16 Jun 2016

CONUL ANLTC Library Assistant Award 2016: Facing the Open Access Challenge – The experience of a University Open Access Team

*Joint Third Prize, won by Megan Corrigan, Queen’s University Belfast*

Facing the Open Access Challenge – 

The experience of a University Open Access Team


The Open Access (OA) movement (where research papers are free to access online and free of most copyright restrictions) has been around for some time. However it gathered momentum in the UK following the publication of the Finch Report (1) in 2012 and acceptance of its recommendations by the Government.

The recommendations of the Finch Report set out an ‘encouraging and challenging road map to improve open access to scholarly literature’(2). Academic funding bodies including RCUK, COAF and the Wellcome Trust embraced OA and made it a requirement for funding. However of major importance was the decision by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England – which covers all of the UK) to issue an OA policy (3). This mandated that from the 1st April 2016 researchers must deposit their journal articles and conference papers (with an ISSN) in a subject or institutional repository within 3 months of publication and make OA within embargo limits, Figure 1. Researchers need to be compliant if their work is to be considered for the next REF (Research Excellence Framework). This is a major assessment exercise where research output from each UK University is judged and funds allocated accordingly.


Figure 1: HEFCE’s Open Access Policy for the next REF
CC-BY QUB Open Access Team


These developments are having a huge impact on UK Universities and their funding.  It is a challenging environment for OA teams as while researchers need to engage with OA to ensure future funding, many are far from convinced. Here at Queen’s University, Belfast the big challenge remains researcher engagement.  

Why is it so difficult convincing researchers to make their work OA? As those interviewed for a Blog in The Guardian in 2014 (4) outlined, many academics still remain confused. In Stephen Curry’s words they are ‘confused about what it is they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to go about it’. They pointed out that the biggest battle is about changing the academic culture and making OA mainstream, especially within the arts and humanities. This is still the case today. For many academics OA is about bureaucracy and regulatory compliance.   

What can we do about it? The key is developing and sustaining an active support and advocacy strategy. Here at Queen’s the OA team have used the Jisc OA Pathfinder projects (5), especially the advocacy project, and the marketing guidelines in the UNESCO OA Curriculum (6) to develop a range of tools to communicate the OA message, Figure 2. Our strategy includes: OA training sessions run inhouse and in departments; promoting the institutional repository and OA process through our LibGuide (7), FAQs, Blogs and Twitter (8) account; creation of a range of support and promotional materials such as postcards, merchandise (bags, sweets, pens, post-its); and making contact with new research staff. We also run events during International OA week.  

Through our support services the OA Team manages the institutional repository ensuring all documents are copyright compliant and the correct licenses and embargoes are applied. We also enable researchers to pay Article Processing Charges (gold route) and answer queries about anything OA.  
            
Figure 2: Support and Advocacy Strategy – Open Access Team, Queen’s University
CC-BY Megan Corrigan
  
As a result of these activities, since August 2014 over 1200 researchers have attended advocacy sessions and the rate of full-text document upload to the repository has increased significantly. This reflects positively on the team’s approach to develop an OA culture within the University.  However there is still much work to be done and we plan to expand our training programme, build relationships with individual departments, create online videos and run training webinars. 

If UK universities want to continue to be internationally renowned then it is essential that they embrace OA. Being part of the OA movement is challenging but our work to ensure researchers engage in the OA process is essential to its success. We can have a pivotal and exciting role to play and it is only just beginning.  


