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Author: Jean Rainwater

Ivy Plus Discovery Day

On June 4-5, 2017 the Library will host the third annual Ivy Plus Discovery Day. “DiscoDay”, as we like to call it, is an opportunity for staff who work on discovery systems (like Blacklight Josiah) to share an update of their work in progress and discuss common issues.

On Sunday, June 4 we will have a hackathon on these two topics.

  • StackLife — integrating virtual browse in discovery systems
  • Linked Data Authorities — leveraging authorities to provide users with another robust method for exploring our data and finding materials of interest

On Monday, June 5 there will be a full day of sharing and unconference discussion sessions.

We expect about 40 staff from the 13 Ivy Plus Libraries.  We’ve initially limited participation to three staff from each institution and we hope to have a good mix of developers, metadata specialists, user experience librarians and others whose work is closely tied to the institution’s discovery system.

For more information about Discovery Day see: https://library.brown.edu/create/discoveryday/

Researchers@Brown Ranks #1 in SEO Analysis

At the 2016 VIVO national conference in August 2016, Anirvan Chatterjee from the University of California, San Francisco gave a presentation on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — strategies for increasing a site’s ranking in search results.  He analyzed 90 Research Networking Systems (RNS) to determine the proportion of faculty profile pages appearing among the top 3 search results on Google.  His analysis ranked Researchers@Brown (vivo.brown.edu)  #1 out of the 90 sites tested.

Chatterjee’s talk was entitled “The SEO State of the Union 2016: 5 Data-Driven Steps to Make your Research Networking Sites Discoverable by Real Users, Based on Real Google Results”

The report of the research,  “RNS SEO 2016: How 90 research networking sites perform on Google” is available here: https://bitly.com/vivoseo

ORCID: Unique IDs for Brown Researchers

The Library is coordinating an effort to introduce ORCID identifiers to the campus. ORCID is an open, non-profit initiative founded by academic institutions, professional bodies, funding agencies, and publishers to resolve authorship confusion in scholarly work. The ORCID repository of unique scholar identification numbers aims to reliably identify and link scholars in all disciplines with their work, analogous to the way ISBN and DOI identify books and articles.

Brown is an institutional member of ORCID, which allows the University to create ORCID records on behalf of faculty and to integrate ORCID identifiers into the Brown Identity Management System, Researchers@Brown profiles, grant application processes, and other systems that facilitate identification of faculty and their works.

Please go to https://library.brown.edu/orcid to obtain an ORCID identifier OR, if you already have an ORCID, to link it to your Brown identity.

Please contact researchers@brown.edu if you have questions or feedback.

New ORCID Integrations

  •  MIT Libraries have created an ORCID integration that allows their faculty to link an existing ORCID iD to their MIT profile or create a new ORCID record, which then populates the ORCID record with information about their employment at MIT
  • University of Pittsburgh is generating ORCID records for their researchers and adding their University of Pittsburgh affiliation

 

ORCID and the Humanities

ORCID recently announced  integration with the MLA International Bibliography.

We are delighted to announce that, as of June 17, the Modern Language Association’s prestigious MLA International Bibliography connects to ORCID.  The Bibliography joins other repositories in supporting discoverability through use of digital identifiers, and is the first primarily focused on the humanities to integrate ORCID.

Josiah

Josiah is a discovery tool that searches most of the journal, magazine, and newspaper resources available through Brown’s library databases, as well as our Classic Josiah Catalog (which includes most of the library’s books and other physical holdings), the Brown University Library Digital Collections, and the Brown Digital Repository. Other types of materials such as dissertations, theses, and library research guides are also included. Josiah also searches the full-text content of the Brown University Library’s ebook collections.

 

What is ORCID?

ORCID is an open, non-profit initiative founded by academic institutions, professional bodies, funding agencies, and publishers to resolve authorship confusion in scholarly work.  The ORCID repository of unique scholar identification numbers will reliably identify and link scholars in all disciplines with their work, analogous to the way ISBN and DOI identify books and articles.

Brown is a member of ORCID which allows the University, among other things, to create ORCID records on behalf of faculty, students, and affiliated individuals; integrate authenticated ORCID identifiers into grant application processes; ingest ORCID data to maintain internal systems such as institutional repositories; and link ORCID identifiers to other IDs and registry systems.  ORCID identifiers will facilitate the gathering of publication, grant, and other data for use in Reseachers@Brown profiles.  The library, with long experience in authority control, is coordinating this effort.

What is OCRA?

Note:

OCRA has been phased out as the library’s course reserves system. The Brown University Library has migrated to a new course reserves platform that integrates directly with Canvas and the Library’s BruKnow catalog. This document is for the purpose of historical information. The library’s new course reserves system can be found here.

The following is the archive of ORCA development information.

OCRA is a platform for faculty to request digital course reserves in all formats.  Students access digital course reserves via Canvas or at the standalone OCRA site.  Students access physical reserves in library buildings via Josiah.