Open Access Week 2012: Events Listing

Monday, October 22 / Tuesday, October 23 / Wednesday, October 24 / Thursday, October 25 / Friday, October 26

Open Access Author Fund

Monday, October 22

Open Data at the Map & Data Library

10:00 am – 12:00 noon

Map & Data Library | Robarts Library | University of Toronto St. George Campus

Open Data DIY

Marcel Fortin, GIS & Map Librarian, Map & Data Library, University of Toronto Libraries

Although not widely known, the mission of the Map and Data Library (MDL) at the University of Toronto has been to provide service, not only to the U of T community but to the public at large as well. Because of licensing and copyright restrictions, of course, most public access to our collections has been limited to paper resources. But thanks to the loosening up of Crown Copyright restrictions by the federal government; better licensing options from provincial governments; and open data initiatives at the municipal level, the MDL can now serve the general public to a much greater extent. The opening up of data has also allowed the Map and Data Library to create new datasets by combining some of its licensed datasets with open datasets to create new data. This presentation will demonstrate some of the most exciting aspects of how these changes, brought upon by open data initiatives, have affected our services at the Map and Data Library.

Serving up a Taste of GIS: Using Open Data to Introduce GIS in a First Year Online Course

Andrew Nicholson, GIS/Data Librarian, University of Toronto Mississauga

In recent years, Open Data Initiatives have swept across Canadian municipalities, with cities such as Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto now releasing samples of their locally collected geospatial and numeric datasets for public use. With this open availability to municipally collected datasets, new and innovative opportunities for GIS education and promoting geo-literacy in schools and at home have also come forth. Utilizing such data and online GIS tools, students and the general public can research and answer many general and geographically related questions about their local neighbourhoods. This presentation will highlight one such case at the University of Toronto Mississauga, in which the GIS/Data Librarian is utilizing open data from the City of Mississauga to craft an online 'Taste of GIS' tutorial for hundreds of first year Environmental Studies students.

Open Data Initiatives through Statistics Canada

Berenica Vejvoda, Data Librarian, Map & Data Library, University of Toronto Libraries

As part of its services, the Map & Data Library (MDL) has helped broker access to data and statistics from Statistics Canada for a number of decades. As part of this mission, the MDL has also traditionally hosted some of this data locally. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight both licensed access and open data initiatives that have helped make more data from Statistics Canada available to both U of T and the wider public community. The wide, existing spectrum of access - from open to restrictive - will be highlighted. Both the Data Liberation Initiative and the most recent Open Data declaration by Statistics Canada will be discussed in this context. In light of recent changes to Crown Copyright as well as the trend to capture original faculty research data for preservation and reuse, the mission to create new data and accept faculty research data at MDL will also be touched upon.

Data Citation, Digital Object Identifiers and DataCite Canada

Karen Morgenroth, Manager, Content Access Services, Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information

As Canada’s national science library, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) has been working for many years to ensure that the valuable data generated by Canadian researchers is accessible for reuse in other research endeavours. This presentation will look at data citation issues, how digital object identifiers help make data more open and accessible, and CISTI data activities, including DataCite Canada, a central registration centre for Canadian research data sets.

Register

WIDEN UTSC: On Flow

3:00 - 5:00 pm

AA160 | University of Toronto Scarborough Campus

Dr. Leslie Chan, Senior Lecturer, UTSC Centre for Critical Development Studies

Come out to UTSC's interdisciplinary talk series. At every WIDEN (Workshops for Inter-Discipline Exchange & Novelty), three people from different fields speak on a common theme, revealing shared projects and symbiotic insights.

The theme of this WIDEN UTSC session is FLOW. One of the speakers, Dr. Leslie Chan, Senior Lecturer and Associate Director, UTSC Centre for Critical Development Studies, will present the talk "Widening Global Knowledge Flow through Open Access" to highlight some of the structural barriers that are restricting the equitable flow of knowledge, and point to the development of open access as a means of evening the unequal flow.

For more information, please consult the WIDEN UTSC website.

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Tuesday, October 23

Open Access Tea (UTM Library)

2:00 - 3:00 pm

T-Room | UTM Library | University of Toronto Mississauga Campus

Pam King, Librarian, Digital Research and Scholarly Communication

Get involved! Join in the UTM Library's Open Access Tea, a lively introduction to some of the key topics being discussed during Open Access Week 2012. Learn how Open Access is impacting your research.

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Wednesday, October 24

Open-Access Instructional Tools: From Chemistry to Mineralogy and Beyond

12:00 noon – 2:00 pm

AA160 | University of Toronto Scarborough Campus

Alen Hadzovic, Chemistry Lecturer, Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, UTSC

Sarah Forbes, Scholarly Communication Librarian, UTSC Library

Recent advances in technology have provided educators with very powerful tools for the creation of educational and promotional web-based content. This session will begin by demonstrating the use of Jmol on examples from bioinorganic and coordination chemistry, while jCrystal will be illustrated through examples in mineralogy, crystal morphology and general crystallography. This session will also emphasize ways educators can find and incorporate open access content, Creative Commons licenses and public domain materials into their instructional practices.

Register

Part of the UTSC Centre for Teaching and Learning’s Teaching Events for Instructors Series

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Thursday, October 25

The Coming Decade of Open Access: Moving Beyond Traditional Forms and Functions of Scholarly Communication

11:30 am - 1:00 pm

UTM Council Chambers, Room 3130 | Davis Building | University of Toronto Mississauga Campus

Introduction: Pam King, Librarian, Digital Research and Scholarly Communication

Presentation: Leslie Chan, Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough

Open Access continues to challenge the way we think about scholarly communications. Are commercial publishers really the only barrier between researchers and a more equitable knowledge exchange? How do we measure impact in an open globally networked distribution system? Join us for a unique opportunity to learn from one of Canada’s key participants in the Open Access movement.

Leslie Chan is a Senior Lecturer and the Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough where he serves as the program supervisor for the International Development Studies program. Since 2000, Leslie has been the Director of Bioline International, a collaborative platform for open access distribution of research journals from close to twenty developing countries. This activity is part of Leslie’s long-term teaching and research interests in the roles of openness and control in the flow of knowledge and information and their impact on local and international development. Leslie co-founded the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) and the Global Open Access Map. He has worked with organizations such as the Open Society Institute, UNESCO and IDRC in the development of alternative forms of knowledge media and communicative practices enabled by social networking and collaborative software, and is a member of the Research Dissemination Committee of the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences.

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Friday, October 26

Focus on Research Drop-In Session

1:00 - 2:00 pm

4th Floor Conference Room | Robarts Library | University of Toronto St. George Campus

Sian Meikle, Interim Director U of T Libraries, Information Technology Services - Digital Library & Web Services

Gabriela Mircea, Scholarly Communication Services Administrator, University of Toronto Libraries

Focus on Research, jointly provided by the University of Toronto Libraries and the Office of the Vice-President, Research, is a web gateway to the researchers, publications and research communities at the University of Toronto. By joining Focus you will help the University build a strong central gateway to the diverse wealth of research activity at the University of Toronto. Learn more about Focus on Research during this drop in session.

To coincide with Open Access Week, the University of Toronto Libraries is very pleased to announce the launch of the Open Access Author Fund pilot. This fund has been created to encourage and support those in the University of Toronto community who wish to make their scholarly work available via open access publishing and who are required to pay an article processing fee in order to make this possible. For more details, please review our Fund Policy and reimbursement form.

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