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• Celebrate GIS Day @ the MDGL

  Tuesday, November 13, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Celebrate and explore the power of maps on GIS Day (November 14th) at the Map, Data & GIS Library. Held during Geography Awareness Week, GIS Day “provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society.” (gisday.com)

  At Brock, all are invited to enjoy:

  • pizza lunch (at minimal cost) sponsored by TAGS (Tourism and Geography Society) students
  • Esri scholarship contest presentations
  • Digital Scholarship Lab presentation
  • Games, Trivia, Prizes
  • ArcGIS Workshop
  • Cake

  The days events run from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Mackenzie Chown C306

  Tags: Events, MDGL, Workshops
  Categories: Main, MDGL

• Library charging station ready for your devices

  Tuesday, November 13, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Students have a new option when looking to charge their phones on campus. A new charging station, courtesy of BUSU, is now in operation in the library.  The locker-style unit is easy to use. Simply open a box, plug in your phone, set an access code of your choice on the pin pad, and walk away. Each locker has 3 cables: an apple lightning cable, a USB type-C cable, and a micro USB cable.

  The charging station is located on the main floor of the library, next to the copiers and vending machines.

  Tags: Services, Students
  Categories: Main

• Join us for The Human Library

  Tuesday, November 06, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Celebrate International Education Week and check out a human book!

  The library has gathered “books’ from countries and regions around the world. Members of the Brock community can meet and chat for short conversations.  Each conversation is an opportunity to hear someone’s story and share your own!

  When: November 15, 2018, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
  Where: Main floor of the Library

  Reserve your 15 minute time slot

  Tags: Events, Staff, Students
  Categories: Main

• Introductory OpenRefine Workshop

  Monday, November 05, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  The Brock University Digital Scholarship Lab invites you to attend a workshop on the powerful data management tool OpenRefine.  If you work with data in spreadsheets, you will find this tool particularly useful. OpenRefine allows you to work with CSV data in intuitive and efficient ways.  Spot trends in your results, ensure accuracy, and perform transformations to all rows of data based on formulas.  OpenRefine quickly takes messy data and transforms it into a more comprehensive format.  This tutorial starts at the very beginning and provides hands on examples for you to explore.

  When: Monday, November 12^th, 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
  Where: Classroom A (ST228), James A. Gibson Library, Brock University

  Sign-up at: https://experiencebu.brocku.ca/organization/dsl

  Questions? Contact the DSL team at: dsl@brocku.ca

  Tags: Events, Training & Development, Workshops
  Categories: Main

• #RAKDay in the Learning Commons

  Friday, November 02, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Students, staff and faculty took part in Random Acts of Kindness Day across campus and in the community on Friday November 2nd. In the Library, the day was celebrated with spontaneous candy & highlighter drops to delighted students. The Learning Commons sported a very successful card making station facilitated by volunteers from  Student Life & Community Experience.

  Tags: Events, Students
  Categories: Main

• Learn a new skill with Lynda.com

  Friday, November 02, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Brock University students, faculty and staff now have unlimited access to Lynda.com, a leading online, self-paced learning platform. Learn more.

  Tags: Staff, Students, Training & Development
  Categories: Main

• Calling all night owls!

  Tuesday, October 30, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Late night extended hours in the Matheson Learning Commons have resumed for the fall term.

  Details:

  • Open to 2:30 AM Sunday through Thursday.
  • Approximately 400 study spots are available.
  • The Ask Us desk and floors 5-10 will close at regular times (9 PM on Sunday, 11 PM Monday – Thursday).
  • Library services, such as borrowing and research help will not be available during Late Night Study hours.
  • Friday & Saturday closing times remain the same (some exceptions during the exam period).

  Learn more.

  Tags: Hours
  Categories: Main

• Business graduate student wins Brock Library OpenCon Scholarship

  Friday, October 26, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  The chance to hear from a compelling advocate for open educational resources has propelled graduate student Fares Belkhiria into using and advocating for OER in his own teaching and research.

