Are you a student looking for an easy way to stay informed and connected with the world? Look no further! Introducing PressReader, your gateway to a universe of magazines and newspapers, both international and local, right at your fingertips.
Why PressReader is a must-have for students:
Access to thousands of publications from around the globe.
Stay up to date with the latest news, trends, and insights.
Perfect for research, class projects, or simply expanding your horizons.
User-friendly interface for a seamless reading experience.
With PressReader, you’ll never miss a headline, no matter where you are.
Ready to dive into the world of knowledge? Download PressReader today and embark on a journey of endless learning!
Download on the App Store or Google Play!
PressReader is also accessible through our NWU Online Library.
The following products and services are available @ your NWU Library and Information Service (LIS):
Product
Writefull – it proofreads your text in seconds. It is made for students and researchers. It offers AI-based language feedback and big data insights to help authors and copy editors improve their texts. Writefull’s AI helps researchers and students to write, paraphrase, copyedit, and more. Writefull spots mistakes others do not.
What is the difference between Grammarly and Writefull? Grammarly focuses on fixing general English, such as emails. Writefull’s focus is research writing. As Writefull’s language models have been trained on published papers, they give feedback tailored to academic writing, and are familiar with technical, discipline-specific terms.
Press Reader– it provides access to more than 7,000 of the world’s top newspapers and magazines. This includes SA sources such as Sunday Times, The Citizen, Good Housekeeping, Destiny, finweek, Huisgenoot, Sowetan, Elle, Mail & Guardian, Cosmopolitan, etc.
Endnote – it is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays, reports and articles. It is very helpful to students (especially postgraduate) and researchers. Organizing your references and building bibliographies for dissertations, theses, and research papers.
Library Database training – WorldCat Discovery: Using the NWU Library Catalogue to access information sources (Print books, eBooks, Past exam papers, Institutional Repository, journal articles from databases) etc.
NWU Libraries’ support for Open Access publishing through Transformative Agreements – The term “transformative agreement” refers to agreements negotiated between institutions and publishers, where former subscription expenses are redirected to support open-access publishing of the institutions’ authors. This shifts the business model of scholarly journal publishing from toll / subscription access to one with fair remuneration for open access services. In South Africa, SANLiC, a consortium for academic libraries, secured transformative agreements with eight international publishers on behalf of South African university libraries and began implementing them in 2021. NWU Library and Information Services also signed its first transformative agreement in 2022, facilitated by SANLiC, ensuring that accepted articles by NWU authors submitted to the publishers’ hybrid open-access journals would be published free of charge. For more info: https://libguides.nwu.ac.za/transformative-agreements.
NWU Libraries’ support for Research Data Management The North-West University Libraries offers comprehensive support for Research Data Management (RDM) to facilitate effective data organization, preservation, and sharing among researchers. Through tailored workshops, expert consultations with librarians, and access to relevant resources and tools, the library empowers researchers to adhere to best practices in data management, ensuring data integrity, compliance with ethical standards, and long-term accessibility. Additionally, the library collaborates with researchers in implementing Data Management Plans (DMPs) and assists in depositing datasets in NWU data repository called Dayta Ya Rona to promote the discoverability and reuse of valuable research outputs, contributing to the advancement of scholarly knowledge and enhancing the university’s research impact. For more information: https://libguides.nwu.ac.za/research-data-management.
What is ORCID®? ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identification) is an open, not-for-profit organisation aiming to supply a persistent and unique identifier – an ORCID iD – to any individual involved in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.
