using social media to enhance your research activities
DESCRIPTION
Slides for a workshop session on "Using Social Media to Enhance Your Research Activities" facilitated by Bran Kelly, Innovation Advocate at Cetis, University of Bolton at the DAAD 2013 conference, at Cumberland Lodge, Egham on 16-18 December 2013. For further information see http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/daad-conference-2013/TRANSCRIPT
Using Social Media to Enhance Your Research Activities
Brian KellyInnovation AdvocateCetisUniversity of BoltonBolton, UK
Contact DetailsEmail: [email protected]: @briankellyCetis Web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
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Slides and further information available athttp://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/daad-conference-2013/
Twitter hashtag: #daad2013
See licence details
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Social Media: Tools for Busy Researchers!
Social media:• Isn’t (never was) just for young people• Can help in developing one’s professional network• Can help in raising awareness of one’s research outputs
In this session I will:• Give examples of social media for researchers• Provide evidence of the benefits• Listen to and respond to concerns
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About MeBrian Kelly:
• Innovation Advocate at Cetis, a national Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards
• Formerly UK Web Focus at UKOLN from 1996 - Jul 2013• Prolific blogger (1,200+ posts since Nov 2006)• User of various devices to support professional (and
social) activities• Prolific speaker (400+ talks since 1996)
Research profile:• Peer-reviewed papers published on Web accessibility,
standards, preservation, …• Largest no. of downloaded papers from Bath repository• Highly-cited papers in Web accessibility (e.g. W4A)
Intr
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About YouIn small groups:
• Introduce yourself and say: Who your are and where you study What your research interests are What you hope to gain from the session
• Share with everyone: What you hope to gain from the session Any interesting or surprising facts you
learnt about other participants
Intr
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What Do You (Collectively) Do?Exercise:
• In a few bullet points summarise what you do.
• What do you do which is similar to researchers in other disciplines?In
trod
ucti
on
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What You (Collectively) DoI think you (as a researcher):
• Talk to colleagues and exchange ideas• Go to conferences, listen to speakers and discuss
their ideas with them and with your peers• Have an idea for a paper, a project, … and discuss
it with potential co-authors & collaborators• Write the paper, project proposals or submission
jointly with others• Listen to and ask questions of the stakeholders• Do the work with project partners & collaborators• Ensure that the work is known about by
Your peers (they may cite you) Others, including general public, in order to
enhance the impact of your work
Intr
oduc
tion
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What You (Collectively) DoI think you (as a researcher):
• Talk to colleagues and exchange ideas• Go to conferences, listen to speakers and discuss
their ideas with them and with your peers• Have an idea for a paper, a project, … and discuss
it with potential co-authors & collaborators• Write the paper, project proposals or submission
jointly with others• Listen to and ask questions of the stakeholders• Do the work with project partners & collaborators• Ensure that the work is known about by
Your peers (they may cite you) Others, including general public, in order to
enhance the impact of your work
Intr
oduc
tion
Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge that applies the general philosophical constructivism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture of this sort, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture on many levels. Its origins are largely attributed to Lev Vygotsky.
Social constructivism, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructivism
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What Can Help These Processes?These areas of work can be supported:
In established ways:• Events, such as conferences• Swapping business cards at conferences• Email, letters and memos!• …
In new ways:• Use of social media• Embracing open (educational) practices• Participating in ‘amplified events’• Blog posts, status updates and tweets!• Using ‘interactive business cards’• …
Intr
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About This Session
Draft timetable:• Introduction• The Relevance of Social Media for Researchers• Key Services:
▪ Twitter ▪ Twitter environment ▪Lanyrd▪ Researcher profiling services (ResearchGate, Academia, …)▪ Slideshare ▪ Blogs ▪ LinkedIn▪ What else?
• Evidence of Benefits• How Does it Work?• Concerns, Risks and Limitations• What Next?• Open Discussion
Intr
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About The Session RulesDuring this session:
• Feel free to ask questions, make contributions, etc. at any point!
• Put your mobile phones on silent mode• Feel free to tweet, use the Web, Google
stuff, …• Feel free to share ideas, thoughts,
observations, etc. openly.• But respect others’ privacy
By working collaboratively, the learning during the session should be enhanced and the session should be more effective than one in which you were all ‘silos’.
Intr
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You are free to:copy, share, adapt, or re-mix;
photograph, film, or broadcast;
blog, live-blog, or post video of
this presentation provided that:You attribute the work to its author and respect the rights and licences associated with its components.
