Presentation given on the Bloomsbury / University of London Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) implementation at the Kuali Days conference, San Diego, CA, 20 November 2013.
Kuali Days abstract:
In recent years Kuali OLE has worked closely with library colleagues in the United Kingdom in order to facilitate the Bloomsbury Library Management System Consortia (BLMS) (http://www.blms.ac.uk/) in joining Kuali OLE as a development partner. In this session our London-based library experts from the Senate House Library at the University of London will talk about the current BLMS strategy for OLE adoption and implementation. Additionally, they will also discuss the tenor of community and open source software adoption in the UK library and higher education community.
Peter webster interrogating the archived uk webDigital History
Digital History seminar
4 November 2014
Live Stream: http://ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2014/10/28/tuesday-4-november-interrogating-the-archived-uk-web-historians-and-social-scientists-research-experiences/
Discovery strategies for Kuali OLE - VuFind at the University of LondonAndrew Preater
Presentation given on the University of London VuFind discovery layer implementation at the Kuali Days UK conference, 29 October 2013.
The session focused on discovery layer choices – software-as-a-service, open source or community source – of three libraries that are actively planning integration with Kuali OLE, including perspectives from the University of Chicago, Indiana University and the University of London and featured specific use cases for OLE discovery layer implementations at their institutions and what influenced their choices.
The VHS Tapes: Preserving Emerging Formats at the British LibraryStella Wisdom
Presentation for an online VHS Tapes event on Tuesday 29 June 2021 by Lynda Clark, Giulia Carla Rossi and Stella Wisdom.
This event was organised by The Videogame Heritage Society (VHS), a subject specialist network for digital game preservation, led by the National Videogame Museum (NVM), based in Sheffield, UK.
Wikimedia Residencies: Reflecting on Wikimedian Residencies in the GLAM secto...Stella Wisdom
Presentation for Panel 17. Wikimedia Residencies: Reflecting on Wikimedian Residencies in the GLAM sector, UK and Ireland, for the National Libraries Now 2021 conference, by Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator, British Library
Peter webster interrogating the archived uk webDigital History
Digital History seminar
4 November 2014
Live Stream: http://ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2014/10/28/tuesday-4-november-interrogating-the-archived-uk-web-historians-and-social-scientists-research-experiences/
Discovery strategies for Kuali OLE - VuFind at the University of LondonAndrew Preater
Presentation given on the University of London VuFind discovery layer implementation at the Kuali Days UK conference, 29 October 2013.
The session focused on discovery layer choices – software-as-a-service, open source or community source – of three libraries that are actively planning integration with Kuali OLE, including perspectives from the University of Chicago, Indiana University and the University of London and featured specific use cases for OLE discovery layer implementations at their institutions and what influenced their choices.
The VHS Tapes: Preserving Emerging Formats at the British LibraryStella Wisdom
Presentation for an online VHS Tapes event on Tuesday 29 June 2021 by Lynda Clark, Giulia Carla Rossi and Stella Wisdom.
This event was organised by The Videogame Heritage Society (VHS), a subject specialist network for digital game preservation, led by the National Videogame Museum (NVM), based in Sheffield, UK.
Wikimedia Residencies: Reflecting on Wikimedian Residencies in the GLAM secto...Stella Wisdom
Presentation for Panel 17. Wikimedia Residencies: Reflecting on Wikimedian Residencies in the GLAM sector, UK and Ireland, for the National Libraries Now 2021 conference, by Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator, British Library
Jisc, the Wellcome Library, and non UK universities and professional societies, have been working on a three-year large-scale digitisation project of more than 15 million pages of 19th century published works, resulting in the UK Medical Heritage Library, a valuable resource for the exploration of medical humanities.
I hosted a live lab day on the 26th October, with researchers and developers, at the Wellcome Library, to look at how this resource can be developed. These are the results of the discussion.
Fifth British Library Labs (BL Labs) Symposium, Monday October 30, 2017.
10:05 – 11:00 Keynote ‘Open, Digital, Inclusive: Unleashing Knowledge’
Josie Fraser, Senior Technology Adviser on the National Technology Team, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in the UK Government.
Josie will discuss the impact the open knowledge movement has had on education and learning. Looking at the powerful role that Wikimedia UK and Wikimedians have played in bringing UK cultural institutions and their digital collections to new and wider audiences, the talk will also explore how open knowledge partnerships are driving diversity and better representation for all online. She will invite the audience to join her in exploring ideas and opportunities for the future.
