GAELIC Notes should be viewed with HTML enabled / viewed in the internet zone
Dear colleagues
By now you will have survived the registration onslaught and will be dealing with the challenges of information literacy and library resources training. All at the FOTIM Office wish you a happy and successful year ahead.
Zodwa, Anke, Tanya, Heidi and Carole
WELCOME Notes
We give a hearty hello to our new staff member Heidi Harmen who joined FOTIM as the Administrative Assistant in January. Welcome to you. Heidi works at the FOTIM Office, contact details are on the website.
FOTIM Notes
New Challenges facing Higher Education: University hopefuls out in the cold
About 22,000 more South African school leavers achieved university entrance passes in 2008 than in the previous year, many cannot be absorbed into an over-taxed tertiary education system, reports the Mail & Guardian.
Focus Notes : Disability
Remember the FOTIM Disability Conference 19-20 March
This conference will also deal with the challenges facing academic library services to people with disabilities.
E-access Bulletin (produced by Headstar) is a newsletter to develop and promote technologies that improve web accessibility for the blind. Click here to register.
Some interesting articles: >>> (Please pass onto friends with disabilities)
Wilson Debuts New ReadSpeaker Feature for Its Full Text Databases
Text-to-Audio Converter a boon to researchers on the go, ESL (English as 2nd language) Users and the Sight-Impaired
Inaccessible Recruitment Websites a problem for jobseekers
Inaccessible recruitment sites pose a 'huge problem' to jobseekers with disabilities, particularly since many employers are now recruiting exclusively online. E-Access Bulletin: Issue 108, December 2008
International standard for making websites accessible to people with disabilities:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Talking Points uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips with a special reader device, to impart information. Using the Bluetooth tagging system on a cell phone it provides information to blind people about their surroundings.
RoboBraille an online text conversion service has won the eAccessibility category at the European e-inclusion awards. Created by the Danish Centre for Visual Impairment, it automatically converts text sent by email in Danish, English, Italian, Greek or Portuguese into either Braille or speech
The STEP-HEAR is an information and navigation reference point system, designed for the use of blind and visually impaired people.
GAELIC Notes
Objective 1: Promote Optimal Use of the Millennium System in GAELIC member libraries
Perceptions 2008: An International Survey of Library Automation by Marshall Breeding. Jan 18, 2009, Describes the results of a survey conducted to gather data regarding the perceptions of libraries toward their automation systems'; the organizations that provide support; and the quality of support they receive.
The annual Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education. The emerging technology cited for 2009 are: mobile devices cloud computing geo-everything the personal web semantic-aware applications smart objects
Objective 2: Build capacity through identification and provision of training needs and services for the optimal utilization of resources
Academic Library Research: Perspectives and Current Trends: a new publication:
In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update: the Future of Reading: (NY Times 16 Feb 09)
Stephanie Rosalia, a school librarian, demonstrates how her job has changed... she wore a T-shirt imprinted with the words "Don't make me use my librarian voice."
South African Librarians at the Mortenson Centre arriving February:
9 librarians from university libraries in South Africa will be visiting the Mortenson Center from February 20th to March 10th. Their short stay is packed with many activities, including trips to Purdue University, Northwestern University, and Eastern Illinois University. We wish them an enjoyable and fruitful visit.
The University of Pretoria receives a Carnegie Grant to develop library skills and leadership and to establish a Leadership Institute
Objective 3: Improve cost efficiency through joint procurement and resources sharing
The Library of Congress gets a grant to Catalog Hidden Special Collections and Archives and is to be used to catalog 125,000 sheet maps of Africa.
"It Takes a Consortium to Support Open Textbooks" By Judy Baker
WorldCat.org is now available for mobile phones : library materials on WorldCat.org are searchable through mobile devices. Available in the US and Canada and using Boopsie technology, users will be able to find known items in libraries and identify libraries near their location. The experiment uses the iPhone with a download from the Apple site.
Open access and Institutional Repositories
ticTOC's Project: a consortium of 14 partners (incl. Universities of Liverpool, Heriot- Watt & Cranfield; CrossRef; ProQuest; RefWorks; Emerald; SAGE; Institute of Physics; Inderscience Publishers; MIMAS; DOAJ & Open J-Gate is developing a free service to enable anyone to easily keep up-to-date with scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs)
The Research Library's Role in Digital Repository Services:
ARL Digital Repositories Task Force Releases a final report identifying key issues on repository development.
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Using Twitter in libraries
Twitter; Your first 24hours. Phil Bradley's weblog "Speaking from my own experience I use Twitter for a variety of different things, among them information updating, trending information, asking questions, self-promotion" See Archives: Jan 29 2009
Chatterbox 21 Jan 09
Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act 51 of 2008 : Comments on possible implications for HEI's by Wynand Van Der Walt
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BLOG NOTES
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Cats and libraries seem an unlikely combination but the book about Dewey the library cat has served to highlight that there are 700 library cats in the U.S. I am aware of only one real library cat in our libraries at the ILL Dept. at Wits. Let me know if there are others.
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NOTEWORTHY
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Springer launched AuthorMapper.com a free analytical online tool to plot research trends, patterns & subject experts. It includes graphs of trend timelines to see whether expertise in a specific are is growing or has peaked. Searches can be restricted to open access content only or via a link to SpringerLink access.
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TAKE NOTE
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According to Facet Publishing these are the Top 10 books every information professional should have a copy of...
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LIBRARY TRIVIA NOTES
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Upcoming Conferences and workshops
ProLISSA, 5th biennial DISSAnet Conference, 5 - 6 March 2009, UNISA, Main Campus, Pretoria
4th Institutional Repository Workshop 1 - 3 April 2009, University of Pretoria, Main Campus
Web 2.0 Workshop. 28 - 30 April 2009, University of Pretoria Main Campus,
African Digital Scholarship & Curation Conference 12-14 May 2009, CSIR Convention Centre, Pretoria
KARM 2009, 3rd Annual Knowledge, Archives and Records Management Conference, 26-28 May 2009, the Birchwood Hotel - Johannesburg
Call for papers. 13th European Conference on Digital Libraries, 27 Sept - 2 Oct 2009, Corfu, Greece. The submission deadline is 21 March 2009
INTERNET Librarian International 2009, 15-16 October 2009, Novotel London West, UK Call for Participants Deadline: 27 March 2009
icke2009: International Conference on Knowledge Economy, 20 - 22 October 2009, IDC, Sandton,
Digitally Empowering Communities: Learning from Development Informatics Practice. 3rd IDIA (International Development Informatics Association) Conference, 28-30 October 2009, Berg-en-dal Camp, Kruger National Park
Remember to read the updated events at the International Calendar of Info Science events & Library related conferences
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FUTURE NOTE
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"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success"
Albert Einstein
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QUOTE OF NOTE
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