1 Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (‘Finch Group’) (2012) Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: How to expand access to research publications. Available at: http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/finch/ (Accessed 23/3/2016) 
2 RCUK (2014) RCUK Policy on Open Access. Available at: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/policy/ (Accessed 23/3/2016) 
3 HEFCE (2015) Policy for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework: Updated July 2015. 
Available at: 
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/Pubs/2014/201407/HEFCE2014_07_updated%20July%202015.pdf (Accessed 23/3/2016) 
4 Ratcliffe, R. (2014) ‘What’s the biggest challenge facing open access?’  
The Guardian: Impact of Research Blog 27th October. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/highereducation-network/blog/2014/oct/27/-sp-whats-the-biggest-challenge-facing-open-access (Accessed 23/03/2016) 
5 Jisc (2015) Open Access Good Practice: Pathfinder outputs. Available at: https://openaccess.jiscinvolve.org/wp/pathfinder-project-finalised-outputs/ (Accessed 23/03/2016) 6 UNESCO (2015) Open Access Infrastructure: module 2 UNESCO p28-31. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232204E.pdf (Accessed 20/02/2016) 
7 Blee, E. (2016) Open Access. Available at: http://libguides.qub.ac.uk/openaccess (Accessed 01/04/16) 
8 Open Access QUB Twitter account. Available at: https://twitter.com/OpenAccessQUB (Accessed 01/04/16) 

15 Jun 2016

Is a Once Hidden Culture Still Hidden Away in Boxes? The Irish Queer Archive and The National Library

Guest Post by Mark Ward (Please note, that all views are my own and not representative of any organisations)
Eight years ago today, on the 16th June 2008, the Irish Queer Archive (IQA), “a vast collection of material which provides interesting and valuable insights into the social history of lesbians and gay men in an Irish and international context over a thirty-year period”[1], was donated by the National Lesbian and Gay Federation of Ireland to the National Library of Ireland (NLI).

In 2009, a 157 page collection list detailing its fascinating contents was released by the NLI[2].

And then, nothing.

I kept waiting for the National Library to mount an exhibition of the archive, but they never did. Why?

The archive’s Wikipedia page talks about how “the historic transfer of IQA to NLI was also hugely symbolic as it signalled the Irish state taking ownership of LGBT heritage”[3] and states that digitisation of the entire collection is an aim. The IQA has a semi-active Facebook page[4] where a number of items have been photographed and shared along with historical information which gives a fascinating insight into the wealth of the material in the archive. I am under the impression that this endeavour, however, is not coming from the NLI but from historians associated with the IQA.

Tonie Walsh, member of the IQA group, historian, DJ and founding editor of Gay Community News (GCN), has done much to keep the flag of the IQA flying, giving talks and staging exhibitions using copies of materials from the IQA. For example, his exhibition, A Liberating Party: LGBT Pride in Ireland Since 1974, has toured all over the country, visiting places such as Clonmel, Arklow, Waterford and South Dublin (full disclosure: A Liberating Party visited Tallaght Library in 2010, and Ballyroan Library in 2013, both of which I organised). Accompanying this, and all of his exhibitions, is Everybody’s Diary, a ledger of Pride Testimonials which has been travelling the country since 2003 and will continue touring until full, and then be added to the IQA – crucially, the IQA is a living archive that is continually accepting donations.

As is evident from the above, Walsh is a powerhouse in getting the IQA out there, but he is only one man. The NLI have not mounted a single exhibition of the IQA in the eight years that they have had it. And they do mount exhibitions, frequently it seems, not only ones in the NLI itself or in their National Photographic Archive, but they also have travelling and online exhibitions. Frustratingly, there have been events at the NLI which, arguably, would’ve been a perfect opportunity to include IQA exhibits, such as a Marriage Equality event in the NLI in 2013[5] or a BeLonG To Youth Services Photographic Exhibition in 2014 in the NLI’s National Photographic Archive[6]. Currently, there is no NLI-led exhibition of the IQA, and none seems to be forthcoming. This despite the fact, according to Wikipedia that “an advisory group (…) continues to focus on opportunities to help the National Library of Ireland exploit its collection”[7] – if this is the case, why hasn’t an exhibition been mounted? Are the National Library actively collaborating with this advisory group?

Furthermore, despite the aim mentioned earlier that the NLI would be “ultimately digitising the entire collection”[8], nothing of the IQA appears to have been digitized by the NLI and there is no mention anywhere of any such digitization project happening at any point in the future.  

