Category Archives: News

Open Access Week 2014 at Oxford

Open Access Week 2014 at Oxford

International Open Access Week is now in its 7th year. Visit the OAO website for the programme (20th-24th October), for University staff and students:

1. Open Access, Open Data Publication Platform from Nature Publishing Group: Better Data = Better Science.

Dr Susanna-Assunta Sansone (Associate Director, Oxford e-Research Centre and Honorary Academic Editor, NPG Scientific Data). The rise of open data-centric research and publication enterprises. Data sharing practices in life sciences and the importance of making yours more easily reusable. Susanna is a co-founder of BioSharing (reproducible research) and blogs about Open Data on the Guardian Higher Education Network.

Monday 20th October 2014, 2-3pm, Radcliffe Science Library. Book a place.

2. Open Access Oxford — What’s Happening? (iSkills).

Craig Finlay and Juliet Ralph (Bodleian Libraries). A briefing on OA publishing and Oxford’s position: how to comply with funder mandates inc. new HECFE policy for post-2014 REF.

Tuesday 21st October 2014, 12-1pm, Radcliffe Science Library. Book a place.

3. How Can the Wellcome Trust Help You With Open Access?

Pamela Reid (Wellcome Trust) and Eli Harriss (Bodleian Libraries). Tell the Trust what you need.

Tuesday 21st October 2014, 3-4pm, Knowledge Centre, Old Road Campus. Drop-in session with tea.

4. The Open Library of Humanities: Gold Open Access for the Humanities Without Author-Facing Charges.

Dr Martin Eve (Lecturer in English, University of Lincoln and OLH Co-Founder). OLH is ‘a project exploring a PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences’. Martin is on the JISC OAPEN-UK project committee, chief editor of Orbit, and writes about Open Access for the Guardian Higher Education Network.

Wednesday 22nd October 2014, 2-3pm, Radcliffe Humanities Building, (Lecture Room). Book a place.

5. Your Thesis, Copyright and ORA (iSkills).

Sarah Barkla and Jason Partridge (Bodleian Libraries). How to deposit your thesis in ORA without infringing third-party copyright : essential guidance for DPhil students.

Thursday 23rd October 2014, 10-11am, Manor Road Building (Seminar Room C). Book a place.

6. The new Charity Open Access Fund (COAF): What Researchers Need to Know.

Margaret Hurley (Wellcome Trust). For researchers funded by Arthritis Research UK, Breast Cancer Campaign, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research and the Wellcome Trust.

Friday 24th October 2014, 11.30am-12.30pm, Cairns Library, John Radcliffe Hospital. Book a place.

Download the programme (pdf).

Ada Lovelace – Wikipedia Editathon – Tuesday 14 October

The University of Oxford’s IT Services, Bodleian Libraries and Wikimedia UK are organising an editathon focused on women in science to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day on 14 October 2014. The editathon will take place at IT Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford from 2-5pm, and will include some basic training by a trainer from Wikimedia UK. This exciting event aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the role of women in science by developing the existing online coverage of this important area.

The event is open to anyone; no Wiki editing experience is necessary, though experienced editors are very welcome; tutorials will be provided for Wikipedia newcomers. Female editors are particularly encouraged to attend.

Ada Lovelace is widely held to have been the first computer programmer, and Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. This international day of celebration helps people learn about the achievements of women in STEM, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike.

So come along to learn about how Wikipedia works and contribute a greater understanding of the role of women in science!

  • Date: 2-5pm, Tuesday 14 October 2014  (If you can’t be there the whole time? No problem. Join us for as little or as long as you like.)
  • Venue: IT Services, University of Oxford
  • Booking Link: http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/TWOE
  • Cost: Free!

Works update, Library closed until 21/7/14

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, the heating and boiler works have overrun, and we are now unable to open next week as planned. We now hope to open on Monday the 21st of July at 2.15pm. We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and will keep this blog up to date with any further news.

In the meantime, the following other libraries with history of science, medicine and technology provision will be open during the summer:
Radcliffe Science Library http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/science

Bodleian Library Upper Reading Room http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/finding-resources/rooms/urr

History Faculty Library http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history

Please continue to visit this blog and our twitter account @WelLibOxford for updates on the works or any changes in dates.

