Digital Life Beyond the InstitutionBrian KellyUK Web Focus

Being smart with technology; creating something from nothing:Continuing your professional life when your institutional IT infrastructure no longer exists!

Email: ukwebfocus@gmail.comTwitter: @briankelly

Slides available under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence

• You’ve been working in your institution for several years or

• You are a librarian and you provide support for your users

What happens when:• You (or your users) leave your host institution but wish to continue your professional activities

• You (or your users) no longer have access to: IT applications which were licenced to the institution Digital content which required institutional access rights IT training and user support

Context

How do you survive digital life beyond the host institution?

• Worked at UKOLN, University of Bath from Oct 1996 - July 2013

• Made redundant following JISC cessation of core-funding for UKOLN

My challenges:• How do I continue to function as an independent consultant?

• How do I ensure that resources I have created can continue to be used and developed?

• What do I do when I don’t know what to do or when things go wrong?

About Me

How can I continue to build and grow my digital identity and manage my digital tools and services?

What is the role of librarians in supporting users who may find themselves in this predicament?

About You

•WHEN STAFF AND RESEARCHERS LEAVE THEIR HOST INSTITUTION

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When Staff and Researchers Leave Their Host Institution

What happens when:• “The axeman cometh” and staff are made

redundant or take early retirement?• They wish to continue to exploit their

professional interests as: A consultant An itinerant researcher A means of developing their CV A ‘citizen scientist’ ….

“The axeman cometh”

Who has responsibilities for ensuring staff and researchers are able to respond appropriately to such ‘life events’?

What’s Your Policy When Staff Leave?

See http://www.bath.ac.uk/bucs/news/news_0013.html

•POLICY AT BATH UNIVERSITY

Detailed policies

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• Staff leave• Staff have a new job in the Uni

• Staff are dismissed• Staff die

University gives very brief details when:

But is leaving the institution really an unusual event?

“By 2015, there will be more Briton over 65 than under 15. We cannot afford to discard their expertise.”

“Studies show that on average each of us will have seven careers, two of which are yet to exist.”

Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow In New Statesmean, 20-26 Sept 2013

Changing Work Environment

We are seeing how moves to openness can provide benefits for life-long learners:• Open source software: avoids licence costs which enable software to be used outside the institution

• Open content: avoids licensing restrictions so content can be used and modified

• Open access: avoids licensing restrictions so research papers can continue to be accessed

Responding to the Changes

User support and education – the missing component? An opportunity for librarians?!

Following announcement of forthcoming cessation of funding need to ensure:

• Minimal loss of digital content

• Minimal loss of professional networks

• Continued access to use and modify social media services

• Identify and implement strategies for ongoing digital

presence

My Move to The Cloud: A Case Study

Note that since I didn’t intent to die in my job, such plans should have been in place in any case!

The Institutional Repository

Opus, the University of Bath institutional repository, provides a secure, reliable & maintained repository for my research papers, project reports, etc.

• Opus policy seeks to ensure long-term persistency of content.

Persistency of Records

• When people leave will they still have their contributions listed?

• Or their usage statistics?Opus repository continues to provide

content, ownership details and usage statistics

Informal feedback:• "Records disappear when someone leaves

because that's entirely appropriate." • "Staff leaving the university have a different

relationship to the organisation. By rights we should shut off ALL accounts the day the relationship with the organisation ends."

Institutional context:• “this is obviously down to institutional

management of people records”Where does your policy fit in the spectrum?

• We’re focussing on the REF and our CRIS (Current Research Information System)

• We are loyal to former employees

Persistency of Records

• Ensure that a record of your work (e.g. your publications) is available beyond the institution (e.g. on LinkedIn)

Manage Your Own Records

• Ensure that your (open access) publications are hosted in an environment you can maintain when you leave the institution.

• For example:• ResearchGate

Manage Your Own Content

Papers hosted initially in local open access repository

• Ensure that your (open access) publications are hosted in an environment you can maintain when you leave the institution.

• For example:• ResearchGate• Academia.edu• …

Manage Your Own Content

No permission to upload book chapter, so metadata-only records

Full-text of open access paper available

Ensure that if you have a blog it isn’t trapped in the institution (and potentially deleted when you leave). Some options:• Create a

blog in the Cloud initially

• Migrate your blog to the Cloud

Manage Your Own Ideas

Blog at ukwebfocus.wordpress.com was continued with no need to migrate content

Have you got your drive SkyDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox accounts?

Use Cloud Sharing Services

Case studySince 2012 I’ve used SkyDrive for collaborative peer-reviewed papers:• File in one place (avoids multiple

master copies problem).• Can be viewed (and updated) on

mobile devices• Can use MS Word in the Cloud

A spectrum of ownership:• Your CV and list of

publications• Your publications

themselves• Your blog content• Your domain name• Your own server

Manage Your Own Domain

Netskills course

Learning More

Case study: During Netskills course the one.com hosting company mentioned. The ukoln-diaspora.org.uk domain was registered and Web site created for £10 fee in 10 minutes during course.