Working with News Data across different media: A workshoplabsbl
The aim of the News Data workshop is to bring together researchers, developers and content owners to look at different kinds of British Library news data and how they may be used. There will be a number of short presentations from projects either using BL news data or with which we are collaborating on news data-related work.
The key aims are to illustrate the extent of our news collections, to demonstrate ways in which their data can be re-used for research, and to encourage cross-media analysis of news datasets (i.e. print, TV, radio, web). The event will be followed by a news hackathon which will be run on Monday 16th of November, 2015 at the British Library.
INSTG020 lecture for UCL DIS students - Project ManagementAndrew Preater
Talk delivered to UCL information sciences / library studies masters students on Tuesday 27 January 2015, then on 2 February 2016.
Slides are updated for the current lecture.
Updated for January 2015.
Versions of this presentation have been given at:
- Ex Libris Alma and Primo 'Solutions Day' at the Kungl. Myntkabinettet (Royal Coin Cabinet) museum, Stockholm, Tuesday 25th November 2014.
Jisc, the Wellcome Library, and non UK universities and professional societies, have been working on a three-year large-scale digitisation project of more than 15 million pages of 19th century published works, resulting in the UK Medical Heritage Library, a valuable resource for the exploration of medical humanities.
I hosted a live lab day on the 26th October, with researchers and developers, at the Wellcome Library, to look at how this resource can be developed. These are the results of the discussion.
Fifth British Library Labs (BL Labs) Symposium, Monday October 30, 2017.
10:05 – 11:00 Keynote ‘Open, Digital, Inclusive: Unleashing Knowledge’
Josie Fraser, Senior Technology Adviser on the National Technology Team, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in the UK Government.
Josie will discuss the impact the open knowledge movement has had on education and learning. Looking at the powerful role that Wikimedia UK and Wikimedians have played in bringing UK cultural institutions and their digital collections to new and wider audiences, the talk will also explore how open knowledge partnerships are driving diversity and better representation for all online. She will invite the audience to join her in exploring ideas and opportunities for the future.
Working with News Data across different media: A workshoplabsbl
The aim of the News Data workshop is to bring together researchers, developers and content owners to look at different kinds of British Library news data and how they may be used. There will be a number of short presentations from projects either using BL news data or with which we are collaborating on news data-related work.
The key aims are to illustrate the extent of our news collections, to demonstrate ways in which their data can be re-used for research, and to encourage cross-media analysis of news datasets (i.e. print, TV, radio, web). The event will be followed by a news hackathon which will be run on Monday 16th of November, 2015 at the British Library.
INSTG020 lecture for UCL DIS students - Project ManagementAndrew Preater
Talk delivered to UCL information sciences / library studies masters students on Tuesday 27 January 2015, then on 2 February 2016.
Slides are updated for the current lecture.
Updated for January 2015.
Versions of this presentation have been given at:
- Ex Libris Alma and Primo 'Solutions Day' at the Kungl. Myntkabinettet (Royal Coin Cabinet) museum, Stockholm, Tuesday 25th November 2014.
Reading lists made easy! Implementing Leganto to improve reading list user ex...Andrew Preater
Presented at IGeLU 2016, Trondheim, Norway on on 7 September 2016.
Imperial College London Library Services implemented Leganto as a development partner to provide a complete course recommended reading system for academics, students, and library staff; with a first phase launch in February 2016. We present what we learned from the project, with a practical, organisational change focus to help universities wishing to know the "why" as well as the "how" of implementing Leganto.
I cover the value of business analysis using lean methods to analyse requirements and workflow before implementing; how we aligned our project with Ex Libris agile software development to get best value as a development partner; the ways we engaged faculty to align our service offer with their pedagogical concerns and deliver an improved user experience; and how we dealt with varying user needs across different departments, including using the LTI standard to integrate with our Blackboard learning management system and using the Alma APIs to deliver a custom integration for Imperial College Business School.
CPD25 Aspects workshop: Reflective Practice for Library and Information WorkAndrew Preater
Web version of workshop slides presented at CPD25 Aspects workshop, Reflective Practice for Library and Information Work, on 24 November 2016.
