SCONUL Access

If you are a researcher and your base is a long way from the institution which employs you it is possible that you may find yourself at a disadvantage. All the research materials that lie at your colleagues finger tips are out-of-reach. Wouldn’t it be great if you could go to your nearest Higher or Further Education institution and use their resources? Well you can! SCONUL Access enables staff, students, and research students to borrow material from other libraries.

Maria Hiscoe has written a short, but sweet, guest blog post for us introducing SCONUL Access. The plan is that we will be able to follow it up with accounts from the user end, so if you have experience of SCONUL access and wish to share it either comment on the blog or get in touch.

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Hello Everyone. My name is Maria Hiscoe and I am one of two Administrators working for SCONUL Access. We both work from home and so understand that it can be quite an isolating experience.

So much information just washes around a work environment; serendipity is often the name of the game!

Remote working can lead to gaps in your knowledge and you can sometimes miss out on important tools. We think SCONUL Access is one such tool so here is a little teaser to tempt you to investigate…

Does your library have everything you need or would you like to check out the resources of other university libraries?

Have you heard of SCONUL Access: your passport to over 170 higher education libraries in the UK and Republic of Ireland?

Last year
Just under 11,000 researchers
Borrowed over 148,000 books
From 165 of the 176 participating libraries

It’s free, it’s easy to join. Why not take a look today and make your life easier!

If you are have used SCONUL Access perhaps you’d like to share your experiences and comment on this blog.

Check out the scheme at http://www.access.sconul.ac.uk/index_html

Send comments and queries to sconulaccess@sconul.ac.uk

Home working and the Rebound Effect

Ever heard of the rebound effect? I wasn’t aware of the term until a colleague of mine, Paul Shabajee, mentioned it.

Paul is currently working on Greening Events, a new JISC project exploring how event organisers can effectively balance the need to minimise the sustainability footprint of an event with the need for organisations and individuals to still get the most from the events. Sounds familiar? Yes, it touches on many of the ideas we had for our Green ICT bid. I’m just glad some work has been funded in this area. I hope to work more with Paul in the future and will be twisting his arm to write a few blog posts for Ramblings.

Wikipedia defines the rebound effect, also known as the take-back effect or Jevons Paradox, when used in conservation and energy economics as “the behavioral or other systemic responses to the introduction of new technologies, or other measures taken to reduce resource use. These responses tend to offset the beneficial effects of the new technology or other measures taken.“

A more modern analysis of this phenomenon is the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate theory which argues that increased energy efficiency paradoxically tends to lead to increased energy consumption.

The rebound effect was first proposed by William Stanley Jevons, an English economist and logician of the 19th century.

In his 1865 book The Coal Question Jevons theorized that improving the efficiency at which energy was produced would reduce energy costs and as a result increase rather than decrease energy use and consumption of coal. Time has proved him correct and the rebound effect is one area of climate change theory that remains uncontroversial.

A useful analogy is provided by Green Living tips.

A good example of a type of rebound effect that many of us could relate to is low fat ice cream. Since it is low fat, we’re tempted to eat more – just a little, because it’s OK as we’re still consuming less fat than we would from full cream ice cream. However, what we forget is that most low-fat ice cream is chock full of sugar; not to mention through eating more that means more raw products are used, more packaging and so forth.

Paul and I had a interesting chat about the rebound effect and working from home. Here’s a few thoughts:

• Working from home means I use the car less. I tend to stay in my house during my working day, maybe with a short trip to the local shops. This can leave me feeling a little stir crazy and on my days off I feel the need to get out-and-about so often end up driving more.
• Occasionally I’ll drive somewhere in my lunch-hour, something I probably wouldn’t have done had I been parked in a work car-park.
• Being green and not driving as much means that I feel I have the right to leave my heating on all day (this isn’t always the case but has been for much of this winter!)
• It’s quite possible that an institution feels it is doing “its bit” by employing remote workers and so allows itself a little slack in other areas.
• Working from home can save some people a huge amount of time. The time saved may allow them to take new trips.
• Now I have my PC set up at home I tend to work more, I use my PC more, I use my printer more and I use my modem more. They are all electrical items I would previously have had switched off in the evenings.
• For some people working from home may mean that others have to make further trips to visit them, trips that wouldn’t have had to take place if the other person worked in the main office.
• The use of video conferencing and amplified conference technologies may well mean that more people now ‘attend’ and have meetings. They often represent extra meetings rather than ones that replace meetings people would need to travel to. ICT use is increasing all the time.
• People need to ‘travel’ (by this I mean a change in surroundings) a certain amount for their own personal sanity. Saving ourselves time by better travel systems just means that we travel further. Apparently average travel time has not changed for at least 30 years and remains constant at an hour a day. The Myth of Travel Time Saving explores this idea further.

