Today is the day! The Australasian Universities Challenge to get fit and healthy by walking 10,000 steps per day has now started. It’s not too late to sign up if you wish to https://www.10000steps.org.au/

To kick off the challenge, we’ll meet for a lunch time walk today at 12.30, on the ground floor of the PJH building between the staff lift and the undercroft. Please feel free to join us, even if you’re not doing the challenge.

If you’re in need of some eco-friendly wrapping paper and would like to support some future businesswomen, my daughter and her friends have set up this shop as part of their Yr13 Business Studies assignment.

https://paper-cut.mystorbie.com/

They will be studying Business at UC next year which makes me feel I can get away with some shameless advertising! 🙂

Thanks to everyone who has signed up to the 10,000 steps Australasian University Health Challenge which begins on Monday 19 August. We’ve had 13 people in total signed up to the library team. Ka mau te wehi! There’s still plenty of time to sign up if you’re interested.

Helen has kindly offered to organise lunchtime walks around campus, daily at 12.30. This is also a good chance to chat with others doing the challenge.

Some other tips and ideas to increase your steps:

• Take the stairs instead of the lift
• Park a bit further away and walk or bike to work
• Try a 7 or 14 day UC Rec Centre pass to see if the gym is for you
• Take yourself and a buddy on a tour of one of the shiny new campus buildings (eg. Haere Roa, Rehua)
• See here for some ideas for weekend walks https://www.christchurchnz.com/walk-canterbury/
• And with all that extra exercise you might want to reward yourself with yoga or a massage  https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/ucreccentre/staff-wellbeing/
• Other activities can be recorded as steps too https://www.10000steps.org.au/support/dashboardsupport/recording-other-activites-steplog/

Do you have any other tips or ideas for increasing steps and getting fit and healthy? Please feel free to share them as comments on this post.

Karawhiua!

Got the winter blues? Feeling a bit blah and want to do more exercise? Eaten too much cake? Well, hey me too 🙂

I invite you to join me in doing the Australasian University Health Challenge which UC is part of. I’m coordinating the library’s participation. Registrations are open now, and the challenge begins on 19 August. Please let me know if you want to be part of the UC Library cohort – this is so I can co-ordinate activities for us to support each other in the challenge.

What is it?

The challenge is simple, you need to complete 10,000 steps a day from 19 August to 29 September. As daunting as this may sound, it is not impossible. Once you take into account walking to and from office, up and down stairs, to and from meetings, and around the campus, the steps starts to rack up without you even knowing.

What if I can’t do that many steps per day?

It doesn’t matter. If you did more than yesterday then you’re getting health benefits. During my recovery a couple of years ago from breaking my hip I got through it by thinking about what I could do, not what I couldn’t do. If you have an injury we can work around that.

How do I count my steps?

• Fit-Bits, Garmin products, or similar fitness trackers
• Smart watches
• Your Smartphone
• Or a pedometer borrowed from the UC Rec & Sports Team

Find the device that suits your lifestyle best before the event launch on August 19. If you want you can also download the 10,000 steps app to help upload your steps via your mobile device.

Where do I sign up?

• Go to the 10,000 steps website: https://www.10000steps.org.au/ and click sign up
• Enter your details
• Check your emails for a conformation email and then click confirm
• Choose UC as your institution

NOTE: The website asks for your height, weight and waist measurements which I frankly found a bit off-putting. The reason for this is they are measures of health. This information is PRIVATE and can’t seen by others, but I also discovered that if you  are really not comfortable with that you can enter 0 into everything and it still lets you register.

Get in touch with me if you have any questions or would like some help signing up: ext 93915 or joanna.condon@canterbury.ac.nz

We’re delighted to announce that Eurica Thapa has been appointed to the fixed term part time role (covering Gabrielle’s hours who is covering Catherine’s!).

Her hours are:
Monday 9.30am – 4.00pm
Tuesday 1.00 – 5.00pm
Thursday 9.30am – 4.00pm

We look forward to welcoming her to the team this morning 🙂

The exhibition by current Macmillan Brown Artist in Residence, Tuafale Tanoa’i opens at the Physics room tonight, with an artists talk at 12.00pm tomorrow:

I’m so excited to say that our redeveloped Kā kohika site is now live! You can navigate to it through the library website, google it or access it here:

http://kohika.canterbury.ac.nz/opac_canterbury/scripts/mwimain.dll?logon&application=UNION_VIEW&language=144&file=[opac_canterbury]search.html

There may be a few technical teething issues as the DNS servers take time to refresh, so the new site may not show off campus for a few hours.

This has been an amazing collaborative effort by MB and LAC staff, and what you may not know is that the technical redesign has been done in-house, by our talented e-services team! The Resource Discovery team have also made a huge contribution in upgrading the data, which was essential for the creation of the new ‘content blocks’ that you’ll seen on the homepage. Erin and Lydia have created the curatorial vision for the site, drawing on their knowledge of the collections and data base, over a number of years. MB team members have contributed their knowledge and often work on data clean up and image uploading work that help to enhance the site. Thanks also to the design reference group of staff who helped come up with the look and feel of the home page, your input was much appreciated. This was ably coordinated by Donna, who has been amazing throughout!

The results of this project are outstanding and I feel lucky to work with such a talented group of library staff.

Jump on and have a look and feel free to post any feedback here or send it to me.  We are ‘soft launching’ this week, so will begin promoting more in the coming weeks with some help from our marketing colleagues.

MB Library, the Library Warehouse and the Henry Field store will all be fumigated over Queen’s birthday weekend so those areas should be avoided.

Any issues, contact Paul Cooper ext95617

We have a Macmillan Brown Library assistant role, available as result of a secondment. The role is part time, 16 hours per week until December 2019.

We are seeking expressions of interest from a person who is enthusiastic about customer service and cultural heritage collections.

The hours of work are:
Monday 9.30 – 4.00pm (6 hours, half hour break)
Tuesday 1.00 – 5.00pm (4 hours)
Thursday 9.30 – 4.00pm (6 hours, half hour break)

MB-Library-assistant-PD-fixed-term

If this sounds like you, please email an expression of interest to caroline.syddall@canterbury.ac.nz and joanna.condon@canterbury.ac.nz by the end of Monday 3 June 2019 outlining;

• Why you are interested in the position;
• Your team skills and personal qualities;
• Your skills, knowledge and experience relevant to the role;
• Your cultural competencies, particularly in relation to Māori and Pasifika.

This opportunity is advertised internally at this time, and EOI are open to current employees of the University of Canterbury.

Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies has launched a new Global Research and Innovation hub – more info on the website: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/mbc/global-research-and-innovation-hub-on-the-pacific/

Overview and vision

Established in 2018, the Global Research and Innovation Hub for the Pacific (GRIPac) is the research hub of the Macmillan Brown Center for Pacific Studies, at the University of Canterbury. GRIPac pulls together resources, initiatives and expertise under a unified hub. With its global networks and partnerships as well as its leadership in a number of prestigious global and regional projects, it prides itself in being a world-class research entity. Its vision is to promote and enrich Pacific research, knowledge production and data storage and dissemination through cutting-edge, high impact and innovative research. This is to build on MBC’s current role as leader or part of a number of global, regional and local research projects. MBC has an extensive and well-established network of partnerships and collaborations with a number of universities, organizations and individuals internationally, regionally and nationally.