Publications

Publications of TU Wien Bibliothek staff in ReposiTUm

Open Source

The Firefox extension was programmed by Leo Zachl and brings the following advantages:

  • easy transfer of TU Wien classification from the bibliographic record to the holdings
  • location can be assigned automatically during login based on the device's IP address
  • targeted search for records using lists of IDs (ISBNs, MMS IDs, Consortium IDs, barcodes)
  • display of number of loans in the item overview
  • automated modifications of holdings and items
  • automated filling of fields in new holdings and items (for instance in theses)
  • printing of item slips where needed
  • direct link to items from the Metadata Editor
  • supports integration of your own bookmarklets

More information on the add-on, opens an external URL in a new window

Source code at GitLab, opens an external URL in a new window

 

Highlights

Below you find a selection of projects, events and innovations that took place at TU Wien Bibliothek.

Quarterly reports

2024

EULiST Student Conference at TU Wien

From 30 June to 04 July 2024, the first EULiST Student Conference was held at TU Wien with 184 students from all EULiST member universities. The four-day programme included 24 workshops, two keynote speeches on architecture and Europe, and an international evening, as well as very popular “pitch sessions” where participants presented their projects in the space of ten minutes, supported by TEDxTU Wien organisers. The conference created a student community that embodies “innovation, empowerment and network”. TU Wien was able to demonstrate its excellent premises and its spatial closeness and direct access to the heart of Vienna. The announcement that the next edition of the conference will take place in Northern France was greeted with enthusiasm.

First participation in the Vienna Design Week

In a cooperation with the association “One Body of Water”, TU Wien Bibliothek participated in this year’s Vienna Design Week from 20 to 29 September 2024. During this time, the exhibition “Free Genie” by Regina Hügli, which takes a look at the marketing strategies of the drinking water industry, could be experienced interactively in the Data Visualisation Space Davis. The talk “Water Qualities and Water Realities” offered a public discussion about the urban water supply, discharges into the groundwater, and the water footprint of consumer goods. The discussion participants were Norbert Kreuzinger (TU Wien, Research Unit of Water Quality Management), Norbert Klicha (Wiener Wasser), Ernst Überreiter (Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management), Christina Formanek (Environment Agency Austria), Mexican-Kenyan artists’ collective Narratives of Water, and Regina Hügli (One Body of Water), who co-moderated with Lisa Marx (TU Wien Bibliothek). On 26 September 2024, interested citizens joined the information and discussion game “Sharing Water (Vienna Edition)“ to learn more about water and climate change in the urban realm.

Participative research with school pupils on heat islands receives Citizens Science Award 2024

As part of the OPUSH research project, TU Wien Bibliothek and future.lab collaborated in the pilot project “Urban Heat Stories”, which was selected for the OeAD’s Citizen Science Award 2024. Since 2015, the award has been given annually to projects strengthening citizen participation in scientific research. In collaboration with students from three Viennese schools, the topic of heat in the city was discussed and the social impacts of the urban heat island effect were studied. The first results of the school workshops were presented in TU Wien Bibliothek’s Data Visualisation Space Davis. The award ceremony will be held on 24 October 2024 at the Young Science Congress at the KPH Vienna/Krems, in the presence of the education minister, Martin Polaschek, and all participating schools. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all participating students for their enthusiastic involvement.

Steering Committee of the EOSC Support Office Austria (SOA) met in the library

The first meeting of the Steering Committee in 2024 was held at TU Wien Bibliothek with Beate Guba presiding as first speaker. Katrin Vohland was elected second speaker, and subsequently representatives of the Management Board, the Secretariat, the Synergy Team and the General Assembly reported on their activities, on the international projects EOSC Focus, Skills4EOS, OSTrails, and on the national funding programme “Kulturerbe digital”. Stefan Hanslik of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research gave insight into the current discussion of the EOSC Nodes concept. Participants agreed that cooperation between the EOSC SOA bodies had been strengthened, and further information requirements were identified. The second part of the meeting centred on prioritising activities for 2024 and targeted acquisition of new members on the basis of updated key performance indicators. The updated KPIs available online in the Austria Country Report 02/2024.

