ePetition on Fair VAT for academic libraries

Fair VAT on e-publications for the academic community

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/28226

Responsible department: Her Majesty's Treasury

Universities and colleges are obliged to pay VAT at the full standard rate, currently 20%, on their subscriptions to electronic academic journals, books, newspapers and magazines. Printed versions of these resources are zero-rated in the UK; in the rest of the EU VAT is applied at the reduced rate, currently 5%. E-publications are greener, save valuable storage space and offer increased availability for the majority of users. They should be treated in the same way for VAT as printed publications. This VAT burden means that libraries have less to spend on electronic publications and makes it very difficult for them to move towards e-provision. We urge our government to do one of two things; 1. Introduce zero-rated VAT on electronic academic publications or 2. If it is not feasible to add electronic publications to the list of zero-rated goods then to follow other European countries and apply VAT at the reduced rate now and consider reducing this to 0% as soon as possible.

2011 JIBS Student Prize Winner

The JIBS User Group Committee are pleased to announce that the 2011 JIBS Student Prize was awarded to Andrea Ennis for her Masters Dissertation "Indicators of content: the role of word clouds in the creation of summaries".

An MSc student in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University, Andrea examined the potential use of word clouds as content indicators in summaries of academic papers. Despite the small scale of her study her area of research was particularly innovative and, we think, has great potential for future development and practical application.

We hope that Andrea will be joining us on 24th February for our Workshop and AGM to give us a brief overview of her research. We will also make her dissertation available on our website very soon.

Details of the 2012 JIBS Student Prize will be posted on our website in early March.

Research evaluation event brief survey results

A survey was sent out to attendees prior to the JIBS research evaluation event to find out about how institutions are supporting research evaluation and the tools they are using.

• Most respondents to the survey are librarians indicating that the role of supporting the institutional repository (IR) or working with the Research Office on current research information system (CRIS) developments is just another responsibility to fit in with their main duties.

• About half of respondents (25) have some kind of system for managing research most using a commercial system (16) or using in-house solutions (9). The other half does not have a CRIS.

• Only 34 people responded to question 6 (If you do not currently have a commercial CRIS, are you investigating the possibility of buying one?), with 10 aware of plans to purchase a commercial system in their institution. The majority did not know (15) or didn’t answer (19), illustrating that the library is not always included in these decisions and much depends on the working relationship between the Research Office and the Library and whether there is already an institutional repository in place.

• Just over half of people did not answer question 7 (If you are a librarian/repository manager were you involved in the choice of the CRIS?), because it was not applicable to their role, grade or area of responsibility.

• A quarter of institutions have a CRIS (25) that integrates primarily with the institutional repository (20) and the web pages – staff profile pages (16) and departmental web pages (8).

• Of the 24 people who support bibliometrics, 19 have sole responsibility for it within the library service. Only 2 people provided comments in response to the question about other departments providing support with 1 referring to a bibliometrician who carried out this function.

• Overwhelming interest in joining an InCites mailing list (91%) indicates recognition of the importance of bibliometric tools. However take-up is likely to be hindered by budget constraints and less involvement with bibliometrics. A mailing list provides opportunities for InCites users to share information about its use with each other and the wider sector. The library can play a role in advising the Research Office to purchase InCites, rather than purchasing it as part of a library budget.

In summary, no clear picture has emerged but more discussion and sharing of experiences / good practice may see more uptake / understanding of bibliometrics and the need for repositories and CRIS to work together. But this depends on the institutional structure and level at which decisions about these services are taken and implemented.

The findings of the JIBS survey will be disseminated and available on the JIBS website after the results have been fully analysed.

Update on JIBS student Prize and LIRG prize winner announced

JIBS offers an annual prize for a student dissertation focusing on the area of library information systems, bibliographic databases or other resource discovery technologies and how such resources or technologies are being developed or exploited. The deadline for submissions has now past and judging will take place over the next couple of months with a winner announced in late September.