Take control of your research identity!

ORCID:• Open Researcher and

Contributor ID

• Non-proprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific / academic authors

• Managed by ORCID Inc. an open & independent registry

Manage Your Research Identifier

My ORCID: 0000-0001-5875-8744

After 17 years of email use I had:• Large number

of messages• Large number

of contacts• Personal &

professional uses

Know How To Migrate Your Email

I needed to know how to:

• Set up new email accounts (Gmail) & re-subscribe to lists of interest

• Migrate old email messages, sender details, etc.

• Associate social media services with new email accounts

• Rationalise use of email

Change your email address to ensure you aren’t locked out of Cloud services!

Email For Authentication

Claim your papers in Google Scholar while your institutional email is valid – otherwise you might not be able to claim them!

Importance of developing one’s professional networks – a valuable source of advice and support:

Twitter: Quick queries, discussion and links to resources

Blogs: More in-depth contextual information and responses

Getting Help – When the IT Help Desk Has Gone

The Role of Librarians

What is the role of librarians in ensuring staff and researchers and other members of staff can exploit their potential when they leave their host institution?

Traditionally:• Many IT services were provided by the

institution

• Librarians (and IT staff) provided advice & support on use of such services

• Non-hosted services were banned (access to Second Life) or deprecated (“the content isn’t secure”, “the service isn’t reliable”, “they’ll claim ownership of your content”, “students won’t want us in their space” … )

A New Role of Librarians

In the past:• The IT infrastructure was

mainly hosted in the institution

• The IT support infrastructure focussed primarily on institutional services, with some appreciation of(and warnings about) Cloud services

My University

Slideshare

Google

A New Role of Librarians

In the future:• The IT infrastructure no

longer revolves around the institution

• The IT infrastructure will focus on the services chosen by the individual (with warning about the transient nature of institutional services)

My PLE / PRE

My current university

My first university

New approaches can help librarians to ensure that the departure of researchers can stimulate the economy:

• Support the migration of intellectual assets so that they can continue to be used

• Ensure that training to do so is embedded in institution

Stimulating The Economy

Advice for graduates provided by Careers Service

SCONUL

No digital literacies for staff & researchers?

Shouldn’t life-long skills to manage digital content be address in Research Concordance?

Research Concordance

Professional ethics: copyright is broken, so why am I enforcing it? (proposed by @lawsonstu)

Copyright law is broken. By criminalising citizens and creators in order to protect the profits of corporations, it harms the people that it should be empowering. Therefore I see it as an ethical imperative to break and/or subvert it; civil disobedience is a necessary part of a functioning democracy.

It is part of my job in a library to uphold and enforce copyright law.

Professional ethics are in conflict here: on the one hand, I have a duty to my employer and society to act in accordance with the law; on the other hand, when that law is wrong, it is unethical to force people to comply with it.

How can this be resolved? I'm not sure that the professional ethics espoused by our current professional organisation, CILIP, are enough to negotiate dilemmas like this. What does this mean? Do we need a new, more agile ethical approach that can deal with contemporary information ethics? And if so, can we find this within existing professional frameworks or do we need a new professional body?

The Radical LibrarianSession proposal for the Radical Library Camp, Bradford, 28 Sept 2013

Digital life is now primarily in the Cloud, so why am I ignoring this? (proposed by @briankelly)

We seek to prepare our students with life-long learning skills for working in a digital environment after they graduate.

But members of staff and researchers are only given training in institutionally-approved & support technologies. We fail to provide training and support for staff for their digital life beyond the institution.

And yet everyone will leave the institution (unless they die in the job!)

Professional practices and institutions are in conflict here: on the one hand, I have a duty to my employer to support the needs of the institution; on the other hand, my profession, and the higher education sector, believes in the value of life-long learning.

How can this be resolved? I'm not sure that the digital literacies summary espoused SCONUL and promoted by Jisc, are sufficient, as this focusses only on teaching of digital literacies. Do we need a new, more agile approach that can deal with contemporary need for digital life beyond the institution? And if so, can we find this within existing professional frameworks or do we need to do this for ourselves?

The Radical LibrarianManifesto proposal for the ILI 2013, London, 28 Sept 2013

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/selco/5347009607/

Where Do You Stand?

Today we’re learning about the risks of

using Web 2.0 services

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/alatechsourceblog/101011114//

Where Do You Stand?

Today I’ve explained why you need to migrate to

Web 2.0 services

To conclude:

• There will be an increase in the numbers of staff and

researchers who will need to manage digital content

and services when they leave their host institution.

• Current institutional and national plans do not seem

to address such needs.

• An opportunity for innovative approaches from early

adopters?

Conclusions