5 Things You Can Do on LinkedIn

1. Search for Events
2. Add an Application
3. Customise your news feed with LinkedIn Today
4. Join a Group
5. Experiment with LinkedIn Labs

Open Access – What’s a Learned Society To Do?

Following the publication of the UK Finch Group’s report on expanding access to research publications, there has been another flurry of debate about open access (OA).

The Big Deal, the Medium Deal, and the Tiny Deal

I remember answering a question on the "Big Deal" in last year's CPD assessment. I find The Scholarly Kitchen's blog post insightful.

Great way to join in discussions on Libraries

The Groups option on LinkedIn is useful to find discussion groups on Libraries (and of course, other subjects!).  Once signed into LinkedIn, click on Groups and then search for "libraries" - you can then join a group/s of interest

Chickens in Libraries

A chicken walks into the library. It goes up to the circulation desk and says: “book, bok, bok, boook”.
The librarian hands the chicken a book. It tucks it under his wing and runs out. A while later, the chicken runs back in, throws the first book into the return bin and goes back to the librarian saying: “book, bok, bok, bok, boook”. Again the librarian gives it a book, and the chicken runs out. The librarian shakes her head.
Within a few minutes, the chicken is back, returns the book and starts all over again: “boook, book, bok bok boook”. The librarian gives him yet a third book, but this time as the chicken is running out the door, she follows it.
The chicken runs down the street, through the park and down to the riverbank. There, sitting on a lily pad is a big, green frog. The chicken holds up the book and shows it to the frog, saying: “Book, bok, bok, boook”. The frog blinks, and croaks: “read-it, read-it, read-it”.

Finch Report on Open Access

Why the UK Should Not Heed the Finch Report  (by Steve Harnad - the OA guru)

A report has emerged from the Finch committee that looks superficially as if it were supporting OA, but is strongly biased in favour of the interests of the publishing industry over the interests of UK research. Instead of recommending building on the UK’s lead in cost-free Green OA, the committee has recommended spending a great deal of extra money to pay publishers for “Gold” OA publishing. If the Finch committee were heeded, the UK would lose both its lead in OA and a great deal of public money — and worldwide OA would be set back at least a decade.

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT)

This site from JISC Collections aims to help libraries to make informed decisions about future subscriptions to bibliographic and full text databases  (Thanks to Anne Moon from UWC for alerting me to this via Twitter!0

At Libraries, Quiet Makes a Comeback

by Jennifer Howard


The buzzing of smartphones, the clacking of computer keys, the chatter of study groups: Academic libraries aren't the quiet temples to scholarship they used to be. Personal portable technology takes some of the blame. So does the current pedagogical emphasis on group work. In response to students' devices and habits, many libraries have installed coffee shops and embraced the learning-commons model of design, creating wired spaces where groups can gather and plug in...

Why You Need to Learn the Art of Using Hashtags

Why and how to use hashtags. Hashtags are used on social media platforms like Twitter...........