It seems that every day we hear about new technologies, tools and websites. The question is always: does this enable us to do something new, or perhaps to do something in a better way? Learning technologists focus on how the tool can enhance learning. My focus is a more specific sub-question: how can this tool improve the library service for users, enabling them to find, evaluate and use the LRC resources more effectively in order to enhance their learning?

I thought I would bring together a few tools or sites that I had played with over the last year:

• QR codes
• Cartoons
• Animoto
  
• Crosswords
• Quizzes

QR codes

The basics of these have already been covered by Sam. I have been following examples of use, from US studies of their potential, to commercial uses such as Google’s ‘Favorite Places’. I also tried things out using my work mobile phone, and was impressed at how easy it was. You just have to download some software to your phone if it isn’t already on there (I used QuickMark software but I have also heard good things about the Kaywa Reader). Then you can point your phone camera at QR codes and in a fraction of a second the code is deciphered and displayed on the screen. You can make your own (e.g. try here or here), or point at the code below.

How might libraries use QR codes? Below are a few ideas:

• QR code on textbooks in the library – scan to get a subject guide to resources that area (e.g. catering), including classmarks to look at, core texts, useful magazines, websites etc.
• Fiction collections – scan the code to get the e-book version, e.g. from
  Project Gutenberg if it is a classic text.
• Reference collection book – scan the code to go through to a reference
  website on that subject (e.g. online dictionary or style guide), or the library’s own virtual reference collection.
• Posters linking to the relevant web pages. Or notice boards could have
  QR codes next to headlines, which when scanned take the user through to a blog entry on that subject.
• Used as part of induction, for an innovative quiz where there are blocks of QR code information around the library, with a sort of treasure hunt following QR code clues on signs and hidden in some books. Students would be lent a phone if they don’t have their own. The hunt would involve using library resources such as the OPAC, and only if things are done in the correct order will they get the correct final code (which might open a safe; be a classmark for a book with a voucher in; it could be a map reference; or something more imaginative).
• Library cards could have QR codes with user information on, or to take the user to their library account on their phone so they can renew books etc (after some other form of authentication too, of course).
• Other uses for QR codes on a physical item, enabling users to see the
  catalogue record, reviews, similar items etc.
• On the OPAC so users can get locations, classmarks and item details onto their phone for finding item on shelves, or adding to bibliographies. This was done at Aberystwyth University as one of the mobile phone enhancements (the OPAC also has the ability to send an SMS with item details to a mobile phone). To view the QR code function, search the OPAC then click on the “QR code” link in the “Availability” section when viewing a record.
• To provide context specific help and information in the library, as
  at Huddersfield University.

Will any of this be commonplace in LRCs in 5 years? Let me know if you are
using them yourself!

Cartoons

Librarians are always looking for ways to get information across to users. Pictorial methods are attractive, but not many of us have any artistic talent. That is where sites like Bitstrips come in, since with Bitstrips it is easy and quick to create a cartoon. You can design your own characters to appear in it, or use the hundreds that are provided on the site already. The system is easy to use – pose the figure, choose a facial expression, stick some props in the background, and add a text or speech bubble; then tweak until you are happy with it. The end result is that you can link to the cartoon on Bitstrips, or download it as an image to use in newsletters and on notice boards. Bitstrips are obviously aware of educational uses, since they have recently launched ‘Bitstrips for Schools‘.

I created a few for my RSC Wales job, see the RSC Wales LR Netvibes account. Also in my other role at Aberystwyth University, to promote our federated search tool. The fact that it is so easy to edit the cartoons means it is simple to go back in and create a Welsh version.

Animoto

I have always been a fan of Animoto. It is a site that lets you upload images and select music, and they get mixed together into a video slideshow which can then be viewed online, embedded on a webpage, or downloaded. In the early days you had to add words to an image yourself if you wanted text, but nowadays there are options to include titles and subtitles, and even to incorporate video clips. The basic version which creates short 60 second clips is free to use; however I took out a subscription so that I can create videos of any length.

I have used Animoto in various ways.

• Sometimes when I am doing a teaching session I like to have looped music and video playing as people come in and settle down: to help create an informal atmosphere, act as a border between the ‘outside world’ and the session proper, and possibly to raise some questions in advance of the session. This is an example I used in a session I ran on using multimedia resources.
• An attractive way of getting a simple message across.
• To promote a new service (ac yn Saesneg)
• As an ‘attract mode’ running on a laptop when you are on a stall e.g. a recent stall I ran demonstrating e-book readers had this animation playing to pull people over.
• A fun way of introducing people with photos and names.
• For your own projects outside of work e.g. presenting a poem, holiday snapshots.

Crosswords

LRCs often like to offer quizzes as ways of summarising information or reinforcing it later. Crosswords are an easy way to do this, something some users might enjoy (though they shouldn’t be over-used, and many students will hate them – it is just an alternative way of giving information). Creating a crossword by hand is a daunting task, and thankfully unnecessary! Lots of software is available. My favourite is Eclipse Crossword, which is free and simple to use, yet powerful and fast. If you haven’t tried it before, why not incorporate a quick crossword into one of your information literacy sessions, leaflets, inductions or competitions, or use one as part of a promotion of resources and services?