TU Wien Bibliothek’s sustainability concept as a green library now available online

As part of our strategic priority of becoming a “Green Library”, the library has created a sustainability concept (Sustainability concept on Zenodo, opens an external URL in a new window). Following the definition provided by the Environment, Sustainability and Libraries Section (ENSULIB) of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), we take into account environmental, economic and social sustainability and implement a clear sustainability agenda. Our target is to reduce total CO2 emissions in the categories energy use, material use and mobility by 100 percent (i.e. 377 tons of CO2 equ.) by the end of 2025 compared to the base year (2019) level. To this end, a roadmap to 2025 has been drawn up and usage data collected from 2019 for the categories energy use, material use and mobility. The library’s CO2 values are calculated using the "ClimCalc" carbon accounting tool provided by the Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria; the library’s ecological balance is improved gradually by means of targeted measures.

Various activities to improve the library’s ecological footprint and hand print

The library is working towards improving our ecological footprint and hand print in 2024 by participating in the campaigns “Wien radelt” (Vienna cycles) and “Digital Cleanup Day”.  This year, library patrons’ bicycle journeys can be added for the first time. In addition, the library participates in the TU Wien Green Team within the framework of TU Wien’s strategy development process “fuTUre fit”, and networks with the Co-Creation Space TRANSFORMER, which offers a space for all age groups and interest groups to improve their understanding of climate change and particularly of the circular economy. Furthermore, library staff are initiating and implementing various social sustainability initiatives, such as collecting toner cartridges to benefit disadvantaged children and families, or distributing cloth bags to library users so that an existing resource can be reused. The library also exchanges ideas and experiences concerning sustainability with the Vienna Public Libraries.

Citizen science was the focus of the first TUesday Lounge of 2024

As a hub of knowledge and experience exchange at TU Wien, the library introduced the topic of citizen science at the TUesday Lounge. Beate Guba, director of TU Wien Bibliothek, gave an introductory keynote speech, followed by a panel discussion with the panellists Dilek Fraisl of Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) at IIASA, Katja Mayer of the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna, Fabian Dembski of Urban Innovation Vienna and Tallinn University of Technology, and Christian Peer of the future.lab - Research Center, TU Wien. Charlotte Reiff of TU Wien Bibliothek’s service unit Networking and Innovation moderated the stimulating discussion on various aspects of citizen science and its potential for the sustainability transformation. The event met with lively interest.

Library supports “SHE goes DIGITAL”

As part of the "Initiative Digitalisierung Chancengerecht", opens an external URL in a new window for equal opportunities in digitisation, the library promotes women in technology and digitization, offering three workshops on “Data Visualisation”, “Software Carpentry”, and “Semantic technologies, knowledge graphs and large language models“. The workshops offer women the opportunity to learn digital skills and gain insights into the work of a research library. Through interaction with participants and with the workshop team, they make contacts and explore career opportunities.

Journey of a book

In February, Wien Museum opened a special exhibition on the architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, opens an external URL in a new window. One of the highlights of the exhibition is Fischer’s illustrated world history of architecture, “Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur, opens an external URL in a new window" (A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture) – a loan from TU Wien Bibliothek, already on view last year at Salzburg. This work is part of TU Wien Bibliothek’s rare book holdings that make the library a treasure trove of cultural importance, providing public access to valuable historical material.  

2023

EOSC Lustrum - 5 years of EOSC developments

The conference "The EOSC Lustrum - five years of EOSC developments" on 19 October 2023 celebrated the successes of the last five years, since the adoption of the Vienna Declaration on the European Open Science Cloud. Together with the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the University of Vienna, the European Commission and other partners, TU Wien Bibliothek coordinated the programme, fundraising and management of the event. International guests participated in discussions on the perspectives, opportunities and challenges for research data in Europe, and engaged in critical discourse to develop new ideas. View the detailed EOSC Lustrum programme, opens an external URL in a new window

Library activities during the International Data Week

TU Wien Bibliothek was active in the organisation and management of the International Data Week, contributing two sessions to the programme. The International Data Week was held from 23 October to 26 October 2023 by CODATA, World Data System, Research Data Alliance and Paris Lodron University Salzburg. In the session "PID provision - the current Austrian approach, challenges and future directions", Elise Harder presented the framework of the DOI Service Austria and discussed the role of persistent identifiers (PIDs) from a global perspective with international speakers. Chris Schubert co-moderated the session "Enhancing data and information discovery and reuse across disciplines - The roles of quality management in open science" to an audience filling the auditorium, who reached the conclusion that the findings of the speakers and panellists need to be further discussed on a global level.

Successful completion of GIGAR-V project

"Guiding Infrastructure Governance and Controlled Vocabularies Requirement" (GIGAR-V) originated in a grant from the Horizon INFRAEOSC-03-2020 of the EOSC Future project. Under TU Wien Bibliothek’s project lead, the one-year project could be concluded successfully in October 2023. Due to the high level of dynamics of the technical developments within the EOSC context, the international consortium of Austrian, French and Danish institutions was given a mandate to obtain insights into current projects such as FAIR-IMPACT, CORE4EOSC and others and support them with advice. The project results will be published in 2024.