Idea from Cameron Neylon
Slide Concept by Cameron Neylon, who has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights. This slide only CCZero.Social Media Icons adapted with permission from originals by Christopher Ross. Original images are available under GPL at:http://www.thisismyurl.com/free-downloads/15-free-speech-bubble-icons-for-popular-websites
Risk management: I reserve the right to change my mind at the end of the session!
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LSE Impact blogWhat Do You Know About?
The LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog
Open Access research publications
Use of Twitter
Sharing using social media (Twitter & Facebook)
RSS feeds & RSS readers
Creative Commons licences
How a tweet ….can lead to a peer-reviewed paper!
Twitter hashtags
Twitter metrics / alt.metrics
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New Scholarship About the paper:
“That one Tweet got me thinking about the kinds of sessions I would like to see and the things sociologists should be studying”“so I wrote a blog post about it. As I usually do now, I shared that blog post via Twitter.”“I did a series of blog posts that expanded on initial post.”“I combined all of the blog posts into one paper and thought about what my critique of the field might be.”“paper went into an extended peer review process .. and appeared in 2012”“Except for the very end of this process – submitting the paper to the journal for peer-review – none of this way of working bares the least bit of resemblance to how I was trained to be a scholar.”
$25!
Google ScholarSharing services
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What’s It Mean For You?We’ve seen:
• Blogs • Twitter • Hashtags • alt.metrics• RSS • Social sharing • Google Scholar
• Open Access • Creative CommonsHow could you use these yourself?
• Write a brief summary of how you could use one of these examples (or other social media services)
• Share your example with a neighbour• Put your example on a notice board. We will
all discuss a few examples
Intr
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What Can Twitter Offer?Twitter:
• A waste of time for those with time to waste!• A valuable communications & dissemination
channelTwitter can be regarded as:
• An interactive business card: “Here’s my business card” vs “Here’s my Twitter ID”
• The bar where everybody knows your name:“Feeling a bit down about my PhD #phdchat”
• An essential tool for conferences:“On my way to #daad2013. Who else is going?”
• An emergency hotline:“Arrived at Egham station. No taxis. Help!”
Exam
ples
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The Conference Twitter Hashtag
Twitter is useful at events when an event hashtag is used (e.g. #daad2013)• Anyone can use a
hashtag in their tweets• Best if organisers
announce hashtag• Enables relevant
tweets to be searched and aggregated
• Many Twitter archiving tools (e.g. Twubs)
• Note difference between Twitter ID (e.g. @daadlondon) and hashtag (#daad2013)
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When Twitter At Conferences Takes Off
Twitter use is well-established at the ILI (Internet Librarian International) conferenceSharing images provides visual memories of eventNumbers of Twitterers has reached critical mass“Wow” – spotting what people found interesting
Shared memories
Sharing across different languages
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Using Twitter: Tweetdeck
All tweets (from the 1,400 people I follow)
Current conference hashtag I’m interested in
Tweets to me (or about me) Interactions
(e.g. new followers, favourited and retweeted tweets)
Tweets from a group I created
Tweets from another group I created
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Exam
ples Curating Tweeted Links: RebelMouse
RebelMouse:• Automatically curates
visual summary of tweeted links
• Can create pages based on preferred hashtags
See https://www.rebelmouse.com/briankelly/
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Using Storify Storify:
• Manual curation of tweets
Useful for:• Archiving tweets about
one’s own talks, workshop sessions, … (Archive of realtime user feedback, areas of interest and concerns)
• Preparation of conference reports, based on collective insights
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Using Storify Storify:
• Manual curation of tweets
Useful for:• Archiving tweets about
one’s own talks, workshop sessions, … (Archive of realtime user feedback, areas of interest and concerns)
• Preparation of conference reports, based on collective insights
Is Wikipedia session relevant?
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Using Storify Storify:
• Manual curation of tweets
Useful for:• Archiving tweets about
one’s own talks, workshop sessions, … (Archive of realtime user feedback, areas of interest and concerns)
• Preparation of conference reports, based on collective insights
Did users find session useful?
Did users find Twitter useful?
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TweetchatsTweetchats:
• Focussed Twitter discussion
• #phdchat Tweetchats take place on Wednesdays from 19.30-20.30
See blog post on “#uklibchat, #ECRchat, #PhDchat, #Socialchat and Other Tweetchats”
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TweetchatsTweetchats:
• Focussed Twitter discussion
• #phdchat Tweetchats take place on Wednesdays from 19.30-20.30
• Look at the archives to see what you missed.
