Category Archives: Learning, Teaching & Research Support

Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Library Wide

Open access strategy: Useful resources

Leave a comment

One of the specific goals of UC Library’s open access strategy is for 80% of all UC research outputs to be deposited in the UC Research Repository by 2023. Subject librarians are working on an outreach project to encourage UC researchers to upload their journal articles.

The Open Access Project Group is developing resources to support this outreach, some of which will also be of interest/use to many across the library.

An infographic detailing open access at UC

An image to add to your email signature

Please feel free to add this image to your email signature to help spread the word!  The image hyperlinks to a subject guide page on Open Access at UC.

You can find the hyperlinked image for the email signature image in this folder: K:\LIBR-Library\Projects\Open-access\PromotionalResources  as well as a PDF of the infographic.

We will let you know as more promotional resources become available (next up: a set of 3 postcards with the 3 key messages and a widget for subject guides)

 

Central Library, Health and Safety, Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Library Wide, Staff Development

Are You Ready For The Challenge?

Leave a comment

The Australasian University Health Challenge is about to kick off on the 19th of August. If you haven’t signed up yet then head on over to website to get your step by step instructions on how to be involved. Join the other 113 other University of Canterbury participants who have said yes to the challenge.

If you still need some more motivation on joining then have a look at our Facebook below. You can have a chance to win a brand new Fitbit Charge 2 worth $269.99.

The challenge is not only just for steps either. You can record other forms of activities such as biking, swimming, or even volleyball. As long as you are physical active you can add it to your daily step count through the online physical activity to steps converter.

Remember keeping consistent and motivated is always better with a friend. Find someone who will keep you accountable and this challenge may change your life.

Electronic Resources, Learning, Teaching & Research Support

Review of subscriptions – IRAG meeting this Friday

Leave a comment

This coming Friday the Information Resources Advisory Group (subgroup of Library Committee) will be meeting to discuss the feedback received in the recent review of subscriptions.

Our Information Resources Working Group has met and is making recommendations to IRAG regarding which subscriptions to keep and which ones could be cancelled.  Once IRAG has met we will send out a revised list of subscriptions as ‘proposals to cancel’ and there will be a further opportunity to comment.

Many thanks for all the feedback received so far.  New subscription recommendations will be considered at a later date once the value of cancellations and savings elsewhere in the budget are known.

Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Library Wide

LTR restructure

Leave a comment

Following Sara Roberts’ recruitment to the Learning & Teaching Manager role, and the loss of her previous roles, the LTR team has redistributed some subject librarians’ responsibilities in order to ensure an equitable and dependable service across UC’s academic departments. This redistribution is described below.

It is important to note that SLs do support each other across disciplines, specialisations, Colleges and libraries, assisting each other with teaching and consultations, and referring students and staff appropriately.

This structure will commence at the beginning of Term 4: Monday 10 September (except for the European Union change which will start at semester 1 2019), following a series of communications with our academic community (including updated subject guides).

College of Arts changes

  • Dave L takes Chinese (in addition to his Engineering work)

College of Business and Law changes

  • Kerry takes a share of Criminal Justice (in addition to her social sciences work)
  • Kim becomes a general Business and Law librarian and takes on European Union studies (in addition to her work in languages)
  • John becomes a general Law and Business librarian (in addition to his arts and science work)

College of Education, Health and Human Development changes

  • Kim relinquishes Education (and picks up Business & Law and retains her languages work)

College of Engineering changes

  • John relinquishes Mathematics and Statistics (and picks up Business & Law and retains his arts and science work)
  • Alison is now wholly working in Engineering
  • Brian is now mainly in Engineering (He retains his Japanese work)

College of Science changes

  • Alison relinquishes Environmental Sciences, Waterways Centre for Freshwater Management
  • Brian relinquishes Physics & Astronomy, which John, who already has Chemistry, picks it up (in line with the College’s combining these into one school: Physical and Chemical Sciences)

Research Services Team
Also in this restructure, Dave Clemens will move over to the Research Services team.

Datasets, Learning, Teaching & Research Support, Library Wide

Review of subscriptions

Leave a comment

Following on from discussions at IRWG, just to provide a heads up about the following draft communication which will go out to LLOs and Library Committee this week.  We are just waiting for a trial of Newsbank to be set up which we’ll provide details of as part of the review of newspaper subscriptions.  Happy to answer any questions you may have – thanks Tim Stedman

Kia ora Library Liaison Officers and Subject Librarians,

Feedback due by 31st July to acquisitions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz

As is our usual practice, the Library reviews its continuing resources (subscriptions) to check whether any are no longer required. This year we are focussing on:

  1. database subscriptions where we would like to better understand the value for current University research and teaching
  2. individual journal subscriptions considered for cancellation in 2017, renewed for 2018 but flagged again for review in 2018

Databases we are reviewing are:

  1. Databases that support Economics, Finance and Accounting (CRSP, Datastream, SIRCA, SNL, ORBIS, Euromonitor, New Zealand time series database).  We are currently consulting with the departments involved concerning these
  2. News and Newspaper databases including Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre, Factiva and PressReader
    [To be inserted: details of trial of Newsbank….]
  3. The Informit suite of databases (Families and Society collection, Health collection, Humanities and Social Sciences collection, New Zealand collection)
  4. The Safari technical and business eBooks – we expect an increase of over 300% in the subscription cost as the vendor is shutting down the old platform and transitioning subscribers to a new unlimited access platform
  5. LegalTrac – we are expecting a price increase of around 75% for 2019. Conversations with the vendor are continuing.

Why are we reviewing these databases?

In the cases of 1) through 4), there is a degree of overlap with other resources which means we are paying for some of the content twice.  Cancelling content no longer needed or available in other sources helps the Library manage anticipated budget constraints and fund new subscriptions to meet new and changing needs in the University.  In the case of 5) we would like to ask the question of LegalTrac given the proposed cost increase.

We are also reviewing the following journals considered for cancellation in 2017

If you use any of these resources we would greatly appreciate hearing from you regarding how you are using them.  Information that would be particularly helpful includes: details of courses using these resources, number of researchers and postgraduate students in your area using these resources and uniqueness of the resource/whether any alternative sources for the same information would suffice.  If you are aware of colleagues or postgraduate students in your area or other areas who use these resources please let them know about this as well.


Has the Library already decided to cancel these resources?

  • The Library is proposing to cancel the CRSP US stock database based on consultation with Business, Economics and Finance so far.   A final decision regarding CRSP will be made in August/September after all feedback on this proposal has been received and before the 2019 subscription comes due
  • No cancellation decisions have yet been made regarding any of these resources
  • Your feedback is important to guide us as to whether we should be proposing any of these resources for cancellation
  • Should we propose any of these resources for cancellation, we will send out another email in early August with the details for consultation.  There will be another opportunity to comment at that point
  • Any cancellation proposals will also go to the Information Resources Advisory Group (IRAG) and Library Committee for advice before a final decision is made. The final decision will rest with the Library.

Thank you for your understanding and assistance with this review,

Helen Thomas                     Tim Stedman

Electronic Resources, Learning, Teaching & Research Support

Springer Protocols

Leave a comment

From Springer:

“On July 25th, the SpringerProtocols.com platform will be deactivated. You may have noticed that SpringerProtocols content is already searchable via our new research platform Springer Nature Experiments, our advanced research solution dedicated to protocols and methods, while the actual SpringerProtocols content is hosted on SpringerLink. Free-to-use, Springer Nature Experiments has been specifically designed to help researchers find and evaluate protocols and methods across the whole Springer Nature protocols and methods portfolio”