Dataverse unavailable on Sun, Aug.11 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. for upgrade

August 6, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Dalhousie’s Dataverse will be upgraded from version 4.7 to version 4.10 on Sunday, August 11, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

During this time, Dataverse will be unavailable. Please do not log in or make any changes during this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

All data will be migrated to Version 4.10 and will be available after the migrations. If you have any questions about this process, please contact Academic Technology Services at support@dal.ca

For information about features on Dataverse 4.10, please see the user guide: http://guides.dataverse.org/en/4.10/ or email data.management@dal.ca

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Invitation to Participate: Understanding Research Data Management Practices at Dalhousie University

July 24, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Below is an invitation from Dal Librarians Erin MacPherson and Melissa Rothfus to participate in a survey on the topic of research data management practices at Dal. Your participation will be of great assistance as we finalize our Institutional RDM Strategy for Dalhousie. We want to help our researchers to follow the FAIR principles for research data – ensuring their data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Researchers can find more information about current RDM services in the Dal Libraries at https://dal.ca.libguides.com/rdm or contact data.management@dal.ca

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To: Dalhousie University research community, including all current faculty (non-tenured, tenured, limited term appointments), postdoctoral fellows, instructors, staff and graduate students at Dalhousie University

Subject: Invitation to Participate: Understanding Research Data Management Practices at Dalhousie University

Researchers from the Dalhousie Libraries are conducting an anonymous, online survey focusing on the research community at Dalhousie University, including faculty at all ranks (tenure, non-tenure and limited term appointments), instructors, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students at all departments, institutes and schools at Dalhousie University.

The purpose of this survey is to contribute to a national growing body of knowledge on research data management in universities and versions of this survey have been conducted at several other Canadian universities. Additionally, results of this survey may help the Libraries develop infrastructure and educational programmes to meet the research data management needs at Dalhousie University. The combined results may also assist in developing national initiatives for research data management.

We will be sharing our aggregate and anonymized data with the participating schools and the wider community in a data repository such as Dataverse. The researchers also aim to publish and/or present the research results openly within the academic community through academic journals and/or conference presentation and in an institutional repository such as DalSpace.

This research is being conducted by Erin MacPherson (Research Data Management Librarian – MacRae Library, 902-893-3296) and Melissa Rothfus (Scholarly Communications Librarian, Kellogg Library, 902-494-1649) and has been approved by the Research Ethics Board at Dalhousie (REB #2019-4738)

The survey deadline has been extended and is now open until midnight, August 16th, 2019. It can be accessed here: https://surveys.dal.ca/opinio/s?s=48047

Welcome Carl Harvey, New Help Desk Technician

July 23, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

We are pleased to announce that Carl Harvey is the new Academic Technology Services (ATS) Help Desk Technician for the Dal Libraries, based at the Help Desk located in the Chanie Wenjack Legacy Space in the Killam Library.

Carl will be a familiar face to many as he has been working as an intern and in term positions in the Dalhousie Libraries since 2017, spending time at the Sexton and Killam Libraries. Carl has worked both as a Library Services Technician with Access Services and as a Help Desk Technician with the ATS team.

Carl is a graduate of Saint Mary’s University and the Nova Scotia Community College’s Library & Information Technology program, from which he graduated with honours. While in school, he was awarded the Student Recognition Award for first-year students and the Atlantic Provinces Library Association Award for High Standing & Commitment to Professional Advancement Beyond the Program Requirements.

In his spare time, Carl enjoys board games, designing posters for local gaming clubs, and assembling and painting miniature figures. We are very pleased to have Carl as a permanent employee of the Dalhousie Libraries.

Scheduled Downtime for ProQuest July 20

July 17, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

ProQuest will be performing maintenance on Ebook Central and LibCentral on Saturday, July 20 from 1–4 p.m., ADT. This work is necessary to ensure their ebook platforms remain updated and secure. They apologize for the inconvenience.

Dalhousie’s Contract with RefWorks Ending in 2020

July 17, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

The Dal Libraries has signed a final contract with RefWorks, a web-based citation manager that allows one to compile, edit and format bibliographies by importing references directly from online databases.

Our final year under the contract will come to an end on April 20, 2020. There are a number of useful and free alternatives available, Zotero for instance, and we’re seeing many users moving to those options on their own. Some faculties at Dal also subscribe to EndNote.