OPUSH project enters „hot phase“ of citizen science experiments

In the course of a citizen science experiment at schools in the 6th Viennese district organised by TU Wien Bibliothek, pupils aged 14 and 15 contributed their perspective to the participatory city planning process “Zukunftsfitte Gumpendorfer Straße” (Making Gumpendorfer Straße fit for the future). A second citizen science experiment examined the effects of urban heat on the health of retired persons in Favoriten using sensors and a chatbot. These experiments, part of the OPUSH project, were accompanied by a variety of dissemination activities, such as opening the library building to the public during Open House Wien 2023; library participation in the European Researchers’ Night 2023, organizing the workshop “Citizen science to guide developments of and build trust in key technologies” at the CESAER Annual Meeting 2023, including a talk on “Citizen Science and the UN SDGs. Case Study: Open Urban Sustainability Hubs Project” and the moderation of a panel of citizen science experts from Denmark, Lithuania, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands.

Greater transparency on open access publication costs

In September, the document "Empfehlung für die Erfassung von Publikationskosten in Statistiken, opens an external URL in a new window" (Recommendation on recording publication costs in statistics) was published, marking an important project goal of AT2OA2 (Austrian Transition to Open Access 2), with significant contributions from two staff members of TU Wien Bibliothek. This paper defines four categories of publication costs for open access publishing of scholarly works, plus an additional category for other costs. This categorization ensures standardized and comparable indicators in statistics, which is important for (inter)national reporting (for example, in the Statistical Yearbook of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research; the university intellectual capital reports; or the Austrian Library Statistics). The categorization allows a systematic and clear monitoring of costs and maps the transformation from closed to open access over a longer period of time.

Start of "EULIST - European Universities Linking Society and Technology” Alliance

After funding was approved in July 2023, the EULiST Alliance, opens an external URL in a new window in September started preparations for the official kick-off, which will take place from 02 to 03 November 2023 in Hannover. Coordination of the alliance building resides with Paolo Budroni at TU Wien, and he organised the programme for a visit by a delegation from Leibniz University Hannover at TU Wien, in consultation with Rector Jens Schneider. The intensive exchanges were continued together at Brno University of Technology. In October, TU Wien staff members will visit the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. At TU Wien, internal activities included the formation of teams, initial coordination meetings, setting up internal communication on coLAB, and briefings of participating staff members.

Festive launch of Davis, the new Data Visualisation Space in the library

This groundbreaking new space for teaching and learning in TU Wien Bibliothek makes possible the collaborative and interdisciplinary implementation of 2D and 3D visualisation projects.  On 08 May Davis was inaugurated by Vice Rector Josef Eberhardsteiner and Library Director Beate Guba. Around 80 guests tested the nearly 5-metre-long interactive touchwall and experienced intuitive and immersive interaction with visualised data models on the 3D-capable, floor-to-ceiling LED wall. The library is at present developing course formats and usage possibilities together with early adopters from different faculties. From the winter semester 2023, Davis will be ready for wider use in teaching and in events supporting the university’s Third Mission and citizen science.

Erasmus+ Mobility Week at TU Wien Bibliothek fosters knowledge exchange and strategic collaboration on digital tools and skills

Our Erasmus+ Mobility Week from 07-10 May 2023 was dedicated to "Nature-based solutions: Digital Methods and Tools to Support Problem-Solving". The main topics were the potential of AR/VR in urban development or construction, and microcredentials. Petra Aigner from the TU Wien Academy for Continuing Education gave insights into the present situation in Austria in her keynote speech. The participants from Estonia (TalTech), Germany (HLRS) and Austria (TU Wien) then discussed the challenges of implementing microcredentials and their role in lifelong learning. Outcomes of this Erasmus+ week were not only the intensive knowledge exchange, but also a new strategic partnership between the TalTech Library and TU Wien Bibliothek, who are planning to collaborate more closely in the areas of the visualisation of scientific data, digital infrastructures and skills development.