Searching deeper, even their blog, which began in July 2011, began first with a news post announcing that it was beginning, and in which they posted a list of suggested posts that could be featured on the blog, of which the IQA was one. Almost five years later, and the NLI has not even made an informative blog post regarding the IQA. A blog post that does mention it is a now defunct Irish History Blog, Pue’s Occurances, on which, in 2009, their contributor Ciarán Wallace wrote about the IQA at the NLI stating that “much of the history of late-twentieth century Ireland can be traced through this archive”[9].

More recently, in December 2015, The Christopher Robson Photographic Collection – a collection of 2000 photographs taken at “pride events in Ireland between 1992 and 2007”[10] by the late Robson, a founding member of the Gay & Lesbian Equality Network, was donated to the NLI. I do hope that the new acquisition of the Robson collection – which sounds like it would make a wonderful exhibit - doesn’t succumb to the same fate that appears to have befallen the IQA.

With all of this in mind, my question to the National Library is twofold. Firstly, why are you not fully exploiting this wonderful resource of the Irish Queer Archive? And secondly, if not now, then when? Whilst it is fantastic that the IQA is at the NLI and can be consulted, the history of my community – an archival history that was painstakingly assembled and collected by a dedicated group over decades – deserves better than languishing in closed stacks. As we approach, and almost pass-by another Pride, is it too much to hope for our history to be put on display in the form of a large-scale exhibition and/or a digitized online collection? At this stage, I’d even settle for the promised NLI blog post…

[Postscript: I welcome a response, or a dialogue, with the NLI about this issue.]

CONUL ANLTC Library Assistant Award 2016: The Kelmscott Chaucer

*Joint Second Prize, won by Helen McGinley, The Library of Trinity College, University of Dublin *


The Kelmscott Chaucer
It is difficult to choose a favourite item in Trinity College Library’s collections but one of mine is the Kelmscott Chaucer, shelfmark Press B KEL 1896 2. It is not particularly colourful – red and black are the only inks used, and the former only sparingly – but despite the unpromising binding of Trinity’s copy it is a beautiful book. How can you not admire the sheer amount of work involved in designing and creating it?

The first opening 

William Morris (1834-1896) set up the Kelmscott Press in 1891, making it one of the earliest private presses. In the seven years of its existence, the press produced a staggering 52 works in 66 volumes. (It was not a private press in the strictest sense of the word as Morris did employ workers but it only published limited editions of material he chose and he had full control of every aspect of production. He admired early calligraphy and typography and said: ‘I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read’ (1).

Morris was in no doubt that his books should be printed on hand-made, chemical-free paper and was delighted to find that Joseph Batchelor in Little Chart, Kent was able to produce some for him modelled on a fifteenth-century Bolognese example. Although not keen on vellum, Morris realised that some collectors preferred it and printed a small number of vellum copies of most of the Kelmscott Press titles. He managed to find two suppliers in England who could meet his high standards after the Vatican bought up most of the good Italian vellum. In fact, although the book is printed on paper, TCD’s copy of the Chaucer has two vellum leaves bound in at the back which were trial pages for Froissart’s Chronicles. Morris intended to publish this in two volumes but later abandoned the project.


Morris had strong views on layout, spacing and type, saying that ‘the letters should be designed by an artist, and not an engineer' (2). He spent a good deal of time examining enlarged photographs of existing typefaces and drawing his own fonts, even rejecting some letters after they had been engraved to his specification (3). Each book produced by the Kelmscott Press was in one of three fonts, all designed by Morris and cut by Edward Finch: Golden (based on Roman type), Troy (based on Gothic black-letter type) or Chaucer – this last being simply a smaller version of the Troy created when he realised the larger variant was just not practical for such a large book.



Finding ink to satisfy Morris was far more difficult than sourcing either paper or type had been. He contemplated making his own, but never did, instead trying a variety of suppliers. His friend Emery Walker, who later set up the Doves Press, came to his rescue by suggesting Jänecke of Hanover, whose inks were untainted by “those damned chemists” as Morris saw them. However, this was very stiff ink, making it extremely hard work for the pressmen and nearly causing a strike (4). After further trials of other suppliers, and much correspondence between Kelmscott Press and Gebrüder Jänecke, Morris settled on a thinned-down version of their black ink and a vermillion produced by Winsor and Newton of London (5).


