Students' natural use of language for academic library concepts

Library jargon is a barrier to users in their interactions with library staff and systems. Comprehension testing has shown that many students do not understand common library jargon. Usability testing and preference testing have successfully sought user feedback in order to develop more user-friendly interfaces. In this study into language preferences, a questionnaire was based on 20 concepts taken from New Zealand university library websites. Participants were asked to label these concepts with terms of their own choosing. New Zealand university summer school coordinators were asked to forward a URL for the web-based questionnaire to students in their classes. Fifty valid responses were received. Concepts that were central to students' library experiences were labelled with as few as 4 different terms, while less central concepts were labelled with more than 30. Library jargon was an important influence on students' choice of terminology. For many concepts, however, students used terms that had not been found on library websites. Further research is recommended into a broader range of concepts, and into whether user-derived terminology outperforms library jargon in whole-library context usability testing

When all you've got is a hammer: Solving all a librarian's problems with 8 simple javascript bookmarklets

Ever wished you could click a single button to search for a definition, a MARC code, or a bib ID; get off-campus access or even open access to a journal article; or mock-up some tweaks to a web page? You don't need complex infrastructure, high-level coding expertise, or even permission – anyone can create a bookmarklet in their own web browser containing simple javascript code that quickly visits webpages or manipulates information on them. This presentation will show how users can create their own bookmarklets. I’ll look at some common library tasks I’ve faced and show the simple javascript I’ve used to carry them out with the click of a button. The code discussed will be available for download and I’ll talk through how it works so users can easily tweak it to fit their own day-to-day needs

The New Zealand Thesis Project: A nation's dissertations

The New Zealand Thesis Project showcases the power of collaboration between academic librarians and Wikimedians. Beginning in 2022, the project brought together metadata for more than 66,000 theses from 13 tertiary institutions, cleaned it in OpenRefine, and added records to Wikidata. This allows them to be easily accessed in multiple languages and cited on Wikipedia. In addition, we have disambiguated 12,000 individuals and more than 1800 ANZSRC and Ngā Upoko Tukutuku subject headings connected to the thesis collection, allowing us to visualise our data in new ways and find unexpected connections. Through leveraging the vast amount of data already available on Wikidata, the New Zealand Thesis Project is making it easier than ever before to find and connect relevant research from all over the world. We will describe what we’ve done, the next steps for our project, and how our process could be relevant to other institutional repositories

Data@Lincoln: Implementation and integrations

Lincoln launched Data@Lincoln mid-2019, as a repository for data only. This presentation briefly outlines the integrations we included in our implementation and some of the challenges we faced with them

Students' natural use of language for academic library concepts

Library jargon is a barrier to users in their interactions with library staff and systems. Comprehension testing has shown that many students do not understand common library jargon. Usability testing and preference testing have successfully sought user feedback in order to develop more user-friendly interfaces. In this study into language preferences, a questionnaire was based on 20 concepts taken from New Zealand university library websites. Participants were asked to label these concepts with terms of their own choosing. New Zealand university summer school coordinators were asked to forward a URL for the web-based questionnaire to students in their classes. Fifty valid responses were received. Concepts that were central to students' library experiences were labelled with as few as 4 different terms, while less central concepts were labelled with more than 30. Library jargon was an important influence on students' choice of terminology. For many concepts, however, students used terms that had not been found on library websites. Further research is recommended into a broader range of concepts, and into whether user-derived terminology outperforms library jargon in whole-library context usability testing

Predicting the Outcome of Photocyclisation Reactions: A Joint Experimental and Computational Investigation

Photochemical oxidative cyclodehydrogenation reactions are a versatile class of aromatic ring-forming reactions. They are tolerant to functional group substitution and heteroatom inclusion, so can be used to form a diverse range of extended polyaromatic systems by fusing existing ring substituents. However, despite their undoubted synthetic utility, there are no existing models—computational or heuristic—that predict the outcome of photocyclisation reactions across all possible classes of reactants. This can be traced back to the fact that “negative” results are rarely published in the synthetic literature and the lack of a general conceptual framework for understanding how photoexcitation affects reactivity. In this work, we address both of these issues. We present experimental data for a series of aromatically substituted pyrroles and indoles, and show that quantifying induced atomic forces upon photoexcitation provides a powerful predictive model for determining whether a given reactant will photoplanarise and hence proceed to photocyclised product under appropriate reaction conditions. The propensity of a molecule to photoplanarise is related to localised changes in charge distribution around the putative forming ring upon photoexcitation. This is promoted by asymmetry in molecular structures and/or charge distributions, inclusion of heteroatoms and ethylene bridging and well-separated or isolated photocyclisation sites

Only two out of five articles by New Zealand researchers are free-to-access: a multiple API study of access, citations, cost of Article Processing Charges (APC), and the potential to increase the proportion of open access

