APO Blog
A blog to discuss APO and how it works plus discussion about policy, research, open access, gov 2.0, the internet and more…
During National Volunteer Week we'd like to acknowledge our current star volunteer, Stefania Colla. Stefania is studying her Masters of Public Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne, and has also volunteered at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and with the Sail Program (Sudanese-Australian Integrated Learning).
This week we've added Policy History to our growing list of Collections. Policy History contains reports that were released before the age of digitisation. The collection will help provide background information on major issues which have been reviewed and reported on in the past but for which the key documents have been either unavailable online or hard to locate.
APO has just added a new comment system to facilitate discussion on our site. We are using a third party system Disqus to publish comments. The system allows people to login with various social media logins or by setting up a Disqus account with just your email within the widget. The system is configured to allow any verified user (not anonymous) to post comments straight away. There is a basic filter for obscene languages and comment flagged by users as inappropriate will be sent for moderation.
This week we've added a Book Review section to the site and in the Weekly Briefing newsletter. Our preference is for reviews of books related to Australian and NZ public policy but with room for broader international issues. It should go without saying that we are not interested in sales pitches and promotions but publishers interested having books reviewed are also welcome to suggest titles and we'll open up the review process to the Policy Online community.
If you're free and in Melbourne on Friday 22 March we will be hosting an event at Swinburne University called Where is the evidence? Forced Migration, Grey Literature and Public Policy.
Launched this week are our Policy Online Collections. Collections pages are made up of curated content related to either a geographic region (such as the New Zealand Policy and Governance Collection) or a more focused look at a particular issue (such as climate change adaptation and student wellbeing services). Collections also include content that crosses APO topic areas. These collections have so far arisen from partnerships with interested academic institutions and projects.
You may have noticed that our Search function wasn't working very well in January but we are pleased to report that Solr Search has now been installed. If you know specifically what you're after, include quote marks around your terms in the search box. If you are looking for something more general, you can filter your search once you've made it by using the facets in the right hand side column. Currently we're providing these filtering options: Author, Date, Topic
Thanks to readers who have written in with feedback about the new site. One issue that has come up is about the way we are displaying dates next to new research items. You may have noticed that the dates seem to jump around now but actually there are no more older reports being listed at the moment than in the past.
Over summer we've been busy upgrading APO's content management system to Drupal 7. There are a few changes to the design, layout and functionality of the site however the main focus for this upgrade has been to improve the way the site works under the hood. We've only just gone live so please be patient if there are a few glitches over the next few weeks. We are treating this site as a work in progress and if you, our careful readers, notice anything missing or not working properly we would be very pleased to hear from you and will endeavour to fix thi
The Australian Policy Online website will be upgraded to the next version of the Drupal content management system (Drupal 7) over the next few of months, thanks to an infrastructure partnership with the Australian National Institute for Public Policy at ANU.
We are thrilled to announce that Australian Policy Online has been successful in securing an Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure and Equipment grant for 2013. The project, titled “Linked data policy hub: connected resources for social research” is about connecting APO’s collection of grey literature resources with other major research databases such as RMIT Publishing’s Informit database of journal articles and the NLA’s Trove catalogue.
We are pleased to welcome Camilo Jorquera to Policy Online as our new Web and Information Coordinator. Camilo has a background as a web developer and ran his own business building websites for a while before moving into working more for organisations. For the last few years Camilo has worked with Geelong Library in a similar role so he is familiar with some of the particular issues and challenges presented by documents, taxonomies and providing pathways through large amounts of information.
We’ve had some good feedback on our new initiative to digitise major reports that have previously only been available in print. Following our digitisation of the 1973 Karmel report on schools in Australia we received these suggestions, also focussed education:
Philip Roberts, Assistant Professor (Curriculum & Pedagogy) at the University of Canberra wrote:
A new opportunity for a Web and Information Coordinator has arisen at Australian Policy Online (Position number: 29499) based at Swinburne University in Hawthorn.
This position will manage and enhance the potential of Australian Policy Online (apo.org.au). Working with a small team of internal editors and external developers, the coordinator will take a lead role in the conceptualisation and development of the site, including an upgrade in 2012 and into the future.
Skills & Experience
APO is turning 10 years old and it’s role in the policy and research landscape is as important as ever. To celebrate this with all our readers we are organising a number of competitions for conferences being held this year which will cover a rang of policy issues in locations around the country.