I’m pleased to be able to share that Dale Wang will be Content Manager fixed term until 30th November 2022.

Dale brings a variety of experiences from both here at UC and also at the Haeata Community Campus which will be valuable in the role.

Dale’s appointment creates a vacancy in ELS.  Aurelia is currently making preparations for this role to be backfilled.

Dale’s start date in Access and Collections will be next Wednesday 31st August.

Tim Stedman

The Information Resources Working Group (IRWG) and the Information Resources Advisory group (IRAG) have now both met to discuss the list of review subscriptions.

Here is a link to the outcome from both of these discussions.  We are proposing 45 titles for cancellation.  I will send out the final list for consultation all being well later today with a final deadline for feedback end of August.  The outcome from that consultation will go to Library Committee in September.  Helen is the final decision-maker.

IRWG withdrew a number of titles proposed for review based on the feedback we received, and IRAG reduced the list by a further 17 titles.

We are pressing the pause button on 12 titles where IRAG requested more information.  Wendy, Sue and Mariko are working on this at present.  In some cases we need more information from the departments (mainly to check they’re aware and do they have any comments) so Wendy, Mariko or Sue will be in touch with the relevant subject librarian to follow up on this.

In a number of cases the 45 titles proposed for cancellation have alternative access via aggregators or where Interloans is more cost-effective for the university.

Tim Stedman

Kia ora koutou,

I am seeking Expressions of Interest (EoI) for the role of Kaiwhakahaere Whiwhi Rauemi | Content Manager. This is a full-time band 6 role, fixed term until 30th November 2022. The reason for this is to cover my secondment to the Associate University Librarian role. The Content Manager role will report to me with on-the-job support also provided.

The role requires someone who:

• is interested in information resource management within an academic library context
• is seeking leadership experience or leadership skills development
• will support the Library’s bicultural practice planning and development
• enjoys working in a collaborative environment, supporting others and delivering great outcomes for students, academics and researchers.

Further details about the tasks involved in the role can be found in: K:\Operations\HR\Content-Manager-PD-2022.docx

Your EoI should be submitted to me by 5pm Monday 15th August that outlines:

• Why you are interested in this position
• What skills and experience you will bring to the position
• What technical or professional knowledge you will bring to the position

The recruitment process will comprise of the EoI and a mini interview.

Ngā mihi,
Tim Stedman

Further to my post on 22nd July, I would like to provide an update on conversations with Oxford (and Wiley).

Oxford will be making some changes to their email templates to make the information they send to authors less confusing.  They are also moving to a new journal licensing and online payment system called SciPris which will allow for better author identification and communication.

Wiley are planning to visit at the end of August and run through the author journey with their read and publish agreement.  Please let me know if you would be interested in meeting up with them.

The Springer, Wiley and Oxford Read and Publish agreements have caps which means there is a maximum on the number of articles that can be published under these agreements with no APCs.   Approvals are based on a first-come-first-served basis across all CAUL libraries.

Based on current approval volume, the Springer agreement is currently predicted to exceed cap at the end of October 2022.

The Oxford agreement is predicted to exceed cap in early December. The Wiley agreement is currently not expected to exceed cap in 2022, however there has been a recent increase in approval numbers across CAUL.

Tim Stedman

Kia ora koutou and Happy Monday

A fairly quick one from me this time … Fabulous to see blue sky and sunshine again after a yet another wet week.  We ventured out yesterday to take the sled out.  Blue hour over Kura Tāwhiti | Castle Hill coming back home was simply magical.  Had a moment to quickly snap this but couldn’t hang round as the kids had got themselves thoroughly wet and cold playing in the snow..

Back at work today and looking forward to some warmer temps this week.  Starting to hear a bit more birdsong too.  I’m thinking carefully about how to spend the extra hour we’ve all been given (many thanks TEU for your advocacy for that!) but an extra long lunch hour and a decent kawhe definitely beckons.  Make sure you don’t miss out on taking that extra hour somewhere in your diary.

Outside the Library I’m involved in a group that is looking at wellbeing initiatives across UC.  Haven’t actually been to any of the meetings yet… but some planning is going into Mental Health Awareness Week (26/9) so stay tuned for some activities and initiatives coming out of the that.

Last week a few of us attended the Staff Hui Series.  Last week’s presentation was from Digital Services updating us on their plans as well as hearing from their directors (Teaching, Research and Digital Experience; Cybersecurity).  Good to put some faces to names.  A new intranet beckons (some of you have been involved in this already) and there are some plans looking at the replacement of other systems (like PeopleSoft and Oracle).

