Tuesday, October 05, 2010

On another Quest

I have been fortunate enough to have been selected to attend the Research Librarians' Academy, a 2-week residential programme, held at Mont Fleur in Stellenbosch. I'm here with colleagues from UCT Libraries, Wits, University of Pretoria, UKZN, Stellenbosch and Rhodes University. This is the third or is it the fourth group to be exposed to the academy. So here I am, on another quest! In the beautiful setting of Stellenbosch, away from home and work.

There is an official blog for the Research Librarians' Academy.

The aim of the Research Librarians' Academy is to equip academic librarians to provide research support integrating skills, scholarship, and technology in a South African library consortium, generously funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. There are a number of elements to this which include the residential programme, a research space (research commons) in the library, and a research portal. As part of the residential programme, some of the attendees will be sent to the States to spend two months in a top research library.

On this particular programme, we are being exposed to the top researchers in the country. On Monday, guest speakers were Prof Wieland Gevers, the General Secretary of the Academy of South Africa, who gave an overview of research;. John Tosh spoke about history; Zeblon Vilakazi from iThemba Labs spoke about research in nuclear physics; while Cyrill Walters and Maryna van der Heever spoke about their stays in the States.

Tuesday was a really full day with presentations on becoming a researcher, and then looking at different domains and epistemologies.

There are fuller reports from the participants on the blog.
So here I am, on another quest....