We studied journal articles published by researchers at all eight New Zealand universities in 2017 to determine how many were freely accessible on the web. We wrote software code to harvest data from multiple sources, code that we now share to enable others to reproduce our work on their own sample set. In May 2019, we ran our code to determine which of the 2017 articles were open at that time and by what method; where those articles would have incurred an Article Processing Charge (APC) we calculated the cost if those charges had been paid. Where articles were not freely available we determined whether the policies of publishers in each case would have allowed deposit in a non-commercial repository (Green open access). We also examined citation rates for different types of access. We found that, of our 2017 sample set, about two out of every five articles were freely accessible without payment or subscription (41%). Where research was explicitly said to be funded by New Zealand’s major research funding agencies, the proportion was slightly higher at 45%. Where open articles would have incurred an APC we estimated an average cost per article of USD1,682 (for publications where all articles require an APC, that is, Gold open access) and USD2,558 (where APC payment is optional, Hybrid open access) at a total estimated cost of USD1.45m. Of the paid options, Gold is by far more common for New Zealand researchers (82% Gold, 18% Hybrid). In terms of citations, our analysis aligned with previous studies that suggest a correlation between publications being freely accessible and, on balance, slightly higher rates of citation. This is not seen across all types of open access, however, with Diamond OA achieving the lowest rates. Where articles were not freely accessible we found that a very large majority of them (88% or 3089 publications) could have been legally deposited in an institutional repository. Similarly, only in a very small number of cases had a version deposited in the repository of a New Zealand university made the difference between the publication being freely accessible or not (125 publications). Given that most New Zealand researchers support research being open, there is clearly a large gap between belief and practice in New Zealand’s research ecosystem

Future and potential spending on health 2015-40 : development assistance for health, and government, prepaid private, and out-of-pocket health spending in 184 countries

Background The amount of resources, particularly prepaid resources, available for health can affect access to health care and health outcomes. Although health spending tends to increase with economic development, tremendous variation exists among health financing systems. Estimates of future spending can be beneficial for policy makers and planners, and can identify financing gaps. In this study, we estimate future gross domestic product (GDP), all-sector government spending, and health spending disaggregated by source, and we compare expected future spending to potential future spending. Methods We extracted GDP, government spending in 184 countries from 1980-2015, and health spend data from 1995-2014. We used a series of ensemble models to estimate future GDP, all-sector government spending, development assistance for health, and government, out-of-pocket, and prepaid private health spending through 2040. We used frontier analyses to identify patterns exhibited by the countries that dedicate the most funding to health, and used these frontiers to estimate potential health spending for each low-income or middle-income country. All estimates are inflation and purchasing power adjusted. Findings We estimated that global spending on health will increase from US$9.21 trillion in 2014 to$24.24 trillion (uncertainty interval [UI] 20.47-29.72) in 2040. We expect per capita health spending to increase fastest in upper-middle-income countries, at 5.3% (UI 4.1-6.8) per year. This growth is driven by continued growth in GDP, government spending, and government health spending. Lower-middle income countries are expected to grow at 4.2% (3.8-4.9). High-income countries are expected to grow at 2.1% (UI 1.8-2.4) and low-income countries are expected to grow at 1.8% (1.0-2.8). Despite this growth, health spending per capita in low-income countries is expected to remain low, at $154 (UI 133-181) per capita in 2030 and$195 (157-258) per capita in 2040. Increases in national health spending to reach the level of the countries who spend the most on health, relative to their level of economic development, would mean $321 (157-258) per capita was available for health in 2040 in low-income countries. Interpretation Health spending is associated with economic development but past trends and relationships suggest that spending will remain variable, and low in some low-resource settings. Policy change could lead to increased health spending, although for the poorest countries external support might remain essential.Peer reviewe

Future and potential spending on health 2015-40: Development assistance for health, and government, prepaid private, and out-of-pocket health spending in 184 countries

Background: The amount of resources, particularly prepaid resources, available for health can affect access to health care and health outcomes. Although health spending tends to increase with economic development, tremendous variation exists among health financing systems. Estimates of future spending can be beneficial for policy makers and planners, and can identify financing gaps. In this study, we estimate future gross domestic product (GDP), all-sector government spending, and health spending disaggregated by source, and we compare expected future spending to potential future spending. Methods: We extracted GDP, government spending in 184 countries from 1980-2015, and health spend data from 1995-2014. We used a series of ensemble models to estimate future GDP, all-sector government spending, development assistance for health, and government, out-of-pocket, and prepaid private health spending through 2040. We used frontier analyses to identify patterns exhibited by the countries that dedicate the most funding to health, and used these frontiers to estimate potential health spending for each low-income or middle-income country. All estimates are inflation and purchasing power adjusted. Findings: We estimated that global spending on health will increase from US$9.21 trillion in 2014 to$24.24 trillion (uncertainty interval [UI] 20.47-29.72) in 2040. We expect per capita health spending to increase fastest in upper-middle-income countries, at 5.3% (UI 4.1-6.8) per year. This growth is driven by continued growth in GDP, government spending, and government health spending. Lower-middle income countries are expected to grow at 4.2% (3.8-4.9). High-income countries are expected to grow at 2.1% (UI 1.8-2.4) and low-income countries are expected to grow at 1.8% (1.0-2.8). Despite this growth, health spending per capita in low-income countries is expected to remain low, at $154 (UI 133-181) per capita in 2030 and$195 (157-258) per capita in 2040. Increases in national health spending to reach the level of the countries who spend the most on health, relative to their level of economic development, would mean $321 (157-258) per capita was available for health in 2040 in low-income countries. Interpretation: Health spending is associated with economic development but past trends and relationships suggest that spending will remain variable, and low in some low-resource settings. Policy change could lead to increased health spending, although for the poorest countries external support might remain essential