Following on from some conversations within our team and at the 6 weekly OER catch-up, I’ve updated the following wiki pages (indicating updated “August 2022”) where there have been some changes:
You are most welcome to add notes, suggestions or comments on either or any of these eBook wiki pages.
Tim Stedman
You might remember that periodically I post in Counterculture the completed tasks from the LTR visualisation board, so you can see that we do actually get stuff done… I haven’t done this for a long time and the completed tasks have been building up, so apologies for this being a super-long post. In fact, the previous report was on 1 October 2021. This isn’t everything we’ve done, just the projects and one-off (even if they repeat each year) activities.
If you’d like further details about any of these let me know and I can put you on to the person or team who did the work.
Subject librarians – could you promote this webinar among your networks? – Thanks, Tim Stedman
Looking to get published? Springer Nature is hosting an Online Author Symposium on Journal and Book Publishing on 31st March (Thursday), 2:00pm to 4:00pm NZST. There will be a focus on the Open Access agreement that Australian and New Zealand Universities have in place with Springer Nature and how you can get the most out of it.
Location: Go to Webinar (https://bit.ly/3pS0WJG)
Find out about the role of publishing in today’s academic environment, how to decide what publications are right for your research, and what new developments such as open access mean for academics and researchers. There are tips for early career researchers and advice on how to get published.
Academic book publishing with Springer Nature (3pm)
You can register for the Symposium using the link below:
Register here
(https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3043907103634597390
Your Presenters:
Alison Fitches is an Auckland based Editor and is part of the Springer Nature Adis publications team. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Molecular Diagnosis & Therapy and is also a Section Editor for the Adis journal Drugs, Drugs & Aging, Pediatric Drugs and CNS Drugs, covering Pain & Anaesthesia, Nephrology & Urology and Ophthalmology. She joined Springer Nature 8 years ago, from the University of Otago.
Vishal Daryanomel commissions research books on Politics, Business Management and Economics for Palgrave Macmillan. He is based in Singapore, and works with authors from Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. He commissions monographs, edited volumes, reference works, handbooks, textbooks and Palgrave Pivots.
Please feel free to share this email. We look forward to seeing you at the Online Author Symposium.
Kia ora koutou
Working from home is no longer new to us and most would have designated a spot as “the working space”.
Here is a brief checklist for your home workstation:
Your chair: ideally an office chair, if not be creative in adjusting the height, a cushion may be good to sit on or support your back.
Your feet: ensure your feet are flat on the floor, if not you may improvise something as your foot rest.
Your screen: either a laptop or desktop, position the top of your screen at about eye level and about an arm’s length away from you.
Your eyes: a break away from the screen is good. Eye yoga or the like is recommended. Or the 20/20/20 rule, after 20 minutes on screen, give your eyes a 20 second break by looking at something 20 feet away!
Your mouse & keyboard: it is recommended to have a separate mouse and keyboard if you use a laptop.
Your breaks: take regular breaks, keep up your hydration and physical movements.
Here is the video on how to set up your desk but you might have to change it to suit your home environment.
Do discuss with your manager if you need further support.
Ngā mihi
Swee Hoon
LAC staff and subject librarians may be interested to know EBSCO has started adding indicators to records on GOBI where there is an OA version of an eBook. If an OA book is available the status will say “Open Access – Available Free Online”. At this stage only Taylor and Francis and EBSCO eBooks display this indicator (where available) however EBSCO say more suppliers will be coming on stream with this information.
Some useful resources from CAUL to share:
“Key information for library staff
We have developed an FAQ-style document containing key information for library staff about CAUL Read & Publish agreements based on questions received to date. This includes some suggestions for communicating with academics about the agreements.
Read & Publish agreement resources for Open Access Week
CAUL has developed two slides that you might like to use in Open Access Week presentations. The first is an overview of key messages about the agreements, and the second is aimed at communicating about R&P agreements with researchers.
The second slide includes a section that you can customise by adding your institution’s name and the R&P agreements that your institution participates in.
You are welcome to modify these slides, add branding etc. Download a PDF version or a PowerPoint version.
Other resources for Open Access Week
When sharing the posters, we recommend you link to the supporting web pages via the links in this email so that you can be sure you are sharing the most up-to-date versions.
Please feel free to share these posters with your networks and reuse wherever they may be useful. The posters are both CC-BY licensed.”
Ata mārie koutou. To mark Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori we had planned a display in the foyer of Te Puna Rakahau o Macmillan Brown of collection items which show the way changing technologies have been used by te reo learners over the past 160 years.
Covid put paid to that plan, so I turned it into a blog, which we shared on social media last week. But in case you missed it…here it is! http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/te-wiki/
(P.S. The items mentioned are now on display upstairs at MB if you are interested in checking them out.)
Are now available
… are now available. Some highlights include:
A number of us are having increasing concerns about VitalSource as a platform for eBooks. I would like to ask that we please do not recommend or buy any more eBooks from VitalSource until we get some satisfactory responses from VitalSource and the publishers who are insisting on using this platform. Our concerns include usability, their DRM and more recently privacy of student data they are collecting when students create an account with them. Hope to get some clearer responses soon but I am seriously thinking we should blacklist this provider and manage out the handful of titles we have purchased with them. We will be passing on our concerns to the publishers who are using them as well.