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Author: Arlene Healy

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Expiry of Covid-19 temporary ‘free’ publisher access to online resources

In response to the pandemic, many publishers provided free online access, on a temporary basis, to thousands of books, journals and other resources.

In the early days of the University closure, the Library worked hard to identify which of these online resources, were relevant to university teaching and research activity. All these resources were made available through the Library’s Academic Continuity Guide; in addition, many were integrated into Stella Search.

These resources are available for a limited time only – the expiry date is detailed under each resource in our Academic Continuity Guide. The first tranche expires on the 31st of May; the remainder are available until the 30th of June 2020.

If you require long-term access to resources on this list to support your teaching or research, we invite you to contact your Subject Librarian.

There may be occasions when we are unable to provide access to a resource if:

  • It is not possible to secure a suitable institutional licence
  • It has a substantial cost implication

As always, Library staff will do their best to ensure that the University community has access to the online resources you require.

Following lockdown, the Library has accelerated the purchase of e-books to help with remote study and research; according to the latest figures, we have purchased an additional 800 e-books. If you have submitted a request for an e-book, rest assured we are working hard to fulfil all requests received. Please note we are dealing with a variety of publishers, complex licensing and pricing models, and in some cases, material is simply unavailable for us to purchase. Where possible we will work with libraries across the sector to leverage collective buying power.

Siobhán Dunne (Sub Librarian Teaching, Research & User Experience)
Arlene Healy (Sub Librarian Digital Systems & Services)

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Elsevier ScienceDirect e-journal service: January 2020 update on negotiations for access

Negotiations with Elsevier regarding access to the Science Direct e-journal service for 2020 across the Irish Consortium of universities and institutes of technology are continuing; the engagement is constructive and progress is being made. On that basis, a memorandum of understanding has been signed to ensure that access continues until 30 January 2020 while discussions are ongoing. A further update will be issued later this month. If you require any further information, please contact Arlene Healy (Member, ScienceDirect Negotiation Group and Sub Librarian (Digital Systems and Services) by e-mail: arhealy@tcd.ie.

Background Summary

  • Agreement was reached in March 2019 to provide ScienceDirect access throughout 2019 across the Irish Consortium of Universities and Institutes of Technology. This was an interim agreement to continue with the existing subscription model but on conditions which met the negotiating conditions of the Consortium (the LIBER Principles).
  • The Consortium is seeking a deal for 2020 and beyond which will combine immediate global Open Access to articles published by its members on the ScienceDirect platform with continued access to the rest of the content published by Elsevier on ScienceDirect, currently encompassing over 1500 journals.

ScienceDirect and the complex issues around Open Access are an important part of the conversation around Open Scholarship. Please take a look at the Open Scholarship website, which includes sections from ‘Demystifying Open Scholarship’ to how Trinity is responding to Open Scholarship.

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Library to host LIBER 2019 Conference: 26-28 June 2019

The Library of Trinity College Dublin is hosting the LIBER 2019 Conference from 26-28 June 2019. Librarians and archivists from all over Europe are attending the conference, which brings librarians from 450 European research libraries together for three days of networking. This is the first time the conference has been held in Ireland. It has been organised by the Library in partnership with CONUL, the consortium of Ireland’s main research libraries. The theme of the conference is ‘Research Libraries for Society’ and topics for discussion during the conference include the implementation of Open Scholarship practice, linked data, the future of collections and connecting with partners in society.

We look forward to welcoming over 450 delegates from over 35 countries to LIBER 2019, which promises to be an energetic, exciting and thoroughly engaging conference.

About LIBER

LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries) is the voice of Europe’s research library community.
For nearly 50 years, LIBER has worked to meet its mission of enabling world class research. It does this by representing the interests of member institutions, their universities and their researchers in several key areas.

Some 450 national, university and other libraries are part of LIBER and its wider network includes goal-oriented partnerships with other organisations in Europe and beyond.

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Unboxing Open Scholarship

Defining Open Scholarship

Open Scholarship is the practice of research, education and knowledge exchange in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research publications, data, lab notes and other scholarly processes and works are properly and ethically managed and evaluated and, unless restricted for justifiable reasons, are freely available to all levels of society under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the work and its underlying data and methods.
Open Scholarship may also be referred to as Open Science or Open Research.

