Hello All!
The Carnegie CPD program is a four-week funded program by the Carnegie Corporation New York holding at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. The aim of the program is to enhance ICT skills of Librarians in academic institutions in Africa for research enablement and better productivity.

So, what is the 'is-ness' and 'about-ness' of the program?
Is-ness - funded, research enablement, better productivity.
About-ness - Carnegie CPD program, University of Pretoria, ICT, Librarian, Africa.

About-ness deals more with the important items in a search string while is-ness, although not necessarily part of the search string but only gives more meaning to the about-ness. About-ness is the actual terms that will be supplied to a database(or search engine) in order to retrieve the most relevant information. This is to save users time spent on searching and to eliminate stop words in a given query.

Information retrieval skills is very fundamental in any academic research process. The literacy level of a researcher will determine the quality and quantity of relevant item retrieved from any database. This program has helped us to be better information scientists so we can be useful and be of help to researchers in our various countries.

Need help with retrieving information from any database for academic research purpose?
Please contact me (nnafatimah@gmail.com) as I will gladly help to not only catch the big fish for you but also teach you how to catch a bigger fish all by yourself.

The following are the basic competencies required for information literacy:
i. Know that you need information
ii. Know what information you need
iii. know how to find the information
iv. know how to organise information
v. know and understand the legal and ethical framework of information use
vi. know if it is the right information for the task.

Then, clearly decide the is-ness and about-ness in your search query before supplying it into a database/search engine. Remember that the actual problem in retrieval is the ability to match 'human language(query)' to 'computer language (indexed text)'.
Boolean operators are quite helpful in forming different aspects of about-ness in a query. The mostly used operators are AND, OR, NOT. Each have its own specific use depending on quantity and quality of feedback we expect from the search engine or database.

Now try this: carnegie cpd program AND university of pretoria AND librarian AND africa AND ict
and click 'search'! What do you think?

Keep trying this for your personal research. Remember to determine the is-ness and about-ness and then incorporate the Boolean operators.

Okay just finished a class on Information Retrieval and I learnt two interesting words- 'is-ness' and 'about-ness'. Want to know what that means? I am gonna tell you all about that but not after I finish sharing my experience at University of South Africa (Unisa) and University of Pretoria (UP) libraries with you.

So, my Unisa experience:
A beautiful campus I must say, the oldest in South Africa and one of the leading universities in Africa and rated among the best in the World.
The most fascinating feature of the library is the underground basement which houses the Archives and digitization unit of the library. They have a very robust archival policy as well as a well-planned and managed institutional repository. They have an app developed so users can access their institutional repository via their mobile devices wherever they are. The app can be downloaded free from the app store on any smartphone. Simple type 'Unisa library' and you've got the whole Unisa institutional repository on your palm..cool right?
We were also shown the RFID sorting machine that is used to sort returned materials according to subject areas. This is to save librarians the stress of having to sort thousands of books that are returned daily to the library. Saves our backs from breaking too.

Unisa staff are so friendly and professional in discharging their duties, their faces will definitely make you want to use the library.


For the University of Pretoria (UP):
We were taken around the library and the campus itself. Campus Tour Service guides were employed to take us round the campus. One interesting thing about buildings in UP is that every structure have a story attached to it. The buildings 'communicate' with one another if you know what that means.#winks
UP keep their old buildings and erect a completely new one and then link the old with the new using a bridge/tower to pass information to the community.
The university also have some weird and abstract works of art that you can only understand with the help of a guide. I saw an art of the 'moon dance', I also saw, around the Graduate Student Centre, a walk way with trees that blooms during summer and brings out purple flowers like a fairy tale. The believe is that if one of these purple flowers drops on a students' head, it means that students will pass all exams for that semester...like seriously? Am gonna put a mat right under the trees and make sure am covered with so much flowers that will last me a lifetime...#lol

Hello All!
Hope y'all doing fine? Am doing quite well here, busy with library visits and campus tour. So much things to see, so much to learn...and am gonna share every bit with you. Pls stay with me on my amazing cpdexperience2016.

We visited three places which are- the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), University of South Africa(Unisa), and University of Pretoria (UP) Library and Campus Tour.

For the National Library of South Africa:
We were shown all the Units at the library like the automated circulation desk, the amazing 1,500 capacity Auditorium which also serves as a source of generating funds for the library, the readers room, reference room, reserve section, the digitization unit and the deacidification unit. The de-acidification unit has a big machine that made me think I was in a big engineering room. The engine is used for de-acidifying books as they start showing traces of discoloration and/or brittleness. They showed us the Magnesium substance used and how the machine helps in drying the books and preserving the longevity of the book...it was really amazing! The high-capacity scanner is one of a kind. It is the first time am seeing such a gigantic, high quality and precise scanner in a library.
The library also serve as a legal depository agency for all publications emanating from South Africa, same as we have it at the National Library of Nigeria. Another amazing thing with the NLSA library is the way users are trooping in and out of the library trying to get their information needs solved. I started wondering whether am actually in another academic library!

My experience at the University of South Africa....coming soon. Got a class now...Later!

Orientation Day at University of Pretoria, South Africa

My CPD Experience - Training Day 2

Hello All!
Okay, it is the second day of the Carnegie CPD Training in South Africa. We were taught Publishing Tools using the Microsoft Word package. Yeah, MS Word you all know. But, in another way. Now we used the STYLE options to design OUR OWN template. We defined styles for 'Doc Title', 'DocSubtitle', 'PartHeading', 'Heading1', ' FirstParagraph', and 'SubParagraph' in that order. Its glad to know that you can format your styles to suit your style of writing.

After learning this, my lecture notes, journal publications, conference paper is gonna be a lot more tidier. Thanks to my Carnegie experience.

We will be going on site seeing of the National Library of South Africa (NSLA) in 30 minutes. Am gonna upload so much pictures soon...watchout y'all #winks

My CPD Experience 2016

Hi All.
This is a brand new me on my very first blog post. Never knew life could be so easy and fun with amazing tools at my disposal. First its Wiki, then Blog, Facebook and Twitter. The CPD program is a well timed life-saver package for me and us. It is happening live at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Beautiful campus, lovely people, cool weather, nice food.
We are the 7th Intake and a total of 33 participants across Africa. There is gonna be a lot to learn from these well-seasoned lecturers and resource persons across the World. We are gonna learn ICT skills for research enablement towards advancing information provision services to our clients.

Okay, am gonna keep you posted of latest happenings while am in South Africa. Watch out y'all!

Ooh, I missed the bonus cookies from Joan. Got late to the coffee room, I was carried away with exploring Wikispaces. Lets hope I don't miss lunch too.