Workshop on the FAIR principles with experts from the Netherlands met with great interest

TU Wien Bibliothek and the TU Wien Center for Research Data Management organized a two-day workshop on FAIR awareness together with the GO FAIR Austria office. The trainers were Barbara Magagna and Erik Schultes from the GO FAIR Foundation (NL). The workshop provided historical and technical context to help researchers better appreciate the value of FAIR and how FAIR might impact their own work. The key issues around the implementation of FAIR and technology trends in FAIRification and the FAIR Orchestration of research data were also considered. The 59 participants came from Austria and 13 other EU countries. The presentations by the GO FAIR Foundation (GFF) trainers Barbara Magagna and Erik Schultes and the GFF fellows Juliana Menger and Erik Van Winkle are available for download on the OSF platform, opens an external URL in a new window.

Our commitment to more openness in science and society was rewarded with the Open Library Badge 2020

On 20 February 2023, TU Wien Bibliothek became the first Austrian institution to be awarded the “Open Library Badge 2020”. Recipients include national, university and city libraries as well as library networks from the German-speaking countries. The Open Library Badge highlights the diversity of the community as well as the wide spectrum of activities libraries are undertaking to promote open science. TU Wien Bibliothek scored highly in the following categories:

  • Contributing to open-source software
  • Professional development opportunities
  • Enabling text and data mining
  • Establishing cost transparency for acquisitions
  • Revealing open access potentials 

More on the Open Library Badge, opens an external URL in a new window and best-practice examples of previous recipients

A valuable volume from TU Wien Bibliothek’s holdings is on display at the exhibition “Fischer von Erlach – Master of Baroque Architecture”

To mark the 300th anniversary of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s death, Salzburg Museum and Wien Museum are presenting a large joint exhibition of his work with exhibits from the inventories of both museums, supplemented by a large number of high-ranking loans from Austrian and international collections. Fischer von Erlach’s “Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur”(A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture) was the first illustrated world history of architecture and gained him renown in all Europe during his lifetime. TU Wien Bibliothek contributed our copy of the 1721 first edition of this book to the exhibition as a loan. In addition, a specially produced video allows visitors to view more of the contents of the book. The exhibition is on view at the Salzburg Museum until 08 October 2023 and will be shown at the Wien Museum in 2024.

2022

Visualisations as a new feature in CatalogPlus

In cooperation with Open Knowledge Maps, opens an external URL in a new window, the search function and search result display in CatalogPlus, the library's central discovery portal, has been expanded by two features: Since December 2022, search results can be displayed not only in list form, but also visualised as a clustered knowledge map, or in chronological sequence as a stream graph. The thematic clusters of the map and the timeline are generated in real time based on AI. For the time being, the prototype contains content exclusively from the external source BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, opens an external URL in a new window. As a next step, the library's own holdings on the UN Sustainable Development Goals will also be included as a special use case and made available as an Open Knowledge Map.

Start of project “Responsible Metrics”

This project will identify, discuss and evaluate new indicators for assessing research achievements at two pilot faculties. The project team includes 16 persons from the Faculty of Physics, the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering and from central divisions. In accordance with S.P.A.C.E., opens an external URL in a new window, different career levels of scientific staff and other diversity aspects were taken into account. At the kick-off meeting on 05 October 2022, the framework was established with regard to international initiatives such as CoARA, opens an external URL in a new window and the Austrian Open Science Policy, opens an external URL in a new window, common project goals were set and tasks were defined. A project page with relevant materials was set up in a coLAB space. Analyses of trends in research assessment in an international and regional context started in December.

Second General Assembly of EOSC Support Office Austria

The Second General Assembly of EOSC Austria , opens an external URL in a new windowtook place on Monday, 07 November 2022 at Graz University of Technology, chair of the Management Board until the end of 2022. The opening by Katrin Vohland, Vienna Natural History Museum, and the keynote speech by Ute Gunsenheimer of the EOSC Association were followed by further professionally valuable contributions. In the afternoon, summaries by the working groups (including Beate Guba), the Synergy Team (including Barbara Sánchez) and the back office (Juliana Giroletti) presented their results and the planned next steps. The ACONET Association and the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) expressed their support and praised the initiative. The office of the Support Office Austria was set up at TU Wien.

Systematic implementation of the library's sustainability concept

TU Wien Bibliothek confirmed its commitment to sustainability by signing the Green Library Manifesto, and in 2022 developed a concept for this purpose that takes into account buildings, library services, administration and environmental aspects. In order to reduce the library’s ecological footprint, continual monitoring was implemented. To calculate our greenhouse gas emissions, we feed CO2-relevant data on our consumption of heat, electricity, service water, toner, paper and print products, our IT equipment and our mobility data into the calculator provided by the Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria. Our energy consumption has already gone down. We collect used and empty toner cartridges and donate them to a social project of the Austrian Children’s Cancer Charity. The ecological handprint shows a saving of a minimum of 1139.60 kg of CO2 for this year: This is the amount 8 library staff members achieved within the “Wien radelt” (Vienna cycles) campaign, covering a distance of 6460.30 km by bike and on foot between 20 March and 30 September 2022.

