Yumma Darruwa Ngunnawal

SIS begins by acknowledging that our services are delivered from Ngunnawal and Ngambri country.

We acknowledge and celebrate the First Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay our respect to the elders past and present.

A big thank you to Della and many SIS staff for the all the work occurring on understanding how our collections can support the graduate attribute on Indigenous knowledge.  We had fantastic presentations – Rachel Armstrong on Archives, Jennifer Sheehan on maps, Alisha Nolan on the Chifley collection, Anne Newton on Legal materials, Cathy Burton on Science collections, Jacky Clements on the Menzies collections, Jen Douglas on searching for material in the library collections and Kit Nelson on searching for material in the Open Repository.

Thanks to everyone who attended for your interest and contribution.  Our next step will be a presentation to the Indigenous Education network.

Next SIS talk:

Dr Olivia Evans, Indigenous Postdoctoral Research Fellow from the Research School of Psychology, will talk about the Indigenous psychology course she has developed for students at ANU.

When? 12pm, Wednesday 17 April

Where? Graneek Room and Online (https://anu.zoom.us/s/84656888903)

ANU COVID-19

COVID inspections are no longer required. If you see supplies are running low of hand sanitiser or masks do let the relevant people know in your building.

Please read all the messages from the university about COVID 19.

All COVID updates will be communicated to staff and students via the ANU On Campus email newsletter. You can find previous staff On Campus and student On Campus editions online.

WHS

Thanks to those who commented on the WHS guidelines circulated earlier this year. Dinah has addressed all the comments made and the revised documents are now on the Intranet.

Congratulations on our new HSR Joshua Bell.

SIS Staff meeting

The next meeting is:

#2 Tuesday 4 June 9.30-11 am

Location: China in the World Auditorium

Buildings

Menzies:

·       The copper on the lower roof is now done. Some Colourbond steel needs to be replaced over the former courtyard/reading room area, and after that the lower roof will be complete.

·       The construction team will be handing over the lower roof to F&S on the 26 March

·       The scaffold on the low roof will then come down

·       The tree which was overhanging the little back roof above Archives has been trimmed and they will start work on this roof in 2 weeks. It will take 2-3 weeks to complete.

·       There will be a crane onsite again soon – TBC exact date

·       Of the interior works, there is one wall to be painted in Archives (this will take approx. two hours, date TBC) and the final carpet installations will be done soon.

·       The replacement screens for the Level 1 windows on the side have been ordered and should be here soon. We’ll be advised when they are going to be installed.

·       Windows will be cleaned before the replacement screens are installed.

Academic Board

AB met on 12 March. The agenda included:

·       TEQSA update

·       SIS annual report

·       Academic Board Self-Assessment – Recommendations 

·       Academic Freedom – Attestation Statement 

·       Curriculum Framework – Update on Pilot Program

·       ANU Employability Framework

·       HDR Program Reviews – Update 

Academic Quality Assurance Committee

AQAC met on 14 March. The agenda included:

·       Update on the activities of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) - TEQSA has advised the University that its registration has been renewed for the maximum period of 7 years to 13 December 2030 without conditions

·       Academic Integrity Report 2022

·       Formal complaints and appeals annual report (2022)

·       2023 Visa Cancellation, Refusal and CoE Incompletions Report

·       Annual monitoring of progress of students admitted under all Pathway Agreements

·       Annual Academic Calendar 2026 update following AQAC feedback

·       Amendments to and disestablishment of awards

·       Policy documents: Word Limit Penalties in Assessments – Student Assessment (Coursework) and Class Summary Policy Change, Late withdrawal due to special circumstances policy and procedure proposed amendments, Academic Accreditation Policy and Procedure, Recommendation to amend the Policy English language admission requirements and post-admission support.

ANU Brand training

The ANU central marketing team have released a new training module on ANU branding. Whether you are a new staff member, an academic, researcher or a professional staff member, understanding who we are, what we say about ourselves, and how we visually communicate is important for all staff to understand and actively implement on a daily basis. Complete the short training module in PULSE.