(Adapted from Foster’s Open Science definition)

Image: https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/content/what-open-science-introduction

Trinity Task Force on Open Scholarship

The Trinity Task Force on Open Scholarship was created by the Librarian & College Archivist and the Dean of Research with colleagues across the University. One of the first tasks is to define what is meant by Open Scholarship – is it Open Science, (in the broadest sense, incorporating all disciplines), Open Access or Citizen Science? – and work through where Trinity wants to be in this landscape, what is or will be mandatory, where to lead, where to actively follow, how best to support and help researchers etc.

There is much activity in this area. Internationally, Plan S is aimed at ‘accelerating the transition to full and immediate Open Access of Scientific Publications’. Nationally, NORF (National Open Research Forum) led by the Higher Education Authority and the Health Research Board is working towards a ‘National Statement on the Transition to an Open Research Environment’. From a European perspective, LERU (League of European Research Universities) is creating a pragmatic ‘Roadmap to Open Science’.

As part of collectively figuring this out, a series of events under the theme of ‘Unboxing Open Scholarship’ will take place over the coming months. The first will be an interactive event open to all members of the Trinity community and will take place at 12 noon, 8 February in the Trinity Long Room Hub.

Please contact us at openscholarship@tcd.ie with your views and suggestions for future events.

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Alternative routes to scholarly articles and research outputs

Many scholarly and peer-reviewed articles can be read for free on the Web. A number of tools exist to help discover research output more easily: through installing a browser extension or plug-in; by using academic search engines and archives; or, by contacting the author directly.

Some articles will however remain elusive – but the Library can help. The Library offers an Inter-Library Loan service which provides access to scholarly articles which are not available via the Library’s print or online collections, are not open access and cannot be found via plug-ins, search services or repositories.

Find articles using plug-ins

There are a number of browser extensions or plug-ins for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari which can be installed to facilitate finding articles which are open access. Some examples:

Unpaywall makes finding OA-articles easy for the individual user by installing a plug-in on Chrome or Firefox.

 

You can search Open Access Button directly on their website or download an extension for Chrome which makes finding open access articles easy. When OA Button hits a paywall, the service also sends off requests to authors asking them to deposit their articles in a subject or institutional repository in order to make their research open. Open Access Button is a non-profit organisation.

Google Scholar Button is a browser extension available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. The extension makes finding full-text open access articles in Google Scholar easier.

Kopernio offers a browser plug-in that makes it easier to find both open access versions of articles and articles which users have access to via institutional subscription. The service is free but belongs to Clarivate Analytics and you need to register in order to use the extension.

Find research articles using search engines, academic repositories or archives 

Some examples:

  • arXiv is a preprint archive mainly for physics, mathematics, computer sciences and related sciences. Run by Cornell University.
  • bioRxiv is an archive for open access preprints in the life sciences operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
  • DOAJ is a list of open access journals and a search service finding peer-reviewed and scholarly journals and articles.
  • The Humanities Commons CORE repository is intended for open access articles, monographs and other publications and resources in the humanities. Humanities Commons is a nonprofit operation run by the MLA.
  • OpenDOAR is a searchable global directory of open access repositories and their policies.
  • OSF Preprints is a platform with openly accessible preprints, or submitted manuscripts which are publically distributed before acceptance and peer-review in a traditional scientific journal. OSF Preprints is developed by Centre for Open Science (COS), a non-profit organisation with the goal of greater openness and reproducible research.
  • SocArXiv is an open archive of the social sciences for preprints, working papers and other outputs. It is operated by the University of Maryland and developed by the Center of Open Science (COS).

Contact the author

Researchers may share articles between themselves if this is permitted by agreements with their publishers, so-called ‘scholarly sharing.’ Please refer to Sherpa/Romeo to check current terms for the journal in question. When using the plug-in Open Access Button and hitting paywalled articles, requests to authors are sent asking them to deposit their articles in an open institutional or subject repository. There are also a number of social platforms for researchers, e.g. ResearchGate and  Academia.edu.

(Adapted with thanks from: https://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/2018/07/01/alternative-routes-to-scholarly-articles-and-research-outputs/)

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The Library has launched Self-service Laptop Lending in the Berkeley/Lecky/Ussher complex!

We are delighted to announce that from today (Monday 15th January 2018) you can now borrow laptops for use in the Berkeley/Lecky/Ussher complex from a self-service unit located in the basement of the Berkeley Library (just outside the training rooms).

