The LibrarySeptember/October 2012

Diane Abbott with Elizabeth Williams 20/10/2012

September/October 2012 The Library – N

Elizabeth Williams October 20 2012 – a silver jubilee celebration at Goldsmiths…

Kevin Wilson Digital Workshop on digital non-text media 19 October 2012

Nicola Stephenson Annual Meeting for SCONUL contacts 26th June 2012, Bristol University

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October 20 2012 – a silver jubilee celebration at GoldsmithsThe year 2012 marks 25 years since Diane Abbott MP Shadow Minister for Public Health has been a member of the British parliament and has served her Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituents. After reading History at Newnham College Cambridge under Professor Simon Schama and other distinguished tutors, Ms Abbott worked as a journalist, Head of Press and Public relations, the National Council of Civil Liberties and in local councils. Abbott’s parliamentary career commenced in 1987 upon entering the Palace of Westminster Parliament as the Hon Diane Abbott MP at the tail end of a turbulent decade alongside other honorable new members of Ghanian-English, Guyanese and Indian heritage. This quartet made British parliamentary history as the first people of colour in nearly hundred years to be selected to represent members of the British electorate. During her parliamentary years she has been seen as a freethinker, willing to rebel against the party machine, which has made her a controversial figure. However Abbott’s record in and out of parliament speaks for itself; her stance and vote against the Iraq war, opposing ID cards and campaigning against the renewal of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons. Her speech on civil liberties, in the debate on the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008 won The Spectator magazine's "Parliamentary

Speech of the Year" award and further recognition at the 2008 Human Rights awards. Abbott has served on a number of parliamentary committees on social and international issues.

For most of the 1990s she also served on the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons and went on to serve on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Abbott chairs the All-Party Parliamentary British-Caribbean Group and the All-Party Sickle Cell and Thalassemia Group. She founded the timely London Schools and the Black Child initiative, which aims to raise educational achievement levels amongst black children.. In May 2010, she was re-elected in her constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington, with a doubled majority on an increased turn-out.

When Goldsmiths under the guidance and organization of Dr Deirdre Osborne celebrated Abbott’s parliamentary career on Friday 26 October, there was an impressive line up of speakers and panelists who discussed subjects Abbott has been championing all her career, good Journalism, Education, Politics, Young People and the Arts. With a blinding array of distinguished guests and participants; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown MBE, Hannah Poll and Hugh Muir, Professor James Curran and Heidi Mirza, Professor Kevin Hylton, Dr Keith Davidson, Simon Woolley, Ken Livingstone, Darcus Howe, Yvonne Brewster OBE, Malorie Blackman OBE, S.I. Martin, Lewisham Young Mayor, Moira Stuart OBE, Aminatta Forna, Margaret Busby OBE and many more including surprise guests such as Harriet Harman MP. There were many interesting stands and the Library information table promoted Special Collections and those new collections that reflect the carnival and theatre arts of BME communities in London as well as the broader scope of its collections. The Library stand was enthusiastically visited throughout the day.Enjoy the photos!

Elizabeth Williams

Library information table

JISC workshop on digital non-text media, 19 October 2012

JISC is the UK’s expert on information and digital technologies for education and research. It is an organization currently starting a period of transition so they organized a workshop to begin a dialogue with

academics and libraries to determine how they should proceed in the future. Around 20 or so people, representing a range of institutions attended. Some were academic staff; some were working in digital media, whilst most were library staff in various roles.

After a short tea and introductions, we split into groups and began three separate workshops. First, we were asked to discuss recent experiences of using multimedia resources, focusing on what our objective was, how well we realized it and what potential barriers there had been. Whilst librarians always endeavor to find the multimedia resources we’re asked to locate, a number of common issues arose from these discussions that make it difficult for librarians. These include navigation (how to find resources initially), restrictions on material (such as copyright), quality (such as streaming video) and costs.

The second workshop divided the group into those who use JISC multimedia resources and those who don’t (the majority already do). Those who use JISC resources were enthusiastic in their praise, citing their quality as a major plus. However, some issues arose. Promotion of JISC Media Hub isn’t widespread and it’s rarely communicated to students and academic staff how this resource can be of use to them. Improving the knowledge of librarians would be a definite help – this will be one of the positives from this workshop.

