Posts Tagged ‘workshops’

“Managing Your Research Data” – training for postgrad students

Posted on January 9th, 2013 by Paul Stainthorp

As part of the JISC-funded Orbital project, we are starting to offer introductory training to (initially) postgraduate students, on how to look after their research data.

The first workshop is on 23 January 2013 at 10.00 in the Graduate School classroom, and there are further workshops every couple of weeks throughout 2013.

I’ll be arranging further workshops aimed more at staff (including Library staff) in due course.

MANAGING YOUR RESEARCH DATA

The Graduate School – University of Lincoln Multiple dates throughout 2013

Research data management is an important part of the research process, and a vital part of academic practice. This one-hour workshop will include a presentation and discussion of what you should consider when creating, looking after, and sharing/publishing your research data.

The workshop will cover:

  • What do we mean by research data?
  • Policies affecting your data
  • Data Management Planning (DMP)
  • The research data lifecycle
  • Practical tools for looking after your data
  • Data publishing and citation
  • Where to go for help

Postgraduate students can book a place on a workshop, online at: http://uolresearchdata.eventbrite.co.uk/

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Current e-resources problems: what to advise users

Posted on November 30th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

Slides from a recent workshop for Library staff at the University of Lincoln, on a number of current bugs in our access to electronic resources and software – how to identify and diagnose problems; what to suggest to users; the cause of the problem; and if/when the problem will be fixed.

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EZproxy crib sheet for Library staff

Posted on October 24th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

Recently Elif and I gave a workshop for our e-Library Services colleagues on EZproxy: what it is, how it works, and how we’re using it at Lincoln. Here are our workshop notes.

  1. EZproxy is e-resource authentication software, provided by OCLC, which we host on a server here at Lincoln. It’s very cheap (small annual subscription cost + maintenance of the server). Our EZproxy service is at: http://proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/
  2. It works by rewriting the URLs of e-resources, so that they go through a *.lincoln.ac.uk domain – see examples of this below. This ‘tricks’ the e-resource provider into thinking that the user is on campus (i.e. that they are within the University’s IP range). So, it only works with e-resources that are IP-authenticated.
  3. EZproxy has nothing to do with OpenAthens or other kinds of federated authentication. It’s an entirely separate method of access, useful when it’s difficult or impossible to make OpenAthens work properly and consistently (e.g. via the Electronic Journals A-to-Z). However it doesn’t offer the same flexibility/personalisation as federated authentication.
  4. Our EZproxy service is protected by a University secure sign-in screen. Currently this piggybacks off Blackboard authentication. It can also inherit authentication from the University Portal, as well as its own local login screen, which we’re not using. Users sign in with their standard University of Lincoln accountID and password. If the user is already logged in to Blackboard or the Portal, they will be passed through to the resource automatically and won’t have to log in again.
    Screenshot of the sign-in screen
  5. Once you have signed in to http://proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/, you’ll see a list of all the e-resource platforms that are currently set up to use EZproxy. All of these resources currently set up to use IP authentication (solely, or in addition to another method). Users won’t generally see this menu screen as they’ll usually be clicking on a link directly to a specific e-resource.
  6. When we update the IP ranges that a resource provider holds on file for us, we need to include the IP address of EZproxy. Before we disclose our IP ranges to a provider, we ask them for written assurance that they will only use our IP ranges for user authentication. These details are held on file in a Portal site shared with ICT services.
  7. URLs for authentication via EZproxy (from Blackboard, the A-to-Z, etc.) are generally in the form:
    • http://proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/login?url={URL}
  8. However there’s a special URL format for links from the University Portal:
    • https://login.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/login?url={URL}
  9. Publishers’ URLs to e-resources which are stored in the A-to-Z/LinkSource knowledgebase are rewritten to go through EZproxy using the A-to-Z’s “proxy mask” feature (which is like a template for re-formatting URLs). Find it at Lincoln also re-formats a number of internal URLs so that users are routed via EZproxy.
  10. EZproxy resolves the above URL formats into final URLs like these:
  11. There is an admin site for maintaining EZproxy. Access to this admin site is restricted to only a few people (EV, PS, DM, TS), and the site is available on campus only. To configure EZproxy to work with each additional e-resource, we have to download a configuration text file from the admin site, and edit it to add a new database “stanza” (a short piece of configuration text).
  12. There’s a general format for writing stanzas for electronic resources – in addition, some databases have additional weird requirements for stanzas (OCLC maintain a list of oddities). If all else fails, we can ask on an EZproxy mailing list, or on Twitter!
  13. Once we’ve added a new stanza (or changed an existing one), we re-upload the config file, and re-start the EZproxy software from within the admin site. Then we test the new resource from off campus before creating links from the A-to-Z, etc. The admin site provides an archive of previous versions of config.txt in case we need to roll back a mistake.
  14. EZproxy stores usage data (in the form server logs) – we’re not doing anything with this data at the moment, but we are looking at archiving it off to a ‘Data Warehouse’ and analysing/reporting on it within the Library. RAPTOR is a JISC-funded, free-to-use, open source software toolkit for collecting and reporting on authentication usage – Elif is writing up a report on RAPTOR.
  15. Our own JISC-funded Linkey project is looking at streamlining all authentication systems including EZproxy under a joint OAuth-Microsoft UAG (Unified Access Gateway”) framework. Alex Bilbie blogs regularly about how authentication to Library resources could be served in such a framework.
  16. If you have any questions about EZproxy please contact Elif or me!

