Mōrena everyone,
Last year during lockdown we put together a list of tasks that could be done while working at home. If you’re running out of regular work or needing some variety have a chat to your manager and see if any of these could be an option.
Thanks Tim
The IRWG meeting notes are now available here. We will be putting the following statement about VitalSource eBooks into the next UL report for Library Committee. Comments on this to any members of IRWG are welcome.
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The Library’s Information Resources Working Group recommends that we no longer support eTextbooks via the VitalSource platform. Some of the concerns with VitalSource are:
• Only available as subscriptions requiring ongoing budget to manage
• Access is limited to small numbers of simultaneous users
• Restrictive digital rights management for printing and downloading
• Concerns about the user experience / interface
• Concerns about how VitalSource is treating the privacy of user data when they create an account with VitalSource to use some of the advanced features
• Problematic licence agreements
As the Library has actively encouraged use of alternative sources wherever possible we only have 3 VitalSource subscriptions we are maintaining at present:
Questioning Gender, 3rd Edition
An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 3rd Edition
International management : managing across borders and cultures : text and cases
We would like to manage these out of our eBook collection from the end of the current subscriptions, or by 2022 whichever comes later. This decision would also mean no new VitalSource eBooks would be purchased from 2022.
This means that courses using required texts where the only e-version available is VitalSource will either need to:
a) rely on access to print copies only where available, or
b) encourage students to purchase their own copy, or
c) use alternative sources from 2022.
This decision will be communicated as widely as possible so courses directly impacted have time to consider alternative access before 2022 teaching. Support will be available from subject librarians in sourcing alternative texts.
Welcome to the first issue of Inside Out. Library Managers have been discussing ways we as a group can improve our communication which has led to the idea of this ‘Inside Out’ column. We’ll be taking it in turns fortnightly to each write something from our perspective about happenings both inside and outside the library. And I get to go first 😊. The content and length will vary from fortnight to fortnight.
You might have come across the idea of “coloured meetings” as part of the TMP exercise we did last year. Library managers have a strategy meeting once a month. They’re normally from 9am-12pm on a Wednesday and while a three hour meeting might sound like a terrible idea (!), I actually find these meetings really interesting and energising. We usually follow the ‘Yellow’ or ‘Green’ style of meetings (TMP terminology) where we focus on exchanging, exploring and assessing ideas. While this meeting style speaks to my TMP profile I am reminded by colleagues on the opposite side of the TMP wheel to me that ‘Red’ meetings (about getting things done) and ‘Blue’ meetings (about checking and reviewing) are equally important. More about the TMP meeting styles here. Question for reflection – could it be useful to apply the idea of ‘coloured’ discussions in your sphere of work?
At our last strategy meeting we discussed the topic of wellbeing and how we can improve our resilience in a world where change and uncertainty is the norm.
All library teams have experienced or are experiencing some degree of change in the last 6-12 months. At the heart of it is that we want to be more effective, to be well placed for any future reviews and to be in step with the UC strategy. Each area will be presenting a session for all Library staff so you can hear about what’s been happening in each area. Most recently we have heard from LT+R and LAC, with ELS and MB to follow in the coming months.
Thank you to everyone who came to a recent Discomfort Pain and Injury refresher session. Jenny and I have really appreciated the efforts of Jane, Glenna and Swee Hoon in presenting the sessions.
You might be aware that UC has a wellbeing plan – Mahere Oranga which uses a model called Te Pae Māhutonga. This is a metaphorical framework of six whetū, or stars (which make up the Southern Cross), which relate to six wellbeing objectives. We briefly talked about this model in the DPI refresher sessions replacing the ACC model we used in the past where we talked about ‘psychosocial factors’.
The six objectives are:
I’ve personally found it helpful to reflect on a number of these and mention this by way of an example (Te Mana Whakahaere | Autonomy). A self-reflection question for me has been what I can do to improve my own wellbeing and health and how am I intentionally making changes in my life.