Quizzes

At the end of a teaching session it is good to include some way of reviewing the content. Institutions with voting systems or interactive whiteboards can use those, but there are many other options for running a quiz. One of my favourites at the moment is ‘Multiple Choice Quiz Creator‘, which resembles ‘Who Want To Be A Millionaire?’ in format and sounds. I like the fact that you only need a laptop/PC, speakers, and (ideally) a projector. Sometimes I get a student to take part, helped by the rest of the people at the session; sometimes I get people to call out answers; other times I put the lecturer on the hotspot (depending on the vibe of the session and how relaxed people are!) It has proven to be a fun way to finish off with a laugh, with a prize of some sort for the winner (e.g. a USB memory stick or some pens). The quizzes are free to play (since the display software has no limits), but the quiz creator programme itself is only free for thirty days. You can download sample quizzes here if you want to try it out.

When I started with RSC Wales back in June 2007 one of the first things I did was attend a JISC Access Management (AM) event. And here I am again a few years on, having just got back from the 2009 event which I attended hoping to find out what the current access management landscape looks like. What has changed and what have we learned in the interim?

I’ll blog about some of the sessions and some of my thoughts, with  inevitable emphasis on the areas most relevant to libraries and LRCs. I haven’t been Tweeting with the rest of the Twittoratti, but there was plenty to digest on the #fam09 tag.

If you want to find out more about the event you can view the programme, download many of the presentations or visit the FAM09 social site.

First, a recap of the access management options for e-resources

Shibboleth (by which I mean Federated Access Management) was the main option under discussion. It requires either in-house support, or you can pay a third party to set to it and provide support until you have enough in-house experience.

A related option, offering the same functionality, is to pay for a subscription to the OpenAthens Service, to gain Shibboleth-like features. I think of the Shibboleth/OpenAthens options as being like looking for somewhere to live.

OpenAthens is like renting a nice appartment. It is nice to live in, but you can’t do what you like with the apartment (e.g. replacing the windows if you don’t like them), and you will never own the apartment – if ever you stop paying the rent you get kicked out and have nothing to show for the years you paid for. Though while you do pay rent, someone else will (hopefully) be responsible for repairs to the property.

Shibboleth is like buying a house. There is a cost at the start, and you the one reponsible for maintaining the property. You can do that yourself if you have the skill; or pay someone else to do so, and maybe when you understand more go on a DIY course yourself and start to do your own maintenance.

There are two other common access management options, though I can’t think of a way of extending the house analogy to them without it being contrived, so I’ll just describe them straight. One option (often used in conjunction with Shibboleth) is to use the more traditional IP plus proxy solution to on-and-off campus access to resources and services.

There is also sometimes the option to have a single, fixed username and password for off-campus access, which can be workable for small e-resource portfolios. This option is gradually disappearing for many resource providers though.

Some of the sessions I attended

Identity and Access as UK Priority, Sara Marsh and Peter Tinson

This session was a summary of where we came from (beginning in 2004), where we are, where we’re going, and potential barriers to getting there, so was an appropriate conference opener. Sara likened herself to the jam of the talk, sandwiched between Peter’s opening and closing bread. I was glad to see that the bread was wholemeal.

The early landscape was one where there were few Shibbolised resources and a lack of in-house skills. Organisations lacked institutional access management strategies, and IT departments felt that access management was just about access to e-resources, and was therefore only a library issue.

And now? All but a few of the big publishers offer Federated Access Management as an option, and those that don’t offer it are under increasing pressure. UCISA and SCONUL surveys found that access and identity management is now in the top ten strategic issues listed by their members, so the importance has risen (though the issue is not at the top of the list).

What is needed for the future? Two main things stood out. Firstly access and identity management/Federated Access Management needs to get into top-level strategies. Secondly we need more examples of the benefits early adopters have gained from Federated Access Management in order to make the strongest possible management case.

Federated Access, the Library Experience, Sarah Pearson, Richard Cross and Francis Lowry

The experiences of two institutions (the University of Birmingham and Nottingham Trent University) in implementing Shibboleth. Many of the things said rang true to my experiences of being involved with a university implementation.

Sarah Pearson spoke about the Birmingham experience. In Birmingham they have used Shibboleth to implement single sign-on (SSO) to Metalib (their federated search tool) and EZproxy, but not to the VLE yet. They try to push users through Metalib as the primary means of accessing e-resources, since then the library can make access more seamless to users.

Sarah showed a diagram of the various ways in which a user at the University of Birmingham accesses e-resources (see below – click to enlarge). It illustrates the complexity of managing the various access options – a diagram like that can be a valuable thing for any library to create in attempting to identify areas which need work.