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EMALINK seminar on activity data and the LIDP

Posted on June 15th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

The details of a workshop I’m speaking at in July; relates to the University of Huddersfield-led Library Impact Data Project (LIDP), in which Lincoln and DMU participated last year.

EMALINK Seminar

Library Data Impact Project

De Montfort University
Kimberlin Library
Lecture Theatre, 00.11
Tuesday 17th July 2012
2.00 – 4.00 pm
(Light refreshments available from 1.45pm)

The JISC Library Data Impact Project proved a statistically significant correlation between library usage and student attainment. Two universities in the region, De Montfort and Lincoln, participated in the project and will present on their approaches to the collection of library activity data and the analysis and dissemination of the results. There will also be an opportunity for participants to discuss the practicalities and value of gathering and using such data, within our libraries and the wider institution.

Session leaders:
Phil Adams, Senior Assistant Librarian, De Montfort University

Marie Letzgus, Senior Assistant Librarian, De Montfort University

Paul Stainthorp, Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Lincoln

Contact your EMALINK representative to book a place by Wednesday 11th July. There are three places available per institution.

The DMU campus is a 15-20 minute walk from Leicester train station. Limited visitor parking is available on campus – please advise your EMALINK rep on booking if you wish to request a parking space. Campus maps available from: www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/how-to-find-us.aspx

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Leading Lincoln down the FOSS way

Posted on March 9th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

On Wednesday this week, LNCD/the Orbital project hosted a meeting to raise awareness of ‘open source’ among staff at the University of Lincoln. Joss Winn and Sander van der Waal (from the JISC-sponsored open source advisory body OSS Watch) both gave presentations on the recent ‘open’ theme of LNCD’s various projects (open access, open data, open education, open source) … and on the terminology, history, principles, benefits and applications of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Higher Education.

OSS Watch (oss-watch.ac.uk) are based at the University of Oxford and are funded to provide “unbiased advice and guidance on the use, development, and licensing of free and open source software”. LNCD’s work is informed by an open approach partly through a strong funder (i.e. JISC) preference and policy, but also because of the background of the people involved in LNCD.

Joss has written up the workshop—including the slide presentations—on the Orbital project blog. Joss will also be convening a follow-up meeting to discuss key points that came out of the morning, leading to a small group to develop and guide the understanding of open source at the University. It’s certainly clear that if we want to make the open approach anything more than a happy accident and to put LNCD’s work on a more sustainable and stable footing, we need to be clearer about [1] the business case for open source and open data, [2] the licenses we choose to apply to make our work open, and [3] the kind of support that staff want and need to produce work openly.

Related: Hacking the university, Joss’s recent case study for JISC on Student as Producer and Lincoln’s approach to openness.

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Keeping Research Data Safe and the benefits of Orbital

Posted on March 8th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

Note of apology: early in December 2011 we attended the launch event of the JISC Managing Research Data programme at the National College for School Leadership in Nottingham. I managed to blog day 1 of the event there and then. Unfortunately my notes on day 2 fell into an abyss. Here they are: late, but unscathed.

Aspire!

The first exercise (on this second day of the programme launch event) was to examine the benefits and metrics checklists provided by the KRDS frameworks project, and to identify the benefits that Orbital will provide & that we can measure. Then to blog a first statement of the benefits we expect Orbital will generate.

KRDS = Keeping Research Data Safe

Notes from Neil Beagrie‘s presentation on the benefits analysis toolkit (which I have already blogged about at the RDMF7 event, but noted here in more detail.)

