I couldn’t find an up-to-date list of dedicated UK academic library Twitter accounts, so I created one. It’s openly-editable in Google Docs, so if I’ve missed off a UK university library, please feel free to add it (or correct any mistakes).
CLOCKmakers wanted: Lincoln needs web developers!
Posted on January 24th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp(I promised you an awful clock-related pun in every CLOCK blog post title, and by crikey I’ll deliver one.)
Lincoln needs web developers! As well as the full-time developer we’re recruiting to the Orbital project team (still open for applications – just!) we’re now looking for willing and talented people to fill two part-time web developer posts for our new CLOCK project.
In a nutshell:
- The University of Lincoln, working in consortium with Cambridge University Library and Owen Stephens Consulting, has been awarded £49,877 by JISC to investigate ways of driving innovation in libraries’ interactions with Open Bibliographic Data, through a project we’re calling CLOCK (Cambridge-Lincoln Open Catalogue Knowledgebase).
- These new developer posts will include a significant amount of working with library data-exchange formats, web standards, and Linked Data, including contributing to the development of a sector-wide data.ac.uk service.
- The role requires extensive knowledge of the web and its attendant technologies and the software development and analytical skills to put this knowledge to good effect. The postholder should have demonstrable experience as both a producer and consumer of RESTful web services.
- You can apply online via the University’s jobs website
In a second nutshell:
- Closing date is 2 February 2012
- Salary: grade 6 (from £25,251 pro rata)
- There are two part time posts available (0.4FTE each – i.e. approx. 2 days a week)
- Posts are fixed term until 31 July 2012
- Based at our lovely Brayford Pool Campus in Lincoln city centre
This is an opportunity to work alongside a range of interesting people from the University Library in Lincoln, from Cambridge University Library, and from the national Discovery programme, as well as a growing ‘cross-project’ pool of developers in LNCD, our agile open-source ninja webdev hothouse. “If we were to summarise our technologies and interests I guess they would be #agile, #opensource, #opendata #LAMP, #php, #codeigniter, #mongoDB, #OAuth, #APIs, #HTML5, #CSS3, #github and moving towards #RDF and #LinkedData. Just seeing these hashtags listed together should cause your heart to beat with excitement 
“
If you have any questions about the role please get in touch!
What could you get done in the Library with an extra 6½ hours?
Posted on January 24th, 2012 by Paul StainthorpNow’s your chance to find out: we’re extending the term-time opening hours of the GCW University Library by an extra 6½ hours per week. (This applies to the times when we’re not open 24 hours a day, of course.)
From Monday, 30 January 2012, until the end of the current term:
- The Library will open at 08.00 Monday-Friday (instead of 08.30)
- On Saturdays, we’ll open at 09.00 (instead of 10.00)
- On Sundays we’ll open at 09.00 (instead of 12.00)
- Desk services will also start earlier at the weekends, at 09.15
This takes our total opening hours to 106 hours/week in term time, or 146 hours/week during 24-hour opening. (This compares well with other universities’ library opening hours. Three universities selected at random on the web had term-time opening hours for their main academic library of 135, 108½, and 100 hours per week.)
You can find our new opening hours on the University Portal.
British Education Index, AEI and ERIC – now on ProQuest platform
Posted on January 20th, 2012 by Paul StainthorpThe trio of education abstract/index databases, BEI (British Education Index), AEI (Australian Education Index) and ERIC, have moved from the Dialog Datastar search platform to a new home provided by ProQuest.
To log in to the databases on their new platform:
- Go to the page on the University Portal for the database you want to search:
- If you are off campus, log in using your network\accountID and password.
- Click on the ‘big green button’ link to log into the database.
- You will be taken to a web page headed “Login through your library or institution”. From the drop-down menu marked “Please select your region…”, choose the option “United Kingdom (UK Access Management Federation)” and hit “Select”.
- Then, from the second drop-down menu which appears, select “University of Lincoln” and hit “Login”.
- Finally, from the “Athens login” page which appears, click on the orange link marked “Go to the University of Lincoln login page »“.
- You will be taken to the ProQuest platform from where you can search all three education databases.
N.B. For the time being, this change only affects the three education databases listed above. However, the other databases on the ‘legacy’ ProQuest platform—ABI/INFORM Global and the ProQuest Biology Databases—will shortly be moving to their own new search platform with a similar login process.
If you have any questions about these or other Library databases, please contact your subject librarian.
First RefWorks, now Write-N-Cite
Posted on January 18th, 2012 by Paul StainthorpFollowing on from the final push to get everyone* using the new version of RefWorks, the people at RefWorks-COS are now working on upgrading the associated desktop/word processor application, Write-N-Cite. RefWorks say they are “very close” to releasing the new version of Write-N-Cite for Windows, and have today launched a series of introductory webinars (web-based training sessions) to prepare people for the change.
You can sign up for a webinar via RefWorks’ website.
“The full release version of Write-N-Cite will run on Word for Windows 2007 & 2010 as well as Word for Mac 2008 & 2011. […] Key improvements of the new Write-N-Cite:
• Auto formatting while you write
• Seamless online/offline access to your references
• Professional citation and bibliography customization tools
• Auto managed footnote styles”
*N.B. at the time of writing, it’s still possible to switch back to the ‘Classic’ version of RefWorks, using a link in the top right-hand corner of your RefWorks account. RefWorks-COS did threaten that this option would be removed for good, early in 2012, so don’t expect it to be there for much longer!
