Hi everybody, thank you so much for coming.
Uh It's my honor to introduce this morning Ms. Veliswa
Tshetsha. She's the research and scholarly communications
librarian at the Cape Peninsula Peninsula University of Technology
, the C. P. U. T.
Um in Cape Town. South Africa, actually in
the Western Cape because it's got a lot of branches
. This is our second librarian scholar from in our
strategic collaboration with C. P. U. T
. The program has been going now about three years
. Uh and at present a total of 10 persons
both here and in South Africa are collaborating on research
to improve operations at both of our academic libraries.
Um You the one most of you, I see
a lot of familiar faces, most of you will
remember Joanne audiences who was our first visiting uh South
African librarian scholar um uh Robert Sebek was our first
uh Virginia tech uh librarian to go down to South
Africa and he helped him out a lot. We've
got a also In addition to the police were coming
here, we've already got another library and going to
South Africa in February of 2017. Thereabouts. Mr
Keith Gilbertson who's sitting right over there, stand up
just a second Keith. So he's gonna go out
. These are technology development library and they're pretty excited
about getting Keith down there. They're gonna working hard
I think. Well we're working for police were hard
to let me give you a real short bio.
I don't want to take much time. Uh Police
Swat Valley and she, sometimes it's called the T
. V. Is graduated in 2004 from the University
of the Western Cape, which is one of their
leading research libraries. She was born and grew up
in right here. I go village in kobo.
Okay. In Kabul is in the Eastern Cape.
It's a Tasha, thank you. I'm trying you
know, you know me as a, as a
polyglot, but this is one which I do not
know. Uh, OSHA is a, is a
Bantu language closely related to zulu. It's the second
most spoken language in in South africa. And where
she's from in tow ball is Doans sweet grass.
It refers to the sweetgrass found in the area and
it's a village, it's home to about 6000 persons
. She'll tell you a little bit more about some
of her experience growing up there. Um, yeah
, Russia is a click language and I've really been
practicing ever since you got here. Uh, It's
spoken by about 7.6 million people or 18 of the
South African population, like most Bantu languages and confidently
chinese. Uh, it's a tonal language. And
what that means is uh, that uh, if
you, you can have in the same sequence of
consonants and valves you can have a different totally different
meanings when uh that sequence of vowels and consonants are
said with a rising or falling or a high and
low intonation so you can get totally different things so
you better know what you're saying when you try it
and I don't go anywhere. Uh but I thought
it was cool. A click language that's pretty neat
. Um uh Police were also besides Russia speaks english
extremely well with a nice accent and zulu as well
. So she's accomplished in the linguistics department as well
as far as her career goes. She started out
as a public librarian and volunteer and you know looking
at her resume you see she went here and there
and here and there and you can see just this
total sort of rise in her in her career.
She at one point became a health and wellness librarian
and then she became a branch manager of C.
P. U. T. She was a faculty
library and for applied sciences and she's recently been appointed
to her current position as research and scholarly uh communication
library. So I'll stop talking and and give the
microphone over to police. Well so would you like
to set this up and you can have a holder
to put a it was working pretty well up here
. Right. Yeah. Okay. However yeah.
Good morning everybody. How are you this morning?
Thank you so much. Let me start with paul
from you know communication coming here preparations until today and
also the warm welcome I've received from everybody in this
room. Thank you very much and I will take
you through you know some of the south African perspectives
. But my presentation my name is very slow in
Short valley or you can call me V. And
this is just a brief outline of the aspect that
I'm going to touch on, which is my background
. And also look at the South African population,
South African enrollment. And so what brings me here
briefly, I will touch on that and the current
project that we're working on at deputy. I hope
you can hear me okay, Go to one.
Okay, good. Also touch on the South African
movement, especially student protest that is taking place down
there. And I think paul, you've already opened
this slide while you have introducing me and I have
arrived here on the 15th of october in the afternoon
and that is from Cape Town to Johannesburg and from
Johannesburg via Ghana then up into the sea was shooting
That is 22 hours five minutes sitting all the way
from. Okay, All right. And I didn't
skip any slide. Alright, let's look at some
of the perspective in South Africa. We have public
holidays in South Africa and these are the days that
were formed due to the movements that took place in
South Africa. And I think most of you will
be familiar with the first of january which is a
new year. I'm not sure you celebrated here.