Event information: http://www.cpd25.ac.uk/events/reflective-practice-library-information-work/
The Author's Drift: scholarship, scale and societyPip Willcox
Why do we engage the public in research? Who is "the public"? What does successful engagement look like?
This talk presents some answers to that question, drawing on work from the Bodleian Libraries, the Oxford e-Research Centre, the University of Oxford's IT Services, and the HathiTrust Research Center.
The talk was the keynote at the Research and/as Engagement, a Royal Society of Edinburgh sponsored workshop, organized for Digital Humanities Network Scotland by the University of Edinburgh, 12 September 2014.
UCD Digital Library is a repository of digitised cultural heritage data (photographs, maps, printed documents, archival materials, artefacts, etc.) and research data arising from activity at UCD and elsewhere. It is also an organisation with expertise in digital content management and preservation, steadily developed over the past decade.
By cultivating strong working relationships with a broad cohort of content providers, adopting open source technologies where possible and harnessing the expertise and enthusiasm of a very diverse in-house team, UCD Digital Library has successfully met challenges head-on in a fast-paced technical environment. All of this has taken place in a landscape of diminishing library budgets and resources.
This lightning talk will serve as a use case for under-resourced academic digital libraries and data curation organisations, offering a “survival kit” and providing accessible best practices to address and overcome common challenges.
Building Better GLAM Labs - Keynote at University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, ...labsbl
Presentation given by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs entitled 'Building Better GLAM Labs'.
Experiences and lessons learned from the British Library and around the world with Galleries, Libraries , Archives and Museums engaging with researchers, artists, educators and entrepreneurs who want to use digitised and born digital cultural heritage collections and data for innovative projects.
Mahendra Mahey, Manager of British Library, British Library, London, UK.
Wednesday 27 February 2019, 1330 – 1500 (Keynote)
Talk given on behalf of the British Columbia Research Libraries Group, in the McPherson Library/Mearns Centre for Learning, Digital Scholarship Commons, Room A308, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
A global commons: turning research into educational material with WikimediaUoLResearchSupport
On 21st April we welcomed Dr Martin Poulter former 'Wikimedian in Residence' at the Bodleian Library to learn how the Wikimedia suite of tools can extend the reach and impact of research to support teaching and learning.
Martin talked about his work as a Wikimedian, and some of the projects at the Bodleian that demonstrate the combined use of Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia to extend the reach and impact of research outputs.
Wikimedia also aligns with the University of Leeds Libraries Vision for 2030: Knowledge for all, and Open Research Advisor Nick Sheppard discussed how we are planning to work with Martin as part of our open research strategy.
Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is one of the most visited website in the world. Perhaps less well-known are a wide range of related projects under the Wikimedia umbrella.
- Wikimedia Commons is a repository of openly licensed media files including photographs, diagrams, video and audio
- Wikisource is a free library of out-of-copyright texts
Wikiversity and Wikibooks encourage collaborative creation of open educational resources (OERs)
- Wikidata is a store of structured data that can be read and edited by humans or machines.
Supporting the Digital Scholar:Experiences from the British Library Labslabsbl
The presentation will first give a very brief overview of the Library and then tell you a number of ‘stories’ mostly from a Humanities perspective on how researchers did things in the past and how that is changing because of rapid developments in digital technology. With more and more digital content, data, tools and services being made available, researchers are able to ask questions they had never dreamed of before, share their findings in an open way and collaborate, some of them are becoming the ‘digital’ scholar.
It will bring back the story to the British Library, and how the digital scholar is changing the way we do things. It will then move on to the efforts of digitisation across the British Library, giving a whistle stop tour of some of the incredible digital collections we now have and highlight some of the challenges that we face given our historical origins, licensing and technical restrictions. Importantly, it will also try to address how we are trying to tackle some of these challenges. It will outline the work of Digital Scholarship department, created to support the changing research landscape, focusing particularly on the work on the Digital Research Team and that of British Library Labs, both of which sit in the same department. It will point out some of the surprising findings we have discovered and some of the lessons we have learned so far and what we are planning for the future. Finally, it will finish with some important final ‘take away’ messages and The Presentation will be asking you what excites you most about digital scholarship. Hopefully, if there is time, there will be an opportunity to take a few questions too.
Presentation delivered as part of OpenFest Online Symposium at the University of Sheffield on 7th September 2023.