A blog post in last year’s Guardian entitled Does teleworking really cut emissions? suggests that home working isn’t the quick fix many would like us to believe it is. I personally believe it has a big role to play in reducing carbon emissions (and so do many others – too many to list here). It could potentially be a big chunk of a climate carbon wedge. The key is that we are aware of the rebound effect so we can minimise its impact.

I’d be interested to hear what other people think.

Remote Audiences

At last year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) we were lucky enough to have Kirsty McGill along as our live blogger. Since then Kirsty has blogged at many other events and become increasingly involved in event amplification.

Kirsty is the Creative Director of communications and training firm TConsult Ltd. As part of this diverse role, Kirsty delivers professional blogging and event amplification services for conferences, creative uses of social media for business firms and specialist English tuition. A graduate of the MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Kirsty has a keen focus on translating the narratives of the physical world into the digital, where they are sometimes lost. Kirsty also contributes to the Transliteracy Research Group blog and explores a range of new media related issues on her own blog: Custard in the Ether.

Kirsty has written a guest blog post on a recent presentation she gave on Remote Audiences. She can be contacted on custard@custardether.co.uk and followed on Twitter.

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At this year’s Transliteracy Conference held at Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre, Leicester on Tuesday 9 February I gave a talk entitled Remote Audiences. My talk was based on my experiences as various events including a stint as the Institutional Web Management Workshop blogger for 2009.

Just to explain, transliteracy is currently defined as: the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. However, this is very much a working definition, and part of the purpose of the Transliteracy conference was to discuss transliteracy, as we currently understand it and potentially re-evaluate or even change our definition as our understanding evolves. The talks were quite varied and looked at both theory and practice to see how we can understand and make use of the concept of transliteracy. The event was chaired by Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger, who have gathered together both researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields to form the Transliteracy Research Group. I became involved with this after studying with Kate and Sue on DMU’s MA in Creative Writing and New Media. I contribute to the TRG blog and was asked to speak at this inaugural event within a panel which examined Action in Transliteracy.

As travelling and expenses budgets are being slashed in many sectors, attendance at national and international conferences is dropping. Environmental pressures are also leading many firms to look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint – including minimising air travel. These factors, together with the rise of social media tools such as Twitter, have led to the emergence of remote audiences, who attempt to follow the events of a conference via the internet, often relying on a mixture of unofficial sources to piece together an understanding of the issues covered. However, conference organisers are now beginning to recognise the need to produce official resources to cater for and encourage this remote audience in order to harness their contributions.

My presentation provided a brief introduction to creating a complete online experience of a conference for a remote audience by creating tools and providing content so they can actively engage and interact with the live event.

Providing effective combinations of resources and integrating them with a live event raises a number of challenges related to transliteracy: the remote audience may wish to access the event content from a variety of different platforms; representing the event appropriately within the literacies of each platform may require some adaptation of the content; and members of the remote audience may have different levels of ability to navigate and use the resources to full effect.

To explore these issues, I presented a short a stylistic analysis of an Online Conference Space which attempted to achieve all this, specifically examining how an understanding of transliteracy is helping to inform its design. The Online Conference Space took the principles that we established/experimented with at IWMW and adapted them to a more commercial setting – as the commercial sector is not currently exploiting the technologies available in this way.

During my talk I used an image I had taken at IWMW and posted on the IWMW blog (which has a CC licence) to illustrate my discussion about the event. Brian Kelly, the subject of the image, has since written an interesting blog post on the amplification and reuse of images – OMG! Is That Me On The Screen?

Higher Ambitions, e-learning and remote working

Back in November the Government published their Higher Ambitions paper through the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS). The paper sets out a range of proposals for the future of higher education. Its aim being a blue print for “how universities can remain world class, providing the nation with the high level skills needed to remain competitive, while continuing to attract the brightest students and researchers.“

One area that is seen as key is higher quality through greater awareness of choice. The report suggests more help for students who want to “progress through more vocational pathways, or study more flexibly, by varying the length or the intensity of study, studying remotely, and using the latest technology.“

The importance of improvements to the e-learning infrastructure is highlighted in recommendation 31: “The Government, working with the Higher Education Funding Council for England, should prioritise investment in e-learning infrastructure to extend the possibilities of remote and online learning.“

To carry out this recommendation a task force led by Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, has been established. The task force will be looking at how the UK can be world leaders in distance learning and increase its market share by 2015. This will underpin the best use of digital technology and e-learning for home students, including as a tool for widening access.

