Students’ library services improved by three universities working together – Library and IT news.

Canterbury Christ Church University, the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent are to share a Unified Library Management System (ULMS). The ULMS will:

Inspired by fresh Kent sourced ingredients, the new menu at Gulbenkian launched on Monday 9 January and is packed full of delicious seasonal produce and locally sourced meat.

Breakfast now includes Eggs Benedict and among new main courses are Brogdale Farm lamb burger served in a Kentish Huffkin roll and a goats cheese, kale and red onion pizza.

New vegan dishes include avocado and plum tomatoes on toast and a butternut squash gratin, and gluten free pizza bases and pasta are also available.

View the new menu online on the Gulbenkian website. To reserve a table, phone 01227 769075

These new webpages provide information about a range of tools that provide metrics on the impact of:

• you as an individual;
• your works, or the works you consider using to support our own research.

They also include introductions to some tools we are trialling to help you find, understand and increase your impact:

SciVal uses data from Scopus and Science Direct to give access to the performance of research institutions and individual researchers worldwide. It also enables you to visualise performance, benchmark, develop partnerships and analyse trends.

Altmetric collects mentions of scholarly articles from across the Web by gathering attention from newspapers, blogs, social media, and more and presents it as a score.

Kudos allows you to annotate your paper for multiple audiences and use inbuilt tools to promote your work using social media. Integrates some data from Altmetric and other altmetrics sources.

We hope these pages help you to understand more about how to measure and amplify the impact of your research. If you want any help or advice, or have any feedback about the pages or tools, please email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk.

We’re continuing to improve the Kent website with a new mobile-friendly look and new features. Here’s what will change in the coming months.

Background
We’re undertaking a project to improve the Kent website as part of a focus on the online digital experience for our prospective and current students, staff and partners.

For many people, our website is the first connection they have with the University and it needs to reflect the high quality of our research, education and engagement goals.

We’ve already made significant developments, and there’s more planned for 2017. Improvements coming up include:

Changing Quick Links to an Audience Bar – January 2017
We will remove the ‘Quick Links’ drop-down menu from Kent web pages, and replace it with the option to choose information for students, staff, alumni, or a particular department. You’ll see the most popular systems and services and an ‘autocomplete’ search box.

Over the years, the Quick Links list has become long and unwieldy. It’s no longer so important now that the website’s search has improved considerably.

New look webpages – February 2017
We’re aiming to make some of our most heavily visited pages live in the new look by the end of February 2017.

These will include 12 top-level pages under the Research, Study and Engagement sections, plus the undergraduate and postgraduate courses section.

We chose these based on a workshop with stakeholders across the University (including Recruitment and Marketing, Research, Corporate Communications, the Development Office, and International Development), plus website user analytics and research we’d already carried out over the past couple of years.

The University home page and News Centre pages are already live (in beta) in the new look. We have received lots of useful feedback on them.

Image Guidelines  – March 2017
If you’re a web editor, we know you’d like help with sourcing images and making best use of video and rich media on your web pages. We will produce some guidelines for you by March.

Web Symposium – April 2017
Attend our Web Symposium in April and we’ll update you on plans to expand the theme to school and department web pages.

We will show you a pilot school website in the new theme and you’ll find out how to upgrade your school or department web pages and edit them easily with a new simple editing tool that will replace Dreamweaver. Look out for more information on this in the New Year.

Read more:
Blog post: Building blocks of the new Kent web theme
Try the new Kent website in beta

The portable appliance testing for the Keynes building is scheduled to take place from Wednesday 4 January  until approximately Friday 10 February 2017.

Please ensure all equipment is available for testing.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and we will endeavour to keep any disruption to a minimum. If there are any queries, please call the Estates Helpdesk on ext 3209.

Tim Dickson
Deputy Maintenance Manager, Estates

Colleagues from across Kent Hospitality wowed us with their Christmas Jumper enthusiasm in December to raise money for Save the Children.

Well done to everyone that took part and helped us to raise £114.88. We even made it on to the Kent Online coverage for the day.

December’s Pride Award has been won by Mark Finch, Food and Beverage Manager, Rutherford.

He was nominated after administering life-saving first aid in November. Here is an extract of the nomination we received:

‘One of our guests collapsed at the top of the stairs and Mark as the designated first aider reacted quickly and calmly. Working with Mark during this situation it was clear to see Mark used his training to good effect. He remained calm throughout and kept the guest calm and reassured others who were concerned. When the paramedics arrived Mark was able to quickly brief them on the situation enabling them to treat the guest accordingly.

‘Mark’s calmness, professionalism and helpful attitude made a stressful situation less stressful and contributed to the other guests remaining calm.’

Nominations are now open for the next Pride Award. All Kent Hospitality outlets in both Canterbury and Medway, as well as reception areas have a Pride nomination box. Complete a paper form or download a copy from our website and email it to Rooie Thomas.

The next nomination deadline is Wednesday 29 March at 13.00.

From 16 January to 24 February 2017, the road from the ground floor west entrance to Rutherford College including the disabled parking bay, round to the entrance of the road leading to Tyler Court B and C, will not be accessible to enable urgent remedial works to take place. The area will be closed off and access will be limited during these dates.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and if there are any queries please contact the Estates Helpdesk on extn3209.

Charlotte Ifill, Estates

Housekeeping staff from Turing College have been working on the latest Respect campaign posters.

In December, they were focusing on the environment, both the negative and positive of the University campus and what action can be taken to improve the environment.

From looking at things that are potentially harmful to animals and humans to learning more about the solar power panels at Turing, the team really got the opportunity to explore the environment they work in.