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.

Creating websites

Adding content to the Website using Wix.com

We started the first session with planning of how we would like our website to look like. The planning was not that easy however it was completed. We then started collecting pictures to add on the website only creative commons license pictures were used. Flickr picture were another kind of pictures we were advised to use. After both the completion of the planning phase we then moved to the upper gear where the technical engagement took place.

We added the videos from YouTube and added some podcasts which was quite astonishing to practice.  

What to add to the website is such a challenge, my website will deal strongly with the Research data Management (RDM) and it looks like it is going to be an uphill battle as there are not many website for content hence building an academic website is not easy but it is a journey I’m prepared to tackle.to those who wish to know some few tricks on how to build a website this video is for you. Click here to watch the video

Essay presentations

Essay presentations

This was a hectic week for the MLIS group as presentations were the order of the week. Everyone had a presentation to do and the interrogations from the lecturer about our topics it was quite interesting to see how we have developed some knowledge on our individual topics. After the presentations and after the dust has settled we had a wonderful consultation session with the lecture to receive the feedback on our assignments, indeed it was depressing but at the same time nice experience to note that academic writing is not for the faint hearted that was a bitter sweet experience. My topic was: Discuss what Research data management encompasses, describing the challenges associated with it and the role that the library is playing

RDM is an umbrella term to describe all aspects of planning, organising, documenting, storing and sharing of data. It also takes into account issues such as data protection and confidentiality. It provides a framework that supports researchers and their data throughout the course of their research and beyond. These services support the full data lifecycle including data management planning, digital curation and metadata creation and conversion (Tenopir et al. 2012). Click here for a snapshot on RDM.

Let me take this opportunity to thank my classmate for their well thought and well-presented topics, the presentations were on both   Open Access and how have libraries accommodated the Generation Y user"

Lecture on Altmetrics

Altmetrics

This lecture/presentation was the highlight in my master’s program the reason behind was the fact that the presenter is a PHD student from University of the Western Cape S.A  she deals with Almetrics on a day to day basis. Ms Natasha Langdown presented a mind opening and intriguing topic.Natasha is a Chief Information Officer at South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC)  her presentation was informed by the experiences at SAMRC, where she articulated  and presented a practical evidence on how her colleagues were benefiting from this social media phenomenon.

To the librarians and Information specialists  who have not developed any interest in the almetrics subject allow me to take you through this journey of discovering the impact it has towards your research life cycle.

“Almetrics is the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social Web for analyzing, and informing scholarship.” Coined by Jason Priem in 2010 in a tweet.

Impact analysis-determining scholarly value based on engagement and impressions

Altmetrics proposes that citations are not only, or even the best, technique for measuring impact, relative to the new ways scholarly works move, grow and are shared.The video below elaborates further on how almetrics function. 

 Alternative metrics or altmetrics are indicators of impact and engagement with research that extend beyond traditional methods of influence measurement, such as citations. Altmetrics measure and surface attention to research in non-traditional sources such as news, blogs, policy documents and social media. Altmetrics are complementary to traditional forms of research evaluation, and help provide a more coherent, well-rounded understanding of the way in which research is being received and used in broader society. Altmetrics aren’t an alternative to traditional bibliometrics or peer review, but help tell another part of the story.

The following challenges have been identified within the field of Almetrics:  

• Lack of author identifiers (disambiguation)
• Low (or zero) metrics available for some items (Piwowar & Priem, 2012)
• Gaming (Abbott et al., 2010)
• Little adoption among traditional publishers, libraries, and university administrators.
• Social Media literacy

The strengths of almetrics are further explained in a in this  libguide link.

A reflection on the Digital Curation Lecture

Digital Curation

On this date we were introduced into the Data Curation by Mrs S.L Witbooi who is a scholar of note in this discipline as it is one of her specialties and has an interest in it.
Digital Curation: It is defined as the management and preservation of digital material to ensure accessibility over the long-term (Abbott, 2008); the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets; the process of establishing and developing long term repositories of digital assets (Wikipedia).
“Digital curation is the active involvement in the management, including the preservation, of digital resources for future use” The Digital Curation Institute (2014:2).
On a basis that digital curation is fairly new concept not many librarians has tapped on its conceptual meaning, It is only fair that the library schools in the country and the CPDs should embrace this concept and introduce it to their curriculum.By such introduction most information specialist and knowledge workers will enhance their know how on the concept.
The digital curation life cycle looks interesting and sophisticated take a look on the image by (Cyprus, 2008) below .

My blog experience

library 2.0

Being in the information world for 18 years now and the big question remain unanswered why we took long to migrate from traditional library to library 2.0

Today s lesson brought about issues of importance in dealing with Library 2.0 the following topics were discussed in full length. The presenter Dr Zinn showed that the library 2.0 has brought some changes in the way the libraries used to provide services. The following topics were covered on today s session.

•     User participation/collaboration
•          Reaching new users
•          Constant & purposeful change
•          Embracing new technology
•          Not just a technology shift, but also a cultural shift.
•          Library services taken to the user

This embedded video gives us a two worlds,the first being the traditional library in the 1900 to around 1950 how libraries were so confined to the four walls where everything was paper based.users of the libray had to go to the physical building to get service.from the late 70s 70s and 90s the intoduction of both computers and internet based methods were introduced and to day we have established the learning resourced centers which connects people around the world and improves the sharing of information. 



On today s blog few experiences are going to be shared, this will range from the  first-hand experience of creating a Blog, the lecturer introduce the group on  how to create links on the blog, to attach videos, to add images and to create RSS feeds so that the things that are of interest towards each can be send individually based on the interest. Personally was fascinated by the LIASA and IFLA  RSS feeds of which the links were immediately created. This links have now became my knowledge capital as their are becoming the knowledge hub that works as a community of practice. 


QR Codes

We also looked into the QR codes and how they can benefit the libraries, it should be noted that QR codes have been around for some time now but are only fairly new in libraries and mostly in academic libraries. The South African library landscape has not yet taken a full advantage of utilising this QR Codes phenomenon.

The video  below will show some insight in the benefit of using the QR Codes in libraries

Academic Writing as a reflection in my Journey

This post was informed by the consultation session with my lecturer, the consultation was supposed to have lasted 30 minutes however it lasted for one hour luckily I was saved by the bell as another student had to consult.Academic writing is not about language but the arrangement, discussions, logic and arguments that are well articulated and of course linked to citations.The lecturer highlighted my writing flaws at the same time encouraged me carefully plan my work and to have logic and invite the reader to want to read more.Challenges on academic writing this article has assisted me in finding the better understanding on academic writing and what kind of questions that i need to ask myself always when i m writing.Below is the list of carefully chosen words that one can used and words to avoid in academic writing.

This work is awesome!
argues	concludes	explains
demonstrates	differentiates	identifies
critiques	deduces	discriminates
evaluates	proves	assesses
examines	distinguishes	predicts
proposes	assesses	integrates
discusses	illustrates	outlines
I feel neutral
shows	applies	outlines
composes	proposes	uses
states	organises	differentiates
uses	produces	examines
separates	develops	appraises
selects	performs	illustrates
interprets	paraphrases	reports
prepares	restates	reviews
uses	classifies	contrasts
debates	relates	produces
This work is poor
asserts	chooses	justifies
invents	uses	constructs
states	makes	selects
recalls	recites	tells
generalises	changes	characterises