Please note the following changes to locations of DVDs in PJH Library
The DVD collection has reduced in size after we went through a recent deselection exercise, and had a giveaway.
Jenny
Kia ora koutou
Thanks to those of you who were able to join the Demystifying CONZUL webinar earlier in the week. We (CONZUL) are committed to providing opportunities to kōrero on why we exist, what we focus on, and how members of teams at each of the eight university libraries can pitch in and be involved in CONZUL initiatives. In this vein, we’d like to keep offering such sessions, and have a short (anonymous) participant survey here, to help us find out what you thought of this week’s session, and what you’d like for the future.
The University’s Research Committee and Learning & Teaching Committee met for their respective monthly hui this week. There was some discussion at the former on the Open Access support we provide (e.g. via our Open Access Fund, and via the raft of Read & Publish Agreements to which we are signatories). I also took the opportunity to “headline” our commendable year-to-date progress towards the Universities New Zealand pan-university statement for 70% of published research to be open by 2025. We’ll talk in more detail on this at next month’s Research Committee hui, but if I say the words “62% so far this year” and “first equal with Otago”, you’ll probably know what I mean.
The Learning & Teaching Committee looked at progress on Faculty Learning & Teaching plans, currently in development across UC. These are being shared on a Teams channel, to which a few of us have access. A common theme in every Faculty is the scarcity of time available for the large scope of work ahead. I’m aware this is a shared sentiment here in our Library teams too, as our keystone projects hit their straps with breathtaking momentum, calendars are full and workloads are substantial.
We also have the Library Review Report on the radar, as being ready to share, socialise and discuss in the next few weeks. This is exciting, as it will give us a ‘roadmap’ of recommendations to guide our future. But I appreciate our road ahead can feel a bit too vast at times, and it’s reasonable to wonder from where we’re going to drum up all the energy required. Especially when we’re immersed in the day-to-day of significant and all-consuming mahi!
Library managers are keenly aware of this, and experiencing the same, too. So I’d encourage us all to take care with our energy levels and wellbeing, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your manager, or with me, at any time.
Finally, what happened to the balmy spring weather offerings of last week?!
Mā te wā,
Kat
Our annual can drive kicks off next week!
We are really hoping to get a decent amount this year so are reaching out to staff to help us. We know that the City Mission really appreciates our efforts so lets impress them with stacks!
Ngā mihi!!
Kia ora Koutou,
Further to the information provided about Hugh’s new and exciting career direction, we will be holding a farewell morning tea for Hugh on Wednesday 4 October – in the Level 5 break-out space between the staff room and workroom at 10:30 a.m.
All welcome!
We will be providing some kai but feel free to bring a plate to contribute to the send-off!
Ngā mihi, Simon and ELS Team.
Standards New Zealand’s website has encountered a technical issue which is preventing access to some joint Australian and New Zealand standards (AS/NZS) and New Zealand standards (NZS).
We have identified the issue and are working with our technology vendors to resolve this matter as a high priority.
How can you access standards you need?
Our customer service team are working hard to manually provide access to the standards you need in the meantime.
If you urgently need access to a standard that is not available, please contact enquiries@standards.govt.nz with your name, organisation, contact details and the specific standards you require.
Urgent requests for PDFs received Monday to Friday, 8am-4pm will be processed within four hours after which the document(s) requested should be available through your download link or online library. Please do not send multiple requests during the four hours as this might delay our response.
Working towards a solution
We continue to work with our vendors to implement a solution as soon as possible. We will provide further updates on our website here: https://www.standards.govt.nz/home/access-to-pdfs/
Kia ora koutou
Daylight saving commences this weekend! Remember to put your clocks forward one hour before you go to bed tomorrow night (having first watched the Wahs beat the Broncos, just saying). And somewhat topically, given the fire evacuation at PJH this morning, it’s also a good time to check your smoke alarms.
I’m back this week from a CAUL/CONZUL two-day meeting in Melbourne. I squeezed in a visit to Monash University’s Caulfield Library while there, and have a swag of images and insights to share. Will look for the nearest chance!