Abstract:
Google something, anything. What are the top ten results? Whether a scientific concept, political theory or research methodology, Wikipedia will almost certainly be near the top, if not the very first result.
As a large-scale collaborative platform funded through charitable donations, with a mission to provide universal free access to knowledge as a public good, Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world and a primary source of information on the web, especially for people outside academia.
This presentation will explore the role of Wikipedia in the information ecosystem, where it occupies a unique role as a bridge between informal discussion and scholarly publication. We explore how it relates to the broader Wikimedia ecosystem, through structured data on Wikidata for instance, and openly licensed media on Wikimedia Commons. We consider the potential for universities to engage strategically with Wikimedia and the benefits of doing so, in the areas of information literacy and research impact, sharing openly licensed text and images to improve Wikipedia, for example, and linking Wikipedia citations to open access repositories.
We will discuss our Wikimedia Champions project at the University of Leeds, which has recruited PGRs to examine Wikipedia in their subject area, identifying areas of need and making contributions. The project has been an opportunity to explore ways of sharing University research with a wider audience in an open and accessible way and thereby contribute to the global commons.
Increasing reach and access through WikimediaCILIP
Lucy Crompton-Reid's (Chief Executive, WikiMedia UK) presentation to the CILIP 2017 Conference #CILIPConf17
Wikimedia UK is the national charity for the global Wikimedia movement, and our vision is of a more tolerant, informed and democratic society through the shared creation of, and access to, open knowledge. This presentation will draw on Wikimedia UK’s current work with libraries across the UK – including Bodleian, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Senate House and Wellcome – to highlight ways in which libraries can increase engagement with their collections through the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. The case studies shared will focus on partnerships that address issues of diversity and equality, particularly gender, linguistic and geographic bias on Wikimedia and in library collections.
Beyond the Academy: engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
Beyond the Academy: engagement, education, and exchange
This presentation introduces you to the practice and practicalities of public engagement. It draws on experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue, participation, and new knowledge.
FLAX Weaving with Oxford Open Educational Resources: Open Practices for Engli...Alannah Fitzgerald
Workshop delivered at the e-Learning Symposium on the 25th of January, 2013 with the Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies at the University of Southampton.
Building Better GLAM Labs - Keynote Presentation at Simon Fraser Universitylabsbl
Presentation given by Mahendra Mahey, Manager of BL Labs at Simon Fraser University between 1030 - 1200, Monday 25 February, 2019.
See: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/publish/dh/dhil/bl-labs
For more details.
Inclusive reading lists: UWL approach and experienceAndrew Preater
Slides from a talk delivered as a University of West London webinar on inclusive reading lists and library collections, 9 December 2022.
Recording at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fCo03WBDMs
Free and Open Source Software as Free Culture - at KohaCon 2022Andrew Preater
Free and open source software as free culture, slides of a talk presented at the koha-US Annual Conference (KohaCon22) 20-23 Sep 2022, Lawrence, Kansas.
What is critical librarianship? A talk for #CityLIS After Hours.Andrew Preater
*** Note, processing of LibreOffice slides by Slideshare is not optimal - there may be glitches. ***
This seminar for #CityLIS at City, University of London explored the idea and the various meanings of critical librarianship as a concept and practice.
Critical librarianship is multifaceted. It includes a developing body of scholarly work that uses critical ideas as a frame for theorising libraries and information; activist and social justice-oriented stances within library work; online communities and informal discussion spaces such as #critlib (critlib.org); and more. Its focus on scholarly thought and theory has been criticised as removed from the practical concerns that confront library workers and the communities they serve, whereas its more practical suggestions and ethical approaches are sometimes read as 'just good librarianship'.
This seminar will unpack the issues and consider how library workers can apply critique and the critical – in a board sense – as powerful lenses for inspecting practice, in rethinking and contesting the status quo.
The license CC BY-SA applies to original content in this talk. Some elements such as images derived from CC-licensed photographs have their own licenses, which are listed in the images credit slide.
We need critique more than ever: critical librarianship as a tool for thought...Andrew Preater
Keynote talk presented at Dublin Business School annual seminar #dbslib17 on 9 June, 2017.
The license CC BY-SA applies to original content in this talk. Some elements such as images derived from CC-licensed photographs have their own licenses, which are listed in the images credit slide.
