The Quiet Study Area in the North East corner of Level 3 of the Library will be closed for two weeks for refurbishment. Several new desks with power sockets as well as chairs have already been added to the area in the few months. The walls will now be repainted during the Inter-Semester break. In the following week new carpet will be installed. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Since November 2016 we have been using a new graffiti feedback board to gather your views on our services and facilities. We have noted and collated your comments and responded to them by topic/theme in three separate posts. Print copies of these responses have been attached to the board itself. You can read the original posts online here:
Themes covered include:
Many thanks,
The Library
The Library is currently running a trial of the BrowZine journal discovery tool. BrowZine allows you to browse ejournals available in the Library’s collection, arrange your favourite titles on a virtual bookshelf and monitor current content.
It is available as a web version on your computer or as an app for use on tablet, iPhone or Android devices.
Go to www.browzine.com
Afterwards, please tell us what you think by completing our brief survey online
Most of the issues raised in the comments (Dec-Jan) have already been answered in previous posts, so if you don’t see them here please visit: http://bit.ly/2fjh3vL and also http://bit.ly/2j55S9s
New comments:
Problems with power points not working on Level 4 and 5. The power points on these floors have now been checked and repaired by Estates, plus new ones have been installed in the Quiet Study area on the North East corner of Level 3.
‘Sleep space’/‘sleep zone’ – providing high-quality study space within our existing building structure can be challenging, particularly during periods of peak demand e.g. exams/revision. While we have watched these developments in other Universities with interest, we really do not have sufficient space to consider specific nap areas. We would also like to support a work-life balance, if you’re tired please take a break.
‘Working pens’ – presumably relating to the whiteboard pens for Level 2. We regularly top these up and have chosen glass-board specific pens which work the best on the glass and ceramic surfaces. Unfortunately the pens we provide are often vanishing before they run out, which is disappointing (and expensive) for us. We may have to return to loaning pens from the Security desk rather than leaving them out on Level 2, 24/7. Would you be happier if we took this approach?
‘More plants’ – we can raise this with the Landscapes team in Estates who kindly provide and maintain the plants in the building. We think plants are great for a conducive, lower intensity study environment. Unfortunately, one or two plants have been removed from the Library recently due to being ill-treated by our users – plant pots are not refuse bins, leaves are not used-chewing gum display receptacles and plants prefer water to cola, coffee and other liquids!
‘Stationery machine’ – we will have a look again at whether we might provide a stationery dispenser. Last time we looked there was nothing very suitable on the market, but we’re always happy to revisit ideas as things do move on. Stationery can already be purchased from various shops on campus, whilst the most popular item – staplers – can be used for free in the Copy & Print area at the back of Level 2. Also keep an eye out for Library training sessions and promotional events where you are likely to have a chance to get free bits of stationery e.g. pens, bookmarks, post-its, etc.
‘Please allow to borrow books during vacation’. You will be pleased to know that we already systematically extend all loans over the vacation period so you do not have to worry about returning recalled items whilst away from the University. You will need to borrow or renew existing loans after the specified date (usually a week or so before the beginning of vacation). Keep an eye out for messages on our plasma screens, Library homepage and news blog, etc.
Thanks for giving us your comments. In the coming weeks we will be using the graffiti board to request your views on specific topics and themes.
Warm regards,
The Library
Our recent news item Open access increase correlated with jump in Bath citation rates has attracted lots of interest. This blog post fills in some of the details behind the story.
We analysed journal articles and review papers published by University of Bath researchers between 2010 and 2015.
We used Pure (the University’s internal research information system) and the Library’s records of APC payments to identify publications that are:
We used SciVal to access and benchmark citation data for these publication. Publications’ DOIs acted as the bridge between our internal records and SciVal.
Our benchmark group is all University of Bath journal articles and review papers (indexed by Scopus/SciVal) rather than only ‘closed access’ papers because it’s hard to definitively identify closed access papers. For example, even if we haven’t got an open access version in our repository, the paper could still be openly available elsewhere.
