Sandrine Gropp: “Multimedia resources available to everyone”
This year, the joint documentation service is once again offering new resources accessible to students, Professors staff. Whether you're looking for professional documentation, training and teaching aids, or simply leisure activities, the university libraries open the doors to a physical and digital world that is richer than you could ever imagine. Details with Sandrine Gropp, director of the SCD.
Some people at the university are still unaware of this, but every year the shared documentation service offers new resources. Who are they intended for?
The fundamental mission of shared documentation services is to contribute to training and research activities, in particular by providing the necessary resources for students, but also for Professors, researchers, and staff—and I mean all staff. Historically, these resources were mainly paper-based, such as books and journals, but today they are primarily digital, and in recent years we have been offering more and more multimedia resources.
Among the new additions for this fall, 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 learning. 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 such as chemistry, biology, statistics, etc. It offers content to deepen your knowledge at the bachelor's degree level, as well as video tutorials on how to organize practical work, take samples in the field, or use specific types of equipment. All videos are made by professionals.
How Professors teachers and Professors use these resources to enrich their courses? Do they use Moodle?
Yes, they can integrate them in whole or in part into the Moodle course or distribute them during their face-to-face classes. In terms of rights, the subscription taken out by the University of Montpellier gives unlimited access and consultation rights to these resources, on or off campus, via the digital workspace.
And in practice, how do you access these platforms?
There is one entry point that should be prioritized, whether you are a student, teacher, researcher, or staff member: the ENT via the libraries tile. It works just as well on campus as it does off campus.
There is, of course, always a wide range of news items available?
Europresse allows you to read daily or weekly headlines, 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 covers foreign press more extensively, although it also includes French titles, particularly in the field of economics.
A new offer has appeared in the news, Brief.me. Can you tell us about it?
Yes, for the past few weeks, at the request of students and some staff members who say they don't have much time to keep up with the news, we have been offering a service called Brief.me, which is supplemented by Brief.eco. It is an independent daily newspaper that analyzes and summarizes the day's news. It takes less than 10 minutes to read, and you can subscribe to the newsletter to receive a summary of the news. Brief.me is responsive, so it can be accessed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
There are also professional databases such as Cobaz. What is it?
Cobaz is one of the so-called professional databases in the sense that it is not designed to explore a subject, but rather to search for 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 (University Institutes of Technology) in 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 department, for building standards. 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 department, for standards relating to buildings, and the scientific culture and historical heritage department, which can find all the standards on archive management, conditions for preserving old collections in buildings, etc. We also provide IT databases, notably Eni on application development, server management, data management, etc.
There is 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 for monographs, i.e., books. This market includes not only textbooks but also the purchase of individual titles. As far as textbooks are concerned, it was initially requested by the Faculty of Education for the training of future school teachers and future educators, but it can also be used by all University staff who have children in primary or secondary school to help them revise. Parents can access both the student's book and the teacher's book.
Another resource that is not well known at the university is the preparation of language certifications such as the TOEFL or TOEIC...
Yes, indeed, we provide multimedia resources for everyone to practice for these certifications, to review grammar rules, but also pronunciation, by listening to texts. You can practice for the TOEIC or TOEFL, see your level, and identify areas that need improvement.
We haven't mentioned professional development or exam preparation for agents either. How can the SCD help them?
We offer books (paper and digital) to help prepare for competitive exams, which can be found in the university library catalog. For professional monitoring, it will depend on the professional field of the staff concerned. Depending on the departments and their areas of activity, the databases will not necessarily be the same. For example, we have databases and resources in law: Dalloz, LexisNexis, we have already mentioned Cobaz for standards, there are other resources in scientific fields... Often with the possibility of creating alerts on keywords or topics. Don't hesitate to ask the librarians for help, including online, via the ENT, Ubib tile. For doctoral students and Professors have also adopted The Meta News. This format is clearly very popular with young researchers for monitoring developments.
Since you mention 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 deploying and promoting open science to ensure that research work is freely available and accessible to all. There is an economic challenge. There is also a societal challenge. The SCD, in collaboration with numerous departments and more specifically with the Research and Doctoral Studies Department, is working on two fronts with regard to access to documentary resources. The first is to deploy and maintain open access databases such as the UM's Hal portal for scientific publications. The second is to work with publishers to make more paid and private resources available through appropriate economic models. Contrary to popular belief, open science is not free.
We cannot conclude without mentioning that SCD also offers students and staff a range of leisure activities. What does this offer consist of?
We often forget that university libraries are also public libraries. So we will never be media libraries with all the resources they have, but our university libraries do have leisure collections that are open to everyone, especially staff (and even their children). We offer novels in French and English, comic books, movie DVDs, TV series, etc. We also lend out DVD players. We can also purchase certain items on request... It's still a little early, but we can already announce the third edition of Instant Noël! Themed surprise bags are available at the university libraries, containing a book, a DVD, and a comic book to borrow. And just like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, discover the golden ticket that entitles you to a gift!