Dear colleagues, Despite the current challenges we are all facing around the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, Digital Library Services is committed to providing the UCT community with continued support for the full suite of research data services online, including:

• ZivaHub, the institutional data repository service to share UCTs latest research on an international scale. We will continue our data curation service on ZivaHub as normal.
• UCT DMP Our data management planning tool is fully functional and can be accessed outside of the University. All admin related issues are being done remotely.
• OSF for collaborating on research projects is functioning normally and currently houses all of our training material for 2020 as well as our quick guides. See https://osf.io/5avhm/.
• UCT’s MyESRI Organisation, for online GIS training. Please contact uct-gis@uct.ac.za if you require membership to the organisation.

Even though we can not provide you with face to face consultations during this time, we will be making ourselves available remotely to answer any of your questions. We will strive for a same-day response, and schedule all of our meetings using appropriate online conferencing software. Key office numbers have been rerouted to mobile phones. As secure access to the ZivaHub and OSF platforms is available remotely via UCT single-sign-on (UCT DMP post-upgrade 15th April 2020), you can continue to upload, edit, share and publish your research outputs while off-campus. Our administration will be maintained remotely. Our digitization services will have slight delays, however, as we have to be careful with handling physical objects and managing access to our workspaces.

Should you require any assistance with working on these platforms, or have any further questions about our services, please contact dls@uct.ac.za. Should you need GIS support please contact uct-gis@uct.ac.za directly.

Best regards,

Niklas Zimmer

Manager: DLS

dls@uct.ac.za

+27 21 650 2957