Highlights from the quarterly reports of TU Wien Bibliothek 2020
2020: Quarter 4 - Multimedia programme at literature festival | Expanded range of library courses and workshops
The library as third place: Multimedia programme at the Austrian literature festival
In October 2020, the literature festival "Österreich liest" took place at TU Wien Bibliothek despite the challenges caused by Covid-19. The multimedia exhibition "Digital Art Hub Austria-China. A Touch of Purple and Gold. Science Meets Art in the Library" was shown in cooperation with the Viennese artist Barbara Salaun and opened with a lecture by Alexandra Harrer. In addition, Uwe Wössner and Fabian Dembski (High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart) presented an interdisciplinary research project on the 3D reconstruction of the Octagon in Ephesus in the library's temporary data visualisation lab. Analogue and digital data were interrelated to each other in physical space and made immersive. Augmented and virtual reality gave the library as third place an entirely new dimension in terms of access to scientific knowledge and knowledge transfer.
Expanded range of courses and workshops offered by TU Wien Bibliothek
For the first time, the library offers three courses on scientific work within TU Wien's Transferable Skills Catalogue. Bachelor's and Master's students practice basic skills such as searching, citing and writing. The focus for doctoral students is on publishing and disseminating research output as well as data visualisation. In addition, workshops on research assessment, academic profiles curation and self-archiving are regularly offered for (junior) researchers. For institutes and research groups, tailor-made courses are available by arrangement.
Furthermore, the following successful national and international events took place this quarter: e-IRG-Workshop under German Presidency, Focus on Open Science, Virtual Round Tables as part of the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Week, and the ORCID Austria Tech-Workshop, opens an external URL in a new window.
2020: Quarter 3 - Library as a partner for DOI registration | ReposiTUm goes live with new software | Commitment to European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
Library as a partner for DOI registration
TU Wien Bibliothek acts as a central point of contact for all TU Wien members aiming to make their scientific results findable and citable in the long term. The library assigns DOIs for documents in reposiTUm, the TU Wien Academic Press publications, the “Journal for Facility Management”, the Journal “The Public Sector”, and other technical systems that meet the requirements of the Rectorate´s directive. For other Austrian universities, research and funding institutions, and non-profit organisations, TU Wien Bibliothek operates the DOI-Service Austria, to which 13 institutions now belong.
Go-live of reposiTUm in a new software environment
On 3 September 2020, the library relaunched the open access platform reposiTUm. Before that, it had successfully migrated the data from the previous software application Visual Library to the open source software DSpace. The import started on 27 June and ran 81 hours for 14,931 data records. New functionalities and a new design were developed in close cooperation with Campus Software Development.
Strong commitment to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is currently the most important initiative of the European Commission concerning European digital infrastructures. It pursues the goal of connecting science and society more closely to solve societal challenges. Vice Rector Josef Eberhardsteiner applied for the membership of TU Wien, Austria's oldest technical university, in the EOSC Association, following a corresponding decision by the Rectorate. The library, represented by Beate Guba and Paolo Budroni, took care of co-shaping the governance of the recently founded EOSC Association through participating in the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) open consultation and contributing to the Bylaws Group.
2020: Quarter 2 - “Education Landscape on the Move” focuses on library buildings | Relaunch of Library website and catalogue
“Education Landscape on the Move” focused on library buildings
In the summer term 2020, the courses “Education Landscape on the Move” were dedicated to the library as a place of learning and, in particular, to the TU Wien main library building. Due to Covid-19, the contents had to be adapted and changed to distance learning. The sudden closure of the library was one of the topics. “I spent so much time there last semester that I could have easily registered my second home there. It is exactly this place that has been taken away from me now. In this place, all my concentration, motivation and creativity is concentrated,” said one student. Among a diverse mix of methods, the students interviewed library staff about their activities. They are going to present the results of this qualitative study in September. The virtual lecture series “Free Space Art” was organised in cooperation with the library and featured experts from architecture, cognitive science and library science: Daniel Bammer (AT), Gareth Griffiths (FIN), Jef van den Putte (NL), Markus Peschl (AT), Anna Maria Tammaro (ITA). The lectures offered fascinating insights and interesting discussions.
Relaunch of the library website and CatalogPlus
On 30 June 2020, the new website of TU Wien Bibliothek went online, presenting the library as a broad-based, future-oriented partner in the university and scientific community. Language, style and visual language are characterised by consistent principles and support user orientation. The navigation addresses the user groups as well as crucial university and library strategy aspects. At the same time, we relaunched CatalogPlus to make the literature search even more intuitive and optimise it for mobile devices. In addition to the library's printed and digital holdings, one can find numerous open access full texts on TU Wien's main research areas in CatalogPlus.
2020: Quarter 1 - Library fosters international knowledge exchange
International knowledge exchange
A study with recommendations for TU Wien Academic Press was carried out by KU Research and UCL Press. In this study, dissemination systems and platforms from Amazon to Google Scholar and OAPEN to databases such as Scopus were evaluated. A targeted selection based on this will be implemented step by step to make TU Wien Academic Press publications even more visible and findable internationally.
In addition, the library was a popular contact point for colleagues from abroad: Dr Gavin Boyce, head of the Faculty of Engagement and Partnership at the Western Bank Library of the University of Sheffield, sought exchange regarding research data. Thomas Eichenberger, a member of the Head Office of the ETH Library, was interested in the strategic orientation of TU Wien Bibliothek and its activities in the field of Open Science. A high-level delegation from the University and State Library of Münster and the University and City Library of Cologne visited our library to learn from our best practices in implementing the cloud-based library software Alma.