Library Review: Learning and Research Environment
The design of new library services will contribute to the creation of different learning and research environments for our users, and will enable the University's Strategic Framework for Learning, Teaching and Assessment and Research Strategy to be achieved.
Increased representation for libraries on School committees
Librarians meet new researchers
Reading lists enhancement to Learning Central
Bringing research resources to life
Institutional repository
Cardiff's institutional repository ORCA (Online Research @ Cardiff) provides a freely-accessible digital repository of research publications authored by Cardiff University members, with full text availability wherever licensing allows. Researchers may register and submit their own papers to the repository for verification and uploading by Information Services staff. ORCA will be central to the data-gathering exercise for the forthcoming UK-wide Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise within higher education.
Increased representation for libraries on School committees
Over the last year, the University Librarian has contacted all Heads of School proposing that the appropriate Subject Librarian and IT Consultant be invited to join the School's major academic committees (as well as the more informal groups on which they are already represented). By and large this offer has been taken up, with benefits to both partners.
Librarians meet new researchers
Subject Librarians invite all new research staff and research students to meet them to discuss in detail their research needs and how these can be met by the library.
Reading lists enhancement to Learning Central
Enhanced support from the University Library Service and the addition of a 'Reading Lists' button to all Learning Central modules has increased Learning Central's value to students as a source of reading list information. Links can be made directly to full-text electronic items such as journal articles, where available.
RAE and REF assistance
Subject Librarians across the University have been working in support of their Schools' submissions for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and will be involved once again with the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF), the successor to RAE. In particular, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and PDF copies of articles required for the RAE have been collated on behalf of Schools.
Bringing research resources to life
The University is participating in various collaborative bids on Wales-wide and UK-wide bases to digitise archival material and theses.
Information Services has joined EthosNet, a UK-wide project funded by JISC, which is digitising 22,000 of the most popular PhD theses in the UK. Cardiff University has already had about 350 theses digitised, free of charge to the University. Bibliographic details of each thesis will then be available from search engines such as Google Scholar, and the full text from the British Library and, subject to confirmation, from Cardiff University's own ePrint repository. This will raise the profile of these titles and their authors.
Further theses will be digitised in subsequent years, gradually exposing the research in Cardiff to an international audience. The print copy of the theses will be returned to Cardiff for retention post digitisation.
SCOLAR meets BS5454
Upgraded archival storage facilities meeting BS5454 are now in place in the University's Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR). As a result, high profile individuals in the field of evidence-based healthcare have been approached to consider depositing their collections here in the Centre for the History of Evaluation in Health Care (CHEHC), which we believe will become the strongest collection in evidenced-based healthcare in the world.
Library Review seminars
Publishing trends: what does the future hold? 1 May 2007
Journal costs are rising, more books are published, university library budgets are static, electronic access is blooming, authors are demanding the maximum impact for their work - and then there is the RAE. Scholarly publishing deeply affects the academic processes of universities, yet it is changing rapidly. Are we keeping up? This seminar addressed the changes and gave an opportunity to provide feedback to a leading academic publisher.
Robert Campbell, President and Publisher, Blackwell Publishing
Professor David Fone, Director, Centre for Health Sciences Research
Anne Bell, Head of Collection Development, Information Services, Cardiff University
Access not ownership: the changing face of library support for research. 11 May 2006
In the present climate of huge change in research environments and practices, and faced with increasing pressures on physical space and resources, university libraries must address the issues surrounding the ways in which we support researchers. Collaborative initiatives to provide 'access, not ownership' to materials, both print and electronic, in ways which are seamless from the user's perspective, must be explored. Speakers from Cardiff, the British Library, the Consortium of University Research Libraries in the UK (CURL) and the Research Information Network (RIN) all contributed to the debate and outlined their ideas and solutions for addressing the needs of this diverse and important user group.