We have the 21st of March which is human rights
day and when people were celebrating the rights to education
, to freedom of speech and many other rights and
also to live and also security Help issues as well
. Also we have a good Friday that we celebrate
which is just before the Easter Sunday and also 27
April, which is a freedom day when South Africa
received its independence and then the first of may is
workers there. So workers don't go to work,
please stay at home. and then the June 16
which is also student uh protesting related event. Also
we celebrate and honor that day and also ninth of
august, its national women's Day when women marched to
parliament and they were against uh passed laws that were
laid by current government that day. And 27 September
is a heritage day. You celebrate our culture,
different languages, different out foods, outfits, sorry
, and uh the uniqueness and being human beings.
So that is usually a big event and many departments
or institutions, they celebrate it in different styles and
we cook different meals and we taste each other's food
and we just enjoy ourselves in those events. And
then 16 December, which is a day of reconciliation
, 25th, which is Christmas and the boxing day
. So these are the public holidays out of 365
days in a year calendar that we have. We
have 11 official languages. I'm not sure if there's
any, oh you can speak English of course besides
English. Is there any that you can speak from
their Afrikaans? We have devil, Northern Soto Swazi
. So um, that's one now, the other
is they call it sometimes she agenda but often say
vendor and closer, which is mine paul has tried
to announce pronouncer and then zulu. Those are close
related languages. All right. I was born in
lower New Law, which is a rural area in
a novel which is my hometown in the Eastern Cape
of South Africa And it's a distance of about 11
hours, 10 minutes from my hometown to Cape Town
and that is 1,089.9 km. It's a long drive
, but we don't mind traveling between, you know
provinces. Alright. I belong to a closer or
born to ethnic group of the southern African mainly found
in the Eastern Cape. And as Paul mentioned earlier
, 6.477.6 million people speak my language. So we
are a country on our own And I process a
click language. I will just take you to some
of the basics of my language which is just three
basic clicks. And the name Khosa comes from a
legendary leader, King casa and most of these ethnic
groups they had kings. So that's how we trace
uh you know, background. So it actually determines
where we belong. All right. These are the
three basic tricks that I'm just gonna sort of teach
you on today just to practice at least to say
okay I've learned that click. All right. We
have C. For dental clicks in english we say
see but in my language it is please you know
try that you get that's excellent. And then we
have X. For lateral clicks in pasta. It
is just like when you say hasta. Yes.
So your tongue is more like lateral. And then
we have two for posts of yola clicks which is
in this case your tongue will be sort of pushed
backwards and you will come up with I think in
your legs. So those are the basics. Yeah
. Some find it difficult but I must say uh
speaking people the most influential people. Given that we
have 7.6 million people speaking our language and yeah.
All right. My family I've got my dad and
also my late mom with 13 grandchildren. We are
56 sisters, sorry. And my late brother.
So we are a big family. And in terms
of education I think paul has given you sort of
an overview of my education background, starting with a
metric, we call it metric that time uh in
in Eastern Cape or standard 10 of grade 12.
and also I started at UW, 1997 2000 I
completed my people degree, which is librarian ship.
Then uh, 2000 and four I completed honors the
green librarian ship. Currently busy with my masters.
And you can see also the gap between the years
. So I took a break trying to expose myself
to sort of gaining experience in the library profession.
All right, This is my work experience. You
will also notice during those years I've been trying to
gain experience in library shit because I was fresh from
school and 98 it was in service training 99 until
2000 and one. I was at U W.
C. And within U. W. C.
I was between units. You can see the other
one is C. S. H. E.
Which is the Center for the Studies of Higher Education
. It was a brand new center that was established
. We started it from scratch and you W.
C. In the library loans. I was a
volunteer. They're trying to learn what is happening.
They're also 2000 and two. That's when I started
as a library assistant at U. W. C
. In 2000 and six. I was at info
desk and you will notice 2000 and six are given
a sort of a tick. That is where I
was really pushing myself very hard now I said I
will try my best. I want to be a
librarian And I exposed myself at the Info Desk which
is a librarians information point where they assist students with
queries, research topics etc etc. And when they
have meetings then I will be a standby assistant.
Their and then work experience. Also again 2005 2006
. I was a part time librarian at planning partners
in Cape Town. And I started in 2006 as
well to Subpoena T. Tiger Campus is a branch
library money jump 2013- 2014. I left C
. P. U. T. Four U.
