Dear all,
This morning, I received an email from Tetiana Kolesnykova @Tetiana at USUST in Dnipro, Ukraine. I asked for her permission to share it. I asked to share it because I feel like it can fill many hearts, not only mine. What we do, together, all of us, matters in many ways.
If you want to send a message to Tetiana, I’ll be happy to deliver it to her!
The tags for people quoted in the message were added by me (so you can see Tetiana mentioned you!), and the rest comes in the original format. Her message follows.
Hi, dear Paola!
I adore you and not only remember you, but also often recall specific examples of your tireless help to me personally and to the USUST Library team at home and at work.
I have already written to you that very often your bubbling energy, unusual projects, determination, and kindness helped me get out of the “darkness.”
For my family, colleagues, and most Ukrainians, this winter was terrible. January and February were especially difficult, because we often only had electricity and heat for three hours a day. The temperature was -25 to -30 degrees Celsius, which is unusual for Dnipro.
I have a private house, so I was lucky to have gas and always be able to cook food and boil tea or coffee. But the temperature in the room was 7-8 degrees Celsius (thanks to the generator), which meant that even my brain didn’t want to work, and I had only one desire — not to get out from under the blanket.
Most of all, my daughter-in-law Lera and I worried about little Taryasik.
But every day, my colleagues and I dragged ourselves out from under our warm blankets and forced ourselves to go to work in the even colder rooms of the university (3-5 degrees Celsius). This winter, we were able to help our six teachers publish their own electronic textbooks under an CC license (as OER).
Tetiana Shcherbatiuk (also from ENOEL and a member of our Library’s OER working group) and I also published the second part of the guide “Find your ideal scientific journal: publishing an article without unnecessary costs. Part 2. Scopus and WoS scientometric databases (CC)”. https://crust.ust.edu.ua/handle/123456789/21685
Tetiana Shcherbatiuk also created two short videos (as OER) based on the guide:
- Searching for a journal for publication in the Scopus scientometric database https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQdcff_Ecd0
- Searching for a journal for publication in the Web of Science Core Collection scientometric database https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRl3bikgS8o
My dear Paola, thanks to you, Mira @Mira, Alan @cogdog, Jennryn @Jennryn, Heather @heatherb, Vanessa @vanessaproudman, Sarah, Shira @shiras, and many other wonderful and caring people, we survived this terrible winter.
SPRING is here!
And during OPEN EDUCATION WEEK, I want to say (or maybe shout): “We have survived and will continue to live, we will continue to work for the benefit of our communities, because we have such thought leaders and ambassadors of Open Education as Paola, Vanessa, Mira, Alan, Jennryn, Heather, Sarah, Shira…” Thank you all so much!
Dear Paola, my warmest regards!
Tetiana
