After working as
Curatorial Specialist at RULA, Alison Skyrme was recently appointed to the position of Special Collections Librarian. Alison holds a BFA in Photography Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University (2002) and a Master of Information from the University of Toronto (2015). Alison is also a 2007 alumnus of the Photographic Preservation and Collections Management (PPCM) graduate program, and has been an active instructor with the program for several years. She specializes in collections management and documentation in the heritage sector and has over 15 years of collections experience in galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
April 26th is World Intellectual Property Day
April 26th is World Intellectual Property Day and is celebrated around the world. Launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 the day was created to raise awareness about how intellectual property like patents, trademarks and copyright are both used and in turn foster creativity. This year’s theme is Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined.
Universities are both creators of intellectual property through faculty, instructor, researcher and student output, but are also consumers of intellectual property. Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives spends millions of dollars per year on book and digital journal subscription purchasing. Most of these on-line journal articles are not publicly available to those outside of a university environment without a fee. At universities we are digitally privileged because we pay a substantial amount yearly for access to this content.
The purchases universities make support publishers and at the same time give instructors, researchers and students timely access to the latest scholarly information that can be used in their courses and for their research. Ryerson researchers are also part of the creative cycle as they create and publish new works citing the work that has gone before them.
More about:
World Intellectual Property Day
WIPO
Graduating Student Employees Make Their Mark
Congratulations to our graduating student employees! The Library annually recognizes their contributions by giving them the opportunity to suggest items to add to the collection. The items selected by the students have been purchased and are now available at the Library, with a mention of the contributors in the catalogue records, as well as in each of the chosen items themselves. In the photo, recent graduates Sethlina Adusei (left), Leyan Saleh (middle) and Jason Chow (right) display their requested titles, now part of the Library collection.
Requested titles include Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman (2014), Mornings in Jenin (2010), and Food Inc. (2009) (DVD).
Chief Librarian Elected to OCLC Board of Trustees
Congratulations to Chief Librarian, Madeleine Lefebvre, who was recently elected to the OCLC Board of Trustees during the OCLC Global Council earlier this month. OCLC is a global library cooperative that provides shared technology services, original research and community programs for its membership and the 
library community at large. As an elected member of the Board of Trustees, Madeleine will be working on behalf of participating libraries worldwide to ensure that the cooperative meets the needs of individual institutions, and the profession at large. In addition, the Board is responsible for recruiting and working with the OCLC President and CEO, and for monitoring the cooperative through a dedicated audit process. Madeleine is the first Canadian to be elected to the Board of Trustees.
FACETS: New Canadian Open Access Journal
Faculty members looking for a new venue for sharing research will want to know about FACETS, a new multidisciplinary, peer reviewed open access journal published by Canadian Science Publishing. The journal publishes articles in the biological sciences, biomedicine and health, environmental science, engineering, physical sciences, and integrative sciences (such as ethics, public health, science policy, sustainability, etc.).
The creation of this journal is part of a larger shift in academic publishing away from traditional for-profit commercial publishers to an open access landscape that permits faculty members to retain copyright over their intellectual property and facilitate wider sharing of the results of their research. These and other open access benefits prompted the drafting of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, which now requires that research funded by NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR be made open access.
Dr. Imogen Coe, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Ryerson and one of the editors for the new journal, notes that “The classic routes of publication are extraordinarily expensive for new researchers, for small labs with limited funds and for individuals all over the world who want access but get stuck with expensive paywalls.“
As a new journal, FACETS does not yet have an impact factor, a metric that reflects the average number of citations to articles recently published in a specific journal. Dr. Coe advises emerging researchers to “find a balance between impact factor and other measures of impact and contribution.” She also points out that some researchers mistakenly rely on impact factors as a measure of article quality. “Publication in the highest impact journal in the world – with no subsequent citations suggest that there was really no impact of the contribution. Publication in a low impact journal combined with huge numbers of citations suggests a truly impactful contribution.”
A major challenge for libraries supporting open access publishing is finding sustainable funding to support article processing fees (APCs). FACETS will charge an APC of $1350, which is less than most other APCs. The Ryerson Library provides some support for open access author fees via memberships with Biomed Central, the Public Library of Science, and Hindawi. For more information about open access publishing, the library’s open access author fund, and our Digital Repository, please see: http://learn.library.ryerson.ca/scholcomm.