W. C. As a faculty librarian for community
and health sciences. And within that year which is
2013 and 2015, I exposed myself to uni.
So there was an opportunity, there is a library
part time branch libraries And also 2015 2016 back to
see beauty. So you'll notice this movement from U
. W. C. Two C P U.
T. And then currently uh C. P.
U. T. As a research and scholarly complication
labyrinth. I'm actually new in this position, but
before it was a research librarian post, so I'm
actually finding my feet again in this position. Okay
, these are just the communities that have served on
I've been exposed to when I was a faculty librarian
, uh C P U T and U W C
in the library and also departmental or faculty committees in
there. All right. In terms of publications,
there was a conference that was hosted by C.
p. U. T. in Cape Town in
2013 and our director suggested that librarians, we should
collaborate and come up with a poster. So you
can see a number of authors listed. There is
mostly librarians. So they were asked or tasked to
look at uh the author collaboration, recipe ut co
author internationally and locally. So each branch was responsible
to actually look for faculty authors and come up with
reports and generated that poster and Joanne presented that poster
in the conference and it was a winning poster,
we warn, Was it$50, But it was
a big amount that reward. And then in 2013
I collaborated again with severe Bongani on a conference paper
which we presented to the layers conference. Alright,
South African population. We are a big population of
52.98 million. That is the data as of 2013
. Mhm. And also in terms of the South
African student enrollment, which is a key data for
2013. We have 23 universities. Yeah. And
um the overall total of those 23 universities is at
986,000 559 students. Not currently this is 2013 In
terms of public and private. These are the indicators
. You'll notice that public universities have high figures done
private, same as colleges, which is 404 849
students in those colleges and public colleges have more students
than private colleges. Yeah. All right. And
then down to C. P. U. T
. These are the enrollments as of 2015 and you
can see the leading faculty there, which is business
faculty, the blue one which is coded in that
colour and also followed by engineering, which is green
. And followed my education in orange color. And
then the paper is health and wellness faculty. And
the blue one is a blood science, which I
was working on before I moved to this post and
the last red one is informatics and design. All
right. These are the current enrollments as I speak
And we have 34,792 students this year. And these
are the indicators per faculty as I've listed. And
also from the graph before they slide. We also
have research centers and units within the university. All
right. And stand in terms of the staff headcounts
and these are the staff or the c. p
. U. T. staff personnel. And we
have 1000, we had 1,986 staff members last year
. And this year in the library we have 97
staff members employed. But we are a big team
in the library but not as big as you are
here. Alright, What brings me here? Is
that Super ut libraries goals are aligned to those of
the university then, which is to support the open
access publishing and also become the publishing agent or perhaps
and also steak uh store warehouses of the published work
, which is the work that is produced by the
universities. We should support that. And also set
up a library based publishing service or unit, which
is similar to what you have already uh VT and
also improved access to superiority research output, which is
one of the huge project that we're currently working on
. We've also noticed the trends in some of the
South African universities that also having presses and we would
like to follow those trends as well. And your
city is one of them, you city vets University
of South Africa Stellenbosch University also is leading there also
in terms of general publishing. We've also noticed that
libraries now moving away from, you know, old
ways of doing things into new trends in terms of
publishing. And this is the list of, for
example, just the local university in South Africa stellenbosch
and open a general publishing system that they have.
And also we found that VT is actually a place
where I could come and also learn the best practice
from here in the exchange program between C p U
. T and Virginia. So these are the identified
areas which are really of interest to us and which
will put us on the map in terms of research
support in the university and I'm not going to read
through them. I think they are clear to everybody
and the slide will appreciate as well. Okay.
Currently at C P U. T. Yes,
we do have the institutional repository also known as Digital
knowledge. We have the faculty collection in the repository
and also communities and the open educational resources also available
and organized according to communities as well. We're also
hosting the journals in the platform. Which is not
a good platform though because we cannot host a journal
in a repository. So one of the things that
I've already learned from meeting is it N yes,
yes, I've learned a lot from here as well
is you know those unique platforms where you can host
your general and it will also have a better profile
than hosting it in the repository. We have two
journals that we have to actually host a beauty.