Collaboration for the University of Birmingham Shibboleth implementation was between:

• Serials Team (Library Services)
  They activated e-resources, customised links, implemented authentication, and did troubleshooting.
• Digital Library Team (IT Services)
  Managed Metalib and SFX installation including interaction with the IdP (Identity Provider)
• Networks Team (IT Services)
  Setup and maintenance of IdP and interaction with BIIS registry

See Sarah’s presentation for the implementation timescale and process – it shows the complexity of the move from the librarian’s perspective, all the processes involved before you even reach the user education element! Issues such as contacting service providers, finding out what information to provide, obtaining WAYFLess URL information, testing etc is all time-consuming, and if you need to manage resources in a federated search tool like Metalib there are extra steps.

One issue Sarah raised was the fact that some users will navigate directly to a resource rather than going through the library portal, so they will have to deal with WAYFs. Her team has now incorporated that route into their user education (guidance on Metalib and in induction).

Then Richard and Francis gave the Nottingham Trent University perspective. Nottingham Trent University were early Shibboleth adopters, and the central message I took away from their part of the presentation was the positive one that they had experienced no problems, Shibboleth has been stable with no downtime, and it all just worked from day one – on which day it was heavily used by students to take advantage of Microsoft’s free DreamSpark offer (it requires an institution to be using Federated Access Management for their students to benefit – another reason to switch!)

A valuable piece of advice from the presentation was that they never refer to Shibboleth when communicating with users, they only talk about the ‘University username and password’. Obviously they refer to it among library and IT staff though.

In terms of transition, they had a roadmap and a blog to inform staff. They also created a wiki that includes every e-resource they subscribe to and how users access it (since terminology varies from provider to provider), so that staff know how to help off-campus users for each resource. Bear in mind that the help staff on campus won’t see login screens, they will be automatically validated via IP, so this kind of information is invaluable for user suppport. Richard and Francis lamented that there is no consistency of terminology in how Service Providers refer to the login options, necessitating this approach.

The main lessons Richard and Francis wished to share:

• Plan early
• IT and library staff must work together (a partnership emphasised in other talks too)
• Communicate with Service Providers – don’t assume anything
• Don’t expect glowing praise from users – access management should be invisible to them if it works (but expect complaints when it doesn’t!)

They concluded that it is an ongoing process of development, it is not all over on the day that Shibboleth is installed. Also Shibboleth is not a solution to everything, but it is an important and flexible building block in the organisation’s infrastructure.

There were some similarities between the setup at the two universities. For example, both institutions currently use a combination of Shibboleth, IP/EZProxy and other methods (for a minority of resources). Both are currently using Shibboleth 1.3 but are planning to move to version 2.

Both also agreed on some of the challenges:

• There are personalisation issues when using dual authentication (e.g. Shibboleth plus IP). However they can be dealt with e.g. Nottingham Trent University migrated accounts wholesale where possible (e.g. for Refworks) and when that wasn’t an option they supported users individually in migrating settings. In a few instances users had to rebuild their personalisation from scratch.
• Not all Service Providers use a standard WAYFless URL structure, and many don’t include the ability to deep-link it e.g. to a particular e-book or database. Those that do have WAYFless structures may not tell you. There is a lack of standards here.

Tech 101 for Librarians, Andy Swiffin

Andy tackled the issue of terminology, trying to unravel the acronyms, as well as placing the emphasis on why and how you deploy an IdP (Identity Provider). He emphasised the relative simplicity of the process – if you have a web server with Tomcat, and have an identity source e.g. LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory, then you can do it easily. Andy has done a Shibboleth install and configured and tested it in just 12 minutes!

Why adopt FAM?

The same answers came up in a number of sessions, so it makes sense to just summarise the common answers here.

• Increased user privacy.
• KISS – Keep things simple for the user by enabling single-sign-on (SSO) for internal and external resources.
• Granularity – Federated Access Management enables fine-grained authorisation, so it should be possible to save money by only buying a specialist resource for the group that needs it, rather than paying for a subscription for the whole institution that will only be used by a few people. Obviously the ideal from a librarian’s perspective is to offer access to everyone, but as Sara Marsh pointed out – if it is a choice between paying for access for a group that needs something, or not getting the resource at all because access for the entire organisation is too expensive, the former is better than no access at all.

Social gaming

After the evening meal on Monday there was a games room for socialising to take place in. Four Nintendo Wiis were set up so that people could compete in Mario Kart, boxing, baseball, ten-pin bowling, Wii Fit and winter sports; along with giant Jenga and Connect 4, table football and air hockey. I put in some sterling defence work on the table football, but my gaming ability was a major letdown at ten-pin bowling, and for some reason my bowling ball always ended up in the gutter or – even worse – rolling away from me in the wrong direction. I’m almost certain that it was a faulty controller :-p but it made it look like I couldn’t hold my own in a Wii-ing contest.

I’ve been out of the office a lot recently, crossing the length and breadth of Wales, hence the lack of new posts here. To justify my silence I’ll give an update on where I’ve been. I should also say that when there are no new learning resources posts here, it is worth looking at the Chrissie’s Muses blog – Chrissie Turkington is a Learning Resources E-learning Adviser for RSC North West, so writes great posts on a lot of relevant topics, e.g. her recent post on using the Nintendo DSi to read e-books.

