Open Access

Open acess is free, immediate, permanent, full‐text, online access, for any user, web‐wide, to digital scientific research and scholarly material.It will be in the best interest of everyone to read more on Open access Open Access in order to familiarize with the concept.Many countries of the world have signed the   Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. IFLA adheres to the definition of open access used in the Berlin Declaration and will use it in public communication and contacts with various organizations (IFLA, 2011).The attached statement guided the participating countries in terms of compliance IFLAstatement on OA .

South Africa issued a Statement on Open Access to Research Publications funded from the National Research Foundation (NRF) that  From 01 March 2015, authors of research papers generated from research either fully or partially funded by NRF, when submitting and publishing in academic journals, should deposit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been accepted by the journals, to the administering Institution Repository with an embargo period of no more than 12 months.This action has resulted in allowing more  researchers and students from around the world to gain increased access to knowledge, publications receive greater visibility and readership, and the potential impact of research is heightened. Increased access to, and sharing of knowledge leads to opportunities for equitable economic and social development, intercultural dialogue, and has the potential to spark innovation.

The benefits of open access

There are significant gains to making research and research results available without financial, legal and technical barriers to access. Researchers benefit from increased visibility, usage and impact for their work. Open access helps to publicise institutions' research strengths. For publishers, open access brings maximum visibility, increased readership and impact for the contents; it means that a greatly improved dissemination service is being provided for research. Open access enhances the flow of knowledge between North and South and also between South and South.The four minutes embedded video will share an exciting story on open access.

Mendeley Referencing Manager

Referencing

Today s post has become personal to me in this journey as i have realized that taking things for granted is not a way to go in this academic journey.In the past four weeks i completed three assignments with a total number of at least 12 000  words and i noted that i threw away around 20 percent of the total mark due to poor referencing and inconsistent citations.

As librarians it is our professional obligation to master and to teach our patrons the right referencing skills and also to use the right tools.Below i m introducing Mendeley as a reference tool that will change academic's life in a great way.

  Mendeley  is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.

After  watching the video above it will be beneficial to click the this link for more information on  importing documents to the library then the referencing skills will be enhanced.

Using the google forms in the Information Literacy course at CPUT

In today s blog i m to reflect on the usage of the ICT Trends with a special reference to the google forms for the survey and evaluation of the presenter and the course.by clicking the attached form one can have a feel of how the course was presented,how the course can be improved and how the students benefited from the information literacy class.
In the year 2015 one was afforded the opportunity to attend the Carnegie Continues Professional Development intake 3 (CPD 3) which highlighted a lot in the Library ICT trends but now togather with what im being taught in my MLIS  the closeness is evident and how one can put this into practice to better our student population.The video embedded below will clarify some aspects of Information literacy as it is presented in many universities.