Four months behind the times, I found this tale of an academic pirate interesting.

Perhaps we need to profile her for our pirate displays on September 19?

We’ve been advised that ITS are completing database maintenance this Saturday 20 August from 9-5pm that will have some impact on the performance of Horizon, specifically our ability to take payments.

Please note that staff will not be processing any payments (for fines, membership or lost books) on Saturday. They will override any fines or lost blocks to issue items. Borrowers can make payments at a later date.

The other impact will be on the updating of student records but this should not have any significant effect on our service.

The following systems will have intermittent outages on Saturday:

• Canterbury Card Top Up Online
• Minor Course Change System (MCCS)
• UC Student Web

A reminder that we have a battery recycling bin in the Central Library (by the Den).

If you don’t have a bin in your work area, feel free to send us your old batteries in the hampers for recycling.

Caroline, Lisa and I met today for our first meeting to refine the draft values based on staff feedback. We looked at the draft values alongside the existing library values in Ngā Awa e Rua and found a lot of correlation, particularly after taking into account staff feedback on the draft values.

So our first step has been to identify five possible values drawing upon the draft values and Ngā Awa e Rua:

• Whakahoahoa – Partnership
• Manaakitanga – Goodwill (English word needs revision)
• Kotahitanga – Unity, Teamwork
• Kaitiakitanga – Guardianship
• Mātauranga – Knowledge (English word needs revision)

Alongside these short value statements, we would like to provide a brief statement that explains how these values inform our work.

We’ve started work on this and “Kaitiakitanga – Guardianship” precipitated much discussion! This value correlates to original draft value: “We treasure, protect and share knowledge now and in the future”

The issue is the tension between our treatment of archival collections (eg in MB) versus teaching/learning/research collections (eg in Central, EPS and Edu) and how to capture that complexity.

So far we have:

• We treasure and protect our collections or
• We treasure, protect, and curate our collections. (We’re not happy with this!)

We’d love your feedback – in the comments, in person discussion or via email to any of us.

(If you would like to see the notes from our meeting, they are here: K:\LIBR-Library\Management\Planning\Libr-Values-2015-2016\Values-Revision-2016-07-18.docx. Please note the values revision is very preliminary and will no doubt be drafted, redrafted and reredrafted!)

We’re starting to amass a good box full of non-perishable food to donate to the City Mission’s Foodbank Appeal.

You have a bonus few more days in which to contribute if you’ve kept forgetting this week.

I’ll now take them in on Tuesday:)

There is a change to the process for dealing with lost books returned at CKI. A report has been developed that identifies lost and missing items that have been returned to the library, as well as their previous borrower.

This means staff no longer need to fill in ‘the Returned at CKI’ form for lost books (nb. this form is still used for claim returned and incomplete Group CKI – an adapted form is available on the K-drive: K:\LIBR-Library\Management\Procedures-Workflow\Customer Services\Forms).

The benefits of using the form are that the retraction of finance invoices is no longer dependent on staff remembering and/or having time to fill in the ‘Returned at CKI’ form and said form then finding its way to the person responsible in each library for cancelling invoices. It will also save staff time when on returns.

The wiki has been updated to reflect this change.

The Christchurch City Mission is doing its annual Foodbank appeal and I’d like to organise a collection. This year their theme is ‘The Money’ or ‘The Bag’ – meaning you can donate food or money.

There is a bag in the Central Library Workroom on Level 2 if you want to drop off some canned goods. Alternatively, if you’d prefer to donate money, I’ll gather the collection.

I’ll drop off the collection at New World on Friday 8 July.

Some staff who have upgraded to Office 2013 have reported issues when using computers that have not been upgraded (settings disappear when they return to their ‘home’ computer).

Shona van Ee from ITS has recommended that all staff upgrade to Office 2013. Benefits include that Office 2013 manages multiple inboxes better, which many of us have. Since many of us frequently work in different locations, it would also be preferable for us all to be using the same version so that we’re not constantly adjusting our settings.

(There is some software that doesn’t work well with Office 2013 but that is mainly financial systems that doesn’t affect us in the library.)

Peter K posted instructions on how to update Microsoft Office here.

Metrocards can now be purchased or topped up at UBS (University Book Shop). UCSA is no longer offering this service.

The Education Library is re-open and looking a bit different this morning:
 

The roof is now watertight. Scaffolding will go up shortly to start repairs. We don’t yet have a time frame for repairs. The stacks are not accessible and have been roped off as the lights are not working.

We have a temporary desk in place on Level 1 and are working on signage. Library users seems remarkably unperturbed (as you would expect in Chch) by the appearance of road cones and metres of plastic wrap.