Post LIANZA Conference Training Opportunity
21 September 2011
Gale Cengage, Oxford University Press & Encyclopaedia Britannica would like to offer EPIC member libraries a free product training session!
The training will be from 9.00am to 2.45pm on Thursday 3 November (the day after the LIANZA Conference) at the temporary National Library building – 77 Thorndon Quay, Wellington and will feature sessions from all three EPIC vendors.
Check out this flyer to view the programme.
For more information and/or to register your interest, please e-mail Liza Fisher at Gale Cengage.
Paula Banks
EPIC Manager
(04) 474 3058

My apologies, my linking skills have left me.
If any of the staff who are attending LIANZA would like further infomration I will be happy to forward the email.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian

The Library has been asked this afternoon to take part in making visible the New Zealand wide graduate longitudinal survey. This government-funded study is looking at the ongoing impact of tertiary education on a students life. The survey has been commissioned by Universities New Zealand – Te Pokai Tara, and University of Otage will be responsible for collating the gathered data. I have been asked if frontline Library staff would be willing to wear t-shirts advertising the survey during the weeks of 19th September to 7 October, the t-shirts are yellow with black writing asking “Where will you be in 10 years?” Yellow books marks are also appearing in most of the libraries.

I will hand over a few t-shirts to each of the LR&IS Managers and if you wish to wear one please let them know, this is purely a personal decision if you wish to volunteer.

Information about the survey can be found at either or

There are a series of workshops being held this week, facilitated by Bill Hawkins and Brett Haly from Enzyme –

Monday morning – Task and Finish Group Leaders
This morinings session gathered together the 6 Leaders of the Task and Finish Groups which looked at the follwoing areas
Reengineering the use of physical spaces
Easy access to relevant collections
Delivering customer centred support
Embedded academic literacy
Selling ourselves and our services
Supporting and enabling cultural change

Firstly thank you to all of you who contributed to these task groups, it was really enjoyable sitting there this morning and hearing all of your ideas. Thank you also to those of you who covered the service points in order that the Task Group members could to attend the meetings. Not all of the groups have finished their discussions, however they be able to do so over the next few days. The Group Leaders each gave a presentation on their groups dicussion and what it is that their groups are recommending. There were some common themes around communication, partnership, resourcing etc., and we now have a plan to move forward on some of these ideas and make a difference. It was acknowledged by all that the Library has faced a number of difficulties in the last two years including the changes created by ProjectStar and the ongoing earthquakes.
In order to adress the issues raised by these Task GRoups, the Task and Finish Group Leaders will meet on a fortnightly basis to kick start the forward planning.

Two of these groups – Embedded academic literacy and Easy access to relevant collections will also be working with the Enzyme Facilitators later in the week.

Monday and Tuesday afternoon
Issues, blockages and opportunities workshop, Library Support Services team

Tuesday and Wednesday morning
Embedded academic literacy and Easy access to relevant collections task groups

Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning
Issues, blockages and opportunities workshop, Library Research & Information Services Managers

Originally Thursday and Friday of last week and Monday and Tuesday of this week were set aside for the Customer Value Discovery (CVD) Workshops, these workshops unfortunately had to be cancelled due to the unavailability of both students and academics at this time of the year. It has not yet been fully explored as yet as to how they Library will obtain feedback from our users/customers, it may well be that we schedule the CVD Workshops either later in the year or early next year.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian.

Sadly it has been agreed that the Customer Value Discovery workshops that were to be run on the 15th, 16th,19th and 20th September will be cancelled. Many academics were unable to attend due to heavy teaching committments.
Thank you to all those who supplied names of possble participants and to all of you who volunteered to be observers.
A special thankk you to Carole Rickman who provided the administration support and undertook a number of task in order to make these meeting a reality (almost!).

Sue is continuing discussions with the Enzyme Facilitators in order to see if the Library will be abe to run staff workshops within the above timeframe.

The outcomes from the Task Groups which were to be used together with the CVD outcomes to inform Library startegic planning will still be a part of that process, with these Task Group outcomes being presented to a Learning Resources Library Managers meeting and I also intend that the outcomes will be presented to the wider Library staff as well through meetings held over two days to offer the greatest possibility of all staff being able to attend and discuss the outcomes and recommendations.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian

The University has created a Community Open Day which will be held on 1st October. The Library will be contributing by having the following on display –

The Rutherford medal display used for the reopening of the Central Library celebrations and will remain on display. It is also the 100 year anniversary of Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus this year. The exhibit was curated by Lydia Baxendell.

The King James Bible and also hopefully Bishop Grimes Bible (from the Catholic Cathedral in Christchurch) will also be on display in the Central Library. Dr Chris Jones and Bronwyn Matthews will be working on creating this exhibit which will also remain in the Central Library for sometime as more aspects of this exhibition are developed. The King James Bible is celebrating its 400th birthday and Bronwyn has informed me that the copy that the UC Library holds is only one of two held in Australasia.