"UX for the win!" at #CityMash: how we did grounded theory coding of qualitat...Andrew Preater
Presented at the #CityMash Mashed Library unconference on 13 June 2015, comprising an overview of UX project work at Imperial College London Library Services plus an introduction to open coding and focused coding in grounded theory.
This informed a practical workshop session on qualitative data analysis where the group coded recordings of user experience testing interviews at Imperial.
Kuali OLE implementation at the University of LondonAndrew Preater
Presentation given on the University of London Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) implementation at the Kuali Days UK conference, 29 October 2013.
In recent years Kuali OLE has worked closely with library colleagues in the United Kingdom in order to facilitate the Bloomsbury Library Management System Consortia (BLMS) (http://www.blms.ac.uk/) in joining Kuali OLE as a founding partner. In this session we talked about the current BLMS strategy for Kuali OLE adoption and implementation.
Kuali OLE: the Bloomsbury LMS. Project update from the University of London.Andrew Preater
Summary of our Kuali OLE implementation project to date, presented to the European Innovative Users Group (EIUG) at an exchange of experience day at Senate House, 19 September 2013.
Includes an update on our metadata optimization and discovery (VuFind) work packages.
Bloomsbury LMS Kuali OLE project critical success factorsAndrew Preater
I presented this talk on the project critical success factors for our implementation of Kuali OLE at Senate House Libraries, University of London for a SCURL event titled at the University of Edinburgh on 12th April 2013.
I co-presented with our project manager, Sharon Penfold. My sections of the talk are here - I describe 1) the reasons for choosing an Open Source / Free Software LMS; 2) our reasons for choosing Kuali OLE in particular; 3) the actual work done at Senate House Library towards OLE implementation so far; and 4) the project success factors for technology in particular and staff workflows and culture as well.
My presenting style is very light on text - you want to look at the notes in the downloaded version.
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
Safalta Digital marketing institute in Noida, provide complete applications that encompass a huge range of virtual advertising and marketing additives, which includes search engine optimization, virtual communication advertising, pay-per-click on marketing, content material advertising, internet analytics, and greater. These university courses are designed for students who possess a comprehensive understanding of virtual marketing strategies and attributes.Safalta Digital Marketing Institute in Noida is a first choice for young individuals or students who are looking to start their careers in the field of digital advertising. The institute gives specialized courses designed and certification.
for beginners, providing thorough training in areas such as SEO, digital communication marketing, and PPC training in Noida. After finishing the program, students receive the certifications recognised by top different universitie, setting a strong foundation for a successful career in digital marketing.
Embracing GenAI - A Strategic ImperativePeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
Acetabularia Information For Class 9 .docxvaibhavrinwa19
Acetabularia acetabulum is a single-celled green alga that in its vegetative state is morphologically differentiated into a basal rhizoid and an axially elongated stalk, which bears whorls of branching hairs. The single diploid nucleus resides in the rhizoid.
Introduction to AI for Nonprofits with Tapp NetworkTechSoup
Dive into the world of AI! Experts Jon Hill and Tareq Monaur will guide you through AI's role in enhancing nonprofit websites and basic marketing strategies, making it easy to understand and apply.
Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
Phyto-Pharmacological Screening, New Strategies for evaluating
Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
Kuali Invades the UK: OLE's success in partnering with UK academic libraries.
1. Kuali invades the UK
OLE’s success in partnering
with UK academic libraries
Andrew Preater, University of London
Robert McDonald, Indiana University
Kuali Days, 20 November 2013
If you want to tweet during the session that is me and Robert.
I work for the University of London at Senate House. This is the central administrative body of our federal university of 18 colleges and 10 institutes.
Senate House Libraries (plural) contains:
Senate House Library (singular) a spectacular research library of about 3 million items concentrated in the arts, humanities and social sciences – also got some amazing special collections and strong in palaeography / book studies.
The libraries of the School of Advanced study adding another 1 million items. These are specialist libraries of the institutes of the central university and important for their mission of research facilitation at a national level.
We support research and teaching at our federal University of London as well as for researchers from about 1000 universities around the world.
We as a group, collaboratively, decided we wanted to work together on evaluating our LMS.
The two early adopters here are SOAS (School of Oriental and African studies) and Birkbeck who specialist in evening study to ‘educate busy Londoners’.
With apologies to Brad Wheeler I am stealing this from his keynote to talk about our journey.