The JIBS prize is partnered with the annual LIRG Student Award. LIRG announced their prize winner earlier this month. Their prize went to Thomas Muggleton, a student at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Strathclyde University, for his study entitled "The effect of homelessness on information access, identity formation and social interaction". More information on their pages: http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/research/awards/pages/lirg-student-prize.aspx

Research evaluation – is it our business? The role of librarians in the brave new world of research evaluation

JIBS User Group - Workshop 29 June 2010 – University of Birmingham


As the tweets (#JIBSre) appear to indicate, this JIBS workshop apparently hit just the right topic at just the right time. People came with all different levels of experience, and being so well-attended the workshop opened up many opportunities for sharing that experience. Whether embedded in your work already or not no-one could have left the day without gaining a wide array of ideas for practical action to take back to institutions. And the venue was the stunning campus of Birmingham University – on a stunning June day.

The workshop’s remit was inspired by institutions’ interest in procuring a CRIS (Current Research Information System) and the perceived and growing requirement from multiple points of view – both internal and external – for analysis of bibliometric information. Procurement of a CRIS is one solution among many (and there are as many hybrid as PURE solutions) that comprises re-tooling of current internal systems, and alternative uses to those originally intended for institutional repositories. At the centre is the librarian – or is s/he? “Is it our business?” It was one of the day’s main aims to contribute ideas to feed into librarians’ individual and collective strategies for getting involved in this new area of work; an area that is of crucial significance for institutions as they face the REF in 2014 . Equally librarians find they must step up to calls to assist in and facilitate the supply of information to researchers for enhancing the visibility of their research output and their personal and research teams’ profiles as institutions manage their internal promotions and their outward-facing impact globally.

Read a report of the workshop here.

Minutes of the JIBS Ebsco meeting

The minutes of the last JIBS Ebsco meeting are now available at JIBS Ebsco Enhancement Group

JIBS Student Prize 2011

We are again inviting entries for this year's JIBS Student Prize. For more information please see: http://www.jibs.ac.uk/prize/JIBSprize.pdf. You can still read our winning entry (by Nicky Ransom) from last year at: http://www.jibs.ac.uk/prize/ransom.pdf

New member

I recently joined the JIBS User Group Committee and enjoyed the recent meeting I attended. The group is very active, experienced at running events with members engaged with a range of professional issues. The group is looking for an additional Committee member, preferably from further education. 


At the University of Greenwich we are involved in a number of collaborations with partner colleges and the partner colleges librarians group, meets regularly. After emailing them I've already had a response from a librarian at Greenwich Community College who would like to join the Committee which is a really good start.


Nadine Edwards

New member - short thoughts

As mentioned in the last post, I (Catherine Robertson) am a new member of the JIBS committee group and it is a very active group indeed!

So far I have started to investigate locations in Birmingham for a JIBS meeting (I have my fingers crossed for Winterbourne as it’s beautiful in the summer) and am trying to keep abreast of the emails flying about regarding the annual conference topic. As it stands I am 10 days away from my wedding(!) but when I’m back from honeymoon I’ll be able to give the emails the attention they fully deserve J. I am looking forward to getting fully involved asap!

A few changes at JIBS User Group

Following our AGM in December, the committee has had a few changes. The rest of us thanked Sue Cumberpatch for her hard work over the last 3 years as Chair, and the major contribution she has made to the work that the JIBS User Group does. Sue will stay on the committee for the next year at least. I have now taken over as Chair, and Louise Cole takes over as Vice Chair. Other committee roles are taken by James Caudwell who takes over as secretary and June Hedges who continues as Treasurer.

Liz Stevenson, Ian Mayfield and Roger Hines have all now stepped down from the committee, but will continue as JIBS advisors. They have all made significant contributions to the work the JIBS User Group does, and we will miss them all at committee meetings. But we welcome some new faces: Nadine Edwards, University of Greenwich; Julie Hamley, University of West of England and Catherine Robertson, University of Birmingham. The other change that occurred last year, was that Joan Bird stepped down as the Research Council representative, and was replaced by Maggie Johnston from Rothamsted Research . We look forward to working with them all in the future.

We are already planning our summer workshop, and will release details as soon as they are available.