Dwindling usage of RefWorks is one of the main factors driving this decision. In the next month, we’ll begin the process of notifying faculty and students. We will provide assistance to RefWorks users who want to move their content from RefWorks to the service of their choice.

For more information about migrating content from RefWorks, please contact refworks@dal.ca

Novanet Is Growing! Some Novanet services unavailable this week

July 10, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

For the first time, an institution outside of Nova Scotia will become part of Novanet. We are in the process of bringing New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University in to Novanet.

You will soon gain access to Mount A’s collections. While the collection is being added to Novanet, some key functions will be unavailable. Effective immediately and until Monday, July 15, you will not be able to access your Novanet account information. That means we cannot tell you which items you have out, when they are due, etc.

You will also not be able to place holds through Novanet, but you can continue to request books and other materials through Document Delivery by following this link: https://caul-cbua.relais-host.com/user/login.html?group=patron&LS=NSHD

You may also find that checking out books in person goes a little slower for the next few days as we will be using a manual system during the downtime. We apologize for any inconvenience this outage may cause and we look forward to bringing you access to an additional collection very soon.

Intern profile: Mitchell Jabalee

June 21, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Where are you interning?
I am interning at the Dalhousie University Archives.

What brought you to the MLIS program at Dal?
What brought me to the MLIS program was in interest in learning and developing a broad range of skills to add to what I already have. My goal is to learn many flexible skills that make me a great fit for working in the field of archives.

What drew you to the internship at the Dal Libraries?
I was interested in gaining more experience working in an archive and the summer intern job at Dalhousie’s archives was the perfect opportunity.

What’s your educational background?
Previously I have completed an undergraduate degree with honours in history at Cape Breton University.

What have you been doing during your internship?
So far during my time at the Dalhousie Archives, I have been processing records and creating archival descriptions for the materials of Canadian writer and poet Charles Bruce that get uploaded to the archives’ online catalog, helping with the preparations for the renovations to the archives collections space and assisting in daily operations and tasks alongside other small tasks here and there.

Spring Into Action 2019

June 14, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Once again, the Dalhousie Libraries participated in the province-wide Spring Into Action initiative. Spring Into Action is annual event sponsored by Horizons Community Development Associates. The goal of the challenge is to get participants moving at least 30 minutes each day, five days each week, for improved and sustained health and well-being.

Across Nova Scotia, 168 individuals participated on 23 teams. The Dal Libraries entered three teams in the Spring Into Action challenge, which ran from April 22–May 24. Two of the teams won one of the weekly draws and one of our participants won one of the individual prizes.

Congratulations to the Heart Throbs, The Scrambled Legs and 2 Fit 2 Quit on your active lifestyles!

2 Fit 2 Quit: Courtney Bayne, Guy LeLievre & Kyoo Lee (Not pictured: Gina Coates & Kelly Casey)

The Heart Throbs (starting at rear left): Stephen Murray, Lisa Drew, Karen Tarum, Nellie Clyke, Anne-Marie White, Hannah Steeves & Anne Matthewman

The Scrambled Legs (starting from rear left): Janice Slauenwhite, Marlo MacKay, Michelle Paon, Donna Bourne-Tyson, Susan Hagen, Sandy Dwyer & Nellie Renzelli

SciVal for Administrators

June 7, 2019 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

***This presentation was originally scheduled for April, but was cancelled due to weather-related travel difficulties.***

SciVal is a bibliometric tool used to visualize research activity, create performance summaries, benchmark comparisons to other institutions and analyze trends at either an institution, department or research group level.

This presentation will focus on features, data sources, and effective use of SciVal. Guillaume Warnan is returning to Dalhousie to do this session specifically designed with academic administrators in mind. Join us for an introduction or refresher to this tool that uses data from the Scopus database to do bibliometric analysis.

Date: Thursday, July 4
Time: 9:30–10:30 a.m.
Location: Rowe Building, Room 3089

Please register for the event here: https://dal.libcal.com/calendar/events/scival

Anyone interested in a personalized session with Guillaume is invited to contact him directly at g.warnan@elsevier.com

The LibVine

What's going on at the Dalhousie Libraries

Category: Agriculture

Intern profile: Mitchell Jabalee