WAGUL Research Day

I'm on the planning committee of the WAGUL Research Day and tomorrow's the big day. WAGUL is the Western Australian University Library Group and they are funding the full day of workshops, guest speakers, lunch and teas provided. We have Wilna Macmillan coming across from Monash University Library in Melbourne to speak about research data management. It's going to be a very comprehensive program covering many aspects of research and university libraries.  UWA is hosting the event which is really a mini-conference.

This is the program:

WAGUL Research Day UWA June 27th 2012

9.00    Introduction

9.05    The Research Process - panel of researchers followed by small group work exploring the research process

10.30    Morning tea

11.00    Scholarly Communication – Publication and Peer Review Panel of journal editors followed by presentation on copyright and open access

12.00    Research funding

1.00    Lunch

2.00    Data management – presentation from Monash University followed by summary of WA university library initiatives

3.00    Research measurement – what it is and current WA university library initiatives

4.00    Putting it into practice

4.20    Wrap up and evaluation

Those of us on the committee will be having celebration drinks after!

Blog every day of June 2011

Last year a group of librarians on Twitter brought together by @flexnib embarked upon a blogging challenge and set themselves the goal of posting one blog post a day throughout June.

It's on again and starting today and I've decided to give it a go and see if I can maintain the pace and write something interesting.

I hope to also revive my blogging enthusiasm which I have to admit has flagged since I started devoting more time to Twitter.

Here's the getting started post from Libraries Interact, the Australian Library group blog, where all the participants names are listed.

Best of luck to all those who have decided to join in, it will be fun to see how we go. I imagine half way thorough the 2nd week will be the time we strike writer's block!

The Twitter tag for this is #blogeverydayofjune

Perth Library Unconference goes national

The Perth Library Unconference is going national for 2011.

The annual Perth Library Camp or Library UnConference has been going for a number of years, due to the enthusiasm of the "unorganisers" and the support of some local institutions.

This year it will be held to coincide with a number of national conferences happening in Perth:

The ALIA 5th New Librarians Symposium (2011) Friday 16 – Sunday 18 September 2011 and the ALIA National Library & Information Technicians Conference (Libtech) 12 - Friday 16 September 2011.

Library Camp Australia will be held in Perth on 19 September 2011, 9am to 4pm at the State Library of Western Australia:

"This will be an unconference for anyone who works in, researches, uses or is interested in libraries, following the principles that session topics are set on the day and that everyone contributes in some way. It is being organised by volunteers and so far is being supported by our generous sponsors the State Library of Western Australia and Public Libraries Western Australia.

There's also a competition to design a logo for Library Camp Australia. Check out this librariesinteract blog post.

The Twitter hashtag for Library Camp Australia is #libcampoz

Our students take to web scale discovery

Library OneSearch

Earlier this year we did a usability study of our new web scale discovery product, Summon.This is a very brief presentation I did on the study's findings during ECU Research Week in August 2010.

The full paper detailing all the findings, has been submitted by Lutie Sheridan and I and is expected to be published by Emerald Publishing later in 2010

View more presentations from Julia Gross.

Library Day in the Life 2010, post two

Julia Gross. Faculty Librarian for Education and Arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia.

This is my second post for Library Day in the Life 2010.

Tuesday is my day at Joondalup, our growing northern campus. This is a view from my office. Pines tress you see are left over from when there was a pine plantation on this site. Alas, there also used to be a group of kangaroos wandering around on campus, munching the grass. But the place is so built up now that they have vanished…wonder where to?

It is always a good day for catching up with faculty people as I have an office in the faculty teaching and learning area on Tuesdays. Had some good corridor discussions with academic staff today about Research Week and research in Education.

Another big project we are in the midst of is the new TRIM Records Management system that is being rolled out across the uni. The library is next cab off the rank, so we need to get our act together with how we manage our records. So.... I met with Records Management staff and went through the Classification Model and securities that have been set up for each work area. All very interesting and it strikes me that records managers and librarians have some things in common: classifications systems, making order out of chaos. Also some of what we are looking at is similar to the research data management area.

