January 2023 Newsletter
An example of transcription of text converted from a manuscript image through to xml code - see Dr Catherine Smith's case study
Welcome to the BEAR Newsletter, bringing you the latest news from the BEAR team (Birmingham Environment for Academic Research), as well as other relevant computing and data-related news from both within the University of Birmingham and outside.
Happy New Year! We are kicking off 2023 with a new interview series called “Bear on Tour”, where our popular Bear mascot meeting will be meeting with service users to find out more about their research and how they make use of BEAR. This is already proving to be a great opportunity to meet more researchers in-person, in their own environment. Our first interviewees are Professor Dagmar Divjak and Professor Petar Milin from CAL – find out about their work in our blog post!
This month we have some new training dates and some exciting events happening:
- RDM drop-in sessions
- RSE Midlands Coding Club event
- 'Feel the Code' Staff Workshop
- Case Study
- Training workshops
- In-Person and Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions
RDM Drop-in Sessions
Every week, Scholarly Communication Services from the Library are now offering drop-in sessions for researchers who have queries or want to learn more about Research Data Management. Queries which can be covered include data management planning, data repositories, file organisation and many more. Sessions will take place every Friday in the Main Library, 1st Floor, Researchers’ Suite between 13.00-14.00. The next sessions are on 20th and 27th January; future dates can be found on the library website or contact researchdata@contacts.bham.ac.uk for further information.
RSE Midlands Coding Club
The next RSE Midlands Coding Club event will be held on Wednesday 18th January, 14:00-15:00. James Tripp from the University of Warwick will be presenting an ‘Introduction to Docker’. In-person attendance is in room 109 Teaching & Learning building, but you can also attend online via Zoom. Keep updated via the rse-midlands website or on Twitter @RSE_Midlands.
'Feel the Code' Staff Workshop
Academic and professional services staff involved in teaching students to code in any language (e.g., R, Python) and any discipline are invited to the ‘Feel the Code’ workshop where they will explore approaches that help students to learn to code, focusing on the emotional dimension of learning. To register contact project leads Lindsey Compton and Archana Sharma-Oates. The session takes place on 19th January, 10.00am - 1.00pm.
Case Study
In this month’s featured case study, Dr Catherine Smith from the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) explains how she has been making use of BEAR’s code management platform, BEAR GitLab, to enable her to support researchers using online editing tools to transcribe texts.
Training Workshops
We still have spaces available on upcoming training courses, including Python, Git, Linux, R, MATLAB and NVIDIA. For more information and to sign up, see our training website.
In-Person and Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions
We are currently holding both in-person and virtual drop-in sessions. In-person drop-ins are being held at least once a month in a variety of campus locations, with additional virtual drop-in sessions via Zoom for those not on campus or who require specialist help, so that we can find a relevant member of the team.
Further details, including how to join the virtual sessions are available on our drop-in webpage. Upcoming dates are also listed below:
- In-person – Tuesday 17th January 12:30 – 13:30 Watson Lecture Theatre C (G24)
- Via Zoom – Tuesday 24th January, 11:00 - 12:00
- In-person – Wednesday 8th February, 12:30 – 13:30 1C32 Metallurgy & Materials building
- Via Zoom – Friday 10th February, 11:00 - 12:00
Missed last month's newsletter?
Find December's newsletter here. Sign up to receive the newsletter direct to your inbox by joining our bear-updates mailing list here (UoB login required).