Reminder – Library Closure from this afternoon

A reminder that after 5pm this afternoon, the library will be closed to readers for the duration of essential boiler works at the Unit. We hope to open again on Monday 7th July, though this may change if the works overrun. Updates will be posted on this blog.

The following other libraries with history of science, medicine and technology provision will be open during the summer:
Radcliffe Science Library http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/science

Bodleian Library Upper Reading Room http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/finding-resources/rooms/urr

History Faculty Library http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history

Please continue to visit this blog and our twitter account @WelLibOxford for updates on the works or any changes in dates.

Library Closure for Building Works 23 June – 4 July (incl)

This summer, the Wellcome Unit is undergoing major boiler and heating works which will mean that access to the library is not possible for two weeks over the summer.

Our last day open before these works will be Friday 20th June; our reopening date will depend on the completion of the works, but is intended to be Monday 7th July

In the meantime, we can still be contacted via email wellcomeunit.library@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. The following other libraries with history of science, medicine and technology provision will also be open during the summer:
Radcliffe Science Library http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/science

Bodleian Library Upper Reading Room http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/finding-resources/rooms/urr

History Faculty Library http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history

Please continue to visit this blog and our twitter account @WelLibOxford for updates on the works or any changes in dates.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused by these works, but hope it means that we will be able to extend an even warmer welcome than usual when they’re done!

 Seattle_-_Commercial_Street_Boiler_Works_-_1900

Wellcome Unit Seminars, Monday 9/6/14

At: The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford

Coffee is available from 2.00pm – Seminars begin at 2.15pm prompt

‘Reproduction, Gender, and Sexuality in the History of Medicine’
Conveners: Marisa Benoit and Julianne Weis

Week 7 – 9 June

Bridget Gurtler, Princeton

‘Reproduction reconceived: cryopreservation in science, medicine, and American culture’

Bridget Gurtler holds a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Woodrow Wilson School and is a visiting fellow at the Center for Health and Wellbeing. Her research interests are in the history of medicine, science, gender, and health, with a particular focus on reproduction and reproductive technologies. Her current book project examines the evolution of assisted reproduction and parenthood in American medicine, families, and society. Focusing on the two Bridget Gurtlerhundred year history of artificial insemination, it investigates how popular and scientific ideas about gendered bodies, heredity, and risk shaped the transformation of sperm into a (frozen) commodity, were pivotal to separating the act of sex from reproduction, and laid the institutional foundations for the modern fertility industry. While at Princeton, she also looks forward to expanding her new research projects on the history of psychosomatic gynecology, urology, and andrology and to collaborations investigating the history of pediatric drug prescription practices in America. She received her Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University in 2013 where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellow and holds a M.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a B.A. from Wellesley College.

 

Open Access and Monographs Forum

Open Access and Monographs: Oxford forum with publishers and funders.

Wednesday 18 June,  2pm-5.30pm

Radcliffe Humanities Lecture Room

A forum on current challenges and initiatives in open access monograph publishing. This is part of the Bodleian Libraries Open Access series and an opportunity for Oxford academics & researchers to feed into HECFE’s Monographs and Open Access Project (see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/monographs/).

Programme of speakers:

  • Introduction: Catriona Cannon (Interim Deputy Librarian, Bodleian Libraries)
  • Cecy Marden (Wellcome Trust, HEFCE Expert Reference Group)
  • Frances Pinter (Knowledge Unlatched, HEFCE Expert Reference Group)
  • Rhodri Jackson (OUP and OAPEN-UK JISC-funded project on open access monographs)
  • Geoffrey Crossick (HEFCE Expert Reference Group, Chair)
  • QandA. Panel joined by Sally Rumsey (Oxford Research Archive)

This session is for Academics and researchers, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and is a must for those interested in issues around Open Access.

To book a place please visit http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/TZ005 .