I starting to prepare my Research Week session on our institutional repository which is managed by the library. Despite some of the whiz bang new presentation products out there like Prezi, I think we will have to use the standard uni Powerpoints they have prepared for Research Week.

Last week 58 boxes of new Education books arrived in Acquisitions. I went over to the library and met with one of the librarians in my team and we checked out the new materials. Looks like some great stuff coming through. We have been ordering lots, through a type of approval plan.

We are also planning a library display for Children's Book Week on August 21-27 2010. One of my staff has been some ordering some merchandise which looks great.

Caught up with a couple of library colleagues over coffee and lunch during the day. Discussed some glitches in last week's Orientation program and how to avoid them next time.

All in all a pretty busy day!

Library Day in the Life 2010, post one

Julia Gross. Faculty Librarian for Education and Arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia.

This is my first post for Library Day in the Life 2010


Started the day at home catching up on Twitter, while listening to the glorious striated pardalote peeping away in the neighbours old gum tree. They are a glorious little birds, but you hardly ever see them as they spend most of their day way up high in the canopy. I'm a bit of a bird nut!

Today is the first day of semester and I came in later as I’m doing the evening shift. I have been flat out, because I’ve been away on leave for 10 days there is lots of catching up to do: socialising speaking to the team and getting through the mountain of emails.

There are a couple of big projects on the horizon, one is the university's Research Week and I’m on the university committee for this. The library is planning some displays and a series of research seminars. We have the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) on my home campus and they come within the Faculty of Education and Arts portfolio, which is pretty exciting. So I spoke to a library staff member about doing a music installation display for Research Week, using work from one of our Music academic staff members. The WAAPA research in the creative areas challenges the library in all sorts of ways, such as how to store creative research on our institutional repository.

I emailed the faculty team with some catch up news. There are staff on two campuses, so it’s important to keep everyone informed. Had some casual conversations wiht colleagues about staffing and a new librarian’s induction. We also have two librarians about to join a web2.0 leadership project which is a federally funded collaboration with three local Perth unis, so I spoke to people about that.

I met a new PHD student who is doing Creative Writing. He’s coming to see me later this week to get started with the library research part of his PHD.

Today I have also been getting ready for going to research data management training at ANDS in Canberra and have been doing some prior reading up for that.

And finally I did one desk shift til 7pm. Good just to keep my hand in.

It is interesting, looking back over all this and it’s clear a lot of my job these days is concerned with support for research.

PS the photo of the big crane is the construction site of our new engineering building.

Now a parody of the Old Spice library ad

Here's a fantastic parody of the Old Spice library ad done by the Multimedia Production Unit for Harold B. Lee Library on YouTube

Do you want to be a scholar? Then study at the Harold B. Lee Library. Do your research here, study here, and be a scholar!

Battle to save Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Libraries in North Carolina

There's a crisis at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Libraries in North Carolina. The Library Board plans to lay off 148 staff and close 12 libraries by 3rd April, due to a massive US $2million budget hole.

This seems incredible that the libraries that brought the Learning 2.0 (aka 23 Things) to many libraries around the world and changed so many lives are now battling to survive.

American Libraries magazine has a report of the public rally over the weekend to help raise funds to alleviate the impact of budget cuts.

What can you do to help? Go to Save our Libraries and also Lori Reed 's website for more information. The Twitter hash code is #cmlibrary

Singing in the Rain, Hong Kong library conference

There’s an exciting library conference on in Hong Kong this week, with some local and international presenters.

It’s the Academic Librarian 2: Singing in the Rain conference held at Hong Kong Polytechnic University March 11-12, which is all about the future of libraries and the library profession.

This conference is the second "Academic Librarian" conference in Hong Kong and is an extension of The Academic Librarian: Dinosaur or Phoenix Conference held by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2007.