Another reason for my lack of time for blogs is that I only work for RSC Wales on Mondays and Tuesdays (for the rest of the week I work as a librarian for Aberystwyth University), normally job-sharing with Sam who covers the RSC role Wednesdays to Fridays. Sam is on maternity leave (and is doing really well!), so I’ve been on my own for a while, but now there is now extra learning resources support because Owen Phillips is providing maternity cover until Sam returns. LRC staff will no doubt be hearing from him soon!

Newport, Tuesday 13th – Wednesday 14th October

Ironically (considering I hadn’t had time to blog here for a while), I was in Newport on these days, teaching librarians how to blog! I ran a number of workshops which gave the background on Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and blogging, before looking at examples of library blogs from Wales. The librarians who came to the sessions were all great, and we had some thought-provoking discussions about how and why blogs can be used, as well as a hands-on where many trial blogs were created.

Getting to the fun part of the workshop...

Cardiff, Thursday 15th October

I was in Cardiff to visit Coleg Glan-Hafren with other RSC Wales staff. We discussed a range of e-learning topics, including technologies like voting systems, and ways of assessing the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. Then I got to do my favourite thing – have a tour of the LRC! Carolyn Howe, the LRC Manager, showed me round. I enjoyed their Online Book Club displays, and took samples of the colourful leaflets and bookmarks that go with them. Students are encouraged to read the books, post reviews, read other students’ reviews and discuss them online via Moodle. This is a good way of encouraging reader development even when a group is unable to meet at regular times. Students can even write short reviews on the bookmark, and the data will be uploaded by LRC staff – a good example of making things easier for students! Another example of LRC staff going out of their way to be helpful is that some of the most relevant journal articles are indexed and records are added to the OPAC. This increases the use of the valuable print journals and aids resource discovery for students.

Coleg Glan-Hafren uses a PC booking system to ensure fair use of the PCs (which had the pleasant side-effect of  improving LRC staff and student relationships!). The LRC takes the innovative (and successful) line of not having fines for overdue books – instead they use the PC booking system to block the offending student’s access to the workstations until the items are returned, which ensures that the books do get returned – quickly! The system is also used for room bookings. There is a kiosk for students to book things themselves which frees up staff time for more valuable work, as well as encouraging student independence in the allocation of their own time.

Coleg Glan-Hafren is promoting the E-books for FE project, and even has a search box on every PC desktop that takes users straight through to relevant books. Currently Coleg Glan-Hafren uses OpenAthens and IP to provide students with access, but the college is considering moving to Federated Access Management in the future.

Aberystwyth, Friday 16th October

I made one of my rare appearances at CyMAL on that date, for a Libraries for Life meeting. I made suggestions concerning improving information dissemination about regional courses in Wales, and the importance of documenting library refurbishments funded by CyMAL in order to benefit other libraries. The truth is that the notion of new build as a cure-all is flawed, partly due to: the expense; the all or nothing nature and dangers when things go wrong (see here, here, here and here); and the environment/resource issues. However renovation and innovation are much more interesting, and there are a huge number of libraries in the position of being based in a building that they consider to be unsuitable, and looking for ideas. So what is needed is more imaginative focus on what can be done with existing estate. Refurbishments can have a stepped approach e.g. lower level funding for furniture, wi-fi, flexible learning and teaching spaces; but with more ambitious plans for if funding is available (restucturing, replace walls, moving entrances and staircases etc.) which avoids the ‘all or nothing’ danger inherent in new build projects. Fully documenting and promoting this kind of work is important for making people aware of the options.

Deeside, Tuesday 20th October

A visit to Deeside College with other RSC Wales staff (Owen Phillips, Helen Hodges, and Christine Davies). Deeside College has now merged with the Welsh College of Horticulture, so it was interesting to discuss the ways in which the best practices of both institutions can be combined. We also discussed a topic dear to many librarians’ hearts – the blocking of Web 2.0 resources. YouTube and other video sites have now been unblocked at Deeside College, since they are relevant to teaching (e.g. the catering courses use lots of clips from professional chefs). However some social networking sites such as FaceBook remain blocked. The debate about the educational utility of Web 2.0 continues! Where do you stand? Frivolous use of resources and time, or invaluable tools for education? I imagine most people fall between the two extremes, which is why the debate is so important so that policies can achieve the best balance.

The Learning Zone (LRC) is a two-floor open space which acts as a one-stop shop for many services. Patrick Cox (the LRC and E-learning Manager) told us that the Learning Zone is wi-fi enabled and students can bring their own laptops, or borrow a laptop from LRC bank of laptops. LRCs lead the way in providing flexible options like this, catering for different student learning styles and needs.

Wrexham, Wednesday 21st October

While in the North we visited Yale College, as the final leg of our tour! Owen and I spent time with Joanne Stewart and Maria Lewis, finding out more about the LRC.  The multi-floor LRC is heavily used, spacious and welcoming, with great use of exhibition space and displays of student art. There was also an interactive whiteboard in an open teaching area of the library, used during induction and information skills sessions – a great way of taking information out of closed rooms and into the relevant spaces and showing the teaching that LRC staff do.

