Dibaj at SLA' AGC 2014

We'll be at the SLA AGC in Doha this year.
Will you?

We're excited to participate for a second year in a row in the biggest exhibition and conference for Academic and Specialist Librarians in the Middle East!

Last year at SLA we launched Dibaj, an aggregator portal for academic eBooks and Journals and received an immensely positive response.

This year we are back with New Content from More Publishers with New Resources for your academic needs and are thrilled to share this with you.

Visit our stand to also get a peak of the following among st others:

Interactive courses from Global Finance School

New 2014 titles from Joint Commission International

We look forward to having a chat with you. To set up appointments email tei@dibaj.org

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Springer digitizes Book Archives and adds Altmetric to Springer Link

Springer has entered the New Year with two major projects accomplished. It completed its four year long project of digitizing every book published from 1840 to 2004 covering 110,000 titles.

Springer has also added a new feature to its SpringerLink (link.springer.com) by including altmetric information to every article available on the platform.  The data collected from this feature will track and analyze online activity around access of the articles to measure impact of research.

Sources:

http://www.subscription-agents.org/springer-book-archives-completed

http://www.subscription-agents.org/springer-now-sharing-data-altmetric-springerlink

Why You Need To Type Faster in 2014

Typing is one of the most important and invaluable skills that anyone can learn. It should be taught young, but in many cases it isn't, and many people are happy with the slow but steady hunt and peck typing skills that they have relied on all these years. There are a number of reasons that you should learn to type faster than average in 2014. 

1. The world is immersed in technology. There are many jobs that are not even possible without having at least some computer knowledge and skills. Even a basic cashiering position can require some basic typing skills to be able to manage the cash register. Learning to type faster than the average words per minute speed can increase your chances of landing a better job. 

2. It can make both work and school easier. Long gone are the days of the handwritten essays and assignments. Even as young as elementary school, students are being required to type and print out their assignments, and this will progress through college and beyond. 

3. Anyone can sit in front of a computer and knock out a few words per minute as a hunt and peck typist. It takes weeks of practice to learn to become a functional touch typist, but it is easily the most invaluable skill that you can learn.

4. The average words per minute speed is 41.1. Most employers are going to want touch typists that can type accurately at least 60 words per minute. The faster you type, the better you look to potential employers.

Learning to touch type doesn't happen immediately. It does take days or weeks of constant practice, and even more than that to increase your speed above the average. Time spent practicing to improve touch typing skills is never time wasted, however. It is easily the best and most important skill that anyone can learn.

Infographic source: http://www.ratatype.com/learn/average-typing-speed/

Enriched eBooks - The next big thing in education?

With tablets booming in the consumer market over the last couple of years, a lot of the companies are marketing the device as multi-touch, media enriched and so on. A device that gives revolutionary reading experience sounds all very attractive but are publishers rising up to the opportunity?

A number of eBook creation platform are providing the chance to add more media to your simple text layout. And although the technology isn’t perfected, we as consumers are already accepting this as the norm and applying it to use in our knowledge consumption.

Whether it’s a magazine with additional links and embedded videos or a school textbook with animated characters, we are expecting it all from a purchased eBook. Then why hasn’t this taken off yet?

According to DBW media rich eBooks aren’t compelling enough yet to get the readers…well reading.

On the other hand, more articles are talking about kids between 6 and 17 taking to interactive content on tablets like fish to water.  

It is evident that kids and academic institutes stand to benefit the most from use of these new innovative ways of learning, keeping their target engaged. However, from a quick look around the internet it is obvious that the support material transforming an ebook into a media enriched book is lacking leaving a gaping market to be as yet fulfilled.

DHA trains medical professionals from private schools

Dubai Health Authority has organized a series of mandatory training courses to ensure health education standards are maintained in schools and colleges in Dubai.

The Health Regulation department met with 160 representatives from private schools to discuss school health policies and latest standards for school clinics. The mandatory courses for medical professionals in school clinics include first aid and emergency care as well as ‘Paediatric-up-to-date programme’.

Speaking to Gulf News, Amal Ali Al Mehrezi, Head of School Health at the Authority, said, “Children are the most receptive, yet vulnerable section of society. By ensuring their health, we are ensuring our future. In the programme, we are going to train medical staff on basic life support, first aid, and on how to handle health conditions like food or insect allergy reactions, asthma, diabetes, etc. The training will look into different kinds of care required in a school setting.”

To ensure only licensed professionals can provide health education in schools, DHA has ensured providers have to first get the correct requisitions from the Authority.

eFADA to group UAE's academic e-resources

UAE’s education sector is taking its new role as an emerging knowledge economy seriously.

A consortium of library directors has been formed in the UAE to head a project called eFada, with the aid of Ankabut, the UAE’s advanced national research and education network. The idea behind the formation of this group is to create a shared national knowledge base to support learning and research in the UAE.

As per Ankabut’s website, this goal will be achieved through several initiatives, which includes establishing a shared union catalog, engaging in cooperative collection development and developing a national digital institutional repository. The outcome will lead to savings in the cost of e-resources, expansion of resources available and sharing expertise to promote cost effective, customer driven services.

In an interview with Gulf News, eFada project manager Dr Ahmad Dabbagh said, “Students will no longer suffer from spending hours on researching. Through eFada, any member related to the academic and education field will be able to view several options including how many researchers have worked on a certain topic or how many research papers have been done by others within the UAE or outside.”

The project, started last year, has a long way to go with continued participation from 9 universities currently but Dr Dabbagh has called on more universities to come forward and be part of what is surely to be big step in aiding the country in its goal as a knowledge economy. 

Challenges libraries face in the cyberage

By Omotola Oyebanjo

From moderate beginnings, libraries in the Gulf and Middle East have grown steadily in their effort to meet the demands of readers and researchers in the region. For instance, in Dubai, a modest start of the Al Ras Public Library in 1963 has grown by 2012 to 8 public libraries across the city with about 462,000 books available and an electronic library in Umm Suqeim.

While the libraries in Gulf regions play catch up with the developed countries in terms of technology, they are all one in the challenges they face while meeting the needs of the 21^st century consumer.

1)      Transition to Digital Libraries: According to Dr M.R. Vaseghi, Vice Chancellor of Research & Technology for Islamic Azad University in his interview with springer.com, “The transition of physical libraries to digital libraries is the most important challenge facing universities in the Middle East; all our previous efforts have been focused on creating a physical library, purchasing printed resources and so on.”  This transition is critical in ensuring the continued effectiveness of libraries as the world seeks new and innovative ways to access and share information and resources.

2)      Gap between catching up to technology advancement and savvy users

Librarians are faced with the task of updating themselves to the latest available technology and e-resource platforms to best serve the millennial generation that has grown up with these advancements as part of their daily life. This generation knows how to access the information and wants it fast, but can the libraries match up?

3)      Access to New Resources & Books: The process of ordering new materials for many libraries is very time consuming. It also takes a long time for these books to get delivered causing libraries to function on limited and sometimes outdated resources. The need for dependable suppliers and sellers who will deliver the right quantity on time continues to be an important challenge.

4)      Absence of Collaborative Operations: Many libraries in the Gulf and Middle East work in silos without any collaborative effort. For instance, it is not unusual to find a single University having multiple libraries each servicing its own unique faculty with no collaborative efforts across libraries. This can lead to duplicate purchases or make searching of data difficult as resources may not be pooled across the University.

5)      Difficulty of Sourcing relevant Resources: With the explosion of EBooks and digital resources, libraries are faced with difficulty of sourcing and distributing relevant resources for their faculty and students. This therefore drives libraries to seek out the best sources and platforms from where the most outstanding EBooks can be bought and accessed in order to ensure they meet their consumer’s demands.

On the plus side, with new and innovative resources directed at the education sector, libraries are left with a larger pool of options to add to their virtual bookshelves. Integrating e-textbooks, rented journals and learning videos for school children into the library’s website seamlessly is catching on fast.

It is evident the future of libraries lie in its digital assets where users can have remote access and not in big rooms lined with unending shelves stocked with bound books.


The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to Dibaj

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