The major themes are:

• Librarians of Tomorrow
• Quality Enhancement
• New Tools & Culture
• Collaboration & Networking

There will be some presentations on how libraries are embedding Web 2.0 and training staff in this area.

conference summary is:

“Academic Librarians face unprecedented challenges to their role, to how they manage their collections and how they interact professionally with their academic colleagues. They require different professional and personal skills as well as different ways of interacting with their communities, both in the academic, publishing and other vendor communities. In the current context of a global recession, without doubt, it is going to be a future full of challenges and opportunities. What has changed and what needs to change? As suggested by the Conference subtitle "Singing in the Rain", a new generation of academic librarians cannot survive without an optimistic, positive and thoughtful attitude towards the future.”

Moira Bent's visit to Curtin University

A special event was organised at Curtin University Library, Perth last week.

Moira Bent, National Teaching Fellowship recipient was visiting from the U.K. Moira is a Science liaison librarian from Newcastle University and one of only 5 U.K. librarians who have received a National Teaching Fellowships. Her blog posts about the fellowship are here.

Having the fellowship has given Moira the opportunity and time to undertake research and publish in a number of areas which she spoke about:

• Facilitating research roles and opportunities for librarians. This is one area that Australian librarians can (and are already) be involved with in providing research support with the ERA and imperative to publish. (The Newcastle University library has a useful “Writing for publication brochure”
• Librarians framing information literacy as a set of learning attitude or behaviours, rather than just as a set of skills.

At the tea discussion she talked about librarians getting out to conferences in non-library areas. I totally agree. We need to collaborate with academic and teaching and learning colleagues.

There's lots more to explore here. These are links to the articles and activities Moira has been involved with.

Perceptions of Information Literacy in the Transition to Higher Education. NTF Final Report.

Providing effective library services for research (book)

Information Literacy in a researcher's learning life: the Seven Ages of Research (article)

Integrating information literacy as a habit of learning (article)

SCONUL Report on Library Services for International Students (report)

Embedding library media in the LMS

Here's my presentation from Friday November 20, 2009 at the WISE ShareCase held at Notre Dame University, Fremantle, Western Australia. WISE stands for WAGUL Information Sharing Exchange. And WAGUL is the Western Australian Group of University Librarians.

Each university library in Perth and also TAFE presented. A great event and thanks to the organisers.

If anyone else puts up their presentation can you let me know and I'll link to it.

Library podcasts and vodcasts

View more presentations from Julia Gross.

Victorian bushfires, books and libraries

With the devastating bushfires in Victoria many libraries and booksellers are rallying around and contributing to the affected communities.

There's a message from Jan Richards ALIA Vice President on the ALIA Blog outlining some of the action taking place: " libraries across the country are acting as collection points for local relief efforts and throwing their weight behind fundraising campaigns. "

One of the major Australian book suppliers, DA Information Services, is donating $5 to the Bushfire Appeal from the proceeds of every book ordered before the end of February 2009:
"This collaboration between members of the Australian Library and Information Association, Public Libraries Victoria, the Australian Publishers Association and the Australian Booksellers Association is demonstrating a unity of purpose for these times. Books are being consolidated at the Mitcham premises of library wholesaler DA Information Services located just 40km from the nearest affected region"

Borders are also donating books to schools and libraries in fire affected communities.

The major centre for cash donations via phone or online is the Australian RED CROSS Bushfire Appeal

Sophie Masson's love song to libraries

Staying with the theme of libraries and love of libraries, I read this a while back and starred it in my Google Reader account. It’s a beautiful post, written by Sophie Masson: A love song to libraries
What a great tribute to the power of parents to engender in their children a love of books and libraries.

Sophie Masson is one of the writers on the excellent literary group blog, Writer Unboxed, dedicated to the "craft and business of genre fiction".

Barack Obama on libraries

In June 2005 Barack Obama keynoted the opening general session at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, while he was still a U.S. senator from Illinois.

This article, published in the August 2005 issue of American Libraries, is an adaptation of that speech, which drew record crowds and garnered a standing ovation. Not surprising as it is inspiring stuff:

Bound to the Word

Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading ...