2023: Quarter 4 - EOSC Lustrum | International Data Week | Completion of GIGAR-V project

EOSC Lustrum - 5 years of EOSC developments

The conference "The EOSC Lustrum - five years of EOSC developments" on 19 October 2023 celebrated the successes of the last five years, since the adoption of the Vienna Declaration on the European Open Science Cloud. Together with the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the University of Vienna, the European Commission and other partners, TU Wien Bibliothek coordinated the programme, fundraising and management of the event. International guests participated in discussions on the perspectives, opportunities and challenges for research data in Europe, and engaged in critical discourse to develop new ideas. View the detailed EOSC Lustrum programme, opens an external URL in a new window

Library activities during the International Data Week

TU Wien Bibliothek was active in the organisation and management of the International Data Week, contributing two sessions to the programme. The International Data Week was held from 23 October to 26 October 2023 by CODATA, World Data System, Research Data Alliance and Paris Lodron University Salzburg. In the session "PID provision - the current Austrian approach, challenges and future directions", Elise Harder presented the framework of the DOI Service Austria and discussed the role of persistent identifiers (PIDs) from a global perspective with international speakers. Chris Schubert co-moderated the session "Enhancing data and information discovery and reuse across disciplines - The roles of quality management in open science" to an audience filling the auditorium, who reached the conclusion that the findings of the speakers and panellists need to be further discussed on a global level.

Successful completion of GIGAR-V project

"Guiding Infrastructure Governance and Controlled Vocabularies Requirement" (GIGAR-V) originated in a grant from the Horizon INFRAEOSC-03-2020 of the EOSC Future project. Under TU Wien Bibliothek’s project lead, the one-year project could be concluded successfully in October 2023. Due to the high level of dynamics of the technical developments within the EOSC context, the international consortium of Austrian, French and Danish institutions was given a mandate to obtain insights into current projects such as FAIR-IMPACT, CORE4EOSC and others and support them with advice. The project results will be published in 2024.

2023: Quarter 3 - OPUSH project enters „hot phase“ | Greater transparency on open access publication costs  | Start of EULIST alliance

OPUSH project enters „hot phase“ of citizen science experiments

In the course of a citizen science experiment at schools in the 6th Viennese district organised by TU Wien Bibliothek, pupils aged 14 and 15 contributed their perspective to the participatory city planning process “Zukunftsfitte Gumpendorfer Straße” (Making Gumpendorfer Straße fit for the future). A second citizen science experiment examined the effects of urban heat on the health of retired persons in Favoriten using sensors and a chatbot. These experiments, part of the OPUSH project, were accompanied by a variety of dissemination activities, such as opening the library building to the public during Open House Wien 2023; library participation in the European Researchers’ Night 2023, organizing the workshop “Citizen science to guide developments of and build trust in key technologies” at the CESAER Annual Meeting 2023, including a talk on “Citizen Science and the UN SDGs. Case Study: Open Urban Sustainability Hubs Project” and the moderation of a panel of citizen science experts from Denmark, Lithuania, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands.

Greater transparency on open access publication costs

In September, the document "Empfehlung für die Erfassung von Publikationskosten in Statistiken, opens an external URL in a new window" (Recommendation on recording publication costs in statistics) was published, marking an important project goal of AT2OA2 (Austrian Transition to Open Access 2), with significant contributions from two staff members of TU Wien Bibliothek. This paper defines four categories of publication costs for open access publishing of scholarly works, plus an additional category for other costs. This categorization ensures standardized and comparable indicators in statistics, which is important for (inter)national reporting (for example, in the Statistical Yearbook of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research; the university intellectual capital reports; or the Austrian Library Statistics). The categorization allows a systematic and clear monitoring of costs and maps the transformation from closed to open access over a longer period of time.

Start of "EULIST - European Universities Linking Society and Technology” Alliance

After funding was approved in July 2023, the EULiST Alliance, opens an external URL in a new window in September started preparations for the official kick-off, which will take place from 02 to 03 November 2023 in Hannover. Coordination of the alliance building resides with Paolo Budroni at TU Wien, and he organised the programme for a visit by a delegation from Leibniz University Hannover at TU Wien, in consultation with Rector Jens Schneider. The intensive exchanges were continued together at Brno University of Technology. In October, TU Wien staff members will visit the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. At TU Wien, internal activities included the formation of teams, initial coordination meetings, setting up internal communication on coLAB, and briefings of participating staff members.