We as a group, collaboratively, decided we wanted to work together on evaluating our ILS. At a bare minimum we wanted to work together to get to the point where we had documentation and a working toolkit so we could evaluation our ILS ourselves and do our own thing.
As it turned out there was so much alignment between us and the colleges we wanted to take things forward and work together on implementation.
The BLMS project is about shared vision and shared goals of the partner colleges and Senate House.
Vision
21st Century Library Management System
Flagship shared service model for UK higher ed.
Goals
Interoperability / integration with
Shared user access to resources
Open Source / Free Software theme
1. Library services platform
Marshall Breeding on the LSP concept:
“To make up for functionality absent in their core integrated library systems, many libraries implemented a cluster of ancillary products, such as link resolvers, electronic resource management systems, digital asset management systems, and other repository platforms to manage all their different types of materials. The new products aim to simplify library operations through a more inclusive platform designed to handle all the different forms of content.”
http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/sep11/Breeding.shtml
As a project we’ve found two substantial forks in the road.
First: whether to implement a traditional LMS or something next-gen.
Second: whether to choose the closed-source vendor option, or commission an Open Source option.
2. A campus-wide, enterprise system
OLE is a genuine enterprise system in contrast with the historical / traditional LMS which has been ‘the has box sitting in the corner’, perhaps even a corner of the library itself. Certainly a system that doesn’t command much attention from IT or the broader university, and not something to be taken seriously as a core system. Our US partners have recognised a requirement for an enterprise approach and we agree. We think the LMS and resource discovery are about enterprise information, and should be seen as a key system enabling learning and teaching, and research. The nature of the data used means these systems are business critical for our HEIs.
3. By and for higher education
The focus in OLE is on what an academic / research library wants and needs in a system. The Kuali foundation ‘gets it’ in this respect, our functional experts – librarians and library workers – sit within a foundation that includes development expertise in analysis, consultancy, and project management. We did a very thorough horizon scan as part of our review of our legacy systems in London and found OLE offered ‘something completely different’ and novel.
A few points to unpack this a little bit.
1. Philosophical fit to HE
Collaboration is fundamental in the HE sector and particularly within libraries, and the older concept of Free Software originates in HE.
2. OSS is best of breed software.
OSS is (often) the best! Proprietary suppliers use OSS themselves, they choose OSS as the foundation for their development because it is stable and well-supported, and importantly flexible and free to use. OSS is licensed in a way that allows development and may be used for any purpose. One example is lots of commercial products use Apache Lucene and Apache Solr which is the same as the OLE document store.
3. OSS is a pragmatic choice for us is terms of mitigating certain risks:
Vendors being bought out by another LMS vendor and forcing you on a migration path.
A secure future for the system, it can’t be bought out by private equity investors.
Usable source code. Vendor source code may be held in escrow but not useful to the average library if we ever needed to use it.
These arguments I’ve made previously in favour of OLE come across well to risk-taking early innovators / early adopters but badly to the risk averse. HE as a whole is risk averse and libraries within them are at the risk averse edge.
Brad put up something very similar yesterday – this slide pre-dates that presentation!
Everyone loves change, right? ;-)
We’ve not implemented production OLE yet so what are we actually doing? ILS change – or transformation – is our Phase One of OLE development and deployment.
Collaborative spec was a big one for us. Working with subject matter expects (those staff who know the work and the requirements) in our libraries to develop a spec that describes what we need. This turned out to be much more ‘aspirational’ than the traditional UK Core Spec. We’re using Atlassian Confluence as a tool for sharing and collaboration. Everything in the SHL Confluence pages on OLE was open from the beginning – every systems librarians meeting, every conversation with the project manager long enough to take notes.
Part of this is about gaining buy in from staff including ourselves as systems workers.
Governance, legal, financials: Essential to cover off this stuff if you want to run an operational shared service between multiple HEIs – even with our federal structure.
BLMS project partner SOAS recently got OLE 1.5 up and running on their VM infrastructure with assistance from HTC.
This is on VMs so you can clone, wipe, and generally fold, manipulate, and abuse the ILS and quickly get back to a clean state. Likewise we can use multiple VMs easily for different purposes eg. 1 OLE for QA purposes, 1 OLE for techie dev work, 1 OLE for data loading.
