All posts by tjs62

Learning, Teaching & Research Support

eTV sessions

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From our representative at eTV:

“Could you please let teachers know that I do regular Zoom sessions on a Thursday afternoon from 15:30 to 16:00.

The link below allows teachers to register for the Zoom workshops.
https://doodle.com/poll/75ped25if9x25mvx.   If I have no participants registered by 15:00 on the day, the workshop will not take place.

I cover one aspect of ETV each week. The idea is to keep these sessions short and focussed, but also allow time for participants to ask questions.   I will be posting these sessions to the ‘Teaching and Learning’ Channel on Online Collections, in case you miss a session and want to go and watch it. It is a simple live recording of the Zoom session – no-frills production.

Schedule:

27 February – EVA Basic – Adding Labels, Textboxes, Tables, Images and Hyperlinks to Videos and using Hotspots and Crossroads and Bookmarks

12 March – ETV Search, Clipping, New Programme Alerts, Requesting shows, Adding videos to EVA.

19 March – ELINK Library and Workspaces

26 March – EVA Basic – Adding Labels, Textboxes, Tables, Images and Hyperlinks to Videos and using Hotspots and Crossroads and Bookmarks

9 April – ETV Search, Clipping, New Programme Alerts, Requesting shows, Adding videos to EVA.

Here is the Meeting Room link for the Thursday Workshops:
https://zoom.us/j/9237586734

Library Wide

COVID-19 and access to needed resources

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Subject librarians and others may be interested to know we are hearing of other libraries having some success with publishers/vendors getting access to e-versions of texts where students are stuck in China because of the coronavirus outbreak.  One example was SAGE agreeing to do a 3 user licence for a needed textbook.  So if you are aware of any needs out there that we are not currently meeting please let Acquisitions know and we can follow up to see what’s possible.

Electronic Resources, Learning, Teaching & Research Support

Introducing EBSCO Faculty Select

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As mentioned at the session yesterday with subject librarians, we now have access to Faculty Select, a new tool from EBSCO which provides a single search interface for finding open access textbooks.

Access Faculty Select

We are in the experimenting phase and we continue to work with EBSCO to iron out a few things with Faculty Select.

What’s our interest in Faculty Select? 

We are keen to promote the benefits of open access generally.  This was a tool we heard about last year and thought it sounded interesting and worth experimenting with.  Other reasons include:

  • Textbook affordability for students and reducing barriers in textbook access for students
  • Rising costs of eTextbooks for libraries
  • Unwillingness of some publishers to sell their eTextbooks to libraries
  • UC’s interest in moving into MOOCs

How you can help

  • Have a play with Faculty Select and send us your feedback, ideas or questions.  If you are just testing/playing please put [Testing] after your name in the submission form to indicate to LAC staff that you don’t actually want to proceed
  • Include Faculty Select in your conversations with academics as an option for sourcing open textbook content (encourage exploring open alternatives to the traditional textbook model generally)

More information

Health and Safety

DPI tip for January

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One of the contributory factors to DPI is our work environment.  Environmental factors can include: temperature (too cold or too warm), air movement (draughts or not enough ventilation), humidity, vibration, noise from machinery and lighting.  If you have a concern, you can talk to your manager, your colleagues or to your health and safety representative.  As an example of one thing we did in Access and Collections last year – Facilities Services visited our workroom to assess the ventilation problems we were having.  They then ordered and installed a different type of ceiling vent over desks where draughts were a particular problem.  In an open plan environment it can be hard to please everyone, but it never hurts to try and to involve everyone in the team in the discussion about options we could try that would be a good outcome for all.

Library Wide

eBook/eTextbook purchasing in 2020

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The Information Resources Working Group (IRWG) has been wrestling for some time with the problem of increasingly expensive eTextbooks.  After much debate and discussion, this is the approach we have landed on for 2020:

  • eTextbook/eBook recommendations continue as usual (eg GOBI selection cart, email acquisitions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz, recommend a resource for the Library web form)
  • eTextbooks over $NZ2000 in value will go through this process as a six month trial.  On receipt of the recommendation and having confirmed the price/model, Access and Collections will email IRWG members with the textbook/cost/model details.  To assist timely with decision-making, IRWG members will have 2 working days to raise any objections otherwise LAC will proceed with the purchase.  Any objections raised will go to the next IRWG meeting  (IRWG normally meets the first Friday of the month).  Access and Collections will inform the recommender as to the status of their recommendation.  This trial (including the details of what was spent) will be reviewed by IRWG in July 2020
  • eTextbooks that can only be purchased in packages will go to IRWG for advice.  Trust funds may assist us with funding eBook packages particularly where the trust description relates to the subject of the package

Access and Collections will be allocating more money to the book budget in 2020 to help with the growing costs of eTextbooks.  I think I have said this every year for some years now … the eTextbook market continues to be a volatile one as publisher models keep changing.  This means we need to continually adjust our approach.   Some models that we were once very useful and cost-effective for us (patron-driven acquisitions) are now becoming less viable as publishers withdraw high demand content from these models or dramatically increase their prices.  eTextbook provision is a hot topic in the wider Library community and we expect to be discussing this again with colleagues at the annual CAUL Content Coordinators Forum in February.  Some of the publisher models are very difficult for libraries to support however we are acutely aware the content is in demand and would be well used.  Paid access to high demand eTextbooks is still the only option in many cases however one of our goals in 2020 is to put more work into raising awareness around and supporting open educational resources.

Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Staff Development

Staff development session – Access and Collections update

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This session will mainly be of interest to subject librarians but anyone who is interested is very welcome to attend – here is the date so you can get it into your diaries – Wednesday 29th January at 9:15am in Room 210 PJH.

Topics will be topical nearer to the time but likely to include:

  • 2020 information resources budget update and how we are going to manage that
  • EBSCO Faculty Select
  • Firm order/GOBI updates
  • Some analysis LAC has been doing on print and eBook usage
  • Update on new resources and changes
  • Our first read and publish agreement
  • Interloans/document delivery update
  • Anything else that’s happening and of interest for LAC to share (feel free to let me know of any suggestions)

No bookings needed – just turn up on the day.

Library Wide

Recommendations for books – 2020 budget

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Access and Collections are making preparations to roll over to the 2020 budget for information resources.

Each year we normally wind up placing orders for books in late October to give Access and Collections staff as much time as possible to order and receive the books on the book budget for the current year.

This year with ordering being down somewhat compared to previous years coupled with an underspend in continuing resources I’ve been a bit looser and kept things going for longer this year.  However the time has now come to call a close on spending against the 2019 book budget and so orders coming through (including in GOBI selection carts) will now be held over until we open the 2020 budgets.

The rollover will happen before the end of the year but if there is something needed urgently then please let us know.

Library Wide

Web of Science – access will cease on 31 December 2019

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Just a reminder that access to Web of Science will cease at the end of this month.  Clarivate (the producers of Web of Science) have started writing to some of our academics (possibly the ones with saved searches) advising our access will be ceasing on 31/12.  In the sample email from Clarivate I saw, it states that Medline is one of the Web of Science resources we will lose access to.  We have access to Medline via OVID and we have renewed this subscription.

We have removed links to Web of Science on the library’s database pages but some links (subject guides) have been left until the bitter end (first thing in 2020).

Although the Library has extensively communicated regarding the Web of Science discussion and subsequent decision to cancel, we have put together this wiki page with links to the various messages, memos and communications over the past 3 years.  This could be useful to refer to should any users who have not got wind of this decision pop out of the woodwork.