There is also wi-fi in the Yale College LRC – users register their MAC addresses and can then use laptops, iPod Touches etc. There are more access points being added around the college, and also a trolley of rechargeable laptops for flexible access.

The LRC promotes reader development in many ways, from displays expanding on topics near the relevant book stock, to an ‘LRC Book of the Week’ on the staff intranet. The LRC is also hoping to embed resources within the relevant course areas on the VLE, which can be a great way to increase the visibility of quality resources and weaken the grip of Google! The LRC is keen on using Web 2.0 tools to communicate with users – there ia a blog and accounts for Twitter, Flickr and Netvibes (I’ll add links here once I have them).

Visiting all three college LRCs (Glan-Hafren Deeside, Yale) was great, you can see how popular and central to the college they all are by the buzz of use. If I was an FE student again I’d love to use any of them for my research.

Swansea, Friday 23rd – Monday 26th October

Across Wales again – but not for work this time! A long weekend in Swansea to enjoy one of my favourite eating places, my new hobby of kayaking, and a chance to do a bit of creative writing.

Windblown sand on Swansea beach

Morning view on holiday

This month I used SurveyMonkey to get a snapshot of the usage of – and opinions on – the E-books for FE Project in LRCs in Wales. There were responses from about half of the colleges (14 respondees in total). I’ll summarise the main results, and have anonymised individual responses. There are some interesting comments on access methods (as expected, colleges want IP for on-campus, and another option for off-campus); importing MARC records into OPACs; ideas for promoting the collection; and on a Welsh-language interface.

Has your institution signed up to the E-books for FE deal yet? [In the sense of having submitted a signed agreement form.]

If no, are there any particular obstacles that have prevented you from setting up access for your institution? [1 response]

1.    we are not members of Shibboleth or Open Athens

Has the site for your institution been set up by Ebrary, with access for your users?

If yes, how long did it take? Any other comments? [6 responses]

1.    a couple of weeks after signing the agreement.
2.    couple of days
3.    Fairly quick after initial problem – they got our details a bit wrong
4.    A couple of weeks – as expected, given the volume of FE subscribers I’m surprised that others have felt this timescale was so slow!
5.    About 2 weeks after completing licence agreement
6.    Around 5 weeks from sending off completed agreement.

What access method did you select?

Do you have any comments about the options offered by Ebrary? [5 responses]

1.    It would have been nice to have on-site access by IP as well
2.    Original offer should have been remote access and IP not one or the other. I understand that this issue has now been resolved.
3.    Not having IP access is a disadvantage. It will make it harder to promote the database and encourage staff to access it
4.    Would have liked IP access as well as evidence suggests this is what students tend to use but this what outweighed by the need for off campus access for those who need it
5.    Would have liked a vareity of options rather than just one. We are still trying to get Shibboleth to work and so IP access would also have been helpful. We may find that 3 months are spent getting the shibboleth access sorted!

Have you downloaded the MARC records for the titles into your library catalogue?

If yes, were there any problems? What LMS do you use? Other comments? [6 responses]

1.    No problems. We use Heritage, and they were very helpful in making it easy for their users by liaising with Ebrary over this.
2.    For some reason the records won’t download in Heritage. I’ve informed Heritage support and we are in dialogue.
3.    To be honest I’m not sure if we have or not (and person who would know is on leave)!
4.    Autolib, they have just sent me a link for downloading the records.
5.    Heritage LMS – provided file and worked fairly easily
6.    Use Alice (Softlink) – not yet aware if we can download MARC records

Do you have any plans for promoting the e-books next term? E.g. demos to teachers, or pointing out titles useful to certain courses, or promoting Ebrary platform features? [13 responses]

1.    yes – demos for staff and students. pointing out useful titles for staff, and also to stick on Moodle site. Promote on web pages and Library Moodle.
2.    We will be adding stickers to books that are also available via the ebrary. Main point of entry will be via our Moodle page. Some tutors have already been introduced to the ebrary, but not all. We will be actively promoting the ebrary via posters and other displays and will likely run workshops throughout the year.
3.    Yes, staff development sessions and promotion of ebook libraries. Also including ebook libraries in the student inductions.
4.    Inductions, collection per course of useful titles, inform Heads of Department to disseminate resource,
5.    Yes – but not yet firmed up. We’ll use a range of concurrent measures and also promote them to students in induction. Will monitor promotional activity and effectiveness and be ready to report back.
6.    Yes. Will certainly demo it to teachers, but have not thought of a coherent strategy yet. I’m waiting to get it on our OPAC first.
7.    Yes – face-to-face demonstrations, e-mailing bookshelves to tutors etc
8.    Will be incorporated into ‘advanced inductions’ have already done some staff development sessions with tutors
9.    No plans as yet, as we are short of staff time to do this at present.
10.    Yes, website links, catalogue links, demo’s during research sessions.
11.    Yes; demos to staff, holding drop in sessions for staff and students; getting ourselve invited to Faculty meetings; holding drop ins for staff during STaff Development days, advertising on the widget – you name it we’ll be doing it!
12.    Yes – will provide demos and point out useful e-books in inductions
13.    Not yet – need to get access first