Open Urban Sustainability Hubs (OPUSH): First on-site meeting of the international project team and official kick-off with national partners in Vienna

With Christian Peer as Principal Investigator, two OPUSH workshops took place in Vienna as personal attendance events to an enthusiastic welcome. The first workshop aimed to create connections between the national partners and discuss first ideas for citizen science experiments in Vienna. The second workshop was held with the international project partners. The participants visited TU Wien Bibliothek and Deck 50 of the Natural History Museum and discussed urban sustainability practices involving open science in Barcelona, Delft, Tallinn and Vienna, and the current state of research on the importance of citizen science for the urban sustainability transformation.  

Start of Horizon Europe project Skills4EOSC

In September 2022, the Skills4EOSC project kick-off took place in Pisa. The aims of the project are: 1. unifying the current training landscape into a common and trusted pan-European ecosystem, 2. upskilling of European researchers and data professionals in the field of FAIR and Open Data, 3. making intensive-data science and scientific data management more efficient. The competence centres to be established in the course of the project will serve as centres of gravity of Open Science and EOSC activities in their countries.
TU Wien institutions participating in the project are TU Wien Bibliothek, the Center for Research Data Management and the Research Unit of Data Science. Overall the project will bring together expert knowledge from 18 European countries.

First international citizen science project at TU Wien: OPUSH

The project Open Urban Sustainability Hubs, opens an external URL in a new window (OPUSH) aims to build capacity for the urban sustainability transformation, social innovation and co-creation in four European cities, by making knowledge on sustainable development and transformative action more visible and traceable, and empowering local communities by granting access to and interaction with open knowledge ecosystems. Communication between libraries, museums, urban planning, citizens and local initiatives is intensified strategically and operatively. Thereby, OPUSH enhances the role and capacity of libraries within Open Science and through Citizen Science as a driver of sustainable development. The project contributes to achieving the UN SDGs, opens an external URL in a new window 4, 11 and 16. OPUSH was submitted to the JPI Urban Europe Call ERA-NET Cofund Urban Transformation Capacities (ENUTC) by Christian Peer of the future.lab as Principal Investigator and TU Wien Bibliothek together with partners from Barcelona, Delft, Tallinn and Vienna, and was among the 16 projects selected out of 152 applications. Here you will find a short project description of OPUSH, opens an external URL in a new window. The project started on 01 April 2022 and will run for three years.

Successful workshop „Key Performance Indicators” of the Austrian EOSC Initiative

The Working Group “Key Performance Indicators” of the EOSC Support Office Austria, opens an external URL in a new window, set up in May 2021, organised a workshop at the Natural History Museum Vienna on 10 May 2022, starting a participatory discussion process on evaluating the EOSC and measuring its impact on a national level. 35 experts from different stakeholder groups (ministries, universities, non-university research institutions, research funders, infrastructure providers, R&I consultants and R&I monitors amongst others) took an active part in the workshop, deepening the shared understanding of EOSC’s objectives, considering current Austrian strategies such as the Open Science Policy Austria, the RTI Strategy 2030 and the UniNEtZ options report from the angle of the EOSC, and identifying challenges to EOSC monitoring. The presentation slides from the workshop "Key Performance Indicators", opens an external URL in a new window are available on Zenodo. More information on the working group, opens an external URL in a new window, which is coordinated by Kathrin Vohland (NHMW) and Beate Guba (TU Wien Bibliothek), is available on the EOSC Austria website.

Kick-off of the Horizon Europe project EOSC Focus in Vienna

In the call HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-02, the EOSC Association together with TU Wien and 7 other partners successfully submitted the project “EOSC Focus”, which will consolidate the governance of the EOSC Association, building on the results of the EOSCsecretariat.eu project. From 29 June to 30 June 2022, the kick-off meeting took place at TU Wien. In the course of the meeting, Karel Luyben and Ute Gunsenheimer of the EOSC Association and Michel Schouppe of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission underlined the importance of the Memorandum of Understanding for the Co-programmed European Partnership for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), opens an external URL in a new window and of the ambitious project goals. The acronym “Focus” stands for “Focusing on Open, Collaboration and Useful Science” and expresses the goal of establishing Open Science as the “new normal”. On the TU Wien side, the research unit Information and Software Engineering, TU Wien Bibliothek and the Center for Research Data Management are part of the project team. More on the project EOSC Focus, opens an external URL in a new window

 

A concise insight into TU Wien Bibliothek

The vital role of libraries in digitisation, the transformation of science and the university's third mission is presented concisely in a short YouTube video, opens an external URL in a new window. In this video, TU Wien Bibliothek gives examples of its daily work, which is shaped by various technologies, such as cloud computing, search engine technologies, RFID, and robotics. The library has been driving digitisation for more than 30 years through its services. As a living lab, it also connects the physical space with the digital world of data. For a better understanding, it's worth looking at the video.