We describe a paper as highly cited if it is among the top 10% most cited papers for in the world for its year of publication and subject area (assigned by Scopus/SciVal ASJC subject categories).
Here’s what we found:
| Number of articles & reviews published 2010-15 | Percentage of these papers that are highly cited | |
| University of Bath all papers |
7,061 |
18% |
| University of Bath green open access |
2,338 |
22% |
| University of Bath gold open access |
219 |
27% |
This shows a correlation between open access and higher citations. But of course correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. While we’re seeing strong up take of green open access right across the board (over 80% of recent University of Bath research articles recorded in Pure comply with HEFCE’s open access policy), the University of Bath’s use of gold open access is more selective. The gold open access papers identified above either published research funded by one of the UK’s Research Councils or they qualified for use of University of Bath’s internal open access fund. This fund is designated for publishing top quality research.
The University’s investment in gold open access growing. We paid APCs/allocated gold open access vouchers for over 150 papers in the academic year 2015/16, amounting to roughly 10% of the University’s article and review publishing for the year. So we will continue to monitor citation rates for open access papers with interest.
Katie Evans, Research Analytics Librarian
The Library is running a trial of the BBC Monitoring Service.
BBC Monitoring collects news from TV, radio, press, internet, news agency and social media sources in over 100 languages from 180 countries around the world and translates them into English to produce in-depth news stories and reports, including:
Media reviews – find out what topics are being covered by the media.
Explainers – reports on reasons behind current events and their implications.
Names in the news – profiles of persons or organisations making the headlines.
Country insights – find out current events and trends in a particular county.
Terrorism digest – summaries of reports on terrorist activity and counterterrorism.
New content is added every day.
Regions covered are: Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS – former Soviet republics); Middle East; Iran; Central Asia; China; North Korea; Latin America; Large areas of Africa.
To get to BBC Monitoring
Go to https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/#/login
Click on the ‘Login’ box
Click ‘Login via Academic Institution’
Click on ‘University of Bath’
Enter your University of Bath username and password.
After logging in, video tutorials are available from the Help section at the top right of the screen.
The trial ends on midnight on Tuesday 28th February 2017.
If you have any feedback or comments on the resource, please send them to Jonathan Woodfield, j.woodfield@bath.ac.uk.
Pidgeon Digital is an excellent resource comprising over 250 unique illustrated talks from the greats of the Architectural, Design & Engineering world. The website has been completely re-built and is now re-launched with a much improved user interface and is now fully responsive for both mobile and desktop use. You can search for talks by subject, architect, building or location.
The Library has subscribed to PD for several years and we would welcome your feedback on this resource. Please email d.stacey@bath.ac.uk or comment on this post below.
For the duration of the exam revision and University Assessment period the upper floors of the Library will be for quiet study only: 9 – 28 Jan 2017. This does not represent a change for Level 5 which is silent all year round.
The University has also set aside specific rooms for quiet study across campus during week 15, week 16 and week 17.
Please be considerate to your fellow students during this period and keep noise to a minimum.
Quiet study space is very popular at this time of year. As a result, students have requested that unattended personal items left in order to reserve Library desks are removed to allow others to use the space. Please be aware that Library staff may remove unattended personal items and take them to Security for safekeeping.
As an additional step, we will again open up our Library Level 4 meeting room for extra study space during this period. See also: study areas and bookable workrooms.
From January 2017 we have access to a new addition to our Statista database. The producers of Statista have added a Consumer Market Outlook (CMO) section focusing on Europe. This new source complements our existing provision of consumer market data via Marketline and Passport (Euromonitor).
The CMO provides market insights, key performance indexes and forecasts for key consumer markets. The current service covers 10 product categories and 70 subcategories. The database will be updated annually and data can be downloaded as an Excel or PNG-file.
Computing Services have alerted us to disruption to IT services during this weekend due to important maintenance work.
We do not anticipate disruption to Library services and e-resources. As noted on the announcement: you will still have access to email and Wi-Fi, as well as the internet ‘if you use your own device.’
University of Bath: Library News 