  • There are two strands to the KRDS toolkit. These tools can be combined for maximum effect (and to reduce wasted effort); tools can also be customised to specific project needs:
    1. The KRDS Benefits Framework (guide + worksheet)
    2. The KRDS/I2S2 value chain and benefit impact tool (guide + impact statement + impact analysis worksheet)
  • Designed for use by wide audience over the full RDM project lifecycle.
  • Conisider the KRDS Benefits Framework ‘triangle’
    • What is outcome? direct/indirect
    • When is it received? near-term/long-term
    • Who benefits? internal/external
  • Tips: quantitative benefits must be measurable (“cashable“) – if not within the project lifecycle then longer-term benchmarking… qualitative benefits could take the form of case studies (working in a team can help to tone down the subjectivity of benefit assessments. Don’t go it alone!)
  • More information at: http://beagrie.com/krds-i2s2.php
  • Previous RMD programme produced benefits report & case studies which can be useful reference points.

Practical workshop

The KRDS benefits and metrics handouts provided here were extremely useful in developing this first statement of benefits for the Orbital project.

Points from the round-table discussion:

  • Checklist v useful brainstorming exercise – not a to do list!
  • Want to do everything and world peace too
  • But how make relevant to project? Target useful examples of top-level things
  • How evidence?
  • Lack of evidence/measurement not a reason not to do it – think of a way of measuring!”
  • Don’t rely on q’aires :-)
  • Think of benefits from the programme as a whole into which orbital can feed in
  • Practical time & efficiency savings for researcher – i.e. not having to go to london with a USB in pocket
  • Similarities engineering with other applied – e.g. NHS
  • Case studies/user story – iterative method  - as user requirements change (become more mature) – that’s a way of measuring benefit!
  • Set actions for the steering group / RIEC

Benefits of Orbital

This is the list of benefits we came up with. Bear in mind, some of them are benefits specific to an MRD project, such as Orbital, but some of benefits of any large project where the institution has a vested interest. Note that some of these can also be found in the ‘Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes’ section of our Project Plan. As Joss mentions in the post on awareness of open source, not all benefits can be anticipated and there may be outcomes of the project, which are quite tangential to the original objectives. We especially look forward to those!

  • Very mention of Orbital attracting expressions of interest from research staff applying for funding. Researchers have to consider RDM when writing bids. We’re doing their work for them!
  • Knock on effect on other university services: authentication, repository, staff profiles, cloud computing, software development environment and methodology, open source awareness and guidance.
  • Supports the development of RDM plans and policies.
  • MRD programme activity is akin to staff training and development of a community of practice.
  • Combines and improves our understanding about research administration, research methods, research data and research outputs.
  • Changes to researcher practices. Improves RDM practices.
  • Should reduce institutional risk (legal liabilities of commercial contracts)
  • Simplifies collaboration among researchers
  • Produces open source software for re-use
  • Provides rapid access to results and derived data
  • Increases awareness of support among researchers. e.g. Aids grant writing.
  • Produces reliable citations of research data
  • Embeds institutional support and training
  • No recreation of existing data. Better security, greater efficiency.
  • Improved version control and transparency.
  • Improved understanding of research methods.
  • Further thinking about and planning for the sustainability of institution-wide services. Who pays?

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A pain in the midlands: JISC/SCONUL future of library systems workshop

Posted on January 31st, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

London Midland 153, very smart

In January I made the long train journey over to the University of Warwick, to attend and speak at the first day of a two-day JISC/SCONUL workshop exploring the future of library systems, under the banner of the “Squeezed Middle” – that is the LMS & other library systems, the bits of library infrastructure often overshadowed/squeezed out of the limelight by the twin heavyweights of Discovery & ERM.

Carrying on from the work done as part of the JISC/SCONUL Shared Services ‘LMS horizon scan‘ in 2008, this workshop points the way toward a new JISC call for ‘path finder’ projects addressing the future of LMSes, under the Information and Library Infrastructure: Emerging Opportunities programme: “you can’t do nothing any more”.

Thank you to Ben Showers of JISC for the invitation to speak at this event!

First, we were treated to a bit of virtual Lorcan Dempsey. In a video talk, he spoke about the trends facing academic libraries (a background of budget constraints, networked decentralisation of content vs. our tradition of vertically integrating services into the one building), and how libraries are re-examining our priorities under pressure, building more flexible spaces, making our expertise more visible, engaging with the network, etc.. Lorcan’s video will be made available via OCLC’s YouTube channel shortly.

Then to the bit of the workshop in which I was involved: a series of ‘provocations‘: radical, challenging visions for the future of library systems (by, say, the year 2020), designed to get the attendees thinking. David Kay of SERO, Ken Chad, and Paul Walk provided the other three visions.

I found it a struggle knowing quite where to ‘pitch’ my vision: it can be difficult to be provocative/radical enough without sounding like you don’t know what talking about. For possibly only the second time in my career I was careful to prefix my statement with “…this isn’t my employer’s opinion!”. I took quite a broad, scattergun approach (figuring if I was broad enough, I’d be bound to hit something…); for that reason I was pleased that some of my themes were echoed in Paul Walk’s Marshall Smith-esque sf/dystopian view of libraries in 2020, which he delivered through the “medium of fiction and the genre of bonkers”.

