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GRO: 2014 IN REVIEW

GROBlog2014inReview

As 2014 is coming to an end, we would like to give an overview of the past year in GRO.

We have had a steady increase in the number of uploads in GRO throughout 2014. 845 new items were added to GRO this year. The departments which deposited the most were Psychology, Computing, and Sociology. This resonates with the download pattern: the departments whose work was downloaded the most were Psychology, Sociology, and Art.

378,467 items were downloaded from GRO in 2014 (until mid-December). The download numbers peaked at 44,530 in October.

Countries that downloaded the most from GRO were United States (56,044 downloads), United Kingdom (47,344), and Germany (42,845). Besides these three countries, China, Australia, France, Romania, and Ukraine consistently made it to the top countries list throughout the year.

The most downloaded GRO item in 2014 was an An Interview with Ojibwe Novelist David Treuer, followed by two PhD theses. The most popular GRO items were:

Language and Signs: An Interview with Ojibwe Novelist David Treuer (2009) by Padraig Kirwan.

FLOSSTV: Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) within participatory ‘TV hacking’ Media and Arts Practices (2012) by Adnan Hadziselimovic.

Netmodern: Interventions in Digital Sociology (2011) by Christopher Brauer.

PhD theses in general were the most downloaded items in GRO. This may be due to open access PhD theses’ ability to make available original research about specific subject areas even before they are published. Creative material, such as videos, artworks, design pieces and compositions, were also popular in 2014.

Deposit Your Work

If you are an academic or a PhD student at Goldsmiths, you can deposit your research outputs on GRO. Here are video tutorials for depositing your peer-reviewed paper, and practice-based work. If you need any help or guidance, please email the GRO team at gro@gold.ac.uk.

GRODownlReport-2014

From the Archive: Surrey Docks Studios

A little known piece of historical information about Goldsmiths is that before London’s Surrey Docks were revitalised into the towering Surrey Quays, the college ran a space for its Fine Art students in a disused Dock Office. The building was loaned to Goldsmiths in the 1970’s and 80’s. Michael Craig-Martin, a former member of Goldsmiths teaching staff and highly influential artist in his own right, makes reference to the usage of the studios in this interview, describing the importance of the availability of spaces such as these as being essential for Goldsmiths to allow its art students to develop their creative identity in a relaxed space. As Craig-Martin himself claims: “[we were] kind of left alone, which seemed to be important.”

Exterior of Surrey Dock studios. From Wikipedia.

Much is made of  Craig-Martins influence on the students that formed the cluster of famous Goldsmiths Fine Art Alumni such as Damien Hirst and Angus Fairhurst (1966-2008), that would eventually become known as the YBAs (Young British Artists). Famously, whilst Hirst was in his second year of study at Goldsmiths, he would organise and feature in the massively influential Freeze show that would announce the arrival of Hirst and the other formative YBAs onto the art scene with much clamour and irreverence. Not to downplay Hirst’s own ingenuity and precociousness in organising such an important event, but the assistance of Craig-Martin and other Goldsmiths academic staff aided Hirst in finding such a fantastic venue as the Surrey Docks studios in order to debut his conceptual vision. The image below offers a glimpse of the interior of the exhibition, demonstrating how much the Surrey Docks studios had to offer as a space for innovative young talent in the art world.

Freeze exhibition in construction. From Damien Hirsts personal website.

For those interested in the works exhibited in Freeze, Special Collections and Archives hold copies of the exhibition catalogue. We are also pleased to house the Angus Fairhurst Collection, a collection of books that showcases the late artists influences and other interesting details about his life. Contact us at special.collections@gold.ac.uk or alternatively call on +44(0)20 7717 2295 to find out more.

Goldsmiths At War: The Goldsmithian.

Written exactly 100 years ago today on 15th December 1914, this Christmas letter from the first ever warden of Goldsmiths, William Loring (1865-1915), strikes a slightly somber note for the festive period. Following the outbreak of World War I, Loring takes a moment to reflect upon the difficulty of war and implores Goldsmith students to make the best of peaceful times, a fact made more tragic by his passing shortly thereafter in battle at Gallipoli in 1915, after deciding to rejoin the armed forces as a Captain in the Scottish Horse.
 
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For more information on Goldsmiths and WW1 go to http://www.gold.ac.uk/ww1/goldsmiths-at-war/
And follow us on Twitter: @goldsmithslib  #GoldsmithsAtWar

Christmas Opening Hours

Goldsmiths Library

The Library closes for Christmas on Tuesday 23rd December at 21.00. It will be re-open in the New Year at 08.00 on Monday 5th January.

Ordinary loans that are borrowed this week will be due back on the 5th January, 7 day loans will continue to be issued for 7 days until Friday 12th December. From the 12th onwards, 7 day loans will be due back in the New Year. If you wish to keep your books until the Spring term starts then please renew your books online over the Christmas break.

Senate House Library 

Senate House Library will be open from 09.00-18.00 on 22nd & 23rd December. It will then be closed until 09.00 on Monday 5th January.

Other University of London Libraries / Other University Libraries

Most other University of London Libraries will also be closed from 24th December until early January. Some of the other University Libraries in London may have limited opening hours over the vacation.  If Libraries are open over the break there may be access restrictions in place, it is best to check their individual opening hours and access policies before you visit.

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Merry Christmas from all the Library staff!

Goldsmiths Research Online – November 2014 Update

GROBlog-2014.11Overview

39,223 items were downloaded from GRO this month. The countries that downloaded the most were Germany, United Kingdom, and United States.

The most downloaded GRO item this month is again is FLOSSTV, a PhD thesis completed by Adnan Hadziselimovic in 2012. The three most popular items in GRO were:

FLOSSTV: Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) within participatory ‘TV hacking’ Media and Arts Practices (2012) by Adnan Hadziselimovic.
Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music (1996), ed. by Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk, and Ash Sharma.
Digital Desire and Recorded Music: OiNK, Mnemotechnics and the Private BitTorrent Architecture (2011) by Andrew Sockanathan.

New in GRO This Month

Research outputs available on GRO range from book chapters to music compositions, from artworks to journal articles. Here is a small selection from the recent deposits:

Christopher French from the Department of Psychology published an article entitled “Magic and memory: using conjuring to explore the effects of suggestion, social influence, and paranormal belief on eyewitness testimony for an ostensibly paranormal event” in Frontiers in Psychology. You can read the full text here: http://research.gold.ac.uk/10934/

Mark Bishop from the Department of Computing published a catalogue essay entitled “Consciousness and Creativity” for the recent Creative Machine exhibition at Goldsmiths curated by William Latham, Atau Tanaka, and Frederic Fol Leymarie from Computing. You can read the full text here: http://research.gold.ac.uk/10857/

More about GRO Stats

We are publishing brief reports every month if you are interested in seeing GRO’s monthly upload and download activity. You can access the November report here.

Deposit Your Work

If you are an academic or a PhD student at Goldsmiths, you can deposit your research outputs on GRO. If you need any help or guidance, please email the GRO team at gro@gold.ac.uk.