We’ve also been talking about the Library management structure and how as a leadership team we align to the UC strategy. This includes the AUL position currently vacant, the roles of the managers and our reporting lines to the AULs. We’re getting close to sharing our thinking with the wider Library and we’ll be really interested to hear your ideas and views in due course.
A number of us join in a 6 weekly Zoom catch up with interested staff from other universities around the country to talk about what’s happening in the OER space. These are largely unstructured, informal sessions where we share what developments we’ve observed happening with OERs. I’ve found it useful to hear what other institutions are doing. Have a chat with one of us who have joined in the Zoom calls this year (including Fiona T, Sara, Lisa, Mariko or myself) and we can share the Zoom link if you’re interested.
In other news, CAUL has recently pulled together a project team to create an Open Educational Resources Collective. The goal is to develop CAUL members’ capacity in open publishing by piloting a cross-institutional open educational resources platform (hosted on Pressbooks). Fiona T is on the project team, working with representatives from across Australia on developing, implementing/managing and evaluating a CAUL Open Resources Collective. The team is currently working on developing a model, surveying the CAUL membership and undertaking an environmental scan for best practice.
Ngā mihi,
Tim Stedman
Are now available.
Some highlights we discussed included:
A reminder of the upcoming DPI refresher sessions – the first one being this Thursday. There are still places left so if you haven’t been to a session for a couple of years or more please sign up :-).
Please enrol here:
Thursday 1st July 11am-12pm : Link to register
Monday 5th July 11am-12pm : Link to register
Wednesday 7th July 2pm-3pm : Link to register
The DPI awareness team is aware that these dates won’t work for everyone and so we expect to run an additional session(s) later in the year for those who can’t make any of the July dates. However, if you can attend one of these dates we would appreciate it so we can keep the number of additional sessions required to a reasonable minimum.
Following on from the LT+R update, the Access and Collections team will be presenting about the changes to our team over the last year and the work that we do.
Please join us in Puaka James Hight Room 210 at 11:00am Tuesday 29 June.
We hope you can all join us!
Ngā mihi,
Helen, Jenny and Tim
Thank you to everyone involved in completing our data entry for the annual CAUL statistics return. This is now available for public consumption on the CAUL site along with the stats from other member libraries (although there are still a few other institutions yet to load their data). There’s a summary here as well including some ‘highlights’ like how many eBooks we now have access to and some comparisons with 2019.
A reminder of the upcoming DPI refresher sessions coming up next month. All Library staff need to attend one of these refresher sessions every two years.
Please enrol here:
Thursday 1st July 11am-12pm : Link to register
Monday 5th July 11am-12pm : Link to register
Wednesday 7th July 2pm-3pm : Link to register
The DPI awareness team is aware that these dates won’t work for everyone and so we expect to run an additional session(s) later in the year for those who can’t make any of the July dates. However, if you can attend one of these dates we would appreciate it so we can keep the number of additional sessions required to a reasonable minimum.
… are now available. Some highlights include:
Blurb from Elsevier:
“We are pleased to invite you to our webinar Scopus – Where have we come from in 2020 and where we are we going in 2021.
Date: Tuesday, 13 July 2021
Time: 4pm – 5pm AEST (6pm New Zealand)
Platform: Zoom Webinar .
The Scopus product team and the local ANZ team understand that keeping your finger on the pulse for new product innovations is really important and can create efficiencies in the future.
Librarians and Research Leaders are encouraged to join this webinar. This session is the start of multiple Scopus sessions to provide details to the Australian and New Zealand research communities updates and progress of Scopus as a product. This first session is a look back at key Scopus updates from 2020 and then new features coming in 2021. We are pleased to have Isabel Butt, Product Manager Scopus, joining us for this call.
This session will also introduce the Scopus Release webinars. These will be webinars to coincide with significant releases of Scopus and will be ongoing.
We appreciate this time is outside work hours for our New Zealand attendees however encourage you to register and we will provide a recording if you’re unable to attend.
Please feel free to forward this invite to your colleagues who might find this session useful. ”