For questions about branding or to get help putting together branded materials like presentations and flyers please email the Library comms team comms.library@anu.edu.au

CAUL & CONZUL

CAUL has appointed Dr Lisa Kruesi to the role of Content Procurement Specialist.

Copyright

·       ICIP: The Australian Government has announced a consultation process on protecting First Nations traditional knowledge and cultural expressions through Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights. To ensure a First Nations-led approach, the Office for the Arts will establish a partnership in the first half of 2024 with First Nations experts to guide the development of the legislation. The partnership will comprise a core group of 8 to 10 experts, with a pool of additional experts to advise as needed.

·       You can now listen to a new podcast episode, Advocacy on the World Stage with IFLA’s Stephen Wyber, Director for Policy and advocacy with a focus on copyright.

·       Library Copyright Alliance asks Court to Reconsider its finding on contributory infringement in Sony v. Cox. 

Privacy

Great work by Alex! She has finalised all the updates to make the Non-standard survey privacy assessment form available.

•                 Updated the PIA advisory page on the privacy site

•                 Published guidance on the privacy SharePoint, including process flowchart

•                 Published news item on the privacy SharePoint

A new Privacy newsletter from Alex makes great reading.

Dr Geraldine Fela

Welcome to Dr Fela, ANU Australian Studies Institute Visting Fellow. “Geraldine joins us from Macquarie University and will be using her Fellowship to investigate the 1998 waterfront dispute between Patrick Stevedores, the Coalition government, and the Maritime Union of Australia.

Throughout her Fellowship at The Australian National University (ANU), Geraldine will utilise the opportunity to undertake sustained and concentrated research in the ANU Noel Butlin Archives Centre, which is home to significant archival holdings and crucial documentary evidence relevant to the dispute. This includes the 1998 Maritime Dispute Archive—a unique ACTU-ASSLH collaborative collecting project on the dispute that was co-ordinated between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History”.

Feedback

I just wanted to take a moment to highlight one of your exceptional team members, Anne Newton.

I have recently conducted a Zoom consult with Anne, to help prepare for an assignment. Anne’s approach was amazing – she was early, had prepared thoroughly, and took the time to answer every tangent question and explain the research opportunities available. Her people skills and EQ are first rate. She is an asset to the ANU and Law faculty, and I am sure you are all very lucky to have her as part of the team!

Hope this email finds you well, 

I couldn't thank you enough for your session with me, and these resources. Gold, gold, gold!!!!

See you next week in person, but until then, I will be hard at work upskilling 🙂.

(ACDC)

I just wanted to thank you personally for your help yesterday. You presented so well, and perfectly extracted the key items…

Kind regards,

…

PhD Candidate 

--

Roxanne Missingham

Director, Scholarly Information Services

Coming events

RLUK ICIL - Traces of South Asia: Working with Hidden Collections

When? 19 April 2024, 11:00am (BST)

Where?  Online

More details. Inclusive Collections, Inclusive Libraries is an RLUK programme of events that aims to foster conversation around decolonisation and inclusive practice in collecting, describing, presenting, and engaging with content in research library collections. It seeks to raise awareness about the opportunities and challenges of dealing with, contextualising, and engaging with offensive collections while also identifying and sharing examples of good practice. Visit the website for more information.

ALIA national conference

When? 6-9 May 2024

Where?  Adelaide

More details. Conference Theme: ‘Truth and Dare’. With this theme, we extend an invitation for First Nations Truth Telling, we showcase the battle against disinformation, and we dare ourselves to push our work forward to continue to bring vibrant, relevant services to library users and communities. Visit the website for more information.

IFLA Presidents meeting

When? 9 September and 2 October 2024.

Where?  Brisbane

More details. Early notice is here

From HR

Indigenous Professional Staff Grants Program (IPSGP)

Applications have closed. See more here.

Recruitment selection reports

HR are leading a project which will have a revised selection report form that will automatically be populated with data in the system (such as title, job number etc) – it will be a great step forward.