We also have electronic thesis and dissertation platform. And
it is also in the process of being integrated into
a national hotel which is South African National electronic thesis
and dissertation platform. And we're currently working on a
data management plan that we have to sort of bring
into our researchers in terms of managing their data in
the process of research. Also developing the research data
management platform for our researchers. So we have a
developer was currently busy with that at the moment and
we've tried to test it and piloted to some of
the faculties. Yes, there were areas that needed
to be actually looked at and sort of correspond with
what they need also profile. Sorry, author profile
, ID's orchid. And also that's another project that
we're working on in terms of integrating, you know
, the repository into the market platforms so that we
can quickly pull or import, you know, the
data or works from market to the repository. And
also other projects include updating the research support website or
page and also the current project that we have.
It's a big project is based on maximizing the visibility
and impact of research output and connect it with relevant
systems which is with a publisher system funders Scopus,
which is a citation analysis tool as well as also
ranking or world ranking systems as well. So the
idea or the purpose for the project project is actually
aligned to that. And also we encourage our researchers
to submit their work in the institutional repository so that
it can be sort of a similar process than it
is not because the current practice now is that uh
researchers don't submit the work in the repository. So
we also encourage them, you know, there are
various steps that they can adopt to maximize the research
output. But out of those processes or steps we
encourage and promote the institutional repository as well. Alright
, the reason why also we promote the institutional repository
to our researchers as much as they ask us.
Do we really have to use the repository? We
are happy with our research Gates, our linkedin and
google scholars. This is how we also motivate,
showing how this or how the repository works with other
systems. Which is it allows other systems to be
easily quickly integrated into it and which is in this
case they can harvest meta data from our repository.
Also, in terms of ranking, it's much more
easier to actually have a state a from the repository
also scope us terms of analyzing the, you know
, the research output, the usage and also the
tracking, you know, the impact. Also looking
at visual impact of the research output of the CPT
research. And also integrated with Pocket Also South African
National Electronic thesis and dissertations. They also harvest data
from institutional repositories and they can also analyzed based on
the funding requirements as well. All right. This
is just also based on the project that we're working
on. It's sort of a simple template that guide
us in terms of the key focus areas of what
need to happen in the project with. In this
case we have a market determine if the author has
an orchid. I'd are there any documents in the
market platform? And then we will also look at
what is called P. O. P, which
is publisher parish, which is a free software,
very powerful harvesting data from google scholar and other platforms
. And we will check against that. We also
have scoopers. We check on scoopers is the autumn
scoopers will also check on the report in the repository
. So we'll see the inconsistency between these systems and
that's where we start the conversation with authors and also
show the benefits of doing this project. And also
we do check research Gate and that is where we
found that they use that platform and also ask for
their cities if they don't have any websites or pages
. So if you notice in this template, it
has the before and after cleanup which is the work
as it is and then after you've sort of trained
and guided the author in terms of cleaning up and
making sure the work is available across all platforms.
Then how is the situation? Any improvements in terms
of the number of documents, age index and many
other aspects that are related to the research. And
this is just an illustrative example. I'm sorry it's
so small. In terms of the fund you won't
be able to see this is the author with the
name Sunni Helling and before she was Sunni bought her
. And so the difference between the two is she
was single and she was married and in between these
it means she was performing meaning she was a researcher
. She produced paper. So now how do we
merge that? So after the cleanup you will notice
that the author has an orchid I. D.
And the number of documents have improved. Also the
number of citations and age index has improved. But
the PowerPoint presentation will be shared. You can have
a closer look. And sometimes they often ask us
to why scorpius is important because when we promote this
we also encourage them that it will benefit also in
terms of a world ranking and international ranking that your
work results resides in the institutional repository. So these
are the areas that we touch or to show that
scope has provide people metric data for Organisations, for
institutions. And if I sort of take it down
to Africa where we have 486 um affiliation and then
narrow it down to South Africa which is 453 and
down to Western Cape which is 33. So those
are the indicators by scoopers and through that that's where
we actually reflect in fact indicate to them where they
are in sort of generator reports from those. All
right. They often ask do ranking matter? Do
we have to worry about frankly? And yes,
of course we have to because students, they always
select the best, you know, institution based on
its reputation. They won't just go to any university
does it? That it's not well known. Also
, metrics are used by university management in terms of
funding and other areas policymakers. They need metrics.