Great to see a good number attending the Living our Narratives and Values workshop last week.  There will be a repeat workshop this Wednesday.  Take some time to reflect on this and share your thoughts and insights with colleagues.  One of my reflections has been on examples of Whanaungatanga, Tiakitanga and Manaakitanga already happening in  different ways in our workplace which is something we perhaps don’t notice or acknowledge as much as we should.

Have a great week

Tim Stedman

Yesterday I was made aware of a situation where a University of Canterbury author attempted to submit their article for publication to OUP (open access) under our read and publish agreement.

The email the academic received as part of the submissions process contained mixed messages which included telling them that they needed to ask the University of Canterbury to pay for their APC and to confirm that they will pay the APC charge.  The academic interpreted this to mean they would have to wait for our quarterly open access fund meeting for funds to be approved and gave up at that point.

This of course is not correct as under the read and publish agreements APCs are waived, assuming authors meet the publishers criteria for article acceptance and assuming the CAUL agreements haven’t met any caps (which they haven’t to date).

I am following this up with OUP and CAUL.  CAUL replied to me:

“I share your frustration after having given OUP much feedback about their interfaces and communication.   Their new platform will commence in August, hopefully that will make the arrangements more apparent to authors”

CAUL has asked OUP to use the same text on the CAUL libguide in their emails from now on (scroll to view “How to submit your article for open access publishing”).  I will update when I have more news on this and a reply from OUP.

Tim Stedman

It has been a while since I posted an update about our Read and Publish agreements.

We are beginning to get data on a regular basis from CAUL.  There is now a channel on the Library All Staff Team on Teams called Read and Publish Agreements.

LAC staff are updating a file of UC institutional publishing data here.  We’re including some charts by department and by student/staff.  Nearly $185K worth of APCs have been approved thus far – all covered under the agreements at no extra cost in 2022.  You can also see how we compare with other CAUL libraries to date for the OUP, Springer and Wiley agreements.

Cambridge data is expected in the near future.

One of the features with the OUP, Springer and Wiley agreements is that the number of articles that can be published under each agreement is capped.  CAUL provide reports which predict when the caps will be reached based on current approval volume.

This is an advance notice that the DPI Awareness team will be running Discomfort, Pain and Injury (DPI) refresher sessions for library staff at the following dates and times:

Tuesday 28th June 9:30am
Thursday 30th June 2:00pm
Monday 4th July 2:00pm
Wednesday 6th July 9:30am

These sessions cover DPI awareness, prevention and tips for working safely. All Library staff should attend one of these sessions every 2 years.

This year we will be running the sessions online.

Please register online to receive a meeting link (Teams) if you are due for a refresher, or if you are a new staff member (within the last 12 months) and haven’t been to a DPI awareness session yet.  For staff who haven’t been recently appointed, you can find out if you are due for a refresher – there’s a register here.

(If, after booking, you would like to change the date of the session,  simply resubmit your session preference to receive a link to that session.  You will need to remove the old meeting link from your calendar).

Thanks, Tim Stedman
on behalf of the DPI Awareness Team.

As part of our business continuity planning in any ‘incident’ or ‘crisis’, the Library forms a welfare response group to assist managers in providing staff with welfare support.  The group helps in various ways including checking in with staff to find out concerns and to communicate major concerns back to the response team leaders.

During traffic light red the Library formed a welfare response group and we were blessed to have Kim Hall, Glenna Wong, Maria Veronese, Hugh Joughin, Kathryn Andrews and Anton Angelo serve in this capacity.  We met regularly as a group during term one to discuss broader issues, concerns and themes in an anonymous way arising from members of the group making individual contact with library staff to understand how things were going.

Library managers are sincerely grateful to these staff and their mahi over the first term.  We considered this to be very valuable.

The welfare group and managers have agreed the time is right to close this piece of work as we now in ‘orange’.  In any future new incident, significant event or crisis a welfare response group would be formed once again.

Library managers are aware that just because the work of this group has closed that this does not mean there won’t be ongoing welfare issues that need support.  Covid continues to be around us and impact us in various ways.  If you believe that there are Covid related issues that managers are not hearing then please feel free to have a chat your manager, or with Stuart or I (welfare response team leaders).

Tim Stedman