There is an extra allocation for textbooks of relevance to Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. If there are any textbooks that you would like to see available in this, enter their details below. The comments will be passed on to the E-books for FE Project Manager. [4 responses]

1.    University of Wales Press titles would be particularly useful as these are often either out of print/print on demand and generally hard to get hold of. Some example titles:
A History of Wales 1906 – 2000, Gareth Evans (9780708315941)
A History of Wales, 1815 – 1906, Gareth Evans 9780708310281)
Hope and Heartbreak: A Social History of Wales, 1776 – 1871, Russell Davies (9780708319321)
Organise! Organise! Organise!, Ryland Wallace (9780708310786 )
Welsh-language textbooks such as:
GCSE Mathematics / TGAU Mathemateg (9780340927366)
IT / Technoleg Gwybodaeth (9781845210977)
2.    At this moment in time nothing comes to mind but would like the opportunity to be able to submit requests in the future should anything deem appropriate
3.    More books for our Business and Professional faculty would be nice e.g. hairdressing, beauty, introductory business books.
4.    Relevant FE vocational titles – again person who would know which key texts are available in Welsh is on leave

Ebrary have agreed to look into creating a Welsh interface for their e-books platform. Would this be useful to your institution? Would you promote it?

Comments (on Welsh interface) [7 responses]

1.    Welsh is already promoted quite well within our LRC and we would happily promote a Welsh-language interface. Usage of the Welsh language in the xxx area isn’t great but both members of LRC staff are able to speak Welsh as well as a few other members of staff. I envisage that it would be particularly useful for our outreach learners, many of whom are based in more ‘Welshy’ areas.
2.    Not terribly useful in reality but would be good politically.
3.    This should be a given in Wales even if colleges have a small Welsh language cohort.
4.    The uptake probably wouldn’t be great, but it would help college satisfy its Welsh language obligations.
5.    We already have a bilingual catalogue and KnowUK was also available bilingually
6.    Usage would be minute, to be frank.
7.    Not sure how much usage it would have but would a good feature.

Many thanks to those college LRCs that responded to my survey: Barry College, Bridgend College, Coleg Ceredigion, Coleg Glan Hafren, Coleg Harlech, Coleg Llandrillo, Coleg Meirion Dwyfor, Coleg Powys, Coleg Sir Gar, Gorseinon College, Swansea College.

The Open University’s ‘Devolve Me‘ page is part of their Charles Darwin website.

With Devolve Me, a student can upload a photo and see themself as they might have looked millions of years ago. It is a good example of the many small, single-function teaching and learning sources that can tie into a lesson whilst also being fun for the students.

In the interests of research I had a go myself, moving backwards through time. I am sure H.G. Wells would approve.

Homo heidelbergensis (500,000 years ago):

Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago):

Homo habilis (2.2 million years ago):

Australopithecus afarensis (3.7 million years ago):

An exciting new, free JISC-funded resource launched last week, relevant to many subjects. A Vision of Britain Through Time gives access to over two centuries’ worth of acts, figures, surveys, maps, election results and travel writing, showing how 15,000 UK places have changed.

Project director, Dr Humphrey Southall, of the University of Portsmouth, says:

Through the site we are offering an unprecedented amount of information detailing how Britain has changed over many centuries. Simply keying in a place-name or postcode unlocks a vast treasury of facts, figures, images and descriptions – from mediaeval boundaries to what the 2001 Census uncovered via, perhaps, a town’s appearance on a 19th century map, a comment by a touring agitator, a crop report from the 1930s and more. The range and depth of the information makes it a terrific resource for professional and amateur historians who want a complete picture of what a place was like at a particular point in history, but the site isn’t only a way to look back. The content is already in demand from researchers and forecasters watching for changes and trends of relevance now or in the future.

JISC digitisation programme manager, Alastair Dunning, added:

This new site is an excellent example of what JISC is enabling, and why. By helping the project to improve its historic boundary maps and add new, fully cross-indexed, content, JISC is making it easier for scholars across all disciplines, to access data. While also granting free access to researchers from other sectors, including healthcare planners, local government, climatologists and the ever growing number of people who are interested in
local and family history.

Read more about JISC’s digitisation programme.

I decided to put it to the test, so spent an hour exploring the site with my nephew. We compared facts and figures for Aberystwyth and Manchester, and discussed the implications of some of the graphs and statistics.

The negatives:

• Sometimes we got a bit lost, for example not all the maps had an explanatory key; or it would be unclear as to the differences between some sets of data.
• The site contains Google Ads (possibly a first for a JISC-funded project, and hopefully not the start of a trend), and the commercial advertising makes it look less like a quality academic resource. I do a lot of information literacy work to do with website evaluation, and one of the areas relates to bias/website purpose and includes looking out for advertising as one of the potential criteria for evaluation. I was running a session on this recently so the advertising seemed to stand out.

