I’ve been reading back through previous Inside Outs, and other posts on Counterculture, and, as always, I’m amazed by the amount and the range of splendid things we all get up to. I’m privileged as a manager to get a regular overview of activity across the library; otherwise my view is of research support and Subject Librarian responsibilities.
It always astounds me how broad our remit is. The library is unique in this – we work across student support, student welfare, student learning, academic support, teaching and learning support, information resources management, information resources creation and curation, collection management, archiving, art curation, Māori and Pacific peoples support, departmental and academic liaison, research support, and, I’m sure, many other things I’ve forgotten. We’re active at Academic Board, Research Committee, Learning & Teaching Committee, Postgraduate Research Committee, Faculty meetings, and of course, Library Committee.
We do all this by building relationships with people inside and outside the library, by taking workshops and demos, by teaching, by meeting with people one on one, by answering AskLive questions, desk enquiries, and emails, by attending meetings, by talking to people over coffee, through phone calls, through exhibitions, by reading, thinking and writing, by updating databases, by influencing, through social media and traditional media, by marketing ourselves, by moving desks and shelves, by ensuring we’re equipped digitally, through reports, by being creative and analytic and thorough and repetitive and persistent and determined. And by living out our values, whether we know them or not.
We have expert and qualified staff working across all of these areas, to a high level of achievement. The library management team frequently focus on how staff welfare can be improved, how to provide professional development, and how to make work fulfilling. We’re interested in our staff not just as ‘human resources’ but as real people who have lives outside of work.
The other thing that occurs to me is that we’ve become pretty good at achieving a lot in adverse conditions. My observation is that staff do all they can to provide a level of service that constantly exceeds expectations, even when they’re not being pushed to do so. This shows kotahitanga and manaakitanga, and coupled with the grace and humour that most apply to their work life, makes me grateful to be working with a whole bunch of decent people.
We still face important challenges. We are at the start of a long journey to understand how being a Te Tiriti-led library really works, and we’ve been slow to get on to this. We don’t always know the best way to engage with change, or how to accept it. We’re a diverse bunch in terms of all of the things we do, and that can cause tension.
But, again, reading about what we’ve done, we’re a highly significant part of this university – crucial to many areas, and influential in others.
