Kia ora koutou,

Now that we have been working from home for a week we are looking at how we might further support staff with equipment or connection issues.    The university is investigating the options to provide smaller pieces of equipment that people can setup themselves with remote help if needed.     Furniture such as tables and chairs is not available.

Please remember to look after yourself by taking additional breaks and doing suitable exercise as we all adapt to this new environment.    Things take a bit longer in this new environment and that is okay.    If you are getting stiffness or pain please talk to your manager about options and please also lodge an event report on RMSS.

I’d appreciate it if you could update your working from home information by answering the following questions (which appear at the bottom of the form):

• Do you have current equipment issues?   Things not working, sound issues, connection limits, not enough usb ports etc.  What would help?
• Is your internet connection performing satisfactorily?
• Who is your provider? (Optional)
• Is your internet plan unlimited?
• Do you have other internet issues?
• Do you have more general working from home issues UC could help with?

Kim will collate the information and we will see what we can do.

Ngā mihi,
Anne

PS from Tim: sorry these questions appear as caps by default in the form.  I will tart it up later with no SHOUTING.

Library managers discussed today how best we communicate with everyone at the moment.  We decided that each library manager will take it in turns to write an update on what their team is doing and I get to kick off  :-).  So it’s a good chance for me to talk about all the great stuff our team is doing and to make up for the cynical tone of my previous post (not all of it is bad/a waste of time!).  Fortunately we are blessed to have a great team of discerning people (I’m trying to avoid the vogue word ‘Agile’ – but it’s applicable as well) to navigate through all of this.

General observation.  Back in the day, we dealt with mostly squeaky clean, straightforward, no shades of grey, low risk stuff.  How that has changed!   Gone are the days when our work was predictable and routine.

Getting to grips with working from home.  This comes up as a common theme in what I’m hearing from our team.  Getting sorted working remotely. Trying to connect to Skype and Zoom conference calls with varying degrees of success (it’s improving!), connections dropping out and remote access issues.  Figuring out how to learn and use Apps.  Well done team for your forbearance on all of this and staying sane.

Catching up. On reading and digesting a plethora of email, tidying up email, pruning and organising, answering email.  Catching up on missed staff forums. Skyping team members checking the phone and sound works, with headsets or via iPads.

Being enterprising.  Two team members report they are taking the opportunity to learn some more phrases in Te Reo, reflecting on our TMP results (good break from the laptop), bringing manuals home with them to learn/revise (well done for having the presence of mind last week to think about this!), visiting IT web pages for advice and ideas using tech, sharing tips and learning with the rest of the team.

General tidyup.  Serials holdings, Horizon records, wiki pages.

Interloans. Keeping up with our usual tasks, contributing to AskLIVE, purchasing where possible, communicating with other libraries, updating licence terms, progressing discussions with RapidILL (more on that to come).

Acquisitions.  Working through the incoming requests, vetting publisher offers and following up to make these discoverable (thanks Resource Discovery team for your help in this too), ordering, receiving eBooks, invoicing, vendor reports and maintenance, cataloguing resources.  Publishers we have prioritised: approaching Standards New Zealand, LexisNexis (well done for getting that content live today), Thomson Reuters, Bridget Williams Books for more NZ content, ProQuest and EBSCO 3 user eBooks to see what can be upgraded to unlimited, getting temporary access to the Economist, Project MUSE, Stuff content in PressReader, Cambridge University Press, matching eBook content with our print high demand collection (working with EBSCO).  Libguide of other publisher offers.  Weighing up decisions and making judgment calls.  Sorting out the chaff and the dross. Risk mitigation.

Research repository and Learn dashboard.  Submissions and uploading theses, scanning requests and keeping a record of scans so we are legally compliant as far as possible (balancing against the need for access so taking some risks).

I am very fortunate to have such a great team and the way you all are all making the most of this extraordinary situation is amazing, dealing with the uncertainty as well as pioneering new territory, with a great attitude and keeping our sense of humour going along the way.

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about various publisher issues, so I thought I should randomly summarise some of my observations

• There are a lot of publishers reaching out to various people in the university including academics, librarians and SLT members (used to be called SMT)
• Feel free to ignore them entirely.  Some of the offers are quite simply irrelevant noise we don’t need to distract ourselves with right now.  In LAC we are trying to filter out the not so useful from the useful, but we may not always get it right. Some of it will be useful and some of it will be snake oil
• I have said to our team we should focus on what is actually needed.  We are hearing some content from Cengage, McGraw-Hill and Pearson is needed.  But not necessarily all of it. Some of these vendors will be trying it on with cute offers not necessarily in UC’s best interests
• Some offers are good and worth us following up.  Recent examples Harvard and Elsevier (never thought I’d say that) but again there is the risk we could be wasting time on something that just isn’t useful for UC or there is some ulterior motive (I like to think I’m not normally a suspicious person by the way)
• Some of the cute offers we are being presented with may likely favour the publishers and not necessarily UC
• Some of the conversations we will need to have with the likes of Cengage will not be easy
• Remember the option to scan up to 50% (not great right now with no access to the physical collection)
• We are in contact with the likes of CAUL/CONZUL to see what is happening with other libraries and where we can join forces
• I realise a lot of academics won’t be in the headspace to have these conversations right now but please look out for opportunities wherever possible to include mention of the benefits of OERs.  Short and long term the model of providing 3 user access eBooks with DRM at extortionate prices is ridiculous for obvious reasons especially for classes of hundreds of students.  Let’s sow seeds in minds now about open access alternatives as that’s going to be a conversation UC has to have at some point, which may come sooner rather than later.

