The State of Sustainable Research Software: Results from the Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE5.1)

This article summarizes motivations, organization, and activities of the Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE5.1) held in Manchester, UK in September 2017. The WSSSPE series promotes sustainable research software by positively impacting principles and best practices, careers, learning, and credit. This article discusses the Code of Conduct, idea papers, position papers, experience papers, demos, and lightning talks presented during the workshop. The main part of the article discusses the speed-blogging groups that formed during the meeting, along with the outputs of those sessions

A Student-Centered Project for Earth System History

This article presents an idea for a classroom activity that is intended to replace some of the lectures that would ordinarily be necessary in a survey of Earth history over geologic time. Students take the lecturer's place in front of the class and present some of the material to their colleagues. They work in groups on a single era or period. Each student plays the role of an expert (such as an oceanographer) and works with teammates playing other sorts of experts (a biologist, a geologist, an atmospheric scientist). Their presentations will require them to do research and to construct resource lists to keep track of how they learned what they are presenting. They will also write brief summaries of the findings within their area of expertise. While the students are researching and preparing their presentations, the instructor will give lectures on the earliest time units, modeling the kind of presentation that the students will be doing. Eventually, students will take the stage, presenting their time units in order. Rubrics for assessing the presentation and the resource list are included. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

SPEC Kit 356 Diversity and Inclusion

Today, diversity is defined beyond racial and ethnic groups and includes gender, sexual orientation, ability, language, religious belief, national origin, age, and ideas. The increase of published literature about cultural competencies, microaggressions, and assessment of diversity issues, as well as the inclusion of social justice movements in libraries, suggests diversity-related activities have increased and evolved over the last seven years. Over this time span, several libraries have obtained funding to support strategies to increase the number of minority librarians on their staff and support their advancement within the organization. There also appears to be an increase in the number of diversity or multicultural groups at the local, state, and national levels. However, these changes have not been consistently documented. Therefore, it is important to re-examine this topic to evaluate the impact of evolving endeavors, to see if more ARL libraries are involved, to see how diversity plans have changed over the years, and to document the current practices of research libraries. The main purpose of this survey was to identify diversity trends and changes in managing diversity issues in ARL libraries through exploring the components of diversity plans and initiatives since 2010, acknowledge library efforts since the 1990s, provide evidence of best practices and future trends, and identify current strategies that increase the number of minority librarians in research libraries and the types of programs that foster a diverse workplace and climate. The survey was conducted between May 1 and June 5, 2017. Sixty-eight of the 124 ARL member institutions responded to the survey for a 55% response rate. Interestingly, only 22 of the respondents to the 2010 SPEC survey participated in this survey, but this provides an opportunity to explore the diversity and inclusion efforts of a new set of institutions in addition to seeing what changes those 22 institutions have made since 2010. The SPEC Survey on Diversity and Inclusion was designed by Toni Anaya, Instruction Coordinator, and Charlene Maxey-Harris, Research and Instructional Services Chair, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. These results are based on responses from 68 of the 124 ARL member libraries (55%) by the deadline of June 12, 2017. The survey’s introductory text and questions are reproduced below, followed by the response data and selected comments from the respondents. The purpose of this survey is to explore the components of diversity plans created since 2010, identify current recruitment and retention strategies that aim to increase the number of minority librarians in research libraries, identify staff development programs that foster an inclusive workplace and climate, identify how diversity programs have changed, and gather information on how libraries assess these efforts

Report of the 6th Tanzania Joint Annual Health Sector Review 4th-6th April 2005 Kunduchi Beach Hotel,Dar es Salaam

The 6th Annual Joint Health Sector Review was concluded successfully at Kunduchi Beach hotel,between 4th and 6th April 2005. It was preceded by a Technical preparatory meeting, held at Belinda Hotel. This year’s was the largest review yet, with over 200 participants. As well as government and donor representatives, the meeting was attended by a variety of civil society and NGO representatives. The Honourable Minister of Health opened the meeting. Judged by the milestones, performance over the last year has been mixed. The advent of the Joint Rehabilitation Fund, the successful integration of Health into MKUKUTA, the scaling up of AIDS Care and Treatment and a steep budget increase (FY2004/5) were all registered as achievements. However, little if any progress was achieved in tackling the Human Resources crisis. The meeting resolved to address the issue with renewed commitment and urgency. A good deal of quantitative data was presented at the meeting, including the State of Health report, the updated health sector performance profile, and the ten-district study. In most respects these reports point to improvement in health service delivery between 2000 and 2003. The major areas of concern were maternal health services and child malnutrition – neither of which seem to have made any improvement over the last 2 decades. Weaknesses in the routine information system mean that data for 2004 is still patchy. Public Private Partnership was the theme of the technical review this year. The clearest message emerging in plenary was the need to replace the current government subsidy to faith-based providers by a service agreement, linked to outputs. Another resonating theme was the need to expand the opportunity for NGOs (including FBOs) to participate in health planning and management at district level. More generally, there was a commitment by both public and private stakeholders to deepen their collaboration. The recommendations of the Technical Review extended well beyond these two themes. However, lack of time in plenary precluded reaching consensus on most of the recommendations in the report. A good start has been made with the rehabilitation of district health infrastructure. This is expected to accelerate in the year ahead. Participants called for a holistic approach towards prioritisation and effective monitoring of implementation. The Honourable Minister called for a new approach and renewed urgency in tackling the human resources crisis. The challenges and the priorities are clear enough. But the shared commitment of MOF, PO-PSM, PORALG and MOH will be needed in order to move forward. A cabinet paper was seen as one way to secure this joint commitment. The financing situation for Health has improved markedly. The PER demonstrates a 33% nominal rise in health budget between 2003/4 and this budget year. FY2005/6 will witness a further steep increase. This good news is tempered by the fact that payroll expenditure is not keeping up with “other charges”, and central government expenditure is expanding much faster than local government. Even these increases are not sufficient to cover the requirements of the health sector. A 167 billion resource gap was documented by the MOH. New financial commitments continue to come on stream, often initiated by short-term donor funding. Moreover, a substantial portion of new money coming into the sector is tightly earmarked. Flexible, discretionary resources remain highly constrained and tough choices on resource allocation will have to be made. Detailed discussion of health financing in general, and user charges / CHF in particular, was deferred to the Health Financing Workshop due in early May.\u