Also research funders, government industries people are metric data
and ranking agencies. They need that date. That
evidence that where we're putting our funds, we can
see the outcome. So that's another area that we
used to motivate in the international collaboration and citation impact
. That's another indicator. And this reminds me of
one of the authors actually that stepped forward when they
were applying for ad hominem promotion. In other words
when they want to be promoted as professors as the
deans and we had to sort of do the cleanup
project and it came to this level as well.
So that actually really helped. How far are we
with this project? Good question project is on hold
due to free education student movement that is happening every
speaking here. There are South african movements that took
place Before. Uh this is just a brief history
. I won't dwell much on that, but just
to highlight on what happened 1948, there was a
ruling party which is a national party that actually came
with laws policies that were governing that time sort of
based on separated Nous people were grouped according to races
and colors and also women were divided from men,
which is called migrant labor system and uh they were
not allowed to visit, you know, men and
men were in the minds working in the mines and
the mothers or women working at home. Alright 1958
and there was a black South African. It's broke
away. So in other words there was a leading
uh political organization which is a. n. c
. But then it broke up due to the movement
based on the laws and policies by the ruling government
. So this pain africanist congress, which is known
as P. S. Came up, but even
though they split it again, they sort of Came
together in 1962, Blend, you know, on
demonstrations against the pass laws which is the passport,
not sure you're familiar with that. And there were
laws that came as a result of the ruling government
, that citizens must have passports. If you don't
have a passport, you cannot go to urban areas
, you cannot go across to other countries, You
must have a passport. So it was actually a
restricting movement, you know, from black people because
they didn't have, you know, the passports.
I mean they were living poor life in rural areas
. So those who are sort of movements and uh
events that took place during that time in 1916,
uh P. A. C. Leader robert,
so vocal who led a large group Sort of marching
against those passed laws due to that movement, 69
people died. I mean, that's a lot of
people that died in, you know, so that
is What happened with in 1960s. Well, uh
the South African nationalist government bend the A. N
. C. So A. N. C.
Was a very uh sort of uh most black people
were under A. N. C. And than
the other ruling party which is a national party which
was white dominated. So, nelson or late nelson
Mandela led the A. N. C. That
time. It was banned in 1960 and Mandela was
uh sentenced into imprisonment For 27 years. And then
during that process of time In June 1976, students
started rioting again. Which is they were protesting,
you know, against, you know, Afrikaans being
used as a medium of instructions in school, 1989
. Toyota was the prime minister since 1978, was
forced to leave the office, instructed by um in
fact, it was replaced by F. W.
De Klerk that time who then pledged for End of
Apartheid in 1990. So things were trying to get
back to normal now. And he also released our
late President nelson Mandela, Which is why in 1994
we were so excited when we were voting. It
was national elections. We were so excited. We're
singing the same sound of this happy and until Today
. All right. The student movement, which is
the movement that took place during that time, which
is 1976. It started with African student movement and
that was renamed after. So as South African Student
Movement. And then what happened during that time,
students were sort of boycotting and they were fighting with
the police and it was a chaos and they were
totally against what the so called Bantu education and being
forced to learn the language that they don't want,
which is Africans. And also hence we have June
16 which we honor and commemorate commemorate in South Africa
. You will also notice also, even if you
do a search about South African freedom movement or Heritages
, you will notice that we honor these movements so
that the younger generation can find it and use it
. So we do have Freedom Park in Pretoria.
We also have the museum in Devon, Hector Peterson
And the small boy who was killed in the June
16 riot. And we also have the freedom route
in there. I just took few of those.
I didn't take everybody and currently we still have student
movement. So that was then now, Which is
last year 2015, which is hashtag fees must fall
. I studied in october 2015, University of the
vet battlefront, which is based in Central Johannesburg and
then other universities like you city, Pretoria roads universities
and many other universities also followed up and joined that
group. There was a very powerful network between these
students. All right. These are some of the
sensitive images of the students who uh we will go
and protesting. You can see it's crowds, they
were singing and shouting and, you know, beating
the drums and showing, you know, the anger
against what is happening and also burning and throwing bombs
and, you know, vandalizing and destroying what is
available so that somebody can listen to them. These
are some of the sensitive images, even our at
main building where they're dealing with cash, you know
, where students pay cash, they burned everything,
even the money coins and notes band, right?
