel has just completed a project management course and is currently studying TREO110.

Tena koutou katoa.

I am going to try to make this as long and tedious as possible, so do feel free to stop reading now – you might just save yourself 20 minutes of mind-numbing nothingness. Take action immediately to avoid this diatribe of jargonic gibberish.

Right, now that I have your attention, let me assure you that I am acutely aware that your time is precious. So let us embark on a mysterious and wonderous journey into the known and the unknown. And also the known-unknown and the unknown-unknowable. A journey of promise and opportunity, and also challenge and familiarity.

Actually, scrap that, I’ll just tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been helping with lately:

1. 1. The Editors’ Symposium was held last Thursday. This was a day for journal editors, potential editors, and those who want to think about academic publishing. Anton and Fiona came up with the idea for this after talking to a number of UC academics who edit journals but never got to share their experiences and issues with other editors.
      The day was very successful. Helen kicked it off with an excellent and thought-provoking overview of the state of academic publishing. There were presentations from senior academics about editing existing and new journals, how to use editing to enhance your academic career, what’s coming next in academic publishing, and new authoring software. Brian spoke about the Library’s implementation of PubPub, and that was very well received.
      But more than the presentations, the questions and discussion were rich and, at times, provocative.
      Big thanks to the Library team who organised this and made it a fruitful day!
   2. We have two PowerBI dashboards ready to publish, following a series of workshops with Doug Muller from Digital Services and Pip Hawkes from R&I. Kiera, Brian and Anton have been working on these. Expect to see them online soon.
   3. He Kupenga Horopounamu, the NZLPP-funded project, is powering ahead now that Jess is on board. Our colleagues from Auckland Council Libraries and Christchurch City Libraries joined us for a hui last Thursday. Next step is to get the ethics submission approved, and to finalise our research participants.
   4. A small team has been looking at how we can get journals that UC academics publish in indexed by Scopus. Most journals are already Scopus-indexed, but there are a small group of journals that are significant to UC researchers that aren’t. We’ve looked at the Scopus requirements, and will work out our next steps soon.

I’ll leave it there. If you got this far – well done!

Ngā mihi, Stuart