Kathryn Andrews is leading Library Liaison for the new CHCH 101 Rebuilding Christchurch course on offer this semester. This is an exciting new offering in the UC schedule and one of the positive outcomes of the response to the earthquake crisis we find ourselves in.

You may have seen the course featured in The Press a couple of weekends ago – CHCH101: Rebuilding Christchurch – An Introduction to Community Engagement in Tertiary Studies
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/5161142/University-to-offer-CHCH101
Billy O’Steen, who is well known to many Library staff, is the course co-ordinator.

The course is offered in semester 2 and again in summer school 2011-12 for up to 500 students. It represents an opportunity to showcase Library support for Learning and Teaching at UC. Library support will require a collaborative effort which so far involves Kathryn Andrews, Kerry Gilmour – Human Services aspects, Alison Johnston – Geological Science aspects, Macmillan Brown Library team – Christchurch Heritage and Community Engagement, and Education Liaison Librarians Caroline Syddall, Ariana Tikao and Margaret Paterson.

Take a look at the CHCH 101 Communicty Engagement subject guide – http://canterbury.libguides.com/chch101

Other Library support will include –
Liaison with academic staff teaching into this course
Information Resource support – including recommending purchases and linking electronic resources in Learn
Information Literacy support

Planning is underway for semester II Library orientation activities.

Events are being planned such that if there is another aftershock and physical library spaces are unavailable that some activities can continue.

Activities are planned as follows –

Library Fair – Tuesday 12th and Thursday 14th July 12.00noon – 3.00; lecture block foyer on Ilam campus (Probably A lecture block – to be confirmed) Ilam and Education Library
Library Tours – various to be confirmed
Library Presentation – lunchtime lecture (venue to be confirmed) Earthquake proof library services in the context of all library services: An introduction for students new to UC.

The following online presentations are also being created for linking from web pages and Learn.

A short Video – Earthquake proof library services.
Key messages –
1. There are physical libraries and online library services for students
2. The online library services include collections of electronic resources and librarian support

An Online tutorial – How to access online library services including online help
1. Search using Multisearch
2. Browse using Subject Guides

Dave Lane and Kerry Gilmour are working with Rob Stowell on the video
Janette Nicolle and Cuiying Mu are working on the tutorial using the new Echo 360 lecture capture software.

Congratulations to Deborah Fitchett, Margaret Paterson and Sara Roberts, who have had their poster abstract accepted for the LIANZA Conference to be held at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington from 30th October – 2nd November 2011.

The poster – Library services without a library: post-earthquake use of virtual reference at University of Canterbury – will illustrate an analysis of transcripts from our post-earthquake AskLive interactions with users. NVivo is being used for the analysis.

We really are starting off with a bang this week with 2 events in our eResources Expose.

Mark Ly, RMIT, will give a session specifically for Librarians from 9.00 – 10.00 followed by a public forum 11.00 – 12.00noon.

Both events will be in Seminar Room L207 in the Education Library.

RMIT Publishing is the largest provider of research from Australia, New Zealand and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Their online platform, Informit, offers access to 100% full text through the Informit Collections. Up to 80.5% of content in the Informit Collections are offered in exclusive partnership with universities, publishers, government departments, research institutes and professional associations – which means you won’t find their content online in any other database.
Search across journal articles, books, reports, case studies, and conference papers for regional insights and comparative studies. With Informit, your students can quickly pinpoint the hard-to-find industry information they need to achieve the best results.

• Business
• Engineering
• Family Studies
• Health
• Humanities & Social Sciences
• New Zealand Studies

All welcome.

Please check with your manager first.

Simon Bian, EBSCOhost, will be at the Education Library all day on Thursday 12th May. He will lead 4 subject specialist forums and be available to answer questions about the content and affordances of EBSCO Host databases. EBSCOhost has very generously given UC free access to their complete range of databases including full text content until 30th June 2011.

Interested library staff are very welcome to attend these forums. Please check with your manager first. Liaison Librarians are encouraged to attend as many subject relevant sessions as possible during the eResources Expose. Please note that the forums this week will be held in the L207 seminar room in the Education Library which only has capacity for 20 people. It is very hard to know how many people might come to such an event. If there is a lot of interest from the wider UC community please give priority to academic staff and students.

The programme for Thursday is as follows –

9.00 – 10.00 Education Databases
11.00 – 12.00 Health Sciences Databases
1.00 – 2.00 Business and Economics Databases
2.00 – 3.00 Performing Arts / Theatre Databases

All forums will be held in seminar room L207 in the Education Library.