How to create your ORCID Step 1: Register for an ORCID – Follow this link to visit the NWU Manuscript system to create a new ORCID iD. This system can also be used to link an existing ORCID iD. If you are unsure whether you already have an ORCID iD, search the ORCID registry on their website for your name. – Use your CAS username and password to register/log in. This is the same username and password you use to log into eFundi and computers on campus. – Click here for a step-by-step guide through the registration and linking process. For more information click: https://library.nwu.ac.za/orcid
On a Spring Tuesday, 11 April the Library and Information Service celebrated the launch of the new integrated library management system. Distinguished guests danced and sang along in exuberant humour as Neo and Tebogo opened the stage with a soothing classical sound. Indeed, it was a formal launch of the new library system OCLC WorldShare Management Services (WMS) by the North-West University (NWU) Library and Information Service (LIS). Distinguished guests packed the Vanderbijlpark campus (VC) library to celebrate with LIS one of the most significant milestones of the department and the NWU at large.
In his introductory remarks, the LIS Chief Director, Dr M. Moyo congratulated the team on their stellar work to ensure the successful implementation of the WMS system. In a celebratory mood, VC Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. L. du Plessis welcomed the distinguished guests and esteemed partners in the launch of this modern 4th generation system. She also congratulated LIS for adopting the new system, which further entrenched LIS as one of the best in the country.
Strategic stakeholders across the NWU institution joined in to celebrate this significant milestone with LIS. Information Technology (IT) Chief Directory Mr. B. Pretorius providing a message of support, said that “the launch of the WMS comes with great excitement as it forms part of the North-West university’s digital transformation agenda and in-line with the Digital Business Strategy (DBS) to direct digital transformation at the university and position the university for the future educational landscape”. He further congratulated the whole team involved in the implementation, “You have done a wonderful job in positioning this university as one of the leading one’s in terms of Digital Transformation.” Students Representative Council (SRC) president Mr T. Andreas and Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) function Directory Dr G. du Plessis also joined hands to salute LIS for achieving such a milestone in the modern epoch. In unison, the strategic stakeholders concurred that the modern integrated library management system is the game changer in the learning, teaching and research environment. Its adoption ensures enhanced, efficient and effective services to the community of NWU.
LIS strategic partner, Sabinet, which distributes and supports WMS in South Africa, graced the launch and provided a message of support. Ms. R. Hattingh, the Managing Director speaking on behalf of Sabinet, commended LIS for the outstanding achievement. She thanked LIS and her team for their excellent work, dedication and hard work during the implementation process. One can agree that this is the beginning of great things, as this new venture solidifies the strategic relationship between NWU LIS and Sabinet.
Keynote speaker Prof. B. Surujlal, the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, delivered a keynote speech on the role of technology in teaching, learning and research. He highlighted how technology had transformed university operations by providing cost-effective solutions that require minimal space. The proactive use of technology foster cooperation, collaboration, and innovation. However, he also acknowledged the potential challenges of dishonesty arising from the use of technology. As he concluded his keynote address, he applauded the LIS for achieving such a landmark milestone, as these cloud-based WMS systems ensure services which allow students who live far from campuses to access educational resources remotely.
Speaking on behalf of the project team, the LIS Shared Services Director, Neli Tshabalala expressed enthusiasm about the successful implementation of WMS and its positive impact on the library and its users. She stated that reaching this milestone came with numerous challenges along the way, such as integrating the different needs of LIS key stakeholders, agreeing on standard processes, cleaning up incredible amounts of historical data, resolving technical glitches and being constantly available for this intense and vital project when there were other competing work demands. She continued by stating that the cooperation of LIS staff made the process smoother. Thanking the project team and all the stakeholders, she highlighted the foundation that contributed to the project’s success. Thus, we can be proud of what we have achieved together. She stressed that the cloud-based nature of the system allows patrons to access the library’s collection from anywhere with an internet connection. She stated that this accessibility empowers users to engage with resources remotely and supports the hybrid work culture by enabling staff to perform tasks effectively outside the office. Once again, as she concluded, she expressed words of gratitude to LIS staff and management, the Information Technology department, students and NWU at large for ensuring the success of this adoption.
Using the words of Sukant Ratnakar, our collective future success is directly proportional to our ability to understand, adopt and integrate new technology into our work. We hope the LIS stakeholders, library patrons and the rest of the NWU community will exploit the rewards that come with World Management Services.
