Hi all,
Basically, I'm a fresh graduate and have run into a bit of an information and tech problem which I'd like to get around by somehow enrolling in a university course to gain access to their big academic paper database and 'some' university equipment.
Long story short, I'm a fresh graduate being picked up by a company to do work on a new type of rare earth deposit that is thought to exist, as I wrote a paper on the subject as I left university. It's highly technical and academic work and I've run into roadblocks when it comes to bureaucracy around accessing academic papers and equipment. The company has no access to academic databases (they are too expensive) and requires me to individually purchase articles, which I need to get permission from the boss. This takes a day or two for each request, and I often need to go through several papers a day which has caused a huge backlog and endless paperwork for me. Along with this I need some basic equipment (mainly a crusher, grain separator and basic microscope) which isn't avaliable. They have this equipment on their mine site, but I'm mainly based in the office making it incredibly frustrating when I want to get something done within a week or two.
Basically, just having access to a uni's academic database along with maybe a student card to access some microscope labs would go a long way and save me some hassle. I thought about signing up to a free Coursera or edX course although I'm not exactly sure if it would work. I live round the corner from Curtin university so I was thinking about that one, or maybe UWA?
Does anyone know of any way to potentially do this? I've only been here for a month and I can already see this being a major bottleneck and pain in my butt for the next year of the project...
