50,000 full-text theses now available on EThOS

EThOS announce that just over 50,000 full-text theses are now available on EThOS, the E-Theses Online Service. The 50,000th thesis to be added was ”The process of writing using a computer: a study of first school children”, written by Charalabos-Babis Bakopoulos from University of East Anglia. The thesis, written in 1991, was added to EThOS after being digitised at the BL in response to a request submitted through EThOS.

The milestone comes at a significant time for EThOS who are now able to share further news of some changes that aim to move EThOS onto a more sustainable footing. As many participants will already know, after extensive consultation and some challenging times during 2010, a new EThOS Governing Board has been established which will now guide the development of the EThOS service and oversee the introduction of a new shared service business model between the HE community and the British Library.

The Board has now appointed an EThOS Service Manager – Sara Gould – to work with HE and the BL to develop the detail of any changes and roll out the new model. This 1-year role is generously funded by JISC.

The Board has also now approved a number of high-level changes, the most important of which is the introduction of a membership fee for all HEIs. This shared contribution will allow EThOS to implement all of the upgrades and improvements to the existing service and bring in the additional elements that have been discussed over the last year or so.  

The detailed membership fees and other arrangements are being shared in an EThOS Update e-newsletter sent to all EThOS contacts today. If you are the EThOS manager for your institution but have not received the Update, please contact sara.gould@bl.uk.

Please be assured that the current EThOS service continues completely as normal, and we will communicate any changes as they occur. If you have EThOS digitisation funds held with the BL, you do not need to do anything: the service continues as usual and no changes are planned for HEIs that continue to use the BL’s digitisation service. If you have questions about EThOS, please continue to send them to ethos-help@bl.uk.

Launch of Theses Collection Wales

In February the Welsh Repository Network held a launch event for ‘ Theses Collection Wales‘. The collection allows users to view both electronic and paper copies of theses and dissertations from every Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Wales through a dedicated catalogue.

Screen shot of ‘Theses Collection Wales’

The Theses Collection Wales includes approximately 50,000 theses and dissertations which have been presented for postgraduate degrees in Welsh HEIs. The collection comprises theses and dissertations arising from PhD and research Masters degrees, as well as taught Masters dissertations which have a Welsh interest or have gained a distinction.

Participants at the launch

 

The vast majority of the current collection is in paper format, but electronic deposit is becoming increasingly common. Through the WRN every HEI in Wales has developed an institutional repository to store and provide online access to their research output, including electronic theses and dissertations – more commonly referred to as ‘e-theses’. In 2009 the NLW and the WRN began work on the ‘e-theses harvesting service.’ This service enabled the NLW to collect, through harvesting, copies of the full-text e-theses and to provide continued access to them through preservation management.

 

 The project team

Anyone may search Theses Collection Wales but to access the resources within the collection it is necessary to register as a NLW reader. This will enable you to request to view a print copy of a thesis in the Library Reading Rooms or alternatively to view and download an e-thesis within the catalogue.

All of the electronic PhD theses that have been collected by the NLW from participating institutions will be further harvested by the British Library’s EThOS service. EThOS aims to provide access to all theses produced by UK higher education. For more information regarding EThOS visit http://ethos.bl.uk/

The presentations delivered during the event are now available online - find them on the WRN blog at http://welshrepositorynetwork.blogspot.com/2011/02/launch-of-theses-collection-wales.html 

Thanks to WRN for the text and the photos.

AEIOU – increasing the visibility of academic research in Wales

We are pleased to announce that the WRN consortium has been successful in their bid for further JISC funding.

The AEIOU (Activity data to Enhance and Increase Open-access Usage) Wales project will run for six months and starts this week. 

Project Summary
The AEIOU Wales project will provide a cost-effective and sustainable shared national service based on open standards that will benefit Welsh HEI partners by improving the quality, impact and productivity of their academic research.

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that the majority of user traffic into an institutional repository is generated through hits from Web search engines such as Google. Searchers will be directed towards a single item or record having no additional incentive to look for further relevant information within the repository.

The purpose of the proposed AEIOU Wales project is to increase the visibility and usage of all academic research by aggregating Welsh institutional repository activity data to provide a “Frequently viewed together” recommendation service, such as those used by Amazon and many other e-commerce websites.

