Again below ground in the auditorium of the Library at the University of Stellenbosch, in South Africa, with 120 plus delegates for the second day of this event.

Despite being below ground, it is a remarkably bright and airy library - as you can see from this picture the entrance is very open and allows in much light.

Following the previous evenings excellent social event at one of the many local wine estates, the assembled audience were remarkably bright, attentive, and appreciative of all the speakers.

Points from the day:-

New Challenges for Libraries as Partners

Mr Richard Wallis Technology Evangelist, Talis - Web 2.0 - Library 2.0

• My presentation is available here

Ms Jenny Walker Vice President: Marketing, Xrefer - Where Google and Libraries Meet

• Our domain used to be OPACS
• OCLC Perceptions Survey - Usage of electronic resources - search engines:72% Library web site:30%
• Where do yo begin search - 84% lib 1%
• Search share Google 50% - Yahoo 23% MS 10% AOL 5.5%
• Google 77% increase in revenue - doubling profits - 2006
• Google is not a verb!
• Partnership with Blackboard [Scholar in Blackboard]
• BookSearch - Publisher Program full text search/Snippet view - massive increase in hits on publishers’ sites
• Booksearch - Library Program ‘Google 5′ plus others.
• Digitization a step change
• 56% of works unique to one of G5
• Google News Archive - Sept 2006 - Free plus chargeable content
• Google Scholar - 2004 “best possible scholarly search”
• Its about finding not searching
• The appropriate copy problem - use a linkserver
• Scholar links to reference tool of choice
• Holdings - Libraries need to provide holdings file
• Google [non-Library] adopted a Library Standard - OpenURL
• So far 850 resolvers registered
• Scope Elsevier & ACS not covered - not context sensitive - no sort
• Lack of Library control - source selection - branding - still [3 years] in beta
• Scholar not perfect - other aren’t either
• Place for Google and Libraries to meet
• Not ‘either or’ - place for specialized and web wide
• We need to ensure libraries integrate well + we need to learn from Google - better discovery tools for users

Ms Dianne Man Deputy University Librarian (Technical Services), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg - Supporting research in South Africa : setting up an integrated library research consortium

• Research consortium - Universities UCT, UKZN & Wits
• Relationship with Carnegie International Dev Program - focus on social, political & economic change
• Carnegie libraries project - partnerships with universities which encourage replication of models.
• Current research situation: aging white males - blacks and women to entering in proportion - many young have little basic research skills
• Libs can’t transform research BUT research not possible without libraries
• geographically based consortiums in SA - set-up with Mellon funding
• Project partners straddle current consortiums
• Components: Research Portal / research Commons / libraries
• Portal: Commercial databases + Lib cats + institutional repositories + Open access Content - new research content + African content
• Research commons: Physical space [different] in each library - reserved for post grads & staff + new technology & trained librarians
• Academy for research librarians - domain/subject expertise + provide in-depth assistance + technical knowledge
• Selection process for librarians 6 from each institution for training - then select best 2 from each for overseas training - mentoring on return. Process repeated until total of 36 trained.
• Project to run for 3 years from summer 2006
• No existing model to follow
• Carnegie’s plan is to roll this out across SA and rest of Africa - pressure to be successful.

Mr Wouter Klapwijk Library IT Services, University of Stellenbosch - Supporting a research repository information infrastructure

• Year old project - CIB DSpace project
• Issues around preservation/dissemination important
• Must address: management - federated search - technical (eg. home connectivity) issues
• CIB: Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
• Project must address client needs
• Prepared Use Cases - work flow/ access levels /permissions / data models /select list values / metadata schemas (Dublin Core)
• Permissions: Access only available to public after 5 years - Open Access?
• Conflict with User Requirements and system design
• Off the shelf digital repository available to do job
• Could develop own but would be costly and not standard.
• Platform DSpace, on ubuntu, on Dell. Info here: http://www.lib.sun.ac.za/dspacewiki
• Metadata is glue of any digital repository strategy
• DC is a cross domain info standard - not suitable for geospacial digital objects - use a CIB Project profile of ISO-19115
• Profile validated by Cataloging department
• Data dictionary enhanced with SA standards - Used DSpace Dublin Core elements where possible
• Geospacial data can be linked to Google Earth, etc.
• Preservation needs to address preservation of content AND preservation of access
• Preserv project - LOCKSS project TOM (Typed Object Model)
• LOCKSS-SA
• The Handle System www.handle.net - persistent links
• Register in ALL OA registries
• Integrate with institution - several repositories behind an aggregating front repository using OAI harvesting

Technorati Tags: Talis, Talis Platform, AquaBrowser, Library, Library 2.0, Web 2.0, Cenote, Web Services, Stellenbosch Symposium

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In the auditorium of the underground [from a physical location, not subversive literature point of view] Library at the University of Stellenbosch with 120 plus delegates.