The library team sets ambitious annual goals for 2022

In a multi-stage discussion process, the library has set ambitious goals for the year 2022, putting its mission statement into action and operationalising its strategic priorities. In addition to COVID-19-specific measures, our Data Visualisation Space and international developments are implemented or consolidated. To improve the library's environmental footprint, the library team is participating in the "Wien radelt" (Vienna Cycles) campaign (20 March - 30 September 2022). We are thrilled to see how many kilometres we will cover by bike or on foot, contributing to climate protection together.

New service for creating accessible PDF documents

The new library web service Asura, opens an external URL in a new window  allows students and TU Wien employees to check their PDFs for accessibility standards and full-text extractability, optimise them, and, if necessary, merge them from several parts without loss. The tool is helpful before submitting a thesis or publishing a paper and makes subsequent corrections unnecessary. The text extraction supports a possible plagiarism check. The library team will soon provide information on avoiding the most common problem sources and continuously improve the software in cooperation with the manufacturer.

2021

EOSC process is gaining momentum

TU Wien Bibliothek coordinated the setup of the Austrian EOSC Mandated Organisation, organising the first project milestone, the first General Assembly on 13 October 2021 at the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. During the next two years, TU Wien Bibliothek will chair the General Assembly and coordinate monitoring of the Austrian initiative.  TU Wien Bibliothek also acts as co-chair of the Key Performance Indicators working group together with the Natural History Museum, and participates in the working groups “Austria Country Profile” and “Researcher Engagement”. Beate Guba and Paolo Budroni act as EOSC Reference Points at TU Wien. Paolo Budroni is also responsible for the setup of the EOSC Support Office Austria, headquartered at TU Wien, and delegate of the Austrian Initiative at the EOSC Association in Brussels. On an international level, TU Wien Bibliothek participates in two taskforces of the EOSC Association: the “PID Policy and Implementation Task Force” and the “FAIR Metrics and Data Quality Task Force”.

TU Wien Bibliothek’s Erasmus+ programme in the second year of the COVID pandemic

In order to continue professional exchange between European libraries during the pandemic, TU Wien Bibliothek offered a virtual Erasmus+ programme from 16 to 18 November 2021. 17 selected participants from the EU and Turkey attended the interactive workshop supervised by TU Wien Bibliothek staff members and outside experts. The main focus was the recent foundation of the Austrian EOSC initiative as well as open science, research assessment, subject registries, controlled vocabularies, and the impact of persistent identifiers (PIDs).

"Gender equality" workshop in the CO-VERSATILE project

On 22 October 2021, the Library team together with Brigitte Ratzer (Services Gender Competence) and Marjo Rauhala (Research Ethics Coordinator) held a workshop on "Gender and Intersectionability" within the CO-VERSATILE project. The topic was in harmony with the European Research Area (ERA) policy agenda of deepening the ERA through gender equality.

"Smart Campus - Smart Library" project shows promising results

The .dcall 2020 project "Smart Campus - Smart Library" proposed the development of a simulation model of the library building for use in teaching and research. During the academic year 2020/202, teachers and students worked on a digital model that will be used in practice. The emphasis on application orientation makes the research topic and subject matter particularly relevant. The prototype simulation model developed in cooperation with the research units of Building Physics and Wireless Communications as well as with Real Estate and Facility Management and TU Wien Campus IT includes datasets on building physics and people flows. The project was concluded with a closing event on 14 October 2021, but the project results encourage the participating institutions to continue using the data in a long-term study and for improving space usage in the library. General information, the simulation model, the datasets and the visualisations, opens an external URL in a new window continue to be available on the project's TU coLAB learning space for use in teaching and research.