Morris began speaking of producing an edition of Chaucer’s works as early as June 1891 (6) and the illustrations were mentioned rather excitedly in The Athenaeum on 22nd October 1892 under the heading “Fine-art gossip”. The Book Buyer (a periodical published in New York) declared on 18th November 1895 that it would be ‘without question the grandest book of the century’ (7).


Morris, an inveterate doodler (8), designed decorative initials, small devices, 14 large borders and 18 image frames for the work, as well as the title page. His old friend Edward Burne-Jones, with whom he had read Chaucer aloud when they were students at Oxford, provided 87 illustrations. The woodcuts were engraved by Charles Edward Keates, Wilhelm Spielmeyer, George Campfield and William Harcourt Hooper, although Robert Catterson-Smith had to simplify Burne-Jones’s very detailed drawings for Hooper.

Opening from Romaunt of the Rose containing initials, a frame and a border by Morris, and an image by Burne-Jones


Printing began on 8th August 1894 (9) and was finally finished on 8th May 1896. 438 copies (425 paper and 13 vellum) of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer; now newly imprinted, probably now the bestknown work from the press, were published. A glowing review in The Athenaeum on 3rd October 1896 stated ‘In its own style, the book is, beyond dispute, the finest ever issued’.

Colophon


All images (including the flowers) are from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer; now newly imprinted, TCD shelfmark Press B KEL 1896 2.


(1) A note by William Morris on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press together with a short description of the press by S. C. Cockerell, & an annotated list of the books printed thereat (London, 1898) p.1. 
(2) William S. Peterson (ed.), Essays and lectures on the arts of the book by William Morris (California, 1982) p.69. 
(3) William S. Peterson, The Kelmscott Press: a history of William Morris’s typographical adventure (Oxford, 1991) p.87. 4
(4) Emery Walker in a letter to John Johnson, quoted in William Morris and the art of the book (New York, 1976) p.82. 
(5) William S. Peterson, ‘William Morris and the “Damned Chemists”: the search for an ideal ink at the Kelmscott Press’ in Printing History, 3:2 (1981) p.7–11. 
(6) A note by William Morris... p.44. 
(7) Peterson, The Kelmscott Press p.228. 
(8) H. Halliday Sparling, The Kelmscott Press and William Morris, master-craftsman (London, 1924) p.67. 
(9) Ibid. p.164. 
            


14 Jun 2016

CONUL ANLTC Library Assistant Award 2016: A Captive Audience

*Joint Second Prize, won by Bernie Gardiner, Maynooth University*

A Captive Audience


Capturing an audience is probably something every blogger aspires to, holding on to the audience is the key to a successful blog, but what happens if you have a short time frame in which to engage your readers?  The depth of information you wish to impart to your audience is vast.  The window of success or failure hangs heavy when you have a tight deadline and you have what appears to be an insurmountable task.  Did I mention you have to create the blog from scratch?





Creating from scratch is such an unusual expression; it prompted me to look at synonyms for the word scratch.  These include cut, graze, score, nick and mark.  If you put a capital letter on the words Nick and Mark you have two potential names for your next born, trusting that your next born is a boy of course.  Still we are living in a time of great enlightenment so why restrict yourself?  It is perfectly acceptable to call your child whatever you please, well within reason perhaps.  Plank may not serve in your child’s best interest when he’s sixteen and applying for a part-time job in the local hardware store.

In my marvelling at the English language and my subsequent ramblings, I’ve probably lost your attention; as your mind has likely wandered toward the many unusual names people call their babies. If you have a burning need to investigate baby names further why not listen to the soothing tones of the late Frank McCourt as he pronounces two hundred Irish names and their meanings.
Oh but maybe wait until after you have finished reading this post.

