Canterbury University Press (CUP) in collaboration with UC Libraries, has an exciting fixed term opportunity for a Research Assistant to assist the author and the editorial board of the University’s 150^th year (UC150) history publication.

The roles involves sourcing and assisting with the selection of images for inclusion (primarily from the Macmillan Brown Library collections) in the UC150 book.  You will also work in conjunction with the editorial board to develop and curate a supporting website hosted by UC Library to showcase text and images not included in the final book.

Applications close 20 February 2022.  More details here

I am seeking Expressions of Interest (EoI) for a part-time Kaitakawaenga role based in Macmillan Brown Library while Jemma Wiki is working two days a week on He Kupenga Horopounamu (the NZLPP project). This is a part-time (0.4 FTE) band 5 role, fixed term from 8 February 2022 to 8 August 2022. This position will be filled internally.

The role requires someone who can deliver professional library services, with a focus on Māori staff and students, and support the ongoing development of Māori library resources and information services. This includes

• Providing one-to-one and cohort library support to tauira Māori
• Teaching information literacy skills and knowledge regarding Māori resources
• Guiding UC students in the use of Māori information resources

Further details about the role are available in the position description: K:\Operations\HR\Kaitakawaenga Māori PD-Oct-2020.pdf

If you would like to discuss this opportunity, please feel free to contact me.

Expressions of Interest should be submitted to Fiona.tyson@canterbury.ac.nz by 5pm on Monday 31 January with Kaitakawaenga Expression of Interest in the subject line.

Your EoI should be no more than one A4 page outlining:

• Why you are interested in this role
• What skills and experience you will bring to the role
• What technical or professional knowledge you will bring to the role.

The recruitment process will comprise of the EoI and an interview.

If you’ve been looking at the news footage of Tonga post-tsunami and wondering how to help, Mayor Lianne Dalziel is encouraging Christchurch residents to donate funds via Red Cross:

Mayor Lianne Dalziel urges Christchurch to show its support for Tonga : Newsline (ccc.govt.nz)

This is the link for the NZ Red Cross: New Zealand Red Cross

You can also donate via donation boxes at Tūranga and some suburban public libraries.

Today is Caroline Syddall’s first day in her new role as Pacific Library Liaison.

This means the Research Services Librarian role is currently vacant and there are some changes in subject responsibilities that it will be helpful to be aware of:

• Pacific Information Resources/queries:   Caroline S.
• Aotearoa/New Zealand history information resources/queries: Damian, with Jemma as back up.
• Pasifika support: Caroline S.

Thank you to Damian and Jemma for picking up some of the work from this role as we work on recruitment for the Research Services Librarian role.

If you come over to MB, you’ll notice a lot of squawking coming from the pīwakawaka whānau that has set up camp in the tree right by the library entrance.

Counterculture won’t let me share video, so I’ll share this short clip of the pīwakawaka in all their fluffy glory that I have, of course, posted to Twitter:

F Tyson on Twitter: “Baby piwakawaka outside the library makes for a good day😍 https://t.co/c1nL64s7jk” / Twitter

Fiona T

The International Visualise Your Thesis competition is running a People’s Choice award this week. The entry with the most views wins a prize pack sponsored by Digital Science.

So make sure to watch UC finalist Daniel Boczniewicz’s entry in the Figshare gallery sometime this week (before Sunday 10 October)!

I’m very fortunate to be part of a CAUL project group working on developing an Australasian open textbook collective. What this means is we’re creating a platform which collective members (which will be academic libraries) will be able to use to create and host open textbooks (non-commercial textbooks that are freely available to all).

I thought you might be interested in the collective model we’ve developed over the last couple of months which is introduced in the video in this blogpost: Introducing the Open Educational Resources Collective Pilot project – Enabling a Modern Curriculum (caul.edu.au)

The pilot will go live in January 2022.

This particular pilot project is one of a suite of projects sponsored by CAUL under the strategic goal of Enabling a Modern Curriculum. The blog I’ve linked too will include regular updates about all of the projects (which are mostly focussed on OERs (Open Educational Resources)) so you may wish to bookmark this page if you’re particularly interested in OERs.

Feeling a bit pōuri [sad] that Te Wiki o te Reo Māori is already almost finished for 2021? Check out these awesome quizzes from Kuwi & Friends of everyday kupu [words]: https://www.kuwibooks.com/kupu-quiz? 

If you like the illustrations in these quizzes, I can recommend the series of Kuwi te Kiwi stories (in reo and English) in the picture book collections.

Lisa, Nick, Kim, Dave C and I are working on promoting the adoption, adaption and creation of open textbooks at UC.

As part of this work, we have reworked the Open Educational Resources guide, linked from the Teaching Support page. The guide now also includes information about:

• how UC Library can support academics with adapting and creating open textbooks
• good repositories for sourcing open textbooks
• open textbooks already in use at UC

You can check it out here: https://canterbury.libguides.com/opentextbooks

Just a reminder that we are having a Visualise Your Thesis viewing today at 2pm in Poutama.

Bring a cuppa, we’ll bring the popcorn, and check out the amazing research happening around campus.

Then we’ll let you know how you can vote in the People’s Choice Prize!