After lunch, we started the final workshop, which involved looking at future uses of multimedia in both institutions and libraries. The groups

considered how multimedia would be used in both learning and research and created imagined, but very possible, scenarios for these. The wider themes that emerged from these discussions included the following (but there were many, many more):

integrating different media in teaching

changes to the law to allow fair use of multimedia material

expansion of UK universities overseas resulting in multimedia becoming more dominant

reluctance of academic staff to share research (as well as who owns their research? Is it them or their institution?)

technology vs. limitations on time and skills

inevitable financial issues How do we incentivize people to

engage in change?

In the short term, there are things we can work on here at Goldsmiths. JISC Media Hub is a valuable resource for image, film and sound, and we should do more to promote it, as well as other multimedia resources that have academic value. There are copyright issues in using multimedia resources (JISC resources are licensed for educational use) and we need to ensure we’re promoting correct use. Students and staff might already be using resources incorrectly without knowing. There are numerous possibilities for how we go forward with this, which subject librarians will collaborate on in the future.

Kevin Wilson

Our Halloween pumpkin

The Library September/October 2012Edited by Nicola Stephenson n.stephenson@gold.ac.uk

SCONUL Access annual Meeting for Contacts 26th

June 2012 Bristol University

I approached this year’s meeting with trepidation as I had caused offence to another library as a result of our 24-hour opening rules. We have had a number of students from Birkbeck asking to use the library overnight and we had banned the one who refused to leave after 10pm from future use of the library. Also, I had suggested to one student that he should campaign at Birkbeck to get 24 hour opening. Philip Payne, the librarian at Birkbeck contacted Jacqueline to object to that. So, I thought that I would be a controversial figure at the SCONUL contacts meeting.

Maria Hiscoe, the SCONUL co-coordinator, reported that Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin are still not members of SCONUL. The SCONUL website is in the hands of consultants, Opus Flow, who are separating SCONUL Access from the statistic-gathering side. They plan to make the statistics gathered available to all members. They intend to make the rest of the SCONUl website ‘as easy as Amazon’. (I looked at the SCONUL website recently and I could not observe any changes, yet!).

The headline speaker was due to be Philip Payne from Birkbeck but he was too ill to attend. Helen Workman read the notes for his presentation which was giving a history of SCONUL and the previous associations between libraries. Cathy Walsh and Catherine Downes from the University of East London also spoke.

The main issues now are:- How well do we inform students

about SCONUL access? How good is the information on

the destination websites? Are we able to give access to

electronic resources or IT? How do we get round the issues of providers’ restrictions?

Could there be a single SCONUL access card which would serve all member university libraries.

Will student charters be mandatory soon-how do these apply to visitors?

How do we assist distance learners, even those abroad?

What does the National Student Survey tell us about shared resources?

Are we seeing an increase in SCONUL use? Do we need an improvement plan?

The topics for the Break Out groups were: - Should SCONUL Access go international, Work-based users, FE Colleges, Promotion of SCONUL Access. You can view the notes from these at L: Library\Lending\SCONUL.

It would be a great step forward if the SCONUL website was improved and if other universities were as welcoming as we are (apart from overnight, of course). The only major incidents at Goldsmiths that I have been aware of in the past year have either been a SCONUL visitor insulting a disabled student in the silent study room or a SCONUL user refusing to accept our rules since 24 hour opening. I am cautious about supporting national or international use of our resources as firstly, we have difficulties providing

IT for our own students and it is not likely that other institutions will give the same level of service (instant library cards and borrowing) that we have been giving. We do already give reference access to anyone with a current university card from outside the UK. Also, since this is the first year of fees, there is reluctance of universities to charge for services. If this were not the case, I would say let’s sell our services to anyone who wants to come here.

And as for my being a controversial figure, Philip Payne was not there, but the SCONUL rep from Newcastle University did approach me to say that he could not see why we had a problem with letting students from other universities

stay overnight as they have no objections to visitors staying at Newcastle University. I would imagine that the pressure for visitor access on Newcastle University would be far less than the pressure on Goldsmiths as we are in London and we are in a residential area.

Nicola Stephenson