Call for participation: Openness course for African academic librarians
5 JUNE 2024
Knowledge behind paywalls limits access to research that could birth innovative solutions to development challenges and this affects researchers, students and scholars adversely, especially those in the Global South. Thus, the shift towards making research processes and outputs more accessible and reusable for greater transparency, more collaborations, credibility, reproducibility and the birthing of innovative discoveries that are necessary for sustainable development is a welcome development for African librarians.
What are the principles that underlie and enable this shift?
What are the various strands of these principles?
This course in Openness, which is borne out of collaboration between OER Africa of Saide (South African Institute for Distance Education) and AfLIA, is specifically targeted at African academic and research librarians who want to have a deeper understanding of Openness in research and scholarship.
The course will introduce participants to the general concept of Openness and lead them to gain knowledge and acquire skills as pertains to;
- What is openness and the open education spectrum
- Types of open licensing and their purposes
- How to support open initiatives and practices e.g., find, evaluate and adapt open content
- Open data and open science
- How to become an active advocates of openness in their respective institutions and academic communities
The virtual course will run from 18th July – 15th August, 2024 with a 90mins live session once a week, and online interactions on AfLIA’s learning platform with academic and research librarians across Africa.
No payment is required for this course.
Nevertheless, two types of certificate would be issued; a Certificate of Excellence will be awarded to those who perform excellently in the course while a Certificate of Participation will be given to others.
However, AfLIA would be under no obligation to give certificates to participants who do not score above the minimal cut-off point.
Registration
Click button below to register and join others from libraries across Africa to gain in-depth knowledge and skills on Openness.