LibQual+ Survey Begins April 4
Once again, the Library will participate in the LibQUAL+ survey, along with several other Canadian university libraries. The Library participated in LibQUAL+ in 2007, 2010, and 2013. Please visit the Library website to view results from the previous survey.
Starting the week of April 4th, a random sample of students, faculty and staff will receive an e-mail invitation to complete the web-based survey. Participation is completely voluntary and the process is entirely confidential. Students may choose, if they wish, to submit their email for a chance to win one three $50 Starbucks gift cards. Neither the email address nor any other personal identification will be transmitted with the survey responses.
Your participation in LibQUAL+ 2016 will be particularly valuable as we now have the Student Learning Centre as part of our space. We sincerely hope that you will complete the survey if you receive an email invitation.
Thank you for your support. If you have any questions, please email: libqual@ryerson.ca
RULA’s Recent Award-Winners
It’s award season, and time to celebrate and recognize the contributions of our fabulous library staff!
At the recent Ryerson Awards Night celebration, the university recognized excellence in teaching, research, administration, service and leadership. The 2016 event honoured 118 staff and faculty members.
Simon Ly, the Library’s long-time IT Technician, was the recipient of a Julia Hanigsberg Make Your Mark Staff Award for his 22 years of excellence in service and leadership. Librarians Lucina Fraser, Kelly Kimberley, Fangmin Wang and May Yan were recipients of the Librarian Award, for their varied contributions to student support and engagement, and innovation in library services.
In addition to the Ryerson Awards, our talented staff have also received external recognition for their efforts. Librarian Mandissa Arlain, who recently received a Viola Desmond Award, was also awarded an International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Fellowship to attend the World Library and Information Congress in Columbus, Ohio in August. Mandi was one of only 15 librarians in Canada to receive a fellowship, which pays all conference expenses, including travel.
Our student staff have also made their mark at Ryerson. Jason Chow, a work study student who helps make library resources available in accessible formats, as well as supporting the One Stop Copyright Service, recently received an Experiential Learning Work Study Award. This award recognizes a work study student who has made an impact in fostering a collegial environment, using exceptional interpersonal skills to proactively seek out collaborative ways to work with colleagues in their department and/or across the community. Jason will receive his award at the Student Experience Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, March 29th.
Open Access Textbooks: Open Education Week 2016
A Guest Blog By Michelle Schwartz of the LTO for Open Education Week 2016
In February, Ryerson was excited to host Rajiv Jhangiani, a faculty member from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, for a talk on his research into the use of open textbooks to teach psychology. Open textbooks are defined as textbooks to which the copyright holder has assigned an open license, which allows anyone the right to access, reformat, and customize the textbook to best meet their needs. These textbooks can be downloaded or printed in hard copy for a small cost via print-on-demand. The author, rather than a publishing company, retains the copyright, and the textbooks are often peer reviewed.
Dr. Jhangiani is the author of two open textbooks hosted by the BC Open Textbook Project. The Open Textbook Project is an initiative by the government of British Columbia to make education more accessible. By developing open access textbooks for the subject areas with the highest enrollments in the province, British Columbia hoped to reduce the financial burden on students. The project has grown steadily over the course of the last few years, and as of March 2016, could boast of the following statistics:
Number of BC Open Textbooks: 139
Number of students using open textbooks: 12,159
Number of faculty adopting open textbooks: 110
Number of institutions adopting open textbooks: 26 (21 Public, 5 Private)
Student savings: $1,215,900 – $1,540,680
As an example of an open textbook, Dr. Jhangiani’s Research Methods in Psychology is in its 2nd Canadian edition. It can be downloaded for free in a multitude of formats, from PDF to epub, and it can be printed on demand for a small fee – $10.90 for black and white, or $32.25 for a colour version. As a comparison, a textbook on the same topic from a major publishing company is currently retailing on Amazon.ca for $276.
