Posts Tagged ‘universities’

Repository feeds on university staff profile webpages: some examples

Posted on March 28th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

There is a project going on at the University of Lincoln at the moment to rebuild our directory of academic staff profiles on the web, in line with our new corporate website.

As I mentioned in my presentation to library managers last week, it’s turning out to be a nice example of how new web applications can be spun up quickly at Lincoln using our existing [open and non-open] data sources (in this case, HR staff data, BuddyPress social profile data, Repository feeds, Gravatar images, and our OAuth authentication framework/Common Web Design), plus a bit of developer magic.

Screenshot of the new staff directory

You can search our staff profile directory (still in development) at: http://phone.online.lincoln.ac.uk/

There is a growing tendency for universities in all groupings—certainly for the research-intensive universities—to publish the entirety of an author’s publications to their web profile as embedded content from their repository and/or Current Research Information System (CRIS). Here are a few examples of staff profiles on other UK universities’ sites which incorporate publication lists derived from their repositories or CRISes:

We’re pulling the publication details from the Lincoln Repository for each author into their web profile (example), using a search on their University of Lincoln staff ID (which forms part of their standard HR data profile) – e.g. http://lncn.eu/ep/000157. We can then get at the Repository data in almost any format we want (BibTeX, JSON, XML, RSS, etc.). I’m also keeping a close eye on the development of the EPrints Shelves plugin, which might be an interesting tool for giving authors more flexibility and control over how their Repository publication list(s) are displayed on their web profile.

168 hours (in the Library)

Posted on March 14th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

Attached to this blog post is a chart displaying the weekly opening hours for the main campus library of 130 separate higher education institutions in the UK, during each library’s ‘peak’ period (i.e. the point in the year at which the library’s opening hours are most generous).

Each bar in the chart represents the total peak weekly opening hours for the main university library for each of the 130 institutions. I didn’t include branch or secondary campus libraries. Where a university has one or more ‘equal’ campus libraries, I chose the library with the longest opening hours.

I haven’t identified the institutions by name (except the University of Lincoln).

Click on the chart or here for a bigger view.

Chart of the peak weekly opening hours for 130 UK HE 'main' libraries

Some notes:

  • I took these figures from institutions’ own web pages. I’ve done my best to record the hours accurately for each institution, but sometimes they were difficult to find and/or not presented very clearly.
  • These are the peak hours for each library only; they may not be the standard term-time hours which in some cases are in operation for a longer period.
  • 30 institutions (23% of the total number) open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (168 hours/week) at peak times. However, the period of 24/7 opening varied greatly between institutions: from year-round 24/7, to just a couple of weeks of round-the-clock opening in one case.
  • I only counted opening hours where they applied to the whole library (including provision of access to book stock); some libraries have separate extended or 24/7 I.T. lab provision – I didn’t count that.
  • The University of Lincoln‘s peak opening hours of 146 hours/week puts it in 35th place, just behind the curve of institutions which offer periods of 24/7, and well above the mean of 115.0 hrs/wk.
  • Most of the libraries toward the bottom of the chart (approaching 60 hrs/wk) are smaller, specialist institutions where you might expect shorter opening hours. Others have relatively short library hours, but more extensive and separate I.T. provision.

The (anonymised) data is on Google Docs.

List of UK university libraries on Twitter

Posted on January 25th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

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).

View and edit the document here.

If you don’t tweet, you don’t eat.

Posted on June 11th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

I’ve been told that asking questions is a good idea, so here goes:

Q. Why is the use of email compulsory for staff in universities, while Twitter/blogging is optional?