Start of the project "Austrian Transition to Open Access 2" (AT2OA2)

Successful measures from the "AT2OA" project are continued in order to further advance the transformation process from closed to open access and setting up a data hub for publication data from different sources.  Subproject 1 presented survey results on existing and possible new transformative agreements with publishers. Subproject 2 set up two working groups to define the metadata schema and technical requirements for an "Austrian Data Hub for Open Access Negotiations and Monitoring". Subproject 3 started researching the current state of publication costs of Austrian universities. Subproject 4 addresses the topic of predatory publishing. Subproject 5 provided access to the Altmetric Explorer to examine the degree to which open access improves visibility of academic publications. TU Wien Bibliothek is active in all five subprojects.

TU Wien Bibliothek Mission Statement

A participatory process of "shaping cooperation" over the course of nearly two years was successfully concluded with the approval of TU Wien Bibliothek's mission statement in June 2021. In externally and internally moderated workshops, the library's management team developed guiding principles of a mission statement that was subsequently worked out by the library team using the Lego Serious Play® method, and finally put in writing.

The mission statement documents TU Wien Bibliothek's commitment to opening doors to knowledge for everyone and connecting people and science. The complete text of the mission statement is published on the library website. On 29 June 2021, the mission statement was adopted in the presence of VR Josef Eberhardsteiner.

TU Wien Bibliothek contributes its expertise to national and international projects

With a coordinating role in setting up the Austrian EOSC Mandated Organisation and the EOSC Support Office Austria, TU Wien Bibliothek is supporting the most important infrastructure initiative of the European Commission on the national level. At the beginning of July 2021, the consensual agreement of this Austrian initiative is to be concluded and in October 2021, the first general assembly will be held.

In July 2021, Paolo Budroni, chair of e-IRG and head of TU Wien Bibliothek's new service unit "EOSC and International Liaison Office", will take up his role as a member of the CLARIN Scientific Advisory Board, opens an external URL in a new window for the next three years.

In May 2021, two workshops on the "future of <digital> universities 2035" took place at Danube University Krems at the initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. A panel of national and international high-level experts, including two representatives of TU Wien Bibliothek, were invited to discuss the influence of digitisation on university teaching, research, organisation and on the third mission of universities. The results will provide a basis for the ministry's future strategy.

Expansion of the library’s bibliometric services

The library offers a diverse portfolio in the context of bibliometrics to TU Wien’s faculties, institutes, and individual scientists: At the faculty level, the Service Group for Scientometrics and Data Visualisation creates reports on applicants’ research and publication activities within appointment procedures. Institutes are provided with scientometric analyses to support the establishment of international cooperation and strategic partnerships. Individual researchers benefit from training and advice on publication strategies (e.g. media for publication, increasing visibility, author profiles). Last but not least, the monitoring of metadata in research databases and any corrections contribute to better ranking results of TU Wien. A data visualisation engineer will join the team from July 2021 onwards to expand the library’s data visualisation services.

English proofreading and editing support for doctoral students

The new "Editing service for doctoral students of TU Wien", launched in March 2021 by the library, aims to support young scientists at the beginning of their careers by increasing the acceptance rate of journal articles or conference papers. The service is open to doctoral students of all faculties. The students benefit from the library's advice on special topics such as authorship, CC licences and predictive publishing. English-language manuscripts are reviewed by ENAGO Editing Services and IATUL Academic Translation and Editing Service. The library has concluded agreements with both service providers to reduce editing and proofreading prices for TU Wien members.

Horizon 2020 project CO-VERSATILE

CO-VERSATILE is an answer to an EU-initiated funding programme for COVID-19 urgent action. The project brings together 21 partners from Europe and Israel. The manufacturing sector should be able to react quickly and appropriately to health crises in the future. TU Wien Bibliothek leads work package 6 - Data Management, GDPR, IPR and Ethics, ensuring efficient implementation of data management in the project. This task is in accordance with the TU Wien Policy for Research Data Management, which recognises the long-term value of research data for research, academia and industry, and the potential for broad public re-use. The proper handling of legal and ethical aspects will also be a main contribution to the CO-VERSATILE project. The project will run until November 2022.

2020

The library as third place: Multimedia programme at the Austrian literature festival

In October 2020, the literature festival "Österreich liest" took place at TU Wien Bibliothek despite the challenges caused by Covid-19. The multimedia exhibition "Digital Art Hub Austria-China. A Touch of Purple and Gold. Science Meets Art in the Library" was shown in cooperation with the Viennese artist Barbara Salaun and opened with a lecture by Alexandra Harrer. In addition, Uwe Wössner and Fabian Dembski (High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart) presented an interdisciplinary research project on the 3D reconstruction of the Octagon in Ephesus in the library's temporary data visualisation lab. Analogue and digital data were interrelated to each other in physical space and made immersive. Augmented and virtual reality gave the library as third place an entirely new dimension in terms of access to scientific knowledge and knowledge transfer.

