Sandrine Gropp: “Multimedia resources available to everyone”
Once again this year, the Joint Documentation Service is offering new resources available to students, faculty, Professors . Whether you’re looking for professional resources, support for training and teaching, or simply something for leisure, the university libraries open the doors to a physical and digital world that is even richer than you could have imagined. Sandrine Gropp, director of the SCD, shares more details.
Some people at the university may not be aware of this yet, but every year the Central Library offers new resources. Who are they intended for?
The core mission of the shared library services is to support teaching and research by providing the necessary resources not only for students, but also for Professors, researchers, and staff—and I mean all staff. Historically, these were primarily print resources—books, journals, and so on—but today we are talking mainly about digital resources, and in recent years we have been offering an increasing number of multimedia resources.
Among the new additions this school year, the catalog features Arte Campus and Jove Education. Can you tell us more about these platforms?
ArteCampusis a documentary portal offered by the Arte channel and specifically dedicated to higher education and adult education. Environment, medicine, arts, sciences… This platform offers more than 2,300 videos and multimedia resources covering just about every discipline. Jove Education focusesmore on scientific disciplines: chemistry, biology, statistics, etc. It offers content to deepen your knowledge starting at the undergraduate level, as well as video tutorials on how to organize lab sessions, collect samples in the field, or use specific types of equipment. And these videos are produced by professionals.
How Professors faculty members and Professors make use of these resources to enhance their courses? Do they use Moodle?
Yes, they can incorporate them in whole or in part into the Moodle course or use them during their in-person classes. In terms of access rights, the subscription held by the University of Montpellier provides unlimited access to and use of these resources, both on and off campus, via the digital learning platform.
In practice, how do you access these platforms?
Whether you’re a student, faculty member, researcher, or staff member, the best way to access the system is through the “Libraries” tab on the digital workspace. It works just as well on campus as it does off campus.
There’s always plenty of news coverage, of course, isn’t there?
Europresse lets you read major daily and weekly newspapers, some of which are available in PDF format. To access articles directly from Google, you can now install a browser extension called Ophirofox, which will display a "Read on Europresse" button on the article. There is also Factiva, which focuses more on the foreign press, although it also includes French publications, particularly in the business sector.
A new service has appeared in the news, Brief.me. Can you tell us about it?
Yes, for the past few weeks, at the request of students—as well as some staff members who say they don’t have much time to stay informed—we’ve been offering a service called Brief.me, which is complemented by Brief.eco. It is an independent daily general-interest newspaper that analyzes and summarizes the day’s news. It takes less than 10 minutes to read; you can subscribe to the newsletter and receive a summary of the news. Brief.me is responsive, so it is accessible on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
There are also professional platforms such as Cobaz. What is it?
Cobaz is classified as a "professional" database in the sense that it is not designed for general research; rather, it is intended to retrieve specific information. In this case, all standards—including AFNOR standards—are accessible. We initially subscribed to this resource at the request of the three IUTs—Montpellier-Sète, Béziers, and Nîmes, which really need it for their teaching, but we have noticed that it is also used by central departments, such as the Real Estate Heritage Department for building-related standards, or the Department of Scientific Culture and Historical Heritage, which can find all the standards on archive management, conditions for preserving historical collections in buildings, and so on. We also provide access to computer science databases, notably Eni on application development, server management, and data management, among others.
There's also Biblio on Demand, which provides access to all textbooks from elementary school through high school. Who uses this database?
Biblio on Demand has been available since last year as part of the monograph market—that is, for books. This market covers not only textbooks but also the purchase of individual titles. As for textbooks, the initiative originally stemmed from a request by the Faculty of Education to support the training of future elementary and secondary school teachers, but it can also be used by all university staff members who have children in elementary or secondary school to help them study. Parents can access both the student’s textbook and the teacher’s guide.
Another resource that isn't well known at the university is preparation for language certifications such as the TOEFL or TOIC…
Yes, indeed, we provide multimedia resources for everyone to practice for these certifications, review grammar rules, and work on pronunciation by listening to audio recordings. You can practice for the TOIC or TOEFL, assess your current level, and identify areas that need improvement.
We also haven’t discussed career development or exam preparation for staff members. How can the SCD assist them?
We offer resources (print and digital) to help prepare for competitive exams, which can be found through the university library catalog. As for professional development, this will depend on the specific professional field of the staff members in question. Depending on the department and its scope of activities, the databases used may vary. For example, we have databases and resources in law: Dalloz, LexisNexis; we’ve already mentioned Cobaz for standards; there are other resources in scientific fields… Often with the option to set up alerts for keywords or subject areas. Don’t hesitate to reach out to the librarians, including online via the digital campus platform (ENT), under the Ubib tab. For doctoral students and Professors also added The Meta News. This format is clearly very popular among young researchers for monitoring developments.
Since you’ve brought up science, perhaps we could say a few words about the open science policy at the University of Montpellier?
Yes, the University of Montpellier is committed to a policy of implementing and promoting open science to ensure that research is freely available to everyone. There is an economic stake involved. There is also a societal stake. The SCD, in collaboration with numerous departments and more specifically with the Department of Research and Doctoral Studies, is working on two fronts regarding access to documentary resources. The first involves deploying and populating open-access databases such as the UM’s Hal portal for scientific publications. The second aspect, which involves publishers, aims to make paid and private resources more widely available through adapted business models. Because contrary to what is sometimes believed, open science is not free.
We can’t wrap up without mentioning that the SCD also offers students and staff a range of recreational activities. What does this program entail?
People often forget that university libraries are also public libraries. So while we’ll never be media centers with the extensive collections they might have, our university libraries do have recreational collections aimed at everyone—especially staff members (and even their children). We offer novels in French and English, comic books, DVDs of movies and TV series, and more. We also lend out DVD players. We can also purchase certain titles upon request… It’s still a bit early, but we can already announce the third edition of Instant Noël! Themed surprise bags available at the university libraries, each containing a book, a DVD, and a comic book to borrow. And just like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, look for the golden ticket that entitles you to a gift!