See blog post on “#uklibchat, #ECRchat, #PhDchat, #Socialchat and Other Tweetchats”
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Lanyrd Lanyrd: your online presence at events
Lanyrd:• Can provide
a speaker profile
• See who else attends events you speak at / attend
• Authentication by Twitter
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LanyrdLanyrd:
• Could provide an event’s web site
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LanyrdLanyrd:
• Could provide an event’s web site (provides social aspects)
• Slides hosted on Slideshare can be embedded
• Note encouragement to use Twitter event hashtag
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Observing Patterns of UseTools such as SocialBro provide an understanding of how Twitter is used
• Most tweet daily
• Most follow >100
• Most tweet 2-5 times/day
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Observing Patterns of Use
Note this is the ‘potential’ no. of impressions. Reality will be much less!
Crowdbooster is a Web-based Twitter analytics tool
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Researcher Profiling ServicesRelevance for you:
• You’re a researcher: shouldn’t your research interests and outputs be freely available?
• You’re a young researcher: shouldn’t this information be decoupled from your (current) institution?
• You want your information to be easily found: shouldn’t you use a global service with high Google visibility?
Relevant services:• ResearchGate• Academia.edu• (ORCID)
Exam
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PaperPaper presented at Social Media in Social Research 2013 Conference) available from:• Opus, University
of Bath IR• ResearchGate• Academia.edu
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Share with your friends and provide real-time peer-reviewing: http://bit.ly/sra13-kelly(and I can see real-time stats using + suffix)
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• xxx
Exam
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Institutional Repository
My (former) institutional repository:• Hosts copies of my papers• No longer able to maintain
information• Concern that after I left, my
records may disappear
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Academia.eduAcademia.edu:• Initially used
to provide a list of my papers (which I could maintain)
• Then uploaded open access versions of papers
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Academia.eduAlerts provided:• How people
found my papers
• Peers who have started following me
• Can manage alerts
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Exam
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ResearchGate:• Initially used to
provide a list of my papers (which I could maintain)
• Then uploaded open access versions of papers which I can maintain e.g. embed ORCID ID
ResearchGate
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OrcidEx
ampl
es
Orcid:• International
standard for researcher ID
• Aims to save time and simplify work flows
• Takes 30 seconds to create!
• See orcid.org• Get one!• You can then
add your publications
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Slideshare
Slideshare:• Boring
repository of slides?
• Simple & effective way of raising visibility of conference resources?
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SlideshareNote how:
• Usage statistics are available
• Slides can be embedded in other web sites
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SlideshareNote how:
• Usage statistics are available
• Slides can be embedded in other web sites
• ‘Liking’ and commenting are available
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SlideshareWho liked and downloaded my recent slidedeck?
• Associate professor from Moscow• Interests in open education & open
data• Has an About.me profile
Read her blog. Looked at her slides, … Possible collaborator?
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Exam
ples
UK Web Focus Blog
UK Web Focus blog:• 1,400+ posts
since Nov 2006• My open notebook• Comments
encouraged• “It works for me”
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LinkedInLinkedIn:
• Your online CV – and more
Can include details of:
• Project activities
• Publications
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LinkedInNote that LinkedIn profiles:
• Tend to be easily found using Google
• Can be maintained by you (unlike institutional profile)
NB note risk of empty profile
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Content SyndicationContent posted in one environment can be syndicated to others, such as LinkedIn:
• No need to manually create content in all social networks
• ‘Likes’, comments and ‘shares’ can be sent by email
New slides added to Slideshare automatically appear in LinkedIn activity stream
New blog posts automatically appear in LinkedIn activity stream
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Content Syndication
New blog posts automatically appear in Facebook status update stream
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Importance of EvidenceHow might we gather evidence of the value of use of social media for researchers?
• Provide some examples of approachesFour examples of evidence of benefits of use of social media:
1. As part of the research process2. For identifying and making contact with new
collaborators3. To raise the visibility of research4. Looking at the numbers
Evid
ence
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LSE Impact blogEvidence 1: Role in the Research Process
From post on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog:
• Evidence of how a tweet led to a series of blog posts which became a peer-reviewed article
• Evidence of how the blog post about this become popular
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Evidence 2: Making New Connections
Developing New Connections• Tweet sent asking for researchers to complete
survey on use of Web 2.0 in research• Response from @slewth• Who is she?• Twitter bio: disability researcher• Link in bio to her blog• Blog gives insights which complement my research • Follow @slewth and have Twitter chat
Follow-up• Shall we write a paper?• Paper written• Paper accepted• Paper wins prize for best paper • Sarah later told me she knew of my research
See blog posts on “It Started With A Tweet” and “Winner of John M Slatin Award at W4A 2010”
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Evidence 3: Raising VisibilityBlog post by Melissa Terras, 19 April 2012
The findings
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Evidence 4: Looking at the Numbers
What do download statistics tell us?