The task force will be meeting during 2010 and making recommendations to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and other relevant government agencies, a final report is due out in October. See the task force page on the HEFCE site for more details.

Sir Alan Langlands, chief executive of HEFCE, explained: “The task force intends to encourage debate and discussion on an increasingly important topic in higher education: how to maximise the potential of online learning and technology in order to satisfy the needs of students, education providers and employers.”

It is likely that many of the lessons learnt and technologies examined will have much to offer employees of higher education institutions who choose to work remotely. It is also true that the experiences of those working remotely and in virtual teams may have much to offer those researching distance and e-learning.

Guide to Mobile Broadband Providers

Separating the wheat from the chaff is not easy when it comes to mobile broadband tariffs. There is so much on offer and much depends on where you are located. Quite often the best place to start is by picking a provider you feel happy with.

Joe Linford of Broadband Genie has written a guest blog post introducing the main providers out there. You can email Joe (joe.linford@genieventures.co.uk) or follow him and the Broadband Genie team on Twitter.

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Whatever your mobile broadband needs, it pays to be clued up about the best deals and know which providers offer what, so that you can make an informed decision on which deals to choose.

There are five main mobile broadband providers in the UK, and all of them offer a range of deals, so there’s lots of choice. As a guide, a good benchmark is that mobile broadband will cost approximately £15 per month for a 12 or 18 month contract which allows you to download up to 3GB of data per month. Beyond that, you just need to look out for larger download limits, shorter contracts, or freebie extras – whatever makes it work for you.

Packages and offers change frequently, so before you make a decision it’s well worth visiting a mobile broadband comparison site for all the most up to date information, as well as various ways to compare prices.

3 Mobile

3 Mobile has been offering mobile broadband since August 2007, and has been working hard to get itself to the forefront of the mobile broadband market, including becoming the first provider to launch one of the hugely popular ‘free’ laptop deals. It is also one of two UK operators to have a network capable of 7.2Mb speeds.

3 currently lists nearly twenty mobile broadband options, which vary from very lightweight deals such as one with a 1GB download limit for £7.50 per month (18 month contract), right up to a the £35 per month 5GB 24 month contract, which includes an ultra-portable Samsung netbook. Plus, if you’re already a 3 customer, you’re currently being offered 25 per cent off an 18 month mobile broadband package.

O2

O2 started life as BT Cellnet – one of the UKs first mobile networks. It began offering mobile broadband in April 2008, with a focus on customer service which means that while its prices are higher than some, hopefully the service you get matches up. O2 is also the only provider to offer a 30 day ‘happiness guarantee’; so that if your service doesn’t meet expectations, you can return everything within 30 days for a full refund.

As with 3, O2 offers around 20 different mobile broadband packages, starting from £15 per month, over an 18 month contract for 3GB of data per month – which also gets you unlimited Wi-Fi access at over 5,000 public hotspots. The company also has laptop deals starting at £25 per month for 3GB, and pay as you go options which are frequently discounted.

Orange

Orange belongs to French telecoms giant France Telecom, and its UK mobile operation is in the very early stages of merging with T-Mobile to create the largest mobile broadband provider in the UK.

It currently has the cheapest package on the market at just £5, although that’s only available to existing Orange customers (0.5GB per month, 18 months). In terms of offers, Orange tends to favour the introductory low price, so for example its 3GB, 18 month contract is £7.50 for the first three months, going up to £15 after that. Or if it’s a laptop you want Orange currently has Compaq and Asus models from £25 – £40 per month.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile is a subsidiary of German telecoms company Deutsche Telekom, and will form the other half of the Orange merger if the whole deal goes ahead. It’s got a reputation as an unexciting but reliable network, offering mobile broadband from late 2006, and becoming the first operator to launch pay as you go deals in 2007. Its network is capable of speeds of up to 4.5Mb but the company has hinted that it expects to achieve 14.4Mb in the near future.

Its range of mobile broadband deals is a little more limited than some: it has two contracts on offer (3GB 18-month or 5GB 24 month); four laptop deals (Samsung, Dell and Advent machines at £25 -£30 per month) and four pay-as-you-go options.

Vodafone

Vodafone is the only UK mobile broadband provider to be British-owned. Not only did it help pioneer mobile broadband, it also has one of the fastest networks, capable of 7.2Mb

Vodafone has a good range of mobile broadband contracts, including a competitively priced 5GB per month deal at £18. Laptops are Samsungs and Dells from around £21 per month; and top-ups on Vodafone’s pay-as-you-go deal don’t expire – unlike top-ups with all other providers.