If you have any questions about this event or the eResources Expose please don’t hesitate to contact me – Alison McIntyre, Academic Liaison Manager

Please encourage members of the wider UC community with whom you meet to come along and support this event. Please offer directions to any visitors to the Education Library on Thursday and make them feel welcome – seminar room L207 is upstairs.

Thank you

Alison McIntyre

Thank you for all your lovely messages of welcome. I am thrilled to be back at Canterbury in my new role as Academic Liaison Manager. My office is on level 3 of the James Hight building and my regular office hours will be 8.00 – 4.00. I’m looking forward to meeting with the team so that I can be useful as the busy first term approaches and as we plan for further development of the Liaison Librarian service.

It seems like not time at all has passed since I left, except that I missed all of the disruption of 2010 that you have all lived through. For the last year I have been working at Plant and Food Research Limited, a Crown Research Institute at Lincoln. It was very exciting being an integrated member of science teams and business teams in their pursuit of patentable new knowledge or to solve problems for New Zealand’s seafood and plant food industries. I worked as one of 5 Knowledge Navigators serving 11 regional research centres situated throughout New Zealand close to client industries and growers. For example the wine research centre in Blenheim, Seafood in Nelson and Pip Fruit in Clyde etc. I really enjoyed visiting the research centres and hearing about the science conducted at each of them. In turn I offered competitive intelligence, EndNote support, database and patent searching and advised on information sources and information management techniques. There was a lot of interest in tools for collaboration such as SharePoint, in data mapping and visualisation tools and in RSS for current awareness.

A particular highlight for me was when a team of bioresource engineers made a breakthrough in the lab. An excited delegation of scientists wearing white lab coats and safety glasses burst into my office reverentially bearing a grey glob of something in a petri dish. After a thorough patent and literature search it seemed that they may indeed have come up with a novel material which would be very desirable in the food processing industry. The manufacturer for whom the research was being conducted expects to go into production – not of grey globs but some very useful thing that it will be made into but which I cannot reveal – and to have these things in supermarkets later this year.

Based on my very positive experience in a commercial research environment I am enthusiastic about the role of Liaison Librarians and the very real value they add to the teaching, learning and research here at the University of Canterbury. I am delighted to have such a highly skilled team of librarians to work with.

Dr Marjo Lips-Wiersma and Dr Sarah Wright, Department of Management, have developed a scale to measure meaningful work, based on ten years of action research on the topic. In order to see whether this scale actually works, they need help from workers willing to complete a brief online questionnaire.

The information provided will help further develop the measure based on what most people find meaningful and meaningless in their work. The aim of their research project is to humanise work and participation by volunteers is important to the success of this project.

If you would like to participate in this research, please click the following link:

Meaningful Work Questionnaire

By completing the questionnaire you will go into the draw to win one of three $100 vouchers of your choice.

More information about the study and your participation in it can be found by following the web link above. Philip Jane, Library Corporate Services Manager, has approved participation by library staff.

It’s Tower Race Day!!

A big thank you to the following staff for volunteering to help on the day –
Anne Milligan; Caroline Anderson; Dave Clemens; Glenna Wong; Janette Nicolle; Jill Durney; Joan Simpson; Julie Lewis; Katherine Doig; Kim Bestic; Maureen Ruki; Rachel Goggin; Romy Forrer; Sue Johnston; Sue Thompson; Terri Elder; Tim Stedman; Wendy Wu.

Special thanks to Romy for all her work making displays and notices and attention to detail planning for the running of the race. And to Kim for using her teabreaks to beautifully hand write the racers’ names on the certificates so that they can be awarded on the day.

Heather Jenks will be awarding the lovely Tower Race Trophy on the lawn in front of the Science Lecture Theatres immediately after the race.

Thanks too to everyone who is covering shifts to allow the volunteers to be away from their posts at this busy time.

Yes, it is that time of year when we hold the Library Tower Race. This annual event jointly run with the Rec Centre will take place on Thursday 19th March 2009 beginning 12.00 noon.

Sharon King has done a great job of running this event up until now – but she will be off studying audiology in March so I’ve agreed to coordinate things from our end for this year’s race. Sharon’s got things pretty well organised so what I need most is volunteers for race day please. 20 volunteers are needed to secure the route – which means making sure that no one wanders across the stairs or into the path of the runners. The race is at lunch time starting 12.00 noon and is usually all over in half an hour.

So if you’re not planning to enter the race – please let me know what you can do to help. Of course if you are running in the race you are excused!
Route Map

To volunteer please email me by Thursday 19th February – Thank you Alison McIntyre