2023: Quarter 2 - Festive launch of Davis | Erasmus+ Mobility Week | Workshop on FAIR principles

Festive launch of Davis, the new Data Visualisation Space in the library

This groundbreaking new space for teaching and learning in TU Wien Bibliothek makes possible the collaborative and interdisciplinary implementation of 2D and 3D visualisation projects.  On 08 May Davis was inaugurated by Vice Rector Josef Eberhardsteiner and Library Director Beate Guba. Around 80 guests tested the nearly 5-metre-long interactive touchwall and experienced intuitive and immersive interaction with visualised data models on the 3D-capable, floor-to-ceiling LED wall. The library is at present developing course formats and usage possibilities together with early adopters from different faculties. From the winter semester 2023, Davis will be ready for wider use in teaching and in events supporting the university’s Third Mission and citizen science.

Erasmus+ Mobility Week at TU Wien Bibliothek fosters knowledge exchange and strategic collaboration on digital tools and skills

Our Erasmus+ Mobility Week from 07-10 May 2023 was dedicated to "Nature-based solutions: Digital Methods and Tools to Support Problem-Solving". The main topics were the potential of AR/VR in urban development or construction, and microcredentials. Petra Aigner from the TU Wien Academy for Continuing Education gave insights into the present situation in Austria in her keynote speech. The participants from Estonia (TalTech), Germany (HLRS) and Austria (TU Wien) then discussed the challenges of implementing microcredentials and their role in lifelong learning. Outcomes of this Erasmus+ week were not only the intensive knowledge exchange, but also a new strategic partnership between the TalTech Library and TU Wien Bibliothek, who are planning to collaborate more closely in the areas of the visualisation of scientific data, digital infrastructures and skills development.

Workshop on the FAIR principles with experts from the Netherlands met with great interest

TU Wien Bibliothek and the TU Wien Center for Research Data Management organized a two-day workshop on FAIR awareness together with the GO FAIR Austria office. The trainers were Barbara Magagna and Erik Schultes from the GO FAIR Foundation (NL). The workshop provided historical and technical context to help researchers better appreciate the value of FAIR and how FAIR might impact their own work. The key issues around the implementation of FAIR and technology trends in FAIRification and the FAIR Orchestration of research data were also considered. The 59 participants came from Austria and 13 other EU countries. The presentations by the GO FAIR Foundation (GFF) trainers Barbara Magagna and Erik Schultes and the GFF fellows Juliana Menger and Erik Van Winkle are available for download on the OSF platform, opens an external URL in a new window.

2023: Quarter 1 - Library receives Open Library Badge 2020 | Volume from TU Wien Bibliothek’s holdings at Fischer von Erlach exhibition 

Our commitment to more openness in science and society was rewarded with the Open Library Badge 2020

On 20 February 2023, TU Wien Bibliothek became the first Austrian institution to be awarded the “Open Library Badge 2020”. Recipients include national, university and city libraries as well as library networks from the German-speaking countries. The Open Library Badge highlights the diversity of the community as well as the wide spectrum of activities libraries are undertaking to promote open science. TU Wien Bibliothek scored highly in the following categories:

  • Contributing to open-source software
  • Professional development opportunities
  • Enabling text and data mining
  • Establishing cost transparency for acquisitions
  • Revealing open access potentials 

More on the Open Library Badge, opens an external URL in a new window and best-practice examples of previous recipients

A valuable volume from TU Wien Bibliothek’s holdings is on display at the exhibition “Fischer von Erlach – Master of Baroque Architecture”

To mark the 300th anniversary of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s death, Salzburg Museum and Wien Museum are presenting a large joint exhibition of his work with exhibits from the inventories of both museums, supplemented by a large number of high-ranking loans from Austrian and international collections. Fischer von Erlach’s “Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur”(A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture) was the first illustrated world history of architecture and gained him renown in all Europe during his lifetime. TU Wien Bibliothek contributed our copy of the 1721 first edition of this book to the exhibition as a loan. In addition, a specially produced video allows visitors to view more of the contents of the book. The exhibition is on view at the Salzburg Museum until 08 October 2023 and will be shown at the Wien Museum in 2024.