So back to describing the dilemma in which I found myself.  Such a happening occurred when I was approached by our Deputy Librarian with the very novel idea of creating a blog for the purpose of Quality Review.  In 2015 Maynooth University were about to commence a review under the third cycle of reviews. The library agreed to be the first university department to undertake a review.
The proposed blog would complement the internal Self-Assessment Report to be produced as part of the quality review process. The blog would potentially offer the reviewer a snapshot of library activity and an essence of the level of library engagement with the university and wider community.  It would be necessary to capture and condense the undertaking of the library for the review period 2010-2015 and present this to the reviews in a lively engaging format.

I was very fortunate in that I was not alone in this mammoth task.  I would collaborate with my colleague Emma on the project.  It was a unique opportunity for us to work together and little did we know at the time that it would lead to many other challenges and undertakings.  Fortunately we worked very well together each bringing their own skills and talents to the process.  Emma is a wonderful skilled artist and this is evident in our Quality Review blog.  We discovered early on that I worked using HTML code while Emma worked with the visual in Wordpress, our chosen online publishing platform for producing the blog.

I would highly recommend Wordpress to any aspiring bloggers as it can be used for creating websites, blogs and apps. There is a wide variety of free themes (looks) to choose from, with several more available in their premium range at a cost. You can link the blog site to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to draw in the crowds. WordPress software is user friendly and lends itself well to learning as you go.

So back to creating a blog from scratch; did we make our Mark?  Dreadful and shameless pun intended, we did and in the Nick of time! The blog went live with the link given to the internal and external reviews prior to the visit to the library. The feedback we received about the blog is testament to its usefulness.  As part of the process we created videos to help make the reviewers experience be more immediate and personal.  We wanted the reviewers to have a lasting impression of Maynooth, a good impression that is and thankfully we achieved our goal.



Screenshot of the Collections page of the Maynooth University Library QR Blog 2015 


So you may be wondering, well that is, if you are still reading this post, why mention Mark and Nick and unusual baby names in this post?  It is simply to point out that you can blog about anything, it’s capturing your audience that really helps you get your message out there.  People will always be on the alert for new possibilities for communication.  Ten years from now we are unlikely to be using blogs but then again we can’t see the future that’s what makes this exciting and interesting, which is why I really like what I do.


REFERENCES 

Maynooth  University Library Quality Review 2015 Blog 
TED Talk Takeaways: 8 Ways to Hook Your Audience – tips for helping you capture an audience; the presentation is best viewed using Google Chrome. 

13 Jun 2016

Effects of sharing research on social media

As a part of my blogposts on "reflective librarianship" I have now focused my interest on testing if my own social media apperance "BusinessLib" influence, and if so to what extent, the research communication of OA published research articles in our digital repository DiVA.


First I selected two different articles published by researchers from JIBS in DiVA. The two articles where published as OA in mid April and the difference between the two was that the first one had nearly none (4 downloads) after 8 weeks and the second one had have a more successful start (26 downloads) after 8 weeks.


My experiment  was to see if I published information about the articles (article title, hashtags, a photo of the authors and link to the fulltext) on my "BusinessLib" social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) would that effect the number of downloads for the articles one week afterwards?


Actually, I was a little suprised! It seems that my action had a real impact on the diffusion of the research articles. The first article moved from 4 downloads 8 weeks after publishing in DiVA to 36 dowloads (+ 900%) in DiVA just one week after my publishing on social media. The second one which started out on higher level moved from 26 downloads 8 weeks after it has been published in DiVA to 67 downloads (+ 258%) only one week after I had shared it on my social media channels.


My thoughts on this:
  • Social media increases the impact of research results
  • Hashtags and a link to fulltext gets downloads
  • Research communication is an important part of a researchers work
  • As a librarian I can be part of the diffusion of research
What is your thoughts on this small and simple experiment?







CONUL ANLTC Library Assistant Award 2016: Tradition and Technology and The Glucksman Library,UL

*First Prize, won by Seán Cafferkey, University of Limerick*

Tradition and Technology and The Glucksman Library, UL


"This nation has tossed its cap across the wall of space 
and we have no choice but to follow it." 

