Day 2 of Experiential Learning 2019

 Day 2/12


My Day started of at 09:00 o clock in the morning where we arrived at the Informatatorium in Blue Lab 3 at the University of Pretoria and were welcomed by Mrs Lisa Thompson who then introduced us to Mr. Tlou Mathiba who introduced us to the Topic, Open Access Institutional Repositories.

Mr. Mathiba firstly defined a Repository as a mechanism for managing and storing digital content, he further explained that a repository can either be subject or institutional focus. He explained that the are four types of repositories including: International, National, subject, institutional and research. Mr Mathiba elaborated that institutional performance is measured by a few factors including institutional repositories. He went further into the topic of  institutional repositories by discussing the types of content, inclusive to Conference papers, research articles, special collections, thesis, Book chapters etc, Mr. Mathiba also explained the structure of Institutional repositories as Community , Sub Community, Collection and Item, he explained this by using the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Economics, saying the Faculty would be regarded as a Community, the Accounting department as a Sub community and the different types of collections suitable for the the department and the Items being the submitted articles, thesis etc.

Mr. Mathiba then went into discussion about Open Source and Commercial Software, explaining the difference between the two, which is mainly rooted in the fact that Open source software is most commonly preferred due to assumption that it is inexpensive and that Commercial Software is expensive, however, it is not the case, as with Open source software, the is no technical support and with Commercial software the is more response for needs of users. Mr. Mathiba also explained challenges associated with Institutional Repositories which include: Lack of Technology infrastructure, Policy issues, cost, training and preservation. Mr Mathiba also explained that the are three different types of Roles within Institutional Repositories and this includes: Repository Manager, Repository Administrator and Technical Service. Mr Mathiba then had us using Sherpa/Romeo as a plate form to see Publisher rights through the link http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/journalbrowse.php

through Sherpa/ Romeo we learnt the difference between Pre- Print and Post Print, where Pre - Print refer to a version of paper before review and Post Print referring to a version of paper after review.
After using Sherpa Romeo, Mr. Mathiba dicided us into groups of 5 with 6 members in each group and had us conduct a presentation session of 5 minutes based on different Institutional Repositories and in my group we used The University of Nairobi based on the Criteria: Performance, Webomatrics Ranking, Interperoability, performance and software. We then had to Register on Dspace and then Mr.Mathiba gave a brief overview on Open Access at UP before Lunch.

Immediately after Lunch Mr. Mathiba had us in the same groups as we were in before lunch to create a Repository consisting of Community, Sub community, collections and items. My  Group Created a Hospital Repository consisting of two communities , Hospital and Clinic and 4 Sub communities consisting of Cardio operations, Cradio emergencies, Prescription and medications. My Group members and I submitted 2 dessitations and 2 articles each on Dspace, we then ended off the session with reviewing each others work.

Day 1 of Experiential learning 2019

Day 1/12 

 My day started at 08:50 where everyone arrived into the Auditorium in the Merensky Library at the University of Pretoria ( Main Campus). We were welcomed to a presentation session by  Mr. Isak van der welt whose a system analyst at the University, He then introduced Mr. Robert Moropa to us as the Director of the Library. 

Mr. Moropa welcomed us into the session and elaborated on what is the vision of the Library, He provided statistics as to how the Academic Librarianship is advancing at a Top rate and also mentioned that the University of Pretoria is  both nationally and internationally recognized as a leading Library and that a University in London as asked for the University of Pretoria top submit an article on its vision for a strategic planning in advancement of an Academic Librarianship. Mr. Moropa introduced the 9 Focus as a strategic plan , this includes; Space, Collaboration, Teaching, Digitization etc. He further gave Mr. Isak a chance to continue with the Presentation. 

Mr. Isak introduced us to Lebi, an artificial intelligence robot, considered as stuff within the Library. 

Mr. Isak mentioned a lot of interesting facts about Lebi, some including : The fact that shes female, has 3 camera's , 7 recordings and her creation is estimated at 150 thousands rands.

 Mr. Isak further elaborated on Lebi's functionality as a programmed robot, that He controls and monitors Lebi's responses to questions asked by students within the Library and that Lebi accommodates all different kinds of students including those with disabilities, for instance the deaf (those that can read but can not hear), Lebi accommodates their requests by answering to their question in written format on a screen. According to Mr. Isak, Lebi is versatile and can cater to any academic questions regarding the University of Pretoria, he further concluded that Lebi is not meant to replace the stuff as employees within the Library are constantly trained on doing new jobs within a constantly changing environment, therefore, Lebi can do their old job while they focusing on new things. Mr Isak then concluded the entire presentation session by introducing us to blogger as a platform to blog daily about our experiences within the Library, the day ended with us in the training rooms learning on how to blog.