The laptop cabinet holds 24 devices which can be borrowed using your TCD ID card for up to 3 hours at a time.

A webpage has been created to explain the service in more detail.

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The Librarian presents: Dr. Paul Ayris speaking on Open Science (14th December, 14:00)

 The Librarian and College Archivist of Trinity College Dublin, Helen Shenton, invites you to a presentation delivered by Dr. Paul Ayris (Pro-Vice-Provost, UCL Library Services) on the impact of Open Science on research and libraries. The presentation will cover areas including, Open Access Publishing, Research Data Management, European Open Science Cloud and Citizen Science and will take place on Thursday, 14th December 2017 at 14:00 in the North Training Room, Berkeley Library.

Paul Ayris was appointed Director of UCL Library Services in 1997 and is now Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services). He was the President of LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries) 2010-14; he is now Advisor to the LIBER Board. He is Co-Chair of the LERU (League of European Research Universities) Community of Chief Information Officers. He chairs the OAI Organizing Committee for the Cern Workshops on Innovations in Scholarly Communication. He is also the Chair of the JISC Content Strategy Group. On 1 August 2013, Dr Ayris became Chief Executive of UCL Press. He is a member of the Provost and President’s Senior Management Team in UCL. He has a Ph.D. in Ecclesiastical History and publishes on English Reformation Studies.

Recording of presentation

“The Librarian presents” is an occasional series of talks by thought-provoking speakers curated by the Librarian and College Archivist of Trinity College Dublin, Helen Shenton.

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International Digital Preservation Day – 30 November #idpd17

‘Save the Date’: On the 30th of November 2017, to mark International Digital Preservation Day, the Library invites Trinity students, researchers and interested members of the public to explore the challenges of preserving digital cultural heritage.

A pop-up Museum of Technology in the Berkeley Library will showcase obsolete computer hardware and software, which will be extended into an online exhibition. The exhibit includes computers and storage media from the 1980s right up to the present day. The display is intended to prompt the audience to think about the importance of digital preservation as an active rather than a passive activity, by demonstrating the rapid evolution of hardware and software, the transience of formats, and the dangers of obsolescence.
Some of items on display are from the Library’s own collection; others form part of the John Gabriel Byrne Computer Science Collection, and have been generously loaned by the School of Computer Science for the duration of the exhibit.

In collaboration with the Digital Repository of Ireland, the Library will host a ‘Wikithon’ Workshop (facilitated by Rebecca O’Neill, Project Coordinator of Wikimedia Community Ireland) with representatives from several cultural institutions will collate little-known information about current digital preservation activities.

Register for Wikithon Workshop

The day will culminate in an evening public lecture with a panel of scholars and publishers of digital content, investigating the limits of digital preservation, from the content itself to the experience of using it.

Register for Digital Cultural Heritage and the Limits of Preservation lecture

Speakers:

Anna Gerber and Britt Iverson, who run Visual Editions, a London-based “creative studio and reading lab”

Dr Amber Cushing, assistant professor at the School of Information and Communication Studies, University College Dublin

Programme:

6:15 p.m. – Welcome

6:30 p.m. – Keynote Speeches

7:30 p.m. – Questions from the Audience

8:00 p.m. – Closing Words

Venue: Robert Emmet Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin main campus

Image credit: Afrank99 – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3723573

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Putting Your Humanities Content Online – Workshop 12 December 2016, 10:00 – 13:00

Tim Keefe and Marta Bustillo of the Library’s Digital Resources and Imaging Services Team, are delivering a workshop on Digital Humanities Projects, in the Long Room Hub on Monday 12th December. The workshop is aimed at humanities researchers and is part of the Long Room Hub ‘Telling our Story’ 2016-2017 Programme of Events.
This workshop will introduce methods of planning and organisation to ensure successful online publication and archiving of digital projects. The session will also include several lightning talks to help support the overall theme of online engagement with your scholarly humanities content:

Dermot Frost, the head of Research IT will discuss available Trinity resources for digitally facing humanities work.

Mark Sweetnam, Assistant Professor of English, on the topic of Scholarly communications with digital humanities project work

Ciaran O’Neill, Ussher Lecturer in 19th Century History, on the topic of public engagement with archive/historical sources and citation

Dr. Jennifer Edmunds, Director of Strategic projects, will discuss her ongoing work on the CENDARI Project