This is the blog post for the first three sessions of the DBS Annual Library Seminar. See the next post for the second three sessions
Agenda for the seminar:
10:00 – 11:00 Gary Brewerton and Marie O’Neill | The Reading List Challenge: Implementing Loughborough
Online Reading List Software (LORLS)
11:00 – 11:45 Dr Clare Thornley | The Role of Librarians in Measuring the Impact of Research
12:00 – 12:30 Brian Hickey | The Opportunities and Challenges of Hosting on the Cloud
12:30 – 13:00 Alexander Kouker | DBS Assignment Planner and Reference Tracking
13:45 – 14:15 David Hughes | Migration to the Koha Open Source LMS: The DBS Library Experience
14:15 – 14:45 Maria Rogers and Keith Brittle | The Benefits of Cross-Institutional Collaboration
11:00 – 11:45 Dr Clare Thornley | The Role of Librarians in Measuring the Impact of Research
12:00 – 12:30 Brian Hickey | The Opportunities and Challenges of Hosting on the Cloud
12:30 – 13:00 Alexander Kouker | DBS Assignment Planner and Reference Tracking
13:45 – 14:15 David Hughes | Migration to the Koha Open Source LMS: The DBS Library Experience
14:15 – 14:45 Maria Rogers and Keith Brittle | The Benefits of Cross-Institutional Collaboration
Implementing Loughborough Online Reading List Software (LORLS)
Marie O'Neill
As reading list evaluation is part of course accreditation DBS Library wanted to use the course reading lists as a stock control mechanism, as an unfulfilled or unavailable reading list item can prompt student disengagement. Online reading lists move students towards being autonomous readers, especially when links to the library system via a reading list system, or VLE (Moodle), leads to spontaneous resource discovery.
Moving reading lists from a paper basis to on online basis became a library project. Reading Lists are the student's first encounter with academic life.
Usage analytics are useful. Book records with the course code are too, as are the capacity to import/export into and out of Moodle but it does not create a unified / central location for this information for students and academics. Therefore on online solution was sought at DBS.
Reading lists softwares were investigated.
- Commercial
- Rebus
- Talis Aspire
- Open Source
- Telstar
- LORLS (LOUGHBOROUGH ONLINE READING LIST SYSTEM)
LORLS, matched the need of the library and the assessment criteria, with additional functions like the ability to import / export via Zotero. This allows the system to be pre-populated with data, which can then be maintained by the Academics going forward.
See the publications of Gary Brewerton for more information.
Gary Brewerton
The term reading list implies an academic tie, however there are many different structures that are used for delivering these lists, partly because they differ in size, and vary by discipline, with Arts being more reading intensive than Engineering and Science.
Issues;
- Student unable to locate materials on a reading list
- Academics don't know if or how to use them leading to demotivation
- Library's are often not informed of the materials required, possibly never seeing the list at all.
- Institutional reputation may suffer if the reading materials are not available.
- Browsing is the first year default search methods for reading materials.
LORLS has been around since 2002 and has gone through several re-development cycles.
Developments have included:
- Add a link to Google Books if the materials are out of copyright
- Administrators ability to un-delete reading lists
- Support for the Harvard Citation Style
- Academic users can sort, comment, create a subheading, see how the list is used on the dashboard
- Getting Academics to participate is an issue
- Library can see content types, and book borrowing data
- Items liked and not-liked
- Items can be flagged to the librarian's if they are not held int he library's collections
- E-mail alerts can be created when an item is added
- Reports can indicate where a list has not been updated as expected
- Purchasing predictor to suggest items for purchase - can tie into the LMS for budget availability.
See the website and blog: http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/lorls/
Why DBS choose LORLS
- Open source > cheaper, flexible,adheres to standards.
- Develop prestige > funding applications
- Insight from other users
- Know going to tender for LMS in two years
Project at DBS
Started in September 2013.
Takes time to embed.
Lots of advocacy needed, both from the library and Academic 'Champions'.
The Role of Librarians in Measuring the Impact of Research
Dr. Clare Thornley
What is research?
- Original Contribution
- Method
- Test theory
- Fill a gap
- Investigate
- Create new knowledge
What is impact?
- Citation
- Production
- Change in known knowledge or behaviour
- Discourse
- Academic Pubication
Citation indexes
- Less than 30% of Social Science are cited.
- Connects an identity across all their publications.
- Citation can be related to successful funding applications and promotions
- Political aspect
- Bibliometrics use citations
- Altmetrics do too
Issues:
- Tracking downloads
- Metrics for Institutional repositories are in isolation.
- Not publishing in peer-reviewed journals
- Journals not getting cited
Aim to get into a highly cited journal. Identify these using tools like Web of Science / Knowledge. Science Watch, Publish or Perish, and Google Scholar.
The Opportunities and Challenges of Hosting on the Cloud
To me this was the best / most relevant presentation of the day and really helped me bring together the pieces of the cloud puzzle that I was already familiar with.
Cloud computing - What to look for.
Sotrage location not too far away from your base.
Location transparency (ie you know where your data / app / information is going to be physcially located)
Consult with you local IT Department
Consult a legal expert in the area, especially in relation to data protection and the protection of intellectual property.
Be aware the EU law on this area is changing and will likely continue to change for a while.
AWS (Amazon Web Services) claim to be capable of setting up from scratch in 17 minutes. It tool Brian 9 hours with a lot of background problems to get to that point.
The Deloitte Risk Intelligence map indicates that governance and who actually has ownership are two major concerns to be addressed when moving to cloud storage or cloud computing. The factors listed here should be considered when undertaking a cloud project.
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf
5-3-2 principle of cloud computing
