UC&R Wales Charity Summer Walk at St Fagans National History Museum

University, College & Research Group (UC&R) Wales invite you to their Charity Summer Walk at St Fagans National History Museum on Saturday 2nd July 2011. This is a free event. 

Join us for a great day out at St Fagans National History Museum http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/ near Cardiff. We will meet at 11am outside the museum shop and be given a guided walk of the grounds by UC&R Wales Chair Sonja Haerkoenen. “Sonja’s personal St Fagans highlights tour” will last 1hour 30mins and is easy walking. After the walk you can watch woodcarvers at work. Go Green in your Garden will show you how to make your garden a haven for wildlife. Both are free events. Feel free to bring a picnic or for those who’d rather eat inside, St Fagans has several cafés. Friends and Family welcome.

This is a free event with optional donations of £3.00 for Book Aid International.

You don’t have to be a UC&R (or even a CILIP) member to attend, please bring along as many colleagues, friends and family as you can. 

If you are interested in attending or for more information please contact Elizabeth Kensler: eak@aber.ac.uk / 01970 621848

Further information see:  http://www.cilip.org.uk/FileDownloadsLibrary/Groups/ucr-wales/July%20event%202011.pdf

JUSP welcomes WHELF members

The JUSP team are very pleased that most WHELF libraries have now joined the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP).

Libraries spend millions of pounds on electronic journals each year, but gathering statistics about their use hasn’t always been easy. Diminishing budgets must demonstrate value for money, and reliable data is key. Comparative usage statistics help evaluate the impact of e-resources and inform future purchasing decisions. The Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) provides a “one-stop shop” for libraries to view, download and analyse their usage reports from NESLi2 publishers. It responds to current financial challenges with time and cost saving benefits.

WHELF libraries in JUSP are able to view JR1 and JR1a usage reports for the OUP deal which are gathered automatically each month via SUSHI. We also collect OUP usage data back to January 2009 so you are able to compare usage through the WHELF deal with usage through earlier deals or subscribed titles.  If you use an intermediary service (Ingentaconnect, Swetswise or EbscoEJS) we also collect their usage reports and add them to those from the publisher, to give you a complete record of use.

Once in JUSP, WHELF libraries can benefit from access also to usage reports from their NESLi2 deals. Publishers currently in JUSP are AIP, Annual Reviews, Elsevier, Nature Publishing Group, OUP, Project Muse, Royal Society of Chemistry, Sage and Springer. We aim to include all NESLi2 publishers by the end of the year, and hope to extend JUSP to cover other publishers too. We are now able to collect usage data back to January 2009 via SUSHI for almost all publishers in JUSP.  We collect usage reports for these publishers whether or not you take the NESLi2 deal.

As well as giving you the ability to view or download usage reports, JUSP offers you a number of other reports and tables to help analyse your usage. Most reports can be downloaded as CSV files. You can also use our SUSHI server to gather reports from JUSP.

The number of libraries in JUSP is growing rapidly. We now have over 70 participating libraries and another 20 in the process of joining. JUSP members can log in to their own reports using Shibboleth authentication from the website http://www.jusp.mimas.ac.uk/ .  You will find more information and updates on the website, including a new video presentation on how to use JUSP on the Support tab.

As a community resource, we always welcome your comments and ideas. We are often able to respond quickly to your suggestions and a number of reports now in JUSP have been developed as a result of user feedback. We would welcome any ideas from WHELF members on what else you would like to see in JUSP.

Angela Conyers, Evidence Base (angela.conyers@bcu.ac.uk)

Jo Lambert, Mimas (Jo.Lambert@manchester.ac.uk)

New WAG Cabinet announced

First Minister Carwyn Jones has today [13 May 2011] announced the members of his new Cabinet as the Welsh Government begins its ambitious programme to stand up for Wales and create a country of equality, opportunity and social justice.

http://wales.gov.uk/newsroom/firstminister/2011/cabinet/?lang=en  

Leighton Andrews AC/AM – Minister for Education and Skills

Jeff Cuthbert AC/AM - Deputy Minister for Skills

Future Directions: Learning & Teaching and Widening Access Strategies workshop

HEA workshop – presentations now online: http://bit.ly/i5EOwO

Foundation Degree in Library and Information Practice

Glyndŵr University’s Foundation Degree in Library and Information Practice is recruiting for the September 2011 intake which will be held during the following weeks:

w/c 12th September 2011
w/c 31st October 2011
w/c 6th February 2012
w/c 14th May 2012

The course comprises eight modules and runs over two years part-time.

Each year consists of four modules with each module run over a one week block.

Modules include: Information as a core product; customer relationship management in library and information services; Library 2.0 and key management skills for the library and information professional.

Course fees are £995 per year with the additional cost of accommodation. A bursary may be available for the first year from CyMAL: Museums Libraries and Archives Wales, for those students domiciled in Wales.

A short description of the course is given at http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/en/Undergraduatecourses/LibraryandInformationPractice/ and you can download an application form at http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/en/Howtoapply/Part-timeundergraduatecourses/TheFile,10472,en.pdf

If you require any further information about the course please do not hesitate to contact Nicola Watkinson at nicolaw@glyndwr.ac.uk or Paul Jeorrett at p.jeorrett@glyndwr.ac.uk