  Belkhiria, a second-year student at Goodman School of Business for Master of Science in Management, attended last December’s Library-CPI presentation featuring Rajiv Jhangiani, one of Canada’s leading advocates for greater access and affordability of teaching and learning materials. The event piqued Belkhiria’s interest in OER  and he continues to correspond with Jhangiani about these issues. His enthusiasm and record of involvement with “open” made Belkhiria’s application for the Brock University Library OpenCon Scholarship a stand out.

  Belkhiria, who also works as a graduate teaching assistant and guest lecturer within Goodman’s MBA International Program, will attend OpenCon – an international conference focusing on open education, open access and open data – in Toronto Nov. 2-4.

  The Library offers this scholarship to support professional development for Brock graduate students and to reflect its commitment to transforming the mechanisms of scholarly communication.

   

  Tags: OA Week, Open Access
  Categories: Main

• Equity advocate wins Brock University Award for Open Access

  Thursday, October 25, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  A strong record of advocacy for openly sharing knowledge has resulted in Dolana Mogadime, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, winning the Brock University Award for Open Access. 

  Mogadime has contributed to enhanced knowledge production and exchange via several open access academic and professional communities of practice. Most noteworthy are her Equity Matters blogs through the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as her dedicated work as Editor-in-Chief of the open access publication Brock Education: a Journal of Educational Research. Mogadime continues to champion open access knowledge exchange on several fronts:  on campus at Brock University, national and internationally.  Her contributions have made difference to both academic and professional learning communities. 

  The award comes with a $2,500 grant which Dolana intends to apply to an open access book project. 

  Tags: OA Week, Open Access
  Categories: Main

• Who is the Internet’s Own Boy?

  Tuesday, October 23, 2018 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Aaron Swartz was a young man who, in his own words, wanted to save the world. Instead, and unfortunately, on January 11, 2013, at the age of twenty-six, Aaron Swartz hung himself. News of his death travelled quickly and for many people, his death was a step back in the movement towards open information.

  Swartz was an extremely intelligent individual. He was reading novels by the time he was in kindergarten and by 14 he was working as a computer programmer / software developer.  Swartz was instrumental in developing licensing for freely sharing material and was a developer of the popular social-networking news site “Reddit”.  As Swartz’s career progressed, he grew to hate corporations and working in corporate life surrounded by rules. Swartz eventually decided that he no longer wanted to work with computers and became passionate about advocating for freedom of information rights.  Swartz did not believe people should have to pay to use software or access information. He became famous for using his internet account at MIT to hack JSTOR and download millions of academic journal articles. Swartz believed there was no wrong in his actions, nor did he see his actions as criminal and therefore declined a plea bargain. Instead he faced charges of wire fraud, and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Swartz was strongly opposed to the idea of accessing information as “stealing”:

  “Stealing is wrong. But downloading isn’t stealing. If I shoplift an album from my local record store, no one else can buy it. But when I download a song, no one loses it and another person gets it. There’s no ethical problem. The evidence that downloading hurts sales is weak, but even if downloading did hurt sales, that doesn’t make it unethical. Libraries, video rental places, and used book stores
  (none of which pay the artist) hurt sales too. Is it unethical to use them? (2004)”

  In 2008, Swartz co-authored and posted an article titled “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto”, which was to be used as evidence at his trial to prove his intention of distributing all of the articles he downloaded from JSTOR:

  “Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations… Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable…We can fight back. Those with access to these resources—students, librarians, scientists—you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not—indeed, morally, you cannot—keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world.”

  Swartz died before his trial began. His life as a genius who stood up for freedom and fairness has been immortalized in the film The Internet’s Own Boy. Please join us for a free screening of the Internet’s Own Boy on Wednesday, October 24^th from 10am-12pm in TH253.  Tim Ribaric, Acting Head, Map Data GIS Library / Digital Scholarship Lab, will discuss the importance of the work Aaron Swartz was doing and how his activism is relevant for today’s libraries in the context of open source data.

  (Quotes from Aaron Swartz’s Blog: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog)

  Blog post by Alicia Floyd.

  Tags: OA Week, Open Access
  Categories: Main