Computing Service News

Now available: the October quarterly roundup of Computing Service news.

Items that caught my eye are:

• PWFweb: Personal Web Pages on the PWF – ‘the Computing Service will from now on create, in each new personal filespace, a public_html directory and a default index page along with a simple stylesheet…’
• Computing Service announcements now available on Twitter – ‘Headlines from announcements made by the Computing Service are now available via the micro-blogging site Twitter. Follow UcamCS or see http://twitter.com/UcamCS.’ They recently tweeted: “PWF slowness now cured”…
• Phishing – they want your account details – ‘Over the weekend [this was back in August] a depressingly large number of people, from undergraduates to senior academics, fell for a phishing message and gave away their email details (username, password, full email address, full name).’ Please be very careful.

Hilary Mantel wins the Man Booker Prize

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2009 was announced yesterday evening: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The judges were not unanimous and, according to The Times, Mantel won in a secret ballot by three votes to two. But we are not told what the other book was.

In The Independent Mantel explained that her book was a study of power, told through the biography of Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith who rises to wield immense power in King Henry VIII’s court and finally becomes the architect of the Reformation. “The exercise of power, the business of obtaining power, how it is won and lost … we are still living in a Machievellian world,” she said.

According to The Guardian, Mantel has started work on the sequel to Wolf Hall, which will be titled The Mirror And The Light. “What I have got at the moment is a huge box of notes,” she added.

The Library is in the process of acqiuring all six Man Booker shortlisted novels, as it has done for previous years.

New Fellows of Homerton College

The Homerton College News web page lists a number of new Fellowships, Honorary Fellowships, and staff awards. Amongst them are the following appointments:

Two Honorary Fellows: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (Master of the Queen’s Music) and Carol Ann Duffy (Poet Laureate)(from January 2010).

Five new Fellows: Prof Maria Nikolajeva (Professorial Fellow, and Professor of Education), Dr Ashwin Moheeput (Fellow and Lecturer in Economics), Dr Axel Bangert (Junior Research Fellow in Film Studies), Dr Anders Hansen (Junior Research Fellow in Mathematics), and Dr Melanie Keene (Junior Research Fellow in History and Philosophy of Science).

Dr Kate Pretty, Principal, was recently awarded the CBE for her services to Higher Education.

The Homertonian (no.13, May 2009, page 2) published an article by Dr John Hopkins (Fellow and Director of Studies in Music) abour Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

The Library holds a number of Carol Ann Duffy’s works including some of her children’s poetry and also her recent collection, Rapture (2008), comprising intimate poems about a love affair. We also have a number of Peter Maxwell Davies’ CDs and musical scores.

Deposit your thesis for online access in DSpace

Graduates, staff, and alumni of the University can now deposit their theses in the University’s ‘institutional repository’, DSpace@Cambridge, where it will be digitally archived and made available online. More information at Deposit of electronic theses.

This may mean very little to you! In brief, most higher educational establishments now have an institutional repository (IR) which can act as an electronic ’showcase’ of their research output as well as being a safe long-term curated storage facility. Also, many research funders (for example, all seven members of Research Councils UK) now require that all final peer reviewed research reports are available ’open access’ (freely available online to anyone). This can most effectively be achieved by ’self-archiving’ a copy in your IR which will ensure the report is exposed to web search engine ‘crawlers’ and that it includes the correct level of metadata. The open access element is additional to, and does not affect, the traditional publication of the research in a peer reviewed journal.

DSpace@Cambridge is the name given to ourIR (‘DSpace’ is actually the name of the software that runs it). It says: “The repository was established in 2003 to facilitate the deposit of digital content of a scholarly or heritage nature, allowing academics and their departments at the University to share and preserve this content in a managed environment”. If you browse the site you can see that there is already some stuff in there. But the main criticism of many IRs is that, so far, compared to the output, comparatively little material has been deposited in them.

Physics students may well be familiar with arXiv.org, a ‘central repository’ not linked to any particular institution (although now run by Cornell University), in which over half a million research papers have been deposited over many years. It was, admittedly, established much longer ago to serve researchers in a fast-moving field where traditional print publication finds it harder to keep up with events. But it is hoped that emerging individual IRs will achieve the same level of patronage in the future.