The project will utilise existing relationships and build on the national repository infrastructure established through the WRN.

The project will create a shared recommendation service by aggregating activity data from each WRN repository. Searchers accessing an item within an institutional repository will be presented with recommendations to further Welsh research outputs and will be directed to those items via a Welsh Research Gateway. The recommendation service will also promote relationships between cross-institutional, collaborative research groups within Wales.

Chair in Digital Collections

Lorna Hughes, currently Deputy Director of the Centre for e-Research at King’s College London, has been appointed to a pioneering new post at the National Library of Wales. She will become the world’s first ever Chair in Digital Collections. The post, funded for five years by the University of Wales, is the first academic Chair to be established in any national library in the world.

Lorna has twenty years experience in researching and organising digital information and has worked in universities in Glasgow, Oxford, Arizona, New York and London.

Lorna will undertake and lead academic research on the latest developments in digital resources, while applying their findings to the large digital collections housed at the National Library of Wales. This work spans the creation, provision, investigation, interpretation and conservation of digital collections, including legal issues, the management of data, innovative research methods, and technological developments in access, search and exploitation.

Lorna says, ‘I am delighted to be joining the National Library of Wales, which has a world-class reputation and some very important collections. The NLW has incredible digital collections, and has taken a very strategic approach to digitisation in recent years. I hope to develop a number of new research projects related to the creation, management and use of digital collections. I am also very committed to developing collaborations and partnerships, both nationally and internationally.’

In many respects Lorna will be going back to her roots as she takes up the job of Chair in Digital Collections.

‘I had a Welsh grandfather, who practiced as a dentist in Glasgow in the 1930s! Sadly, he died many years before I was born, but I am now inspired to track down some of my Welsh connections. I am also really looking forward to re-locate in West Wales,’ she added.

Andrew Green, Librarian of The National Library of Wales, is looking forward to Lorna beginning in her new post in Aberystwyth.

‘The National Library of Wales is very glad to appoint a person of Lorna’s calibre and expertise. We hope she will be inspired by the collections within the National Library and beyond. We’re sure she will be able to bring her enthusiasm and experience together for the benefit of extending our understanding and appreciation of digitised and as yet undigitised collections to the world’s attention and benefit,’ said Andrew Green.

Professor Marc Clement, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, also expressed his pleasure at the appointment:

‘The University of Wales is delighted to be instrumental in establishing this unique professorial post.  I feel certain that Professor Hughes brings exactly the right mix of experience and enthusiasm required to lead the innovative work of pioneering the Library’s new technological developments.’

Open Access Week competiton – WRN

The week of Monday 18th – Sunday 24th October has been allocated as Open Access Week across the globe. Now in its 4th year, this dedicated week aims to promote ‘Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research’.

To mark the occasion the WRN are running a competition for partners with an Open Access theme.

They are looking for your best repository success story. Whether it’s a story of success convincing an academic researcher to interact with the repository, or a tale of success regarding a deposited item that ended up proving the wide-reaching audience of the repository.

Entries can be as long or as short as you want and they are looking to put the best stories together in a blog post and perhaps even in a new advocacy learning object!

The competition is open from now until the Friday before Open Access Week (15th October).

Email: wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

There will be a prize available for the winning entry.

Good luck!

Learn about other Open Access Week events, contests and resources through www.openaccessweek.org

WRN Repository Stream at Gregynog

The presentations delivered at the repository stream are now available online from the WRN website at: http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/en/gregynog.html.

In order to evaluate the training we deliver as a project we look to collect feedback wherever possible to feedback to our sponsors JISC. Therefore, if you did attend the repository, and haven’t already filled out and returned the paper version, could we please ask you to take a few moments to complete an online feedback form available from http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/en/gregynogFeedback.html.

WRN also held a discussion session on the hurdles faced by Repository Administrators when trying to encourage academic buy-in to their systems. As part of the discussions we also suggested solutions for each of the obstacles. We have added the discussions points raised to the WRN blog and we are looking for your input.

Please add comments and suggestions to the blog post, and suggest advocacy ideas that have worked for you. It is hoped this exchange of ideas will aid both our WRN community and the repository community as a whole.

