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Friday, September 28, 2012

Test your knowledge of Unitec’s research systems

Unitec has a variety of systems and services that we use to manage and communicate Unitec’s Research outputs. Some have restricted access via a login e.g. ROMS, but most are available publicly online e.g. Unitec Research Bank. It’s not always easy to tell them apart. So to help you understand the purpose of each system or service we’ve designed the short quiz below. If you get stuck, see the links at the end of the quiz for some help.

Quiz
What system does Unitec use to manage its research outputs?
  1. ROMS (Research Outputs Management System)
  2. Advance
  3. ePress
Where can the public find out about Unitec research online?
  1. Unitec website
  2. Advance magazine online
  3. Unitec Research Bank
  4. Unitec ePress
  5. Annual Report of Unitec Research Outputs
  6. nzresearch.org.nz
  7. All of the above
What is the name of our Institutional Research Repository (IRR)?
  1. Unitec Research Outputs
  2. Unitec Research Bank
  3. Research Commons
Check out the answers below.

Links

See these links to help you decide the right answers:
Research repositories at other institutions:

Definitions

Here are a few definitions to clarify the differences and integrations between the systems we use.

nzresearch.org.nz – This is an online harvester powered by DigitalNZ that gathers records from all the research repositories in New Zealand including the Unitec Research Bank. Records on nzresearch include the brief details of the item, together with a link to the item on its native repository. nzresearch is administered by the National Library of NZ.

ROMS – the Research Outputs Management System – is the research management system used to record Unitec’s research outputs. It is an internal system used only within Unitec. Unitec Research Office staff administer ROMs.

Research Bank - Unitec’s Research Bank is an open repository used to expose Unitec’s research to the world. Data from ROMS is used to identify suitable items for addition to the Research Bank. Unitec Library staff administer the Unitec Research Bank.

More about Research Bank


More about ROMS:


Answers to Quiz


Q: What system does Unitec use to manage its research outputs?
A: ROMs (1)

Q: Where can the public find out about Unitec research online?
A: All of the above (7)

Q: What is the name of our Institutional Research Repository (IRR)?
A: Unitec Research Bank (2) 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Library Update


Supporting Highly Productive Talent


This year the library trained another 6 rovers to provide Library, IT, and study support to fellow students. Past rovers reported that the skills they learned providing this peer support helped them obtain employment, as roving in the library not only introduced them to technical and critical thinking skills, but also gave them the confidence to interact with others.


Rovers promoting Library services in the Hub during Orientation Week

 

 

Information skills


Dulcie Brake (Academic Literacies) and Dan Wagner (Performing Arts) with Yvonne Sang (Library) at a CoP meeting in April this year.

Library staff created an information literacy toolkit for academic staff to help embed information skills – finding, evaluating and using relevant information - into the curriculum. The Information Literacy Community of Practice meetings this year focused on using new media in the class room: using and embedding e-books into course content and the benefits of using ipads in teaching practice. Penny Dugmore, our eLearning librarian, also presented on eBooks at Unitec’s eLearning mini symposium earlier this year.

Supporting Maori & Pacific Student Success


Donna Salmon, Maori & Pacific liaison librarian,  with students
Librarians visit Maia every fortnight as a way to offer support and assistance to students in their space. We run tailored information skills for Maori courses and provide one on one research support for staff and students

The Library hosted the Samoan History Day organised by the Pacific Centre on the 30th of May with both staff and students attending. We work with course leaders to run tailored library orientation sessions for Pasifika students and made special provision for the “Pacific Return to Nursing (PRTN)” course run during the weekend.

Our Maori and Pacific liaison librarian is a member of the Pacific Information Management Network that helps connect Unitec with other Pacific information professionals in Auckland.


Unshackling the property anchor


Online subject guides use depicted as an infographic

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Online inquiries via our chat service, library guides and Research Bank are all online library services that have grown substantially in usage over the last year.

Inquiries received via our online chat service increased from 493 for semester 1 in 2011 to 827 in semester 1 2012 (up 66%). A chat box - giving users instant access to a librarian - is available on every library page and has also been embedded into Moodle courses. Contact your Subject Librarian to have the box added to your Moodle course.

Subject guides were accessed 29% more than the same period last year – a total of 129,048 times. Our APA Referencing guide is the most popular (59,362 hits), followed by Nursing (8262 hits) Animal Studies (5391 hits), Business (5001 hits) and Education (3996 hits). Subject guides informs students of the best resources available on their subject and is regularly updated by subject librarians. These can also be embedded into Moodle courses.

The Research Bank is Unitec’s research repository, making research produced by Unitec staff and students accessible to the world. There were a total of 15,024 visitors to the Unitec Research Bank for the first half of 2012, compared with 11,460 for the same period in 2011, a 31% increase. This represents 39,308 pageviews compared to 27,834 for the same period in 2011.

Reconceptualising our Services

 

Students using the new Wireless Zone
We merged our 2 service points in the main library for an enhanced user experience, added more computers to address student demand and created a new Wireless Zone in the Student Computer Centre (located in The Hub).

A 46 inch screen was installed in study room 1 to facilitate group work, collaboration and innovation.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Check out the new ebooks

The Unitec Library ebook collection is constantly growing. Each month new titles are added, according to the demand from students.

Click here to see the new titles that have been purchased in August.

For more information on using ebooks, see our Online Library ebooks page