UR DVC Strategic Planning & Administration visit to Borås

This week, the University of Borås had the honour of recieving theUniversity of Rwanda Deputy Vice Chancellor Strategic Planning & Administration Dr. Papias Malimba Musafiri. It gave us a great opportunity to talk about our respective strengths and aims, our collaboration and potential future cooperation. The PhD students Berthilde Uwamwezi and Muhebera Bizimana joined for lunch. The list of people whom the DVC met covers areas from Science Park, textiles and business, to Library and Information Science, from teachers to the Vice Chancellor Björn Brorström, whose senior advisor Sten Dellby guided the DVC throughout the day.

Thank you for paying us a visit, Papias. We are looking forward to meeting you here again.

Papias Malimba Musafiri and Sten Dellby at Smart Textiles
checking a hockey stick entirely made with textile fibre.

URLS in Social Media

A training on Social Media for University Libraries and the University of Rwanda Library Services (URLS) specifically, has just been organised in Huye, facilitated by Ola Pilerot, University of Borås. 18 librarians participated and during the training there was also hands on training, such as the creation of a Facebook Profile for the URLS. We are hopeful that this will become a useful tool for communication.

URLS in Social Media

UR-Sweden Programme on the Web

The library sub-programme is part of the UR-Sweden Programme for Research, Higher Education and Institutional Advancement. The programme has an updated website, where you can both get a good understanding of the context, and an insight into the various sub-programmes, such as ours.

Caption of the UR-Sweden website. UR-Sweden Programme

Some recent and upcoming activities

A couple of weeks ago, some of you spotted Swedish team members, at times together with new colleagues, in and around Kigali. As you may know, there was a call out for a new Sida Research Training Partnership Programme 2019-2024 for Rwanda and the University of Rwanda. The focus was on that.

The present phase 2013-2018 having been extended, activities still take place. Anna Stockman was recently in the country and worked with you on e-resources. There is an upcoming three day workshop on social media and libraries, to be organised the first week of December. Ola Pilerot, will facilitate the event.

UR-Sweden Programme film.

In the meanwhile, our doctoral students progress, and in February, Berthilde Uwamwezi will have her final seminar. That is, the last seminar before the PhD defence/viva, which will take place in June. Please check this profile film on Berthilde, done by the UR communications team (follow the link!).

Next week, an administrative meeting called Annual Review Meeting (ARM) is organised in Kigali. Maybe I will see you then!

Research4Life

Research4Life commitment until 2025

The Research4Life partners have announced that they have agreed to extend their partnership through 2025. Research4Life currently provides over 8,700 institutions in more than 100 developing countries with free or low cost access to peer-reviewed eResources from the world’s leading scholarly publishers. The renewed commitment will ensure that the nearly 85,000 peer reviewed academic journals, books and databases from some 200 scholarly publishers available through the public-private Research4life partnership will continue to reach research communities in low- and middle-income countries.

E-Learning Africa 2018 a conference report

I attended the E-learning Africa Conference 2018 of 3 days held at the Kigali Convention Centre-Rwanda from 26^th -28^th September 2018. My participation was funded by the Swedish Library Association. Each day started and ended by a plenary session. All the themes were addressed through a range of sessions focusing on the technology transformation. Below is a summary of my impressions. 

The Internet is the driver of e-learning, it is the key networking for education professionals, investors, and training; E-Learning becomes possible when there is an integration of ICT in the education system, which requires a policy and strategy of its own.

The conference explored creative ways which E-Learning can support the development and help to build a sustainable future. Here are the key principles of effective online facilitation: creation of knowledge and opportunity, transfer of knowledge to the local team, digital literacy got to be responsible technology transfer, solutions of problems and mechanisms, online learning as a catalyst for change in higher education.

We learned about the benefits of technology and its role, how to manage students on the e-learning program: handle their questions, management of the FORUM… The role of a mobile phone (smartphone) on the online facilitation in learning and teaching online and blended courses: it is cheaper and portable.

Despite all the challenges facing the academic libraries in Africa, they try to establish themselves modern online centres of research, find out how infrastructure, quality assurance of information and collaboration are crucial factors in building Africa’s higher education research base.

The E-Learning faces some challenges such as inadequate human capacity leading, power cuts, no backups even at the campus, non-reliable Wi-Fi connection and so on. In conclusion, the E-learning will meet their goals when they have a clear plan and fund; internal policies to be adjusted, consistent budget, training and support of teaching and the technical staff in place to provide greater resources to facilitate learning.

The E-Learning Africa Conference 2018 enabled me to develop my knowledge as well as to enhance my expertise and abilities to improve the practice of E-Learning across a range of key sectors including education, healthcare, agriculture, and security. My Thanks go to the Swedish Library Association for the generous opportunity you offered me. It will be such a big help for the URLIS. It’s much appreciated.

Gahongayire Odette

Acting Director of Campus Library Services

University of Rwanda

Another research library activity

In Sweden, three weeks before a viva, or PhD defence, the event is announced and the thesis made public, in a ceremony called "spikning". Some universities do it digitally, some do it manually, as the University of Borås. The University of Borås PhD student is supposed to hang the thesis on a wall in the library, using a nail (nail=spik). On the 31st of August however, the PhD student Emma Forsgren was not in Sweden, so the ceremony was partly held online by the help of an iPad. Even though the text here is in Swedish, the pictures of speak for themselves. In three weeks, Emma will defend her doctoral thesis: "Enterprise Social Media in Project-based Knowledge Work - A contextualised view through the lens of activity theory". 

Should you be interested in research carried out at the University of Borås, it is available through our institutional repository DIVA.

Extension of the partnership programme

The Library sub-programme is happy to announce that extension has been granted for another year of activities within the Sida Research Training Partnership Programme.

This means that our doctoral students will be able to complete their studies and it is anticipated that Berthilde Uwamwezi will be able to defend her thesis in May or June 2019. When it comes to Muhebera Bizimana, it is too early to share any detailed plan.

Master's students continue their work and there are going to be workshops and trainings at the UR  in partnership with the Swedish universities in 2018-2019. We are specifically looking at securing ICT and e-resources on the one hand and at ways to facilitate usage of the resources in our trainings.

The integrated library system, that will be one helpful in harmonizing services all across the UR, is on the way and we are hopeful that implementation will be possible shortly.

We have serious aims and the expectations on us are high. We strive at delivering as well as we can together for a quality and sustainable development of the library services.

Inside one of the partners' libraries. Photo: Suss Wilén.

Bibliometrics

A one-week workshop on bibliometrics for librarians in Huye, March 19th-23rd.
Two librarians from Borås university library train a group of 15 librarians from UR.
What is bibliometrics and how can it be used at the University of Rwanda? Is it ok to use quantitative methods for evaluating research? Those questions and many more are brought up and critically reflected on during the workshop facilitated by Katharina Nordling and Kristoffer Warnberg.
A representative from the bibliographic database Web of Science (WoS) will also come to the workshop to demonstrate some of the possibilities to work with bibliometrics in WoS.