New students Library registration

We would like to welcome all new students to Homerton College and we hope to see you in the Library. We have organized Library Registration sessions for most subject groups—you are strongly recommended to attend your session.

There will be a brief introduction to the library and demonstrations of how to search our catalogue, how to borrow items using our self-issue system, where to return items into our ‘drop boxes’ and using our online system for catalogue searches and accessing your library acount.

At these sessions it is important that you get your University Card registered with us at the Library enquiry desk—you will not be able to use the Library until you do this.

Please attend the Library Registration session for your subject at the follwing times:

Friday 2 October

• 15.30 – Higher Degree students (1st session)

Monday 5 October

• 12.15 – Archaeology & Anthropology
• 13.30 – Theology
• 14.30 – Mathematics
• 15.00 – Higher Degree students (2nd session)
• 15.30 – History

Tuesday 6 October

• 09.00 – Natural Science
• 10.00 – Land Economy
• 10.30 – Classics
• 12.00 – Engineering
• 12.30 – Physical Natural Science
• 14.00 – PPS + Philosophy
• 14.30 – Geography
• 15.00 – English
• 15.30 – Music

Wednesday 7 October

• 09.30 – English/English and Drama
• 10.00 – Law
• 14.00 – MML
• 16.00 – Asian Studies *NEW ADDITION*

Free research skills courses at the UL

The University Library’s Research Skills Programme for this Michaelmas Term is now available at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Courses/. These courses are free of charge and open to all students and staff.

The courses are mostly short one hour sessions. Apart from one or two exceptions, you can just turn up on the day, there is no need to book in advance. A full timetable is linked from the above web page.

The course subjects include:

• Resources for a wide range of subject areas
• Finding journal and newspaper articles (eg. Known knowns: from citation to text; Known unknowns: discovering articles on your topic)
• Open web resources (eg. Open access: e-theses; Taming Google)
• Hands-on practical sessions—need to book these in advance (eg. How to find things on your reading list; Rare books online ECCO EEBO ESTC; E-resources for English literature)

Tip: click on the ‘For Librarians’ link for a 2-page quick guide to using Newton.

Lecture Lists 2009-2010

The Lecture Lists for 2009-2010 are now available online, as printed in the Cambridge University Reporter Special Issue no.1 (Fri 18 Sept 2009).

They are in the form of PDF files split approximately into Faculties to make the individual files more manageable for viewing. It is intended in future to provide a form of the lecture-list which is more appropriate for online use.

All arrangements for courses in the Lent and Easter terms are provisional only.

 Except where otherwise stated, lectures are held between the following dates, designated weeks 1-8, starting on a Thursday:

• MICHAELMAS TERM Tuesday, 6 October — Friday, 4 December
• LENT TERM Tuesday, 12 January — Friday, 12 March
• EASTER TERM Tuesday, 20 April — Friday, 11 June

Faculty of Education on Twitter

http://twitter.com/edfaclib

Paid work in Homerton College Library

We are looking for a team of at least 5 Postgraduate Students (but unfortunately not PGCEs) for shelving books, labelling, and other duties in the College Library.

Hours can be flexible but must be worked between 9.00-17.00 weekdays in sessions of two hours, with a minimum of 2 hours per person per week. The work will be offered during full term (Monday 5 October – Friday 4 December 2009) and possibly at other times. You would also be required to work the following two terms (Lent and Easter Terms 2010).

A training session will be arranged for which you will also be paid.

Note that, before we can employ you, you will need to obtain a National Insurance number. We can help you with this.

If you are interested please email the library staff—in particular Rosemary Boaz (rmb55)—as soon as possible.

We look forward to meeting you.

New weblinks to Libraries Directory and Map

The University’s Libraries Directory and Libraries Map have been moved to new homes on the Library webserver with new web addresses:

Libraries Directory: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries_directory/libraries_directory.cgi

Libraries Map (with key): http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/google_maps/cam_libs_map_key.htm

Libraries Map (full screen): http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/google_maps/cam_libs_map.htm

Please change or add to your bookmarks. All links from the UL website have been changed.