Open Access and Institutional Repositories

Open Access and Institutional Repositories

One can only perceive this lecture to have been a very academic one, if one is to compare it to the previous lectures on Social Media.

It was like getting down to the serious side of ICT applications but a very relevant and useful side.

Open access should become the norm for sharing knowledge in order to empower other students, researchers or academics. The gold road would be the way to go to ensure the information is made available freely to all. As mentioned by Jill Claasen, by doing this, publications gain greater exposure and the readership of them is broader. A continent like Africa can only benefit from Open Access. With this sharing of knowledge and research, it can only have a positive impact in the academic environment.

This website provides a good overview of the concept of Open Access:

http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

This website contains information about Open Access which was compiled by Peter Suber who is a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College. As he states he also wear many other hats and one of them is being the Director of Harvard Open Access Project.

Institutional Repositories

This can only have a positive impact in academic environments, knowing that that the legacy of the institutions academics can live on to certain extent. What is also positive about it is that different forms material can be retained in repositories, such as audio and visual clips, images, conference papers and many other forms. The result is that the university's research gains more exposure which results in better usage.

There is an interesting article on the Information Today website dealing with Institutional Repositories;

http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/may04/drake.shtml

In both instances there are always concerns about copyright but there are procedures in place to ensure the creator remains the owner of the work.

 

Podcasting the other social factor

When the lesson on Podcasting was presented to the class, I at least felt that I was in familiar territory. I am an avid listener of 567 Capetalk radio (http://capetalk.co.za/) and make use of their podcast broadcasts. At times when driving in the car a certain interview is occurring or will still occur and you reach your destination only to miss out on it. Thank goodness for technology that one is able to go to a podcast and listen to a recording of this interview, how useful is that.
Now how can podcasting contribute to libraries? Libraries can utilize this technology in various ways, not that we as a library have done so yet.
Librarians can create their own podcasts for many different purposes such as:

* to promote the library (library tours, story hours, library news, announcing library events)
* to suuport Information Literacy instruction
* for library marketing (tutorials on how to use OPAC, various open source software etc.)
* to enhance librarians' professional development (tutorials, book discussions, interviews with authors,       successful librarians, presentations by other professionals etc.)

To listen to some podcasts by libraries you can access the following website:
http://www.libraryspot.com/podcast/othercasts.htm

Another useful website; http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Podcasting  provides links to various libraries using podcasts, links on “How to Podcast” and various other useful aspects of Podcasting. 

As a library we hope to make use of all this technology which is at our disposal. Social Media plays a very important role in taking the library beyond the physical space it occupies. This will only be possible once municipalities understand the importance of socail media to libraries and provide them with access to this platform.

Below is a clip of how one can create a podcast:

The Twitter Aspect

As one attends the lectures on ICT in libraries, it is becoming quite obvious that the way libraries need to promote their services to their users have changed.

In lecture from two weeks ago regarding Twitter, I would have thought that this sphere of social media would also become part of the library’s playground. The fact that this social media aspect can actually contribute to the way the library is promoted to the community.

Twitter can be cleverly used by libraries for reference purposes and announcements. The fact that the messages need to be short and concise (only 140 characters) makes it perfect for this purpose. Users can actively and easily tap into the happenings at the library. There are other ways in which twitter can be utilized  by libraries. There are some useful websites to view to see how libraries are using Twitter on a daily basis. Websites such as http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2009/01/using-twitter-in-libraries.html

There was an interesting article which was in Time Magazine in 2009 about the impact Twitter will have on our lives: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902818,00.html

That will be all the Tweeting for now.