WHELF Annual Report for 2008-09 now published

The WHELF Annual Report for 2008-2009 is now published. Copies of the report are available on the WHELF website in English and in Welsh.

Don’t miss your chance to meet Ruth Jones!

As Ruth Jones said at the launch of the first ever Welsh libraries arts competition “In the words of Madonna go for it and Express Yourself!”

We are now half way through the competition and entries are flooding in to libraries and via the web site http://library.wales.org/express-yourself/  The closing date is 1st December 2009, so don’t miss your chance of winning up to £500 and meeting TV celebrity Ruth Jones – our Welsh libraries champion.

Welsh libraries are encouraging everyone to show off their creative skills – the theme is ‘libraries’ but can be interpreted in any way you like, whether it is creative writing, dancing, drama, music, animation, painting, photography, drawing or sculpture – the choice is yours!

The competition is open to all students in higher education in Wales.

As well as having the chance to win prizes from £50-£500; the finalists will be invited to an awards event on 25th February at the Senedd in Cardiff where they will get the chance to meet actress and writer Ruth Jones and have their work displayed nationally.

For your chance to win up to £500 and meet Ruth Jones call into your university library or visit http://library.wales.org/express-yourself/ and get your hands on the entry pack which will give you full details of how to enter.

The closing date for all entries is 1st December 2009.

Good luck!

University of Wales Virtual Academic Library

Leigh Abbott, from the University of Wales, will go on maternity leave from the end of November 2009. Bronwen Blatchford will be covering for Leigh as part-time Librarian for the University of Wales Virtual Academic Library (UWVAL). Bronwen has previously worked for the Welsh Development Agency and Deloitte but has left her management consultancy days behind her and is now pursuing a career in libraries. Bronwen is a former Aberystwyth University Graduate Library Trainee and worked with Swansea University on their RFID tagging project last year. She is currently studying for a part-time MSc in Information Science and is excited to be undertaking her first professional library position.

Digitisation initiatives in Wales

Three projects are in train that will all contribute to WHELF’s ambition to put searchable texts of ‘Wales in print’ complete on the web.

‘Welsh Journals Online’, led by the National Library of Wales, aims to make available the complete contents of around 50 periodicals published in Wales, in Welsh and English, from 1900 (and before that date in the case of title already in existence in 1900). Nine titles are already available, and the rest will follow in the coming months.
http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/

‘Welsh Ballads’ is also a JISC-funded project and when complete will offer the texts of 5,000 ballads from the early 18th century onwards. Cardiff University is the lead partner, with help from Bangor, Lampeter and the National Library of Wales.
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/digital/welshballads.html

The largest and most recent of these text projects is ‘Welsh Newspapers and Magazine Online’, funded by a £2m strategic grant by the Welsh Assembly Government to the National Library of Wales. This will concentrate on the nineteenth century and will open up a vast quantity (2m pages) of knowledge currently very difficult to investigate easily. A website will be available shortly.

Meanwhile, an important and very large archival collection of historic Welsh wills, is from this week available online through the National Library of Wales.
http://cat.llgc.org.uk/cgi-bin/gw/chameleon?skin=profeb&lng=en

Big digitisation: where next?

Paper delivered at the Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts conference in Belfast on 8 September 2009 by Andrew Green, National Library of Wales.

Andrew’s theme is ” what I have termed ‘big digitisation’: the attempt to translate large quantities of analogue knowledge into digital form. I shall concentrate on knowledge originally in print form and I want to consider three questions: why this mass approach has emerged, what it has achieved and might achieve, and how different models for big digitisation compare.”  He includes an assessment of Google Books and its impact on libraries worldwide.

http://www.llgc.org.uk/fileadmin/documents/pdf/darlith_big_digitisation_where_next.pdf

The new North Reading Room opens

The National Library of Wales has made a short film clip about the new North Reading Room:
http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=4037

Don’t forget that their online services and databases are available to HE staff and students anywhere in Wales, and you can register for those services without having to visit Aberystwyth – see the web page at:
http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=179

Futureproof: making libraries indispensible to learning, teaching and research

The Fifth CILIP CoFHE and UC&R Joint Conference takes place at Exeter University, 21-23 June 2010

The biennial CILIP CoFHE and UC&R Conference has become a significant date in the academic library professional’s diary. It provides the opportunity to share expertise, experience and knowledge in one of the most challenging and rapidly changing sectors of the profession. Next year’s conference theme will examine the key role that academic libraries and their staff play in both the learning cycle of the student and the wider demands of the institutions they serve.

We are aiming to include a wide range of workshops led by experts and plenaries from the professions’ leaders and influential voices and are circulating a call for papers for copnference workshop presentations:

Topics/themes will include:

•       the library’s role in Digital Britain
•       managing a service during recession
•       libraries as central to their institutions
•       marketing and advocacy
•       cross sectoral, organisational and other partnerships
•       learning, research and information literacy
•       the student experience
•       employer responsiveness
•       mobile learning

The call for papers opens on Monday 19th October and closes on Friday 4th December 2009. Please find attached the ‘Call for papers’ or download the ‘Call for papers’ instructions at:
http://www.cilip.org.uk/specialinterestgroups/bysubject/ucr/Conference

Open Access Week underway

Open Access Week is now underway and the Welsh Repository Network has been gathering together some of the news stories they have seen. Read more on their blog at: http://welshrepositorynetwork.blogspot.com/2009/10/open-access-week-underway.html

They would like to gather together any stories from around Wales to do their own bit of OA promotion, so please do get in touch with the team via wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk if you have done anything to promote OA week.

Average academic book price report re-launched

LISU has now re-launched its Average Prices of Academic Books series, with a single publication covering both UK and USA titles for the academic year July 2008 to June 2009.

The full press release can be found at:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/lisu/pages/pr/bp1pr.html

UC&R visit to the National Library of Wales

Thursday, 26 November 2009 in the Drwm, National Library of Wales

10.00  Arrival, and tea/coffee
10.30 Welcome and introduction by Andrew Green, Librarian
10.45 The National Library of Wales Education Service (Owen Llewelyn, Senior Education Officer)
11.15  Enquiries at the National Library of Wales (Anwen Pierce, Head of Enquiries)
11.45  Electronic resources at the National Library of Wales (Manon Foster Evans, Head of Reader Services)
12.15  Putting Welsh Journals online : the challenges (Martin Locock, SCIF Project Co-ordinator)
12.45 – 1.30  Lunch at Pendinas
1.30  Digitisation of Newspapers and Journals (Alan Vaughan Hughes, Digitisation Project Manager)
2.00  North Reading Room; presentation and tour of the new reading room (Iwan ap Dafydd, North Reading Room Manager)
2.30  Depart

[Members of the University, College and Research Libraries Wales Section Committee will hold a meeting at 2.30]

If you are interested in attending this event, which is free of charge, could you please contact Carol Edwards at the National Library of Wales, on 01970 632923 or cce@llgc.org.uk