Points from the day:-

Dr Tony Hey Corporate vice President for Technical Computing, Microsoft - E-Science and Scholarly Communication

• e-Science all about global collaboration
• On verge of new paradigm - e-science or Data-centric science
• e-Science is a shorthand for a set of technologies to support collaborative networked data-driven collaboration
• Huge amounts of data a problem for the scientists
• Send the calculations to the data
• Researching Publications - expose how ranking achieved (reputation/specialization/etc.) - live documents (RSS) formalized ratings
• Couple of examples The international virtual telescope + Comb-e-Chem Project
• Networked distributed e-science world (control your experiment on your PDA from the student bar)
• Cyberinfrastructure vision - high bandwidth research networks middleware services (authentication etc.) open access federation of research repositories
• Interoperability is essential regardless of IBM/Linux/Windows/etc. - SOA Web services
• IBM - Microsoft - Open source will all interoperate
• Microsoft Open Specification Promise (Sept 2006) “No one needs to sign anything”
• Open Grid Forum (OGF)
• Data Publishing: Metadata Annotations in step with the evolution of the data
• Berlin Declaration 2003
• Institutions cannot afford subscriptions to all publications - results of publicly funded research should be available to all
• Microsoft Conference Management Tool (CMT) to include publish of papers
• Portable version PubMedCentral
• 2 routes to OA - 1. Author pays (difficult commercial mode) 2. Author provides OA by putting up on web site and/or submit to repository
• The Service Revolution - Web 2.0 social s/w wikis blogs etc. - Windows Live Academic - Mashups
• Microsoft Office Open XML (OOXML) - OpenXML Translator Project between OOXML & ODF open source Project
• MS wishes to work with the University Research & lib communities”

The New Research Landscape

Dr Andrew M KanikiExecutive Director: Knowledge Management and Strategy of the National Research Foundation (NRF) - South Africa in the Global knowledge arena: implications for academic libraries

• SA Government set itself objective of transforming country
• Has to operate in global community
• Country’s competitiveness determined by ability to produce internationally competitive knowledge
• Lots of white papers, strategies, policies, and frameworks
• Complexity of world & national problems different types of data - integration issues - cross disciplines
• growing cross border collaboration
• Evolution of the legal concept of intellectual property
• Rapidly changing technologies
• Challenges for academic libraries - understanding of international measures for competitiveness - key national policies closer working relationships withe Universities’ research offices
• Effective management of the S&T data resources for optimal access - developing rational rules and structure for this
• Data management cannot be an after thought
• Libraries need to work with Research

Dr Hussein Sulemandepartment of Computer Science University of Cape Town - What is Wrong with Digital Repository Software?

• What is a Digital object
• archives - learning tools - closed repositories
• Open access repositories (arXiv.org) - teaching objects - (causeweb.org)
• Why Open Access - “double citation impact for open access as compared to closed journal” - people downloading papers within days of publishing in repository
• Several Open Source and commercial repositories
• Has access stored/archived objects from web
• Why not use them - its all hype - its difficult - few staff etc.
• SA no worse than elsewhere do training - match staff to use of resources digital/physical
• Why not packaged installation, why not external APIs, customization requires a programmer - systems do not scale well beyond small collections (hours to index, etc.) - can’t remove name of product from repository instance
• Lock-In how easy to hop products?
• These roadblocks are being worked on - WS in Greenstone - Scalability in DSpace - configurability - OS integration - lock-in will improve when tools no longer need to be ’sold’
• Research taking place on integration consistent access - web 2.0/AJAX
• Repositories get lots right
• Issues are known and being addressed
• They are so important - implement now!

The New Learning Landscape

Prof Johannes CronjeTeaching and Training Studies University of Pretoria - Who Killed E-learning?

• The buzz-word e-learning has died
• The vision of the e-learning doing it all died with it - monumental failures
• Why? - over emphasis on technology being the life blood of e-learning
• presenting things - push technology - ppt/pdf too much text
• lack of on going support - no clear e-learning strategy - no maintenance of commitment
• Nobody will morn its passing we are looking - elsewhere
• Strong competition for easy options
• We should be thinking about learning not e-learning
• A successful project 20% technique (the e-bit) 80% ?????

Dr Brenda LeibowitzDirector: Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Stellenbosch - The Higher Education Teaching and Learning Environment - challenges and opportunities in relation to the electronic information highway

• Pressures faced by academics researchers/teachers/social development
• challenges posed by unequal divided society
• expectations from employers
• “Wobbly” student information skills
• Advantages: paperless - speed information availability - collaboration opportunity to restructure
• Initiatives - Student/Staff/Alumni portals - Student tracking system - e-portfolio - Turnitin - Web CT Vista -
• Benefits of cross country & culture involvement - addresses inequalities (inability to travel)
• Issues around connectivity, parity in skills eg. PowerPoint

Dr Archie DickDepartment of Information Science, University of Pretoria - University teaching and learning: some breakthroughs and blind spots

• Librarians are still appointed based on professional criteria - academics by academic criteria
• Academics don’t see librarians as teachers
• Academic librarians have much to offer academics and university management
• They are scholars in their own right - Librarians should be publish more articles and be encouraged to do so.
• They should be represented on research and other committees
• They are academics - partners in academic research

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