HTC were awesome at this and got a development version of OLE 1.5 running in about 1 day.
OLE 1.5 dev version running at SOAS.
Let’s zoom in to this screen.
We’re editing a bib record.
We’re setting the 008 to define this bib as a festschrift!
I know, this is pretty exciting stuff.
A work package runs inside the BLMS project to replace our current ‘discovery potpourri’ with a next-generation discovery layer.
This may or may not include resource discovery as an element it doesn’t need to at first.
This is a pragmatic medium-term project that gives us a good-enough discovery layer to search our local bib database, archives catalog, ePrints repository, and digital assets management server.
Current state of play with various siloed systems.
These boxes could be much more haphazard. The only real link is between LMS and Discovery right now. We using Innovative Encore having implemented that for live use in 2010 on top of our WebPAC ‘classic catalog’
Medium term solution. The important point is we’re not looking to implement perfection next year, we’re looking to do something better.
We want to search our local resources at minimum. We don’t have a resource discovery platform so that was an easier question for initial implementation.
This will definitely deal with local bib data, and for us will have archives and ePrints included.
Vufind and Blacklight are serious Open Source options for this, Vufind is especially interesting because Birkbeck, University of London are already using it live.
Why
Exists now, immediately useful
Right expertise in our library (PHP dev expertise)
Highly flexible Open Source software <3
Really awesome work done at Villanova, shout out to Dave Lacy and the team there for this for developing the connectors we need to make OLE work with VuFind.
Screenshot of Senate House Libraries, University of London test VuFind instance.
This is VuFind 2 running on a virtual machine. It’s straightforward to set up, it works, and it’s a great test-bed for decoupling discovery from legacy ILS.
We also worked with Lizzie Atkinson at University College London who did an ethnographic study of use of catalogs in the library for her MLS dissertation. We think it’s vital to first research before deploying a system and need to take multiple routes to investigate discovery UX to understand how (if?) we modify VuFind to work for our library members.
Main findings in summary:
Users almost universally start a search using a basic search box
The idea of location is important to users at Senate House Library ie the physical location of books and other content
Facets are generally found useful – if they are noticed or understood
Metadata optimization includes scoping reclassification and ‘tidying up’ legacy bibliographic data from previous systems migrations and integrations.
Much of this goes back years but we’ve not been able to approach it except under the aegis of a ‘big project’ with central funding – this is much more engaging to university senior management.
In case you were in any doubt, university SMT are not that interested in library bibliographic data. But they do care deeply about student and user experience – ie our students and researchers being able to find things in our library and catalogue that form ‘the original shared service’ at the University of London.
Counts from “facet filtering” helps to expose problems with metadata.
Here are some highlights.
Further examples include:
Invalid 006.
Blank characters in the leader.
No dates present in the 008.
041 fields with language codes run together (UKMARC legacy issue)
We identified and updated about 105,000 problem codings in records already.
Here is a language coding example from across the Bloomsbury College partners showing some things are really no biggie, when you have a couple of hundred problem records you can work through them manually.
This is what the BLMS is all about.
Our view of the LMS is that it is an enterprise system and we need to raise its profile at HEI level and move away from being the ‘box in the corner’ we do this by engaging:
University and College SMT. OLE exists as part of a Kuali ecosystem including financials, student records – lots of potential for additional Kuali components as a good choice in future.
University IT essential from early on, so much of our LMS success hinges on IT infrastructure like networking and this will only become more important if we host in the cloud.
Records managers especially for data protection issues.
University procurement team
The UK view of the ILS. It’s a mature marketplace dominated by a few vendors.
UK central government is actively promoting OSS, but UK HE is not taking it up. ‘Getting to yes’ on Open Source is difficult.
Ben Showers (@benshowers) at Jisc has noted traditional procurement processes need to be disrupted and reshaped for the 21st century.
Everyone is watching and waiting to see what happens – and for us & US partners to iron out teething problems in OLE.
Looking forward, what’s the future for this? Ken Chad (@kenchad) a consultant working with UK libraries, noted several historical attempted to create co-operative shared serviced back in the 60s and 70s (one became Talis, now Capita, and one sold to III in the 90s). For me the main difference there is licensing as Open Source protect the software / IP from this fate.
Contact me at: andrew.preater@london.ac.uk or @preater
BLMS project blog: www.blms.ac.uk