Kia ora koutou,

The central Health and Safety team have shared this graph, which shows that the rolling average of the COVID cases reported in Assura is near zero currently.  That feels like good news.

ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

From our list of first aiders in the Library, we only have 7 people who have current certificates and most of those will be expiring before the end of the year.  If you are due to renew, or would like to join our merry band of first aid certifcate holders, could you please check with your manager and book yourself in for a session?

It would be great to bolster our list!

Let me know if you have any questions.

ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

I am very happy to announce that we are recruiting for a Pacific Liaison Librarian.  This role is new and will work alongside Caroline to strengthen support for  our Pacific students.

The position details are available on the University site now:

Pacific Liaison Librarian

If you know of anyone who would be great for this role, please share the information widely!

If you have any questions, please come and have a chat.

Applications close at midnight on Wednesday 14 September.

ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora,

This is the first COVID update since 1 August, which seems promising!

Just one case to report this time – Lisa Davies tested positive on 15 August.  She was last on campus on Tuesday 9 August.

Thanks for keeping everyone safe and staying at home when unwell. Free RAT tests now available from the government: Request a RAT | Ministry of Health NZ (covid19.health.nz)

ngā mhi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

Welcome to Inside Out.  In this issue, I thought I would give you a very brief update on a couple of things I have been working on that are slightly outside our usual business in the Learning and Teaching team.

Open Access Week 2022

I am on the group organising the southern hemisphere events for Open Access Week 2022 (25-28 October).  This year the theme is “Open for Climate Justice”, which is very relevant to us all in the Pacific.

We are putting together a series of events that will run over the week, including panels on climate activism, and the role of open science in combatting climate injustice in Pacific Island nations.  There will also be a group event over the whole week to create a Subject Guide with open educational resources for teaching – if you would be interested in joining in, we would love to have you!

Open Educational Resources

I am continuing to work on our aspirations around publishing open educational resources, with the most recent emphasis being on developing a contract that the Library can use when we fund the creation of resources.  This has given me the opportunity to work with the UC Legal team, which has been a novelty for me and very interesting.  I am hopeful we will have a legally sound, plain language agreement ready to use very soon.

Involvement in planning around the Learning and Teaching plan

Aurelia and I are contributing to two working groups as part of the UC-wide Teaching and Learning Committee.  There are a series of groups working on teaching planning for 2023, with the aim to get planning completed in time for the academic audit next year.  Aurelia will be on the group discussing the Learning and Teaching Plan, and I will be on the Engagement and Blended Learning group.  Although we may not play a large role on these groups, it is still very useful to be part of the teaching planning for the wider university.

D365 and the Library

UC has adopted Dynamic 365 (D365) as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  This tool is being configured for different services and is being used by the Student Support units in Pātaka. We are keen to see if D365 can help us offer better service to our students, so as a beginning, Tomo, Dale, Sara and Stuart will have access to the system to monitor how it is being used and how it might be useful to us in the Library.

If you have any questions, or just want to have a chat about the above, please let me know.  I attach a pictures of a pretty spider web and the fog on Ōnawe Pensinsula to compensate somewhat for the dry content!

Ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

The Director of Health and Safety (Natasha Barnett) sent this message to all the Departmental Safety Officers.  I found it useful.  You can click on the images to make them large enough to read.

ngā mihi,

Sara

Tēnā koutou

Recently the media has been focused on the increasing number of COVID-19 cases across Aotearoa, and the emergence of new variants and reinfections. This may be worrying for some members of our UC community, particularly our most vulnerable.

We continue to track cases and household contact reports from staff and students and as you will see from the data below we are not seeing an increase in cases yet.

As we head into Semester 2 it is possible that the picture may change. Over the next week our COVID welfare team, led by George Haswell, will be preparing comms for students, both new and returning, and working on preparing resource to carry out this mahi. This includes re-engaging any staff who may have volunteered to support this project in Semester 1, and who continue to have availability to do so.

What does this mean for students and staff?

• We will be asking staff and students who are isolating as either a positive case or a household contact, to register this on Assura
• Students will receive a call from a member of the COVID-19 welfare team to check in on them. Māori, Pacific and Rainbow students will be called by a staff member from Te Waka Pākākano
• The staff member making the welfare call will be able to provide the student with general guidance, academic and isolation advice, and assess their eligibility for our Winter Warmth Power Fund.
• If the students need specialist mental health and wellbeing support, financial support or support with groceries, the staff member making the welfare call will make a referral to the relevant team.
• Line managers will be automatically notified when a staff member registers their isolation status on Assura, and will explore options with them. People and Culture Business Partners are also available to assist if needed.
• All students and staff receive an automated email upon completing the Assura form, this email contains information from both internal and external support services
• Reporting of COVID-19 case numbers will continue for key stakeholders such as Te Waka Pākākano, Accommodation Services and International Relationships Office.

