We’re all settled in to our new home offices, finding our feet in the new normal, as we wrangle technology, children, partners and pets in the workplace. We welcomed Angela Davies to the team this week, who is on a fixed term contract covering part of Matt Oram’s parental leave. Welcome Angela! Unfortunately we haven’t been able to welcome her with our usual MB cake fest. Cherilyn is also doing some extra hours while Matt is away.
We’ve moved our daily 9.30 hallway hui online to stay connected. The MB library assistants had their first zoom catch up yesterday. Here are some of the things we’re working on:
Wrangling working from home technologies
Like the rest of you, we’ve been setting up remote access, getting skype and zoom working and troubleshooting any tech issues. Not everyone was able to grab all of the necessary equipment in time, so we’re taking extra breaks to make up for ergonomically dubious work stations.
Asklive
Those who can do asklive have been logging in during work hours, and some team members are voluntarily working flexi hours to support evenings and weekends.
Admin
Started doing a ‘Marie Kondo’ on parts of the K drive and our email inboxes.
Enquiries
The team are working on various enquiries, many of which can be answered sufficiently from home, and some of which are awaiting access to collections. We have 51 Sociology of the City Students doing research on sociological aspects of Ōtautahi/Christchurch using MB collections this semester. Some managed to get in before we closed, and others will be able to use digitised resources. Other main clusters of enquiries are around Masters of Māori and Indigenous leadership students. A number of postgrad enquires for Māori material are ongoing. An ARTH 330 assignment which was due at the end of March has been extended. We’ve prioritised UC enquiries for the past couple of weeks and are now able to send some ‘holding replies’ to external community customers who have contacted us during that time.
Preparation of online content
Specialists and Library assistants are working collaboratively on a range of digital resources:
- Expanding the Ōtautahi subject guide
- Creating a new Rare books and special collections subject guide
- Kā kohika ‘content blocks’ (the featured areas on the front page). Uploading existing images and improving descriptions.
- French rare books identifying works for a future teaching resource.
- Identifying Chinese and Japanese rare books for a future teaching resource
- Identifying Antarctic works in special collections.
- Canterbury Association – preparation work for a future digital resource
- Subject guide for WAI262 Ko Aotearoa Tēnei
- Teaching resource on gender and sexuality in the Pacific for TRNS002. This will become a permanent section of the Pacific Studies subject guide.
- Biographical information on artists for Kā kohika.
- Doing some research into online primary source literacy modules with a view to developing some MB ones.
Teaching
Preparation for teaching online next term is underway. Erin is supervising her intern Jordan, now working from home on identification and description of the Albert Emerson photographs on Kā kohika for his PGDIP in Art Curatorship practicum.
Social media
Hannah, Cherilyn and Lydia are regularly posting to facebook and Instagram. Image of the week is still going, with some extra ones on the theme of working from home this week. Thanks to all the people from other teams helping to keep this going.
I’ve been hugely appreciative of the MB team’s response to the challenges of the past few weeks. Every single person has been supportive, flexible, patient, kind, helpful, co-operative and kept a sense of humour during what has been an extremely challenging, disruptive time. They were also great at ‘self-managing’ while I was working with the Library Response Group. Thanks to all other library staff who have supported us during this time too.