London Metropolitan Archives – Last chance to see a City of London Smallpox Map

SMALLPOX AND LONDON

Friday 6 June   10am-4pm

London Metropolitan Archives, 40, Northampton Road, London, EC1R 0HB

This is will be the last chance to see an original 1870s City of London smallpox map before it is packaged and put back into store. The London Metropolitan Archives, with funding from the Wellcome Trust, has conserved and digitised 5 large smallpox maps that plotted the outbreaks of the disease in London. They date from the 1870s, measure 4X3 metres and give us a wonderful insight into how the disease was spreading in different parts of the City.

We will be holding a public conference on the maps, smallpox and its impact in London. Specialist speakers include:

  • Dr Anne Hardy, the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine,
  • Gareth Williams, Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Senior Research in Philosophy, The University of Bristol
  • Staff from London Metropolitan Archives.

You will also see related archive material and one of the smallpox maps. Once the project has finished, the maps will be put back into storage and access will be via the digital copies. Do come along.

£10 (bring a picnic) Booking Essential: https://smallpox-in-london.eventbrite.co.uk

 

Closing Leverhulme Lecture, 6 June

An Unnatural History: The Re-Emergence of Infectious Disease in the 20th Century’

Presented by Professor Christoph Gradmann, University of Oslo
Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Wellcome Unit for the history of Medicine, Oxford
Christoph Gradmann
These lectures will be hosted at
TORCH – The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
Radcliffe Humanities Seminar Room
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford

Trinity Term 6th Week
Thursday 5 June – 17:00
The Return of Natural History: Re-Emerging Infections, the End of Antibiotics and New Public Health

In this closing lecture of the series ‘An Unnatural History: The Re-Emergence of Infectious Disease in the 20th Century’ debates about the nature and control of infectious disease from the 1980s to the early 2000s are explored. The following topics shall be addressed: The entanglement of biology and technology at the end of the 20th century; changing notions
of infections and of infectious causality; understanding multiple drug resistance; evolutionary biology, disease ecology and emerging infections. In addition we shall have a look at the frequently proclaimed ‘end of antibiotics’. Finally we shall explore how questions concerning infectious diseases and their control have re-entered public imagination.

All are welcome.

The complete list can be found here http://www.wuhmo.ox.ac.uk/events/unit-events.html

Catalogue of the papers of the Overseas Nursing Association

Rhodes House Library have recently converted the Catalogue of the papers of the Overseas Nursing Association to EAD format, and now published them online. The Overseas Nursing Association, formerly the Colonial Nursing Association, was established in 1895 to provide trained nurses for hospital and private work in the British colonies and among other British communities abroad. When Queen Elizabeth’s Overseas Nursing Service (as the Overseas Nursing Association came to be known) closed on 1 December 1966 the Executive Committee agreed to donate their papers to the Oxford Colonial Records Project. The papers were received by Rhodes House Library in February 1967. An association for members (Queen Elizabeth’s Overseas Nursing Service Association) was formed on 25 May 1966 and continued until 2006.

The collection covers the whole period of the association’s existence, 1896-1966, and includes some earlier papers concerned with its formation (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 400 / 120 / 1, fols. 1-20) and some later papers concerned with financial matters (MSS. Brit. Emp. s 400 / 18a). There are 119 bound volumes – minutes of meetings, ledgers and registers, and printed material – and 32 boxes of correspondence and other records including the complete series of annual reports. In the final annual report the work of the association is reviewed in a “Historical Survey” (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 400 / 131, item 53).

The full list of items can be found here – Catalogue of the papers of the Overseas Nursing Association, and will be of interest to those studying Colonial History, as well as History of Medicine and Nursing History.

A reminder that the reading room at Rhodes House will be closing on 12 September 2014 and reopening in the Weston Library on 22 September 2014. The archives and rare books will be moved to the Weston stacks in August-September. The majority of the rest of the book collection has now been moved to the BSF at Swindon. Information about the Weston Library is available on the Bodleian website and this will be added to over the coming months.

The Weston Library opening hours have also now been decided.  The reading rooms will be open at the following times:

Monday to Friday: 09:00 – 19:00
Saturday: 10:00 – 16:00
Sunday: Closed