We're also some of the buildings in the university,
which is student financial aid, you can see the
roof there and other venues or dedicated spaces. They
they were banned into issues in there. Also fires
, buses were bent. You know, those are
the shuttles that they use to travel between campuses.
They just burned everything. And these are the university
class that they smashed fighting with the security guards trying
to block everybody to enter the university. All right
. So now we sort of come to a stage
where we thought it ended. Yeah, everybody was
happy. Everything was a piece because apparently A government
announced that there would be no fee or fees increase
in 2016. They were so happy and things came
back to normal. And also once again, protests
started again this year as of August 2016. And
after the South African Minister has announced that there would
be sort of a kept off eight increase in 2017
, which is next year. And then again it
started. And um, also higher education institutions were
given the sort of the um freedom to indicate how
much will they charge next year. And the continuous
mass meetings happening as I speak in terms of making
arrangement and planning and organizing for 2017. And also
latest news from my university has indicated via email was
that as from friday which is tomorrow classes and work
or workers should come back and work will resume as
normal. But we do not know if they're gonna
come back and disrupt what is blend. All right
. So what next? What's the future like?
This is my view of my opinion that perhaps a
multidisciplinary approach should be adopted where government actually engage all
relevant stakeholders into this uh into these mass media or
conversations and also host regular meetings and sort of continuous
debates in this issue. Otherwise, nothing will happen
if there's no, you know, movement from sort
of coming with a solution or so higher education institutions
. I think personally, they should also empower students
when it comes to social problems, injustice and inequality
because we come from different backgrounds for no money,
Nothing. So if we empower our students with those
, I think it will bring change and further,
you know, developments can also come up from that
. Thank you very much. I hope you've enjoyed
and I'm willing to accept questions if you have any
. And thank you. Okay, while still waiting
for questions. Maybe I can open my heritage event
. In fact, it's just heritage images. All
right. No problem. So I'm ready for the
questions. Okay. These are just the pictures.
I'm not going to talk much on the on this
. Oh, somebody has a question. Thank you
very much. That was very interesting. I'm interested
in the size of your E T. V.
And repository collections. How many items do you have
in there? And what percentage? Okay, potential
contact. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think
the last time I checked actually I think was probably
earlier this year. We don't have that much actually
. We had a problem where we had in fact
our server crashed where we lost all our data and
we have to start from scratch. And I think
the last meeting that I had with my supervisor I
think I'll have to give you the exact or accurate
figures from that report Of all you know in terms
of how many thesis and dissertations and the journal articles
and other publications. Yes. But I think it
was at 8000 300 and some odd publications that we
have including it's just the entire collection. What trying
uh huh increase in the cost of education. Why
why what makes the fees go up here? Thank
you very I would say the rand value. Actually
that's another you. Sure And also the population.
I think it's increasing dramatically And other areas that need
or attention. So financially so I think that's why
we have and many others that didn't include, does
the university receive a lot of government subsidy? Is
it government? So for example, Virginia Tech receives
some. Yes. All of our money comes from
. Yes. Yes, we do. We do
have a subsidy from the government and also other funds
that are generated within the university. Actually, we
also have also financial aid support for performing students as
well. We also have the national student fund that
also assist students with fees, but it seems as
if they don't want that because they have to pay
it back. But yes, we do have subsidies
. You say there's increases what is now a typical
fee for a student matriculating this semester? How much
are they paying? Approximate. I'll take one good
example of a student saying the residencies plus tuition plus
registration. That student was going about 64,000, Rand
64 64,000 and the exchange rate is about 15 rand
-15 figure. If you're doing thinking about doing journals
publishing more journals, do you with all the languages
that are, do you have to be able to
handle multiple languages? Well, not really, not
really. It's mainly english when it comes to languages
. It's mainly at foundation level where we have an
extended curriculum program where we expose our students into different
languages, but as they move higher than its english
. But our publications, it will mean perhaps that
particular department has sort of in terms of supporting,
you know, those uh extended the curriculum will develop
tools that will support those group of which we do
have a language committee that looks at those particular aspects
where they can design guides in different languages which is
English, Afrikaans, closer and other languages as well
. But in terms of journals it's just pure english
. So as you're growing up in a rural area
, were you able to attend all levels of elementary
and high school in your account and your fire?
Did you have to towards some you got older when
I was young? Yes. When I was doing
my primary junior secondary, I was at home.