ARDC

Data and Platforms to Meet Australia’s Future Research Needs

This event was in the ARDC Leadership series.  The video recording and showcase slides are now available.

Australian National Persistent Identifier (PID) Strategy: Accelerating Research Excellence and Impact

The ARDC has released the Australian National Persistent Identifier (PID) Strategy, which will help with the adoption of PIDs to identify and connect entities in Australia’s research and innovation ecosystem for greater, faster impact.

Read more here.

ANU Press and open access

Chief Scientist’s announcement

Guardian ran a piece over the weekend on Cathy Foley's OA plan, which is "currently under departmental consideration". The story was also featured on Four Corners on Monday 11 March.

US developments

·       The White House issued a new fact sheet on the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to address "junk fees" in higher education. The fact sheet highlights the Department of Education’s draft proposal to curb automatic textbook billing and explicitly mentions open textbooks as a solution.

DOAJ Annual Highlights 2023

2023 marked 20 years since Lars Bjørnshauge launched DOAJ with just over 300 titles at Lund University Library – the annual report is out.

New titles

Yagara Dictionary and Salvage Grammar by: Karen Sullivan and Glenda Harward-Nalder

Australian Urban Policy: Prospects and Pathways.

Edited by: Robert Freestone, Bill Randolph, and Wendy Steele.

Open repository

The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis

This report by Gail Steinhart & Lauren Collister is a useful piece of research. Key Observations and findings:

1.              We found considerable variation in the use of four key terms: cost, price, reasonable, and allowable. In this paper, we set out working definitions for these terms.

2.              For repositories leveraging sources of revenue other than deposit fees or other revenue streams that do not immediately scale up with increased deposits, sustainability is an important concern...

3.              Labour is the most significant cost for repositories and data curation, particularly in support of ingest and access, although the actual cost of data curation in repositories varies by discipline, characteristics of data, and level of curatorial services provided...

4.                   If "reasonable" cost is not readily generalisable, greater clarity regarding allowable activities and more transparency in repositories’ costs would aid researchers and funders in evaluating whether any deposit, membership, or other form of fees that are charged are appropriate for the services rendered. Where some or all of the effort associated with meeting public access requirements is performed by members of the research team, costs could be properly allocated to research and to publication components of grant budgets.

To preprint or not to preprint: A global researcher survey

This article by Rong Ni and Ludo Waltman offers insights: “Our survey results show that the United States and Europe led the way in the adoption of preprinting. The United States and European respondents reported a higher familiarity with and a stronger commitment to preprinting than their colleagues elsewhere in the world. The adoption of preprinting is much stronger in physics and astronomy as well as mathematics and computer science than in other research areas. Respondents identified free accessibility of preprints and acceleration of research communication as the most important benefits of preprinting. Low reliability and credibility of preprints, sharing results before peer review and premature media coverage are the most significant concerns about preprinting, emphasised in particular by respondents in the life and health sciences. According to respondents, the most crucial strategies to encourage preprinting are integrating preprinting into journal submission workflows and providing recognition for posting preprints.”

New research resources

·       Emission-line wings driven by Lyman Continuum in the Green Pea analog Mrk 71

·       Infrared Excesses around Bright White Dwarfs from Gaia and unWISE. II

·       Resolved simulations of jet–ISM interaction: Implications for gas dynamics and star formation

·       Conservation translocations for amphibian species threatened by chytrid fungus: A review, conceptual framework, and recommendations

·       Establishing an oph as a prototype rotator: Precision orbit with new keck, CHARA, and RV observations

Keeping up to date

Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles

Martin Paul Eve’s study finds “Of the 7,438,037 works examined, there were 5.9 million copies spread over the archives used in this work. Furthermore, a total of 4,342,368 of the works that we studied (58.38%) were present in at least one archive. However, this left 2,056,492 works in our sample (27.64%) that are seemingly unpreserved”.

National Library updates legal deposit resources

To support the growth of the legal deposit scheme, the National Library of Australia (NLA) have produced a video which introduces the concept, its history in Australia and what it means for publishers.