Expanded range of courses and workshops offered by TU Wien Bibliothek

For the first time, the library offers three courses on scientific work within TU Wien's Transferable Skills Catalogue. Bachelor's and Master's students practice basic skills such as searching, citing and writing. The focus for doctoral students is on publishing and disseminating research output as well as data visualisation. In addition, workshops on research assessment, academic profiles curation and self-archiving are regularly offered for (junior) researchers. For institutes and research groups, tailor-made courses are available by arrangement.

Furthermore, the following successful national and international events took place this quarter: e-IRG-Workshop under German Presidency, Focus on Open Science, Virtual Round Tables as part of the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Week, and the ORCID Austria Tech-Workshop, opens an external URL in a new window.

Library as a partner for DOI registration

TU Wien Bibliothek acts as a central point of contact for all TU Wien members aiming to make their scientific results findable and citable in the long term. The library assigns DOIs for documents in reposiTUm, the TU Wien Academic Press publications, the “Journal for Facility Management”, the Journal “The Public Sector”, and other technical systems that meet the requirements of the Rectorate´s directive. For other Austrian universities, research and funding institutions, and non-profit organisations, TU Wien Bibliothek operates the DOI-Service Austria, to which 13 institutions now belong.

Go-live of reposiTUm in a new software environment

On 3 September 2020, the library relaunched the open access platform reposiTUm. Before that, it had successfully migrated the data from the previous software application Visual Library to the open source software DSpace. The import started on 27 June and ran 81 hours for 14,931 data records. New functionalities and a new design were developed in close cooperation with Campus Software Development.

Strong commitment to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is currently the most important initiative of the European Commission concerning European digital infrastructures. It pursues the goal of connecting science and society more closely to solve societal challenges. Vice Rector Josef Eberhardsteiner applied for the membership of TU Wien, Austria's oldest technical university, in the EOSC Association, following a corresponding decision by the Rectorate. The library, represented by Beate Guba and Paolo Budroni, took care of co-shaping the governance of the recently founded EOSC Association through participating in the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) open consultation and contributing to the Bylaws Group.

“Education Landscape on the Move” focused on library buildings

In the summer term 2020, the courses “Education Landscape on the Move” were dedicated to the library as a place of learning and, in particular, to the TU Wien main library building. Due to Covid-19, the contents had to be adapted and changed to distance learning. The sudden closure of the library was one of the topics. “I spent so much time there last semester that I could have easily registered my second home there. It is exactly this place that has been taken away from me now. In this place, all my concentration, motivation and creativity is concentrated,” said one student. Among a diverse mix of methods, the students interviewed library staff about their activities. They are going to present the results of this qualitative study in September. The virtual lecture series “Free Space Art” was organised in cooperation with the library and featured experts from architecture, cognitive science and library science: Daniel Bammer (AT), Gareth Griffiths (FIN), Jef van den Putte (NL), Markus Peschl (AT), Anna Maria Tammaro (ITA). The lectures offered fascinating insights and interesting discussions.

Relaunch of the library website and CatalogPlus

On 30 June 2020, the new website of TU Wien Bibliothek went online, presenting the library as a broad-based, future-oriented partner in the university and scientific community. Language, style and visual language are characterised by consistent principles and support user orientation. The navigation addresses the user groups as well as crucial university and library strategy aspects. At the same time, we relaunched CatalogPlus to make the literature search even more intuitive and optimise it for mobile devices. In addition to the library's printed and digital holdings, one can find numerous open access full texts on TU Wien's main research areas in CatalogPlus.

International knowledge exchange

A study with recommendations for TU Wien Academic Press was carried out by KU Research and UCL Press. In this study, dissemination systems and platforms from Amazon to Google Scholar and OAPEN to databases such as Scopus were evaluated. A targeted selection based on this will be implemented step by step to make TU Wien Academic Press publications even more visible and findable internationally.

In addition, the library was a popular contact point for colleagues from abroad: Dr Gavin Boyce, head of the Faculty of Engagement and Partnership at the Western Bank Library of the University of Sheffield, sought exchange regarding research data. Thomas Eichenberger, a member of the Head Office of the ETH Library, was interested in the strategic orientation of TU Wien Bibliothek and its activities in the field of Open Science. A high-level delegation from the University and State Library of Münster and the University and City Library of Cologne visited our library to learn from our best practices in implementing the cloud-based library software Alma.