You can read my own provocation statement, “A vision for library systems in 2020“, on Google Docs.

Links to other blog posts about this event are here, here and here.

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Activity data workshop, Leeds, 5th September

Posted on September 13th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

Last week Elif and I attended a half-day workshop at the University of Leeds, entitled ‘Improving processes by using activity data‘, which was organised as part of the JISC Activity Data ‘Synthesis’ programme, as a pre-conference event before the 2011 ALT-C conference.

I got the impression that only about half the expected delegates turned up, which seems a bit poor form, but perhaps all too common for a free workshop.

Presentations from:

One thing (of many useful things) that came up in the discussions surrounding these presentations was around the “usefulness” (utility?) of activity data, and how that usefulness is ‘sold’ to the parent institution: shades of business case-type arguments around recruitment, retention, impact, resource management, etc., but what about the user experience? What about the service quality (sez Ben Scoble of Staffordshire University)?

There’s a danger that these aspects could be missed in the drive to produce a convincing ‘traditional’ business case for activity data, when they are the things we ought to be concentrating on the most (and I tend to assume that, as long as I still have a job, the overall case for providing a quality library service has already been accepted by my institution… at least for the time being).

Then on to activities (ha ha), and a group discussion around the way forward in making it easier for libraries to gather and use activity data. Placed on the spot by David Kay (a consequence of “Lincoln having done all of this sort of stuff already“!! – i.e. participated in the MOSAIC and LIDP projects), I reiterated my point that we should really only be concerned with trying to build a better service for the library. We shouldn’t have to constantly refer up to—e.g.—the effect on student satisfaction, retention, or attainment. Take them (for practical purposes, anyway) as a given. The case has already been made, and as long as your library is open for business, your institutions wants you to use activity data. They do. They really do.

All that remains now is for all of us (esp. the Synthesis project) to come up with a sane, usable, ultra-lightweight event-based (WWWWWH) data-exchange format which would allow institutions to easily share and re-use activity data: practival interoperability for libraries and l-users across all library domains. There are some good ideas floating around (they pretty much scream Linked Data), and I’m sure you’ll be hearing about them soon.

The JISC Activity Data Synthesis project blog is at: http://blog.activitydata.org/

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What’s it worth? EMALINK event in Lincoln on Wednesday

Posted on June 27th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

There’s an EMALINK (East Midlands Academic Libraries Information NetworK) workshop taking place at the University of Lincoln on Wednesday – the theme being collection management and development.

A colleague (Acquisitions Librarian, Di Walker) and I are giving a presentation about how we’ve used e-resources usage data to help make collection decisions about ‘Big Deal’ databases. Our slides are online.

We’re hosting this EMALINK workshop jointly with Bishop Grosseteste University College and Nottingham Trent University.

 

University of Lincoln

The Library

EMALINK event on 29th June 2011, 2pm

Meetings room 1, 1st floor, enterprise@lincoln building (adjacent to the University Library)

2.00                             Introduction, arrangements – Lys Ann Reiners

2.05                             All change at NTU:  new ways of building and managing collections           Helen Adey and Heather Shaw

2.20                             Is the library collection fit for purpose?         Philippa Dyson

2.35                             What’s it worth?  Getting value for money from e-resources

Di Walker and Paul Stainthorp

2.50-3.30                     Breakout and refreshments

Discussion topic:  “What information do we need to support collection management decisions”

3.30-3.45                     Feedback from groups

3.45                             Green disposals          Susan Rodda

4.00                             Disperse

 

What's it worth? Getting value for money from e-resources

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LIDP / “Making an Impact” event, 28th June, Leicester

Posted on June 14th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

I’m speaking at a CILIP UC&R East Midlands members’ event called “Making an Impact“, on Tuesday, 28 June, at De Montfort University in Leicester, about our involvement in Huddersfield’s JISC-funded Library Impact Data Project (LIDP).

Making an impact: The JISC Library Impact Data Project

Paul Stainthorp will give an overview of the JISC-funded Library Impact Data Project (LIDP). This project, led by the University of Huddersfield, is testing the hypothesis that there is ‘a statistically significant correlation across a number of universities between library activity data and student attainment’. To do this, the team is gathering and analysing library activity data (book loans, gate count figures, e-resource accesses, PC logins) from eight UK university libraries, and comparing that data with student attainment. Paul is the electronic resources librarian at the University of Lincoln and currently project manager for the JISC-funded resource discovery project ‘Jerome’.

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