Google Earth Liquid Galaxy is an edutainment feature that is being installed and will be housed in the Central Library. Ronan Phelps from IT will be responsible for setting up a bank of large HD screens in a half circle onto which Google Earth maps can be projected. Overlays of 3D images can be added and the person who is in charge of the very funky mouse can do a Google Earth flyby and travel all over the earth – including into space and under the sea. This installation is expected to remain in the Central Library.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian

Members of the Library Research & Information Services team are no longer located on the Dovedale Campus in the Wairarapa Building. Our departure was rather hasty, so please forgive us if we did not come and say goodbye to those of you based on the Davedale Campus.

I have moved back over to Room 312, Level 3, Central Library
Alison McIntyre is based in the Law Library
Peter Lund is based in the Education Library.

Four work spaces have been created in what was previously the Rare Books Reading Room for Liaison staff to work in, as well as another two workspaces for Liaison staff within the area housing the Flexible Learning Advisors in the Kirkwood Village.

We are not all hooked up with landlines therefore it is probably best to contact us via email until the phones are sorted over the next few days.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian

I have appended the Campus Master Plan report from this weeks “Sue Writes” as it encapsulates the information shared at the recent Campus Master Plan Reference Group meeting I attended last week.

I have been asked to join this group as the Library representative, and will act as a conduit for any issues, questions or queries that you would like raised as the Campus Master Plan work progresses. Please send anything you would like raised at this forum through to me as an email.

The Reference Group has been created as a forum to ask questions and receive explanations as to why decisions have been made by the Campus Master Plan Working Group. I will use CounterCulture as my report back mechanism.

There are ten campus planning and design principles –

Student focus
Promoting excellence in research
Effectiveness in learning and teaching
Indigenous recognition
Cultural expression and social inclusiveness
Economic efficiancy and environmental sustainability
Community relations
Activity concentrated at Ilam
Respect and build on good architecture and urban planning
Heritage in landscape (Botanical heritage, importance of campus streams)

The following is an extract from ‘Sue Writes”

Campus Master Plan
Work has begun again on preparing a Campus Master Plan for the University. To be able to make decisions about the future of our campus, we need quite detailed information on the quality of our buildings. In the previous draft of the plan, this was half an A4 page, so very general. The focus had been more on potential new builds or specific major refurbishments as opposed to the effective management of all our building stock and what we wanted to do with it in the future.

What is envisaged is a document that outlines a vision and possibilities for UC with regard to space planning, together with data that will help inform decisions about what we do with our physical estate in the short to medium term. This data will include:
• All the buildings in a “precinct” with details of floor area, seismic performance against the new requirements of the Building Code, assessment of fitness for purpose
• Space utilisation based on data to be collected in September
• Plans for potential future occupancy – growth, teaching and research requirements etc.

It will draw upon the work already completed in the draft CMP, but will add new scenarios because of the opportunities offered by the earthquakes.

The first meeting of the CMP Reference Group was held on Friday 26 August, with colleagues from SMT, colleges, service units, UCSA and the study body. This group will meet on a monthly basis.

A CMP working group, mainly made up of Learning Resources staff but including the consultant architect, will meet fortnightly (probably by video conference) so that we can get a draft plan to SMT and Council by the end of 2011.

As expected, CERA have requested the structural engineering reports on our major buildings. This will be provided in September, when the modeling work and analysis is completed. We plan to provide this information to the University community as well as CERA.

Sue McKnight started her bi-monthly meetings in August with Library Research & Information Services Library staff with a visit to the Law Library . The next meeting is scheduled for the 13th October, and this one will be held in the Central Library.

Library Support Services also meet with Sue on a bi-monthly schedule.

There have been a number of concerns raised about the Library Warehouse and they way in which items are stored.
On Friday I arranged for Dave Lang from Estate and Assets, Andy Anderson from Human Resources, Sustainability, Jill Durney and myself to inspect the Library Warehouse. An outcome of this visit has been that staff Jill has agreed to conduct a risk assessment of this storage area with her team. Anyone who regularly works in this space can join Jill and her team as they undertake this exercise. Recommendations from the risk assessment will be acted upon.

In the meantime as we do need to continue to retreive resources from this storage area for our customers, and as a precaution before this assessment is completed, please do not go into the Library Warehouse alone, always ensure that there are two staff present in the Warehouse at all times.

Yesterday SMT approved in principle the relocating of the EPS collections to the Central Library and the repurposing of the EPS Library building.
SMT agreed in principle to a proposal that included relocating the print collections from the EPS Library to the Central Library and investigating using the EPS Library buildings for other purposes. A number of consultations will take place as this proposal progresses.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian