Glossary of Terms used by Oxford Talks

Series

A Series is where a talk ‘belongs’ when you create it - for instance it may be part of a seminar series or a conference. We recommend that you only enter details about talks you organize yourself, like your Departmental Friday Seminars, or your Club meetings. You have to be a Talks Editor to be able to create a Series.

Collection (List)

A Collection comprises talks owned and organized by other people, already added to Oxford Talks, and usually belonging to a variety of different series. For example, a collection of ‘Talks about Science and Art’ could include talks from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of History.

Note that it might not always be necessary to make a manual collection - talks can be assigned to the two categories below (Organising Department and Topic) allowing us to create automatic listings. You can also add an entire series or a department to a collection, if you do this then all talks belonging to that series or department will appear in the collection automatically.

Anyone with a University Single Sign On username and password can compile a Collection.

In an earlier version of the software Collections were called Lists.

Organising Department

Many talks and series of talks are organized by a University department or unit. When a talk is added, it can be tagged with the department (or sub-unit within that department). This makes it simple to pull out all a department’s (or even a Division’s) talks.

Topic

Although talks may be organized by a single department, they are often relevant to students and researchers in other departments right across the University. Tagging by Topic means that lists of talks on various subject areas can be pulled out automatically. We have used the Library of Congress Subject Headings for our topic choices, which means that the options for potential listings by topic are quite substantial - but if none of the available topics quite fits the bill, there is always the option to create a Collection.

Talks Organiser

A Talks Organiser is the main point of contact for a talk or a series of talks. They are usually involved in setting up speakers, booking rooms and doing all the juggling involved in the day to day administration of seminars and lectures.

Talks Editor

A Talks Editor is someone who has been given the rights to add and edit talks, and series of talks in Oxford Talks. You have to apply to be a Talks Editor (a relatively simple process). A Talks Editor is sometimes the same as the Talks Organiser - but not always.