Repositories Strand – Gregynog 2010

Just a reminder that we have announced the repository stream programme at this year’s Gregynog Colloquium. Please book now to attend as delegate bookings are closing at the end of this week (Friday 21^st)!

The full Colloquium programme is available on the Gregynog site at http://www.gregynog.ac.uk/HEWIT/index.asp?Page=2 

As in previous years the WRN will be sponsoring places at the Colloquium for 2 participants per partner institution to attend the repository stream. Please book as usual via the Gregynog website but inform the project team that you would like a subsidised place by emailing wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

Looking forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.

Repositories Strand – Gregynog 2010

Tuesday 8th June 2010

15.30-17.00 WRN Business Meeting

Wednesday 9th June 2010

9.15 – 10.00 The power of mandates, Sue Hodges, University of Salford

10.00 – 10.30 Publications Management System at Swansea University – Alex Roberts, Swansea University

10.30 – 11.00 Research Management System at the University of Glamorgan – Leanne Beevers & Neil Williams, Glamorgan University

11.00 – 11.30 Tea

11.30 – 12.00 Developing a repository, caring, sharing and living the dream – Misha Jepson, Glyndwr University

12.00 – 12.30 Encouraging Author self – deposit at Cardiff  – Tracey Andrews & Scott Hill, Cardiff University

12.30 – 13.00 Using statistics as an advocacy tool Nicky Cashman, Aberystwyth University

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

2.00 – 2.30 Repository Advocacy: The theory – WRN staff

2.30 – 3.30 Advocacy Café Society session
3 tables will be laid out each with a facilitator and a topic to discuss, participants are moved on to a new topic every 15 minutes with a 15 minute slot at the end to feedback and present findings. Suggested topics:

A)What are the main obstacles to gathering content in your repository?

B)What are the main misconceptions your stakeholders have when it comes to your repository?

C)Put yourself in the shoes of an objector and outline the main arguments against having a repository?

3.30 – 4.00 Tea

4.00 – 5.00 Advocacy in Action: Workshop/exercise. Participants are asked to work in groups to produce some broad brush repository promotional materials.

2020: a prophecy

NLW has recently published on its website a paper entitled ’2020: a long view of the National Library of Wales’.

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

The paper tries to identify the most significant factors – economic, political, social and technological – that are likely to affect the Library over the next ten years.  It goes on to suggest how the Library itself will develop over the same period.  There will be major changes in collecting, many propelled by digital developments, and in the way users and collections interact.  A much more prominent role is proposed for the Library as an educational institution, and its relationship with local institutions in Wales may well change in radical ways.

This is not a consultation paper, but comments on it are very welcome.  It will be the subject of a talk and discussion at the Welsh Libraries Conference in Llandrindod Wells on 14 May.

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.

New Welsh Repository Network (WRN) website

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Welsh Repository Network (WRN) website, available here http://www.wrn.aber.ac.uk/index_root.html.

The WRN is a collaborative venture between the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Wales to establish, develop and populate a network of interoperable institutional repositories. The vision that underpins the network is to facilitate and encourage the sharing of resources across the principality and to maximise the impact of Welsh research across the globe.

The establishment of the network was underpinned by the JISC funded WRN Start-Up Project which provided both fiscal and practical support to each WRN partner to aid in the implementation of an effective institutional repository in every Welsh HEI. The current JISC funded WRN Enhancement Project seeks to build on the previous project’s work and is investigating the potential of a collaborative, centrally managed model for accelerating the development and uptake of repository services in Welsh HEIs.

The new WRN website brings you information about the project, news on its current activities, and links to the documents and presentations produced by the project team/ project partners.

Other features of the new site include:

Project partner repository search: Allowing you to search for content across partner repositories by entering the search term in just one place.

Chat with the WRN team: Utilising the Google Chat client to offer instant support to project partner queries.

Partners Links/ WRN button: Clickable map giving the location and providing access to each of the repositories that make up the Welsh Repository Network.

**Coming soon**

Learning Objects: Online learning objects on various repository related topics to work through remotely from your desktop.

We would like to have your feedback on our website so have a look, give things a try and Get in Touch.