2011 in pictures
Posted on January 1st, 2012 by Paul StainthorpThis isn’t really a work/library-related blog post.
The past year, for me, has been framed—literally—by a friend’s giving me—on long-term loan—his old digital SLR camera (a Nikon D70s). I’ve now had the camera for a full 12 months, and I’ve been using it to document my year. That’s my interest in photography: not to take particularly better photos (technically or artistically), but to get a better record of the places I go and the things I do.
Here’s my 2011, in photos – an arbitrary five pics per month. Happy new year.
January
New year’s walks, and a trip to Edinburgh for Haggis and Mash.
February
In Cumbria for the RSP Winter School event.
March
Organising Pancakes and Mash and gardening.
April
May
June
Hot.
July
![Danger wreckage: ominous sky [B&W]](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6141/5974588354_fb39945ae0_s.jpg)
August
On holiday in Cornwall / Chris & Donna’s wedding.
September
October
Trips to Glasgow, the Heights of Abraham, and Skegness.
November
Hallowe’en, #DevXS, mushrooming…
…a busy month; worth a second batch. Lots of trips out for work.
December
More trips out. Christmas, #ChrisMash, and a Christmouse.
SpringerLINK journals
Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Paul StainthorpThis blog post is prompted by a couple of recent enquiries about the University of Lincoln’s access to e-journals on the SpringerLINK platform (www.springerlink.com). Basically, we don’t currently have platform-wide access to all articles on SpringerLINK, nor can Lincoln students/staff log in using Athens.
However, we do subscribe to a small number of individual titles from Springer, those being:
- Animal Cognition (issn:1435-9448)
- Crime, Law and Social Change (issn:0925-4994)
- Current Psychology: Research and Reviews (issn:1046-1310)
- Distributed Computing (issn:0178-2770)
- Environmentalist (issn:0251-1088)
- International journal of legal medicine (issn:0937-9827)
- Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (issn:0091-0627)
- Memory & cognition (issn:0090-502X)
- Systemic Practice and Action Research (issn:1094-429X)
- Theory and Society (issn:0304-2421)
- Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (issn:0957-8765)
These 11 subscription journals are now listed on the Library’s electronic journals A-to-Z site. Access is not via Athens, but you can log in—whether on or off campus—using your normal University of Lincoln network\accountID and password.
The SpringerLINK platform also provides access to freely-accessible content from about 40 Open-Access journals, under the SpringerOpen initiative. SpringerOpen journals are now also listed on the e-journals A-to-Z. If you need an article from any other Springer journals (not listed above and/or Open Access), you can order a copy using the Library’s inter-library loans service.
Art Full Text is now an EBSCOhost database
Posted on December 20th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
The Art Full Text database, which until now has been available on its own search platform from the H.W. Wilson company, is now available to search on the EBSCOhost platform, alongside other familiar databases such as Academic Search Elite and the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals.
This change has happened because H.W. Wilson has been bought up by EBSCO Publishing. You can access journal articles from Art Full Text on the new platform:
- Via the University Portal (database searchable on its own or alongside 17 other EBSCOhost databases for more comprehensive search results); or
- As a list of journal titles on the e-journals A-to-Z.
Art Full Text on the old H.W. Wilson platform is still accessible until February 2012 – after which it will be retired. Please contact your subject librarian for help with this or any database!
Art Full Text™ is a comprehensive resource for art information featuring full-text articles from more than 300 periodicals dating back to 1995, high-quality indexing and abstracting of over 600 periodicals dating as far back as 1984, including 280 peer-reviewed journals, as well as indexing and abstracting of over 13,000 art dissertations. Indexing of almost 200,000 art reproductions provides examples of styles and art movements, including works by emerging artists. The database covers fine, decorative and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and architecture, and also includes a database-specific thesaurus.
RDY* mewn orbit! Neu, mae tri yn mynd i Gaerdydd
Posted on December 14th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
(*RDY = Rheoli Data Ymchwil.) Dyma fy post blog (…byr) cyntaf yn y Gymraeg. Ydw i yn Ne Cymru yr wythnos hon, gyda fy nghydweithwyr, Nick Jackson a Joss Winn – rydym ni’n mynd i ’sioe deithiol‘ y CCD (Canolfan Curadu Digidol; Digital Curation Centre), yn y Coleg Brenhinol Cerdd a Drama yng Ngaerdydd. Dyma fy nhrip cyntaf i’r ddinas: beth ddylwn i ei weld/wneud yno?
What did I do before I could blog?
Posted on December 12th, 2011 by Paul StainthorpI wrote my first blog post in February 2007 (in PebblePad, later exported into WordPress for the sake of “historical completeness“). Before then, I used to write things (visits, conferences, training events, etc.) up in MS Word documents and circulate them internally using our SharePoint Portal. I happened across a batch of them from c.2004-2006 (so they’re in no way current). It was interesting to see how things have changed in the past five years; but also how many issues are still ‘live’.
- Jorum training and outreach tour (May 2006)
- Macromedia Flash training course (August 2004)
- NEYAL Annual Members’ Meeting (June 2006)
- UKeiG workshop – quick report (plus scanned notes; July 2006)
- Visit to the LSE (July 2004)
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This blog by Paul Stainthorp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.