OECD on disinformation

The new OECD report Facts not fakes: Tackling disinformation, strengthening information integrity emphasises the need for democracies to champion diverse, high-quality information spaces that support freedom of opinion and expression, along with policies that may be utilised to increase the degree of accountability and transparency of online platforms. The report details specific risks, including the spread of disinformation during electoral periods, foreign information manipulation and interference campaigns, and the implications of generative artificial intelligence. Based in part on a survey of 23 OECD countries, the report includes case studies and provides recommendations on how governments can play a positive but not intrusive role in this area. It reveals that national strategies for tackling disinformation remain the exception rather than the rule. 

Generative AI in Higher Education: The Product Landscape

Ithaka S+R’s new report makes for good reading. “As part of our Making AI Generative for Higher Education project, conducted in partnership with 19 colleges and universities, Ithaka S+R has been closely tracking the GAI product landscape through a unique Product Tracking Tool…We are excited to announce that we are releasing our Product Tracker for public use today alongside an issue brief exploring what these products suggest about the future of generative AI in teaching, learning, and academic research. Together, these two publications provide the higher education community with an easy way to keep up with developments in this space and assess the value of individual products.”

What Brings Gen Z to the Library?

Jennifer Howard has written a useful article starting with “Kathi Inman Berens and Rachel Noorda of Portland State University, analysed quantitative data from about 2,000 respondents, roughly divided between Gen Zers and Millennials. They also did ethnographic research at two Ohio public library branches. They found that young people look to libraries to provide safe places to hang out and to access resources like free Wi-Fi, makerspaces, and tech equipment — expectations they carry with them to college, according to people who work in and with academic libraries”.

College & Research Libraries

The March 2024 issue of College & Research Libraries is now freely available online both as a full issue PDF and as individual articles. Articles include:

·       Yan Quan Liu, Arlene Bielefield, and Jennifer Beckwith. "ADA Digital Accessibility on Academic Library Websites."

·       William H. Mischo, Mary C. Schlembach, and Elisandro Cabada. "Relationships between Journal Publication, Citation, and Usage Metrics within a Carnegie R1 University Collection: A Correlation Analysis."

·       Samantha Godbey and Starr Hoffman. "Characteristics of United States Academic Libraries in 2020 and Regional Changes from 1996 to 2020."

OAIC Notifiable Data Breaches report

The latest report is out. Maddocks have a very useful analytic post by Oma Khurana, and Radhika Bhatia. They note the key privacy issues identified in the Report – the #1 issue is Data retention: The greater the amount of personal information an entity holds, the greater the potential scale and complexity of a data breach. APP entities should ensure they have systems and processes in place to regularly review the personal information that they hold and consider whether it is still necessary to retain that personal information. Having a data retention policy that is regularly audited and updated, and is operationalised, is critically important.

The key tips are:

·       the OAIC expects APP entities to have established processes in place, to enable compliance with the requirements of the Scheme.

·       APP entities must have an established data breach response plan in place to enable effective and timely assessment and notification in accordance with their regulatory obligations.

·       Finally, an individual who has been impacted by a breach should always be ‘front and centre’ of the response. Prompt notification enables individuals to take action and ultimately minimise risk of harm.

National Library updates legal deposit resources

To support the growth of the legal deposit scheme, the National Library of Australia (NLA) have produced a video which introduces the concept, its history in Australia and what it means for publishers.

How academic libraries can lead the way in diversity, equity and inclusion

Academic institutions around the world are adopting principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). As information havens, academic libraries are perfectly placed to promote DEI. But what exactly does DEI mean and why is it crucial for libraries today? In this session, Natalie Pang (National University of Singapore) and Kim Tairi (Auckland University of Technology) spoke about how the library played a key role in DEI initiatives at their institutions. Thanks to De Gruyter for this event, Academic Libraries Reimagined #9. The recording is here, with Natalie’s PowerPoint slides here and Kim’s PowerPoint slides here.

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