Though the importance of this cost difference to students cannot be understated, perhaps an even greater benefit of open textbooks was brought up by Dr. Jhangiani at his talk – by publishing with an open license, Dr. Jhangiani felt he had much more latitude to provide unique Canadian examples that he thought would be most beneficial to his students, without the pressure from a publishing company to try to address larger markets. Because the textbook is published with an open license, any educator can take the textbook, use the chapters that they like best, and replace Dr. Jhangiani’s examples and case studies with the material that is most relevant to their course. This flexibility is the strength of the open textbook model!
If you are interested in adopting an open textbook in your course, check out the offerings available at BC Campus, Open Stax College from Rice University, and the Open Textbook Library from the University of Minnesota.
If you have questions about adopting an open textbook or you have thoughts on how you might like to use them in your course, contact us at the LTO, michelle.schwartz@ryerson.ca, ext. 2094.
The Ryerson Library and Archives can also assist in finding open access educational resources to use in your teaching – please contact your Subject Librarian , call Ann Ludbrook at ext. 6910 aludbrook@ryerson.ca or have a look at the Ryerson Library Open Access Educational Resources Guide.
Happy Open Education Resources Week March 7th-March 11th!
What are Open Education Resources (OER)?
OERs are educational works created by other instructors like lectures, tests, syllabus, assignments, textbooks, journal articles, case studies etc. that the author decides they want to let other educators use freely in their teaching. OERs can be used and reused freely for educational purposes because the author has freely released the work to the public for that use – usually using one of the six types of a Creative Commons licence. These licences allow different levels of use – some allow adaptation and even commercial use and some do not. All Creative Commons licences require citation. The best OER resources are governed by a principle of “The 5 Rs”.
“The 5 Rs” – in order for a resource to qualify as an OER users should be able to
• Reuse – use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
• Revise – adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix – combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
• Redistribute – share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
• Retain – make, own, and control copies of the content
(The 5rs is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221.)
In Canada there are some leaders of Open Educational Resources paving the way to support instructors who want to use resources like these that are free of copyright restrictions. One of these is the BCcampusOpenED resource that hosts Open Access textbooks, including peer-reviewed Canadian editions, and has had adoptions of these textbooks by more than 26 Canadian institutions, saving students over a million dollars of textbooks cost to date. In Ontario eCampus Ontario hosts Open Access educational resources and guides you to other open materials. Toronto Metropolitan University Open Learning has Open Access modules created by Ryerson instructors such as videos from The Naked Entrepreneur and a module Therapeutic Communication and Mental Health Assessment. Michelle Schwartz at The Learning and Teaching Office has created a great best practices resource for faculty and instructors who want to explore open access educational resources called The Open Access Classroom. Open Access Education resources are free for you to use and reuse and adapt to fit your teaching aims as long as you cite the source. Perhaps most importantly these resources are free of copyright restrictions and you can provide them to your students free of charge.
Mandissa Arlain Receives Viola Desmond Award
Congratulations to RULA’s Mandissa Arlain, who was the recent recipient of a Viola Desmond Day Award! The Viola Desmond Day Awards celebrate the work and achievements of strong Black women from Toronto Metropolitan University and the greater Toronto community. Now in its 8th year, the awards help raise awareness of Viola Desmond’s contributions to the civil rights movement in Canada, and the diverse and little-known stories of past and present women of African descent.
The awards are named after four notable women in Canadian Black history. Mandissa has received the Ms. Chloe Cooley Ryerson Staff Member Award, and will receive this award at the Viola Desmond Day Awards Ceremony on Monday, March 7 from 5-8 p.m. in POD250. Recipients of this award have enriched Ryerson’s and/or Toronto’s diversity through initiatives promoting Black history, and have made a positive difference in areas such as equity, diversity, inclusion, human rights, social justice and community-building.
Mandissa has worked at RULA since 2003 in a number of different roles – as a Library Technician, Circulation Services Supervisor, and more recently, as a Librarian, after having completed her Masters in Information Studies at the University of Toronto’s iSchool. Mandissa was a member of the university’s Anti-Racism Task Force, formed in 2010, and also volunteers for the 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women (ABC) Project. This is the second time a staff member from RULA has won a Viola Desmond Day Award – librarian Lucina Fraser was also an award recipient in 2010.