Please continue to let us know at acquisitions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz what is needed.

At the Access to information resources Zoom session yesterday, I promised to provide some standard wording subject librarians could use to send out to their academic contacts.  The key points are as follows.

In situations where we don’t have electronic access to required textbooks, we have the option to scan up to 50% of the content.  Copyright Licencing New Zealand (CLNZ) have said that universities can extend the licence to copy 50% of a print textbook to all students.  The conditions are:

• It must delivered through the secure LMS (in our case Learn)
• Reported to CLNZ (Library staff are keeping a record)
• This is only for the duration of the Covid-19 emergency (when this is over the scans must be taken down off Learn)

Please do not store a copy of the scan on your computer or share the scan with anyone else.

As discussed in the Access to information resources Zoom session this morning, here is a list of print high demand titles where EBSCO have matched electronic availability.  The subject categorisations may be a bit dodgy as I was guessing on many occasions and batch editing at high speed so feel free to re-categorise if it is wrong.  The idea is that subject librarians can tick the “LAC please purchase” box for anything you identify as needing electronic access.  LAC acquisitions staff, please follow this link to order anything subject librarians identify as needing ordering.  Hopefully the screens are self-explanatory but if there are any queries do let me know.  Thanks, Tim

Thanks to all joining us today.

From my notes:

• Access to standards – Wendy W will follow up with Standards NZ
• We have received a list from EBSCO matching our print high demand holdings with electronic availability.  LAC will split this list into subject area and send to the subject librarians for SLs to review what is needed
• LAC to provide some standard messaging for subject librarians about scanning options which subject librarians can edit and send out to their academic contacts
• We were joined by Michele Ashby, sales rep from Cengage.  We will follow up offline to have a more sensible conversation with Cengage about cost-effective access to needed texts.  Please email what is needed to acquistions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz including course details and the number of enrolled students in the course

A number of questions are popping up about access to information resources, so I’m scheduling a Zoom session tomorrow Tuesday at 11am to discuss some of the questions that are coming up.  I’ve invited subject librarians but others may be interested and you’re welcome to join us.  Bring your questions and if we can’t answer them immediately we will park them while seeking further clarification.  Please continue to send specific requests for resources to acquisitions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz

Kia ora everyone,

While we’re all scrambling to get organised to work from home, we wanted to update you on some key things:

Working from home

• Many thanks for updating your working from home needs. Please ensure you have listed here any equipment you are taking home including the UC tag number (where applicable)
• Grab your headphones for Skype for Business or Zoom if you need them (put those as well on the above equipment list)
• Familiarise yourself with the working from home policy
• If you run out of “usual” work here is a list of alternative task ideas you can pick from. There will be plenty of literature to review if we get stuck for ideas …
• As you’re sorting out how you manage working from home, one suggestion is to have a ‘buddy’ you regularly check in with for mutual help, support and discussion about who is wearing the best pjs …

Housekeeping

• Ensure your Outlook Calendar is up-to-date. Block out your calendar when you are not available. See also: this helpful post on Skype for Business
• Suggestion: add your team members as a Favourite in your Skype for Business
• If you put an out of office on your email, please add the AskLIVE hours to your automated message (08:30-20:30 Monday to Friday; 10:30-20:30 Saturday and Sunday)
• You are welcome to apply for annual leave in the usual way (PeopleSoft). Apply for sick leave in the same way as needed
• Regularly check your team’s shared email inboxes
• Access to Camelot and Counterculture

AskLIVE

• We aim to sustain our usual AskLIVE working hours
• Log into AskLIVE when you can this will help maintain adequate numbers across the days and times
• It is possible we may receive more wider UC related queries via AskLIVE. We will provide some guidance in due course about where you can refer these

Access to campus during the next four weeks

• At this stage, we do not expect Library staff to be able to access campus during the period of alert level 4
• If there is an emergency on campus we will contact Security for further guidance
• 20 UC staff in total will be given “essential worker” status to maintain essential services

There is now a field for recording this information “Equipment I am taking home”.  Please add these details if applicable.

Please use this link to update working from home information.  I have edited the link in the previous Counterculture post as well.