Our Accommodation Services Team is engaging with the Halls of Residence to understand what support they may need from UC in the event another wave of COVID-19 causes major service disruption.

We have effective systems and measures in place but should a higher level of coordination/response be required, I will look to reconvene the Steering Group.

For up to date info on the support available to students and staff please see the Covid19 page.

Noho ora mai

Natasha

Kia ora koutou,

Many of you have noticed the pigeon mess outside the door to the undercroft by the sushi restaurant.  This is foul (fowl??), unhygenic and a slip hazard in wet weather.

There has been some cleaning of the area, however facilities management are seeking a more permanent solution.

Any further BEIMs requests about this will be rejected, as the solution is imminent (she writes hopefully).  I will keep an eye on the situation and follow up with FM if necessary.

ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

UC Digital Services are rolling out Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to students from 2 May. This means that all students will be prompted to set up a way to authenticate themselves when logging into the UC systems.

It is likely that we will get questions about this at the front desk, or on AskLive.  So we have been provided with this standard response to use when questions arise:

“Kia ora, thanks for your message; if you need help with setting up MFA, please use the guidance on the website: Multi Factor Authentication | University of Canterbury or AKO | LEARN . If you need more help, please get in touch with the IT Service Desk on 03 369 5000 or 0508 824 843 or raise an Assyst ticket, Ngā mihi”

This wording has been saved in LibraryH3lp as a canned message.

If you have any questions, please let Tomo or me know.

ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

Welcome to Inside Out.  The end of term one provides a good opportunity to look back at what I have been doing with my time.  It feels like the beginning of a new semester and the Omicron surge have been my entire focus, but I have also managed to fit in a few things outside of those two compelling preoccupations.

Our new Pou Tuarua
It is wonderful to welcome Aurelia back to UC.  It is also very exciting to have the AUL role filled again after two years. This means I have now changed my reporting line from Anne to Aurelia and I look forward to further developing our teaching and learning services.

Recruitment of a Pacific Subject Librarian
We are planning to recruit a new subject librarian to work with Caroline to support our Pacific students.  As this will be an entirely new role, we are currently consulting with the Pacific Development team to find out where the support is most needed.

Open Educational Resources
Since Fiona moved into her new role as Kaiwhakahaere Taonga Tuku Iho, I have been attempting to keep some momentum going with our advocacy and promotion of open educational resources.  Thanks to Fiona’s continued guidance and help, there have been some important developments this year.

At the beginning of the year we joined the CAUL OER Collective – one of 3 New Zealand and 27 Australian University members.  As part of the Collective, we are able to publish two open access books on the Pressbooks platform, apply for grants to support our authors and join communities of practice to help develop our skills in this area.

We also have a couple of open texts in process.  Kate Pedley in Geology is collaborating with two academics at Otago to adapt an existing text for the New Zealand context.  Kate and her co-authors are hoping to use the text for semester two teaching, or if circumstances conspire against them, in 2023.

The other text that is in progress is a text on criminal process in New Zealand.  This text is a pilot that will be funded by CONZUL and written by James Mehigan and Mark Wright.  Fiona and I are currently on a steep learning curve as we negotiate with the authors and Canterbury University Press to get a publishing agreement in place.

And finally, we have created an application form that academics can use to ask for funding for their open projects.  It is linked from the Subject Guide for our Open Educational Resources information here:   https://canterbury.libguides.com/opentextbooks. Thanks to Nick Scullin for his excellent work in creating the guide.

If you have any questions, or just want to have a chat about the above, please let me know.  I hope everyone has a great break.

Ngā mihi,

Sara

Kia ora koutou,

Did you know that you can find all of the Library Health and Safety documents stored on SharePoint?  This where you will find the minutes from the H&S Rep meetings, our H&S plan for the year, the hazard register and other vital documents.

We also store all the Library COVID-19 documents on SharePoint. If you are interested, you will find plans for every Alert Level, H&S checklists and most importantly currently – our Library Traffic Light documents.  Here you will find draft plans for the different traffic light levels (the final version is on our website) and our Business Continuity Plan for Omicron.

If you can’t access SharePoint from  the links above, or can’t find a document that you would expect to see there, please let me  know.  SharePoint can be less than intuitive at times!

ngā mihi,

Sara