NWU LIS – Our services, your future…………….
Written by Lizwi Njani Reviewed by Neli Tshabalala
PressReader provides access to over 7,000 of the world’s top newspapers and magazines. This includes SA sources such as Sunday Times, The Citizen, Good Housekeeping, Destiny, finweek, Huisgenoot, Sowetan, Elle, Mail & Guardian, Cosmopolitan, etc.
You can access PressReader via your computer or mobile app.
How to log on:
Always use the PressReader link on the Library web page. It has a built-in proxy address that will recognise you as a registered student/staff member.
First-time users must authenticate via their computer before they use the mobile app. After that, you can read newspapers and magazines via the PressReader App on your phone if that is your preference.
PressReader offers offsite access to the platform. That means you can use PressReader after leaving the University premises for seven days via the App. After seven days, you need to re-authenticate via your computer from the library page (authentication via your computer from the Library web page will also work off-campus). If you read PressReader via your computer, using the PressReader link on the Library web page is unnecessary to re-authenticate.
The Library and Information Service (LIS) is elated to announce that on 6 December 2022, the library officially moved to WorldShare Management System (WMS), which is a cloud-based system. It is the watershed moment for the department as the North-West university community moves away from a legacy system to a modern fourth-generation library management system.
This marks a momentous occasion as all sections across the university’s three campuses in the LIS department will use a centralised seamless end-to-end workflow system, providing vastly improved usability for staff and students. This means more reliability for library operations and enhanced security for NWU and library data. The system is well integrated to eliminate redundancy and duplication of efforts and data. Its robust and reliable cloud-based platform will enable staff to quickly adopt the new ways of working as NWU recently adopted a hybrid mode of working with staff, sometimes working from home.
Reaching this milestone came with numerous challenges along the way, such as integrating the different needs of LIS key stakeholders, agreeing on standard processes, cleaning up incredible amounts of historical data, resolving technical glitches, and being constantly available for this intense and vital project when there were other competing work demands. The cooperation of LIS staff made the process smoother. Thus we can be proud of what we have achieved together.
Staff pictures from all three campuses are shared, celebrating this historic milestone. LIS management and stakeholders are ecstatic about this new system, as this signifies the achievements of the NWU strategy goals, amongst others, realising in action a digital future where the technology ecosystem integrates students, staff, partners, and data to deliver an exceptional customer experience. We hope the key stakeholders, library patrons, will enjoy the experience.
Students from all the campuses also joined in this exhilarating moment. The LIS hopes and believes these library patrons will gracefully harness the benefits of this new system.
This week we are launching an awareness campaign for the NWU Figshare repository, DaYta Ya Rona.
Figshare is a web-based interface designed for academic research data management and research data dissemination. Figshare was originally created as a solution to keep research outputs in one tidy place whilst allowing it to be discovered by like-minded individuals: the academic community. It quickly became apparent that others sought such a resource and Figshare opened its doors. Figshare enables academics to upload, share, cite and importantly discover all manner of research outputs with the security of knowing our hosting options and platform support long term preservation of data. Researchers keep control of what and how they share their research data.
Easy steps to upload research on Figshare:
Log in / register
Create a new item OR drag and drop files from your browser
Insert the title
Add authors
Select a category
Select item
Add keywords (as many as needed)
Write a description, be descriptive as you can
Funding can be added
Select a licence
Tick Publish once all the information has been added
A competition was launched in October 2019 to brand and name the Figshare Research Data Repository.
Congratulations to Mr Marvin Qhekwana, a Masters student in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, who won the competition with his entry Dayta Ya Rona
The name means “Our Data”, but Marvin explained the additional meaning of his entry as follows: The “day” signifies light and this can be related to openness and transparency. These two concepts are linked with academic integrity. There is generally a diversity in the way that people pronounce the word “data”. Different ethnic groups from different areas say it differently, hence the “day-ta”/ “da-ta'” pronunciation struggle exists among many people and this is a true reflection in the NWU context.
This collaborative effort between the NWU Library and Information Service, IT services and the Research Office started in 2018 as part of the eResearch initiative to test Figshare as platform to preserve and share NWU research data. The platform has now been named and branded and is available to all NWU researchers.
Datasets uploaded to Dayta Ya Rona is given a persistent DOI and can be made available to anyone or have restricted access and will increase the visibility of the researcher. The researcher has control over what can be shared when the data is uploaded. Visit https://dayta.nwu.ac.za to upload your research data.
Three LIS staff members: Ishe Muzvondiwa, Glenda Makate and Danny Moloto who attended the LIASA Conference, also had the opportunity to be part of the first Scopus Academy, presented at the University of Cape Town on 8 October. The Academy aims to elevate the skills of librarians and research support professionals who support research grant and rating applications, research information management and journal evaluation.
The SA Scopus Academy was the first of its kind in South Africa and Africa as a whole. Mrs Joyce Olivier (Director of Research NRF) remarked that it was a historic and ground-breaking event on African soil. She stressed the need to involve and incorporate the Research Offices of different academic institutions in the next Scopus Academy. The majority of the attendees were librarians. She described the peer review process, the concept of benchmarking, NRF rating as well as the NRF’s publication practices.
Attention was given to Scopus author profiles – document counts, citation analysis, h-index and author profile corrections. As the NRF requires an ORCID iD when submitting funded research outputs, librarians were encouraged to assist researchers to register for ORCID and integrate the researcher’s ORCID with their Scopus Author ID. With just a few steps, all their publications will be added to their ORCID profile.
Kabelo Kakole, Librarian: Institutional Repository attended a DATAD-R Workshop for IR Managers in Pretoria on 11 – 14 September. The training was provided by Association of African Universities (AAU) in collaboration with Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF).
This training focused on the IR Management from IT side (Technical) and IR Content Management (User interface).
Mr Kakole focused on the IR Content management where the following subjects where covered
Introduction to DSpace a IR management software
Creating IR communities, collections and user groups; assigning workflow roles
Content preparation and upload and item mapping
Content editing, harvesting, embargoes and copyright and licensing.
Ms Ina Smith from ASSAF gave a presentation on how to make your IR a trusted Repository. In her presentation she mentioned that the IR managers should consider having the IR Policies uploaded in the IR home page, there should be a list of contactable persons for both content management and IT/Technical management of the IR. She further advised that we should try by all means to limit our DSpace customization at a minimum according to international standards to allow harvesters to recognize all fields in the meta-data. Visibility of the IR is the most important factor and plays a vital role in the IR rankings. It was discussed that to maximize IR visibility; it should registered in as many directories as possible e.g. OpenDOAR, ROAR etc. The NWU IR is already registered in few international directories and there is hope that our IR will be visible enough.
Dr Leti Kleyn from University of Pretoria gave presentation on how to better market you IR. In her presentation she also put the emphasis on registering the OA IR with directories and harvesters, Market your IR traditional by hosting events and online via social media and other platforms. The IR Rankings issue was brought up and it came out that DSpace 5.5 has hick-ups with the harvesting command line and that impacts on the visibility of the IR. The time to upgrade your IR should also be taken into consideration as to when do you run the IR upgrade. It was mentioned that you should always run the IR upgrade immediately after the release of IR rankings because after the upgrade a lot might have changed in your IR; so there will be enough time for the IR to pick up until the next ranking results are released. Dr Kleyn as touched on the UP IR road map where she presented their IR workflow and parties involved in the IR tasks.
The NWU IR is currently going great in terms of rich metadata, interoperability, compatible and harvestable by other Open Access initiatives.
PressReader
A competition was launched in October 2019 to brand and name the Figshare Research Data Repository.
Attention was given to Scopus author profiles – document counts, citation analysis, h-index and author profile corrections. As the NRF requires an ORCID iD when submitting funded research outputs, librarians were encouraged to assist researchers to 
NWU: Library and Information Service News 