Then when I was in high school I was traveling
you know distance maybe from here to where I stay
, which is maybe jane gina can help me.
Yeah, it is, yeah, it was not
too far but for me to travel every day it
was also during stormy seasons. It was not good
. And then I have to travel to the Western
Cape for higher education institution in years. But I
really enjoyed it. But it was a big difference
from rural to Cape Town I must say because we
didn't have electricity. And here I come to Cape
Town it's beautiful. The mother city everything is in
place and it was like a lost girl in town
but then I found my fit in there. I
really enjoyed it. Yeah. We I came my
background actual sense from from where I'm from. We
didn't have electricity. It's only just before the World
Cup when somebody started to listen to us and say
okay now we can bring change and but it was
not easy. It was through you know movements before
it came to place. Yeah. Oh okay.
I'm trying to understand the student protests and is it
that probably was very difficult just with the prices costs
being what they were for students to come, how
a burden on their families and so they just can't
afford to pay anymore. Is that? And then
it looks now with all the destruction of the buildings
and all that, which is going to cost more
money to fix it. What's I get to your
question? Yes. Uh, students come from different
backgrounds, like I've mentioned, South Africa's diverse,
many languages, Yes. Some are really poor,
Some are being financed by one parent, for example
, or some don't even have parents, but they
have potential. In other words, they can qualify
. They really good performing students, but it's such
that they do not have money to actually pay for
the fees. And in some cases it's a case
of maybe, uh, perhaps it's actually a very
, very poor family that cannot do anything. But
he said that they can at least try to pay
registration and then after that, there's nothing at all
. I've been exposed to that life as well.
When I entered the university, You know I was
from high school level and there I was paying 46
grand for the entire year, Maybe Paul you can
help them with convict converting 46th grade$3. Yeah
. And then here I come to university, here
I come to university Where the registration is 1.5 1500
. And that was like what? And that was
a lot of money to me. But then again
my father was there to support me and all of
those things And also that is just registration and then
the commission would be say 8000 for all the subjects
that I was doing and also as a student,
what I've noticed or realizes that can just only rely
on my father. You know, there's lots of
activities in the university, there's posters, adverts looking
for student assistance sort of exposing myself in those because
in my second year level, as much as the
work was really heavy for me. But I pushed
for student assistant position so that I can finance and
assist my father because he was also responsible for the
family. So I'm not sure this generation can cannot
think that way. Perhaps multitask yourself. Look elsewhere
, complication conversations, luckily they have, you know
, connection with the new systems and sick elsewhere and
find support. So it sounds like tuition is set
for all the public universities at the national level.
Is that true or is it? Yes, it
is. It is that the public years a public
level, all the universities, hence the minister announced
. Uh, I think last week. Yes.
He was addressing all public universities. Yes. Provinces
, states control over the universities region as far as
setting fees. Yes. Yes. From is it
your impression that faculty and students at your university use
open access materials a lot? And if so are
they, then is that a fairly easy argument to
make to them? But Bennett benefited from open access
articles and therefore you should make your own work as
well, I would say yes. Because that is
determined by the number of Okay, for example,
usage of the collection, for example, the print
versus the e that we looked at. We've noticed
that students, they don't often come in borrow books
anymore like they used to before. And also in
terms of journal articles, you hardly hear somebody saying
I'm looking for an article in a journal which is
they do find their way online and also through our
subscription as well. Yes, I think open access
is playing a very crucial role, I would say
, because also we cut down in terms of subscriptions
and sort of to sort of move or slightly move
to the electronic route than print. Mhm. Mhm
. Has your has the amount you pay for online
subscription databases increased decreased recently. It has increased.
That's why we need to critically look also at the
packages and try to select the heavily used, you
know, titles within and perhaps opt for perhaps buying
a single copy done, you know, going for
the entire package. That's what we've looked at.
Yes, I remember last year we nearly lost the
widely online product and it was instead of a big
because we did not want to lose it and we
were negotiating and even a your son like that sort
of negotiate in terms of the deals with our products
. Yes, they have really increased. Well it's
about that time, folks. Um Thank you so
much. We're going please help me with some of
that yogurt. It's very good. Uh We're going
to be around for a little while, so if
you'd like to meet Billy swan, ask her some
more questions or anything, please do so thank you
so much. Thank you so much.