The positives:

• The site includes a wealth of valuable material, especially if you are willing to dig around and explore.
• The site led us to lots of discussion points.
• The four e-learning tutorials were a useful way in to navigate some of the themes.

Some LRC staff have asked me about changes to JISC banding if colleges merge, since we have an number of possible college mergers in Wales. The JISC band has an element based on FTEs, and the JISC band determines subscription cost: therefore a change in band following a merger can result in an increase in subscription e-resource costs. The following advice was put together with the help of JISC Collections (many thanks Brian!).

Q: Where can I find out more about JISC banding, and what my institution’s band is?

The JISC Collections website has a page about this.

Q: Is there an obligation on the college LRS to tell each e-resource provider about the merger?

There is an obligation to tell the publisher about the merger as this is a change in your status, and to avoid any potential breaches of the licences you hold.

Q: How would the new JISC band be decided?

Once the mergers are confirmed as going ahead JISC Collections needs to be informed. They will forward the emails onto their consultant who advises them on JISC Banding. He needs the following information from you about the projected funding for the merged colleges, so that he can calculate your new JISC Bands following the mergers:

• Anticipated funding from DCELLS
• Anticipated funding from HEFCW (if any)
• Anticipated research council funding

The College finance departments should be able to help you with these figures but if you need clarification on this, let JISC Collections know.

Q: Will the librarian have to renegotiate e-resource contracts and pay more for the remainder of any agreement?

• If the resource was not a JISC Collections deals: it will depend on the individual service provider as to what they do e.g. if there is not long left on the current agreement they may just leave it, and move the college to the new band when the new subscription year starts.
• If the resource IS a JISC Collections deal: any JISC Collections agreements which each respective college has currently subscribed to will continue as they were until the agreements end e.g. KnowUK and NewsUK at JISC Band G for College X and Britannica Online at JISC Band J for Y. Once these agreements have been renewed the College can then join the new agreements with the new JISC Band (the subscription will cover all sites at that point). With the free of charge resources (for example Film & Sound Online, Jorum, NewsFilm Online, and Hairdressing Training), you may need to re-sign the licences so that both sites are covered under the licence i.e. as the new college.

Q: What if a college subscribed to a resource and the one they are merging with didn’t?

• If the resource was not a JISC Collections deals: contact the resource provider.
• If the resource IS a JISC Collections deal: If one institution subscribes to one or more resources but the other does not then JISC Collections can contact the publishers on your behalf to see if access can be extended to staff and students at the non-subscribing site. An additional fee may be payable to the publisher in order for this to happen.

Q: If a resource is used by one college (e.g. an agricultural college) and unlikely to be relevant to the one they merge with, will they still have an increase in subscription cost because of a change of JISC band, even though the number of people using a resource won’t go up?

• If the resource was not a JISC Collections deal: contact the resource provider, explaining the situation. It may be that you don’t have to increase the subscription, especially if you can restrict access to students on the course (possible if the college is using Federated Access Management/Shibboleth).
• If the resource IS a JISC Collections deal: The answer to this can get a little complex. If it is a resource which one of the colleges had subscribed to prior to the merger then they can continue to pay at the JISC Banded rate they were paying prior to the merger (they would simply choose not to extend access to the other sites). Once the agreement is renewed they would normally have to pay at the new JISC Banded rate as the licence would cover the whole institution. In those cases where an FE College merges with a HE institution JISC Collections can arrange for the FE staff and students to subscribe to an FE only agreement on the basis that access to the resource is restricted to the staff and students on the FE campus and courses. Because of the complexity of this area, you should definitely contact JISC Collections to discuss the situation.

Update 25 Jan 2010: Mark Ludlam of Gorseinon College has created a useful blog post about college mergers.

I just wanted to plug an e-resource for the more academic end of the spectrum – there is a collection called ” which is free to FE and HE (forever). You can read about it here – probably most useful to history and media studies courses, but with relevance to many other areas. That page includes a link to the form so that you can sign up for it and set up access. It is just one of the databases made available for free as part of ‘The JISC Collections UK National Academic Archive‘.

It is one of the deals listed on our Delicious account under free e-resources. There is also some great stuff coming out of the JISC Digitisation Programme that librarians should be aware of. It includes many free resources, some already launched and some to come – let’s make the most of them by promoting them within colleges.

(Cartoon – click to enlarge)

We have covered the ‘E-books for FE’ project in the past – the collection is now live! See Anna Vernon’s email (below) for instructions on how to sign up; also the project website. There was a useful presentation and hands-on session about this at the Fforwm LRS Managers’ Meeting on 9th June 2009, and some of the points that came out of it were:

• There is an extra allocation for textbooks of relevance to Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. If there are any textbooks that you would like to see included in this then please email the details to Anna Vernon (her contact details are at the end of her email). There is obviously no guarantee that your requests will be included but they will help to create a list of most-requested textbooks in order to keep the new titles relevant. It doesn’t matter if the titles are currently available as e-books or not, just come up with a list of any titles you would like to see included (e.g. because of high usage, or relevance to Wales and the curricula taught in Wales).
• At the hands-on, a number of librarians were pleased when they spotted some very high-demand titles that are available to FE in this collection – see Anna’s email for how to get a full list of all 2990 e-books made available to you (which can also be useful when making printed book purchasing decisions over the summer).
• If you are not on the E-BOOKS-FOR-FE mailing list and would like to be updated on progress, you can subscribe here.
• Training – for those who missed the event on 9th June, there are regular free Ebrary training webinars. That page also links to short videos and guides that could be used with staff and students (to save having to create all your own promotional materials and guides).
• Any feedback on the project is welcomed by Anna Vernon. For example many institutions have an access management policy of IP-recognition on-campus, and Athens/Shibboleth off-campus – if you have trouble setting up the options you want then that could be useful feedback for Anna to pass on to Ebrary.
• Good news is that Ebrary have agreed to look into creating a Welsh interface for Ebrary.
• In the next Fforwm LRS Managers’ Meeting there will be a slot on the agenda to discuss how colleges are getting on with using this collection, sharing tips on promoting e-books etc.

Now it’s time for every college in Wales to get signed up and start using this amazing free resource!

Dear All

I am delighted to announce that the e-books for FE agreement is now available for completion to enable colleges to access. The e-books for FE project, funded by the Learning Skills Council and JISC will make 2990 e-books freely available to every further education college in the UK, for five years. The e-books available cover subjects as diverse as Fashion Design and Software Engineering, Health and Social Care and Automobile Electronics, Beauty Therapy and Practical Lambing.

The e-books for FE project – How to subscribe
Information on how to subscribe, a list of frequently asked questions and the acceptance of sub-licence agreement can be found on the JISC Collections website: http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/ebooksforfePrint out, or save and read the e-books for FE Sub-Licence Agreement. Please note the agreement lists all of the 2990 e-books included in the collection it is fairly substantial so you may wish to save a copy as opposed to printing out the full document.

1. Complete one original copy of the e-books for FE Sub-Licence Agreement Form. Please use block capitals and black ink.
2. Scan and email a copy with the hand signature to subscriptionshelp@jisc.ac.uk or post the original Licence Agreement, completed and unbound to:JISC Collections Helpdesk
   c/o Content Complete Ltd
   Unit 7, North Leigh Business Park
   North Leigh
   Oxfordshire
   OX29 6SW
3. Please retain a copy for your institutional records.

Ebrary will create a partner website for your college shortly after the JISC Collections helpdesk passes on your acceptance of sub licence agreement form. Quality checked MARC21 cataloguing records will be freely available from your college ebrary partner website. Once you have submitted the completed sub-license form an account will be created for you. From here you can access your usage statistics as well as gaining access to the personalized MARC records for your institution.

JISC Collections recommends that all libraries incorporate all the MARC records into their catalogues and provide direct links from the library catalogue and Virtual Learning Environments as it has been shown in several studies that this is essential in raising awareness of the availability of the e-books and encouraging use by students. For instructions on obtaining your MARC records please click here.

For a full list of titles freely available through the Core Collection please click here.
If you have any queries please check the FAQ’s or get in touch,

Kind Regards
Anna

Anna Vernon
e-books for FE Project Manager
JISC Collections
Brettenham House
5 Lancaster Place
London, WC2E 7EN
Tel: +44 (0)20 3006 6008
Email: a.vernon@jisc.ac.uk
Web: http://fe.jiscebooksproject.org/

Image from Conduit toolbars video

One of the most common queries that Sam and I get is to do with how to promote e-resources in order to increase take-up by staff and students. There are some ideas in the RSC Wales E-resources information area, but an idea that has popped up a few times recently is that of using customised toolbars.

The basic idea is that a toolbar is created that links to (or in some cases searches) the library’s resources, making it easier for users to find quality information for their teaching and learning (see this article). Not all toolbar solutions cost anything – for every company such as Besttoolbars which sells toolbar solutions, there are free options such as the Google Toolbar for Firefox, or Conduit. There are even specialist browser-plugin toolbars for libraries, such as LibX. These can do much more than just link to resources. A selection from the LibX feature list includes:

• The “Magic Button” – simply select an article title and have Scholar & the OpenURL resolver deliver an appropriate (accessible, “paid-for”) copy. This is a feature we use daily for our own research, it’s proved to be a tremendous time saver.
• Lookups of a complete book title, author, or ISBN – usually by selecting & right-clicking on a webpage.
• Proxying a page or link when coming from off-campus.
• Using cues and autolinking to get from pages that a user frequently uses to the library catalog.

Toolbars that appear as browser plugins could easily be installed across a college, with the advantage that IP address recognition can then allow users straight through to online resources. The LRS could also make the plugin available to users for their home computers and laptops, and in conjunction with appropriate access management (e.g. Shibboleth, or proxy solutions) the user at home could also have a seamless experience.

Note that toolbars don’t have to be something integrated into a browser – with a bit of creative thinking an LRS could incorporate them into their webpages, Moodle, the college desktop or even the OPAC. Let us know if you have tried this kind of approach – and how successful it was!