These are words from a speech in 1963 by United States President John F. Kennedy declaring NASA‟s commitment to putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. President Kennedy was drawing on a story by the prolific Irish writer (and former librarian) Frank O‟Connor.


John F. Kennedy in his Senate Office 1959 
Image courtesy of JFK Presidential Library and Museum. 


Kennedy described how the young O‟Connor and his boyhood friends crossed the countryside until they came to an insurmountable wall. For some extra motivation to help them cross, they would toss their caps over the wall, leaving them with no choice but to follow.



Frank O'Connor 
Image courtesy of Munster Literacy Centre

By “tossing its cap across the wall” and investing in its space programme all those years ago the US spearheaded the global development and growth in technology which today sees most of the world living in the “Digital Age”. Nowhere is the Digital Age more prevalent than in modern academic libraries. The marriage of traditional library materials to technology has transformed library storage and retrieval systems in ways unimaginable 50 years ago.


“I have an unusual request”

Recently I received a phone call at the Information Desk, the caller started by saying: “I have an unusual request. I am looking for a poem, I think it is called „Christmas Time in the Penal Days‟ and I think it's by Daniel McAleese.” The caller went on to explain: “It's for someone with Alzheimer's and he tries to recite this poem which he scarcely remembers from his school days and he's frustrated because he can only recall bits of it. It would be great if we could find the poem for him so that he could recite it without having to recall it from memory.”  I took the caller's contact details and started to search. 

Firstly I googled the title but no joy. I then decided to search the Dictionary of Irish Biography for Daniel McAleese – BINGO! McAleese, Daniel (1833–1900), journalist, poet, newspaper proprietor, and politician. The dictionary stated that much of McAleese's work was published in the Dundalk Democrat and the Nation newspapers. So my next port of call was the Irish Newspaper Archive; starting with the Dundalk Democrat I carried out a keyword search for [christmas penal days daniel mcaleese] in the “Any of these words” search box between the date range 1860 – 1890.

To my delight I struck pay dirt with record no.5 from the results list. A poem entitled Midnight Mass In Penal Days appeared on page 6 of the Dundalk Democrat in the Saturday 27th February 1869 edition. The title didn't exactly match and the author wasn't specified but on reading the poem I felt that it might just be the right one.  


First three verses of Midnight Mass in The Penal Days
Dundalk Democrat 27th Feb. 1869, p.6


Using the excellent „Crop Selection as PDF‟ function from the database's toolbar, I was quickly and easily able to extract the poem from the “Newspaper” and I sent it on to the caller. The response was wonderful. It was the poem they were looking for and “you should have seen the look of delight when he started to read the poem, you're a star and thanks so much” said the grateful caller.


"...the combination of digitised artifacts, powerful search engines and online databases"


Feeling good that I had helped someone troubled by Alzheimer's to find some bit of comfort was satisfying but it struck me that it would have been almost impossible without the combination of digitised artifacts, powerful search engines and online databases all of which are largely taken for granted today. These technologies offer potential for expanding our searching capabilities while simultaneously providing fast and precise results. 


The BookBot





Who knows what the future holds as new technology emerges and is applied to library services. The Glucksman Library may be taking the lead. A new library extension is underway which will house the first automated book repository and retrieval system in Europe. The BookBot is coming to UL and heralds the ultimate marriage of technology and traditional Book material. Based on a system already operational in the Hunt Library at North Carolina State University, USA, the robotic BookBot can, according to the Hunt Library website “store up to two million items in a climate-controlled environment and deliver any of them within five minutes of a click in an online catalogue. Requiring one ninth of the space of conventional shelving, the BookBot helps transform a 21st century library from a storage facility into a rich environment of learning and collaborative spaces.” These are exciting times for us as we endeavour to take our library into the future and you could say that the Glucksman Library has “tossed its cap” into the BookBot and we can't wait to retrieve it!



For more information on the CONUL ANLTC Library Assistant Awards, please visit: http://www.libfocus.com/2016/06/conul-anltc-library-assistant-award-2016.html



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