12 Dec 2013
Download figures for my papers
Least Downloaded Papers
Will papers in a repository be seldom seen?What can be learn from approaches taken for the popular and unpopular papers?
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“It’s About Nodes and Connections”
Cameron Neylon keynote at OR 2012: “Networks qualitatively change our capacity”
• With only 20% of a community connected only limited interaction can take place
• This increases drastically as numbers of connected nodes grows
Examples:• Phone networks (no use with only 1 user!)
• Tweeting at this event• Galaxy Zoo
How
Doe
s It
Wor
k?
“Filters block. Filters cause friction”Need for client-side, not supply-side filters.
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SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Summary of key approaches:Apply various techniques to Web resources to make resources easier to find in Google, …
Resources may include organisational Web suites, third party Web sites, databases, …
Databases (e.g. IRs)
Web sites
Real world
Directories
Google(Bing,
DuckDuckGo, …)
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Beyond SEO, SMO
Summary of key approaches:Make use of social networking
services which people may use of discuss your services
Services may include Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Twitter, …
Databases (e.g. IRs)
Web sites
Directories
Social Services(Facebook, Slideshare, Twitter, …)
Real world
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Risks, Limitations, Concerns
Over to you:• What concerns do you have?• What risks do you envisage?• What limitations might social media
have for your in your area of research?
Risk
s
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“It Doesn’t Work in Humanities”“They1 found, for example, that science researchers … are more likely to use Twitter, while mathematicians and computer scientists are more predisposed to archive their own material, and, like classicists, to disseminate their research outputs themselves. Social scientists on the other hand are more reluctant to use new technologies, for example they are less likely to Tweet or use a laptop at a conference.”1 Connaway and Dickey, 2009. Quoted in Re-Skilling For Research, RLUK Report, http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/re-skilling-research
Risk
s
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“It Doesn’t Work For Me!”Thoughts:• It’s fine not to be
good at everything!
• But what if you don’t like speaking in public?
• Perhaps there’s a need for a social media role in research team
• Avoid deprecating social media just cos you don’t like it!
Risk
s
The Social Web and the Belbin Model, UK Web Focus blog, 27 May 2009
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The Service May Not Be Sustainable
But what if: • Facebook goes out of business?• Google withdraws (‘sunsets’) its services• Slideshare is taken over and changes its
terms & conditions and operational practices?But also need to consider:
• ICL is taken over by Fujitsu• IBM sells it PC division & stops making
computers• You developed departmental systems based
on dBase III• UMIST merges with Manchester University • …
Risk
s
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A Risk Management ApproachBut what about:
• Legal, ethical & privacy concerns• My boss doesn’t approve; my institution doesn’t
approve• It doesn’t work in my discipline• It doesn’t work for me• I’m worried GooFace isn’t sustainable; is evil.
Risks and opportunities framework:• It’s not about ‘social media’ it’s about
‘social media for a particular purpose’• Be clear of potential benefits & associated
risks• Remember the risks of not doing things• There will be costs (but may be small)• Adopt risk minimisation strategies• Base decisions on evidence• Be aware of biases and subjective factors
See Empowering users and their institutions: A risks and opportunities framework for exploiting the potential of the social web, Kelly & Oppenheim, 2009
Risk
s
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What Next?From the Hyperlinked Library MOOC, develop:
• A plan for your Online Professional Learning Network: Goals; scope; resources and maintenance plan See http://hyperlinkedlibrarymoocbriankelly.wordpress.com/
2013/11/06/assignment-4-my-online-professional-learning-network/
• An action brief: Convince ______ that by _______ they will
________ which will ________ because _______. Complemented by a risk assessment See http://hyperlinkedlibrarymoocbriankelly.wordpress.com/
2013/11/20/assignment-6-the-directors-brief-library-use-of-wikipedia-and-other-wikimedia-projects/
Nex
t St
eps
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Conclusions: Top 10 Tips 1 Be pro-active2 Monitor what works for you3 Don’t forget the links4 Don’t forget the Google juice5 Develop your network6. Encourage feedback and discussion 7. Understand your network8. Know your limits9. Seek improvements10.Participate
See Top 10 tips on how to make your open access research visible online, JISC Inform, 35, Winter 2012
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Questions?Any questions, comments, …?
Continue the discussion: blog post about this presentation to be published at http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2013/12/
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This presentation, “Using Social Media to Enhance Your Research Activities” by Brian Kelly, Cetis is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence
Note the licence covers most of the text in this presentation. Quotations may have other licence conditions.
Images may have other licence conditions. Where possible links are provided to the source of images so that licence conditions can be found.
Slides and further information available athttp://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/daad-conference-2013/
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