On the theme of sharing back from professional development experiences, we’ll have a raft of ‘share-backs’ to look forward to in due course, once our Rosalind Patrick recipients have availed themselves of various exciting professional development opportunities! It was so impressive to see the variety and high quality of applications to this year’s award fund. Ka pai to the recipients, who are:
At the same awards ceremony, we also celebrated Long Service for a number of the team:
We subsequently realised that we had inadvertently overlooked the 15 year anniversary for Swee Hoon Goh, so I’d like to take the opportunity to acknowledge this milestone achievement here. We will celebrate properly Swee Hoon’s (by then) 16 years of Long Service, at next year’s award ceremony.
As always, it was great to come together in celebration over shared kai, to acknowledge and show appreciation for your dedicated mahi, and for your embracing of future development opportunities. Pictures of some of the recipients are posted here for posterity, thanks to the photographic brilliance of Isabella and Glenna!
In other good news, I’m delighted to share that the Library 2024 budget has been approved in terms of its overall envelope, and shows ongoing commitment to our full suite of services for the UC staff and student community.
And finally, I’d like to pay tribute to the stellar efforts of the team for Rā Tōmene initiatives earlier this month. I really enjoyed reading the post here on Counterculture and commend the focus on relationship-building which underpinned this year’s engagement with our prospective student cohort for 2024. Ngā mihi nui!
Mā te wā,
Kat
Kia ora Koutou!
Ngā Mihinui to all those who helped out with Rā Tōmene this year! We tried something new, and we are so thankful for all those who pitched in and helped us out with the events on the day! You have all contributed to the outreach of the University of Canterbury, and as a direct result of your mahi, students will make an informed choice about what tertiary provider they will attend. We had 3204 registered attendees overall at Rā Tōmene, so it was a busy day!
Puna Stall
We engaged with a record 451 people at the stall this year! Our busiest times were 9am-12pm. We had a variety of library brochures, subject librarian leaflets, postcards, and fruit bursts for people to take. For our social media giveaway, people had the choice of a brain stress ball or a lip-balm if they followed us on our Instagram on the day. This was a huge success, and we completely ran out of both options by the end of the day (even with our next-door neighbours also giving away stress balls…granted they weren’t quite as cool as our brains…!). Overall, we went with a more pared-back stall than in previous years (fewer and less complex giveaways), which seemed to be very effective.
| Time | Number of people who visited the stall |
| 9-10am | 125 |
| 10-11am | 103 |
| 11am-12pm | 100 |
| 12-1pm | 45 |
| 1-2pm | 57 |
| 2-3pm | 13 |
| 3-4pm | 8 |
224 Library 101 Information Sessions
The information sessions were a novel plan for 2023. These sessions were bookable through the Central Events portal on the Rā Tōmene website.
This meant we knew how many people were planning on attending our events through the day. We had a 30 minute session each hour between 9 and 3. The second half hour of each session was a guided tour.
The session was deliberately designed to be a relational and interactive session which introduced our guests to our MB, ELS, and LTR colleagues, as well as a brief overview of the resources and services we provide at UC Library. The interactions at the sessions were really engaging, and each of the teams held activities at their tables which led to fruitful conversations with prospective students and their families.
The Events team notified us that our events were completely booked out in July – this shows that people were interested in understanding the services we provide.
On the day we had 155 people come through our information sessions on the day, which is about 2/3 of the number who booked (245). As anticipated, there was attrition during the day and by the afternoon, numbers dwindled – a phenomenon reported from most events across campus. During the session we also gave away the tourism style t-shirts designed by Ryan Dooley, as part of a quick quiz which promoted our services and resources.
The information sessions ended with the guests receiving an exclusive UC Library tote bag filled with the following handouts:
Guided Tours
After the information session, we ushered our guests out to meet more ELS staff members, who then took them on a guided tour of Puaka-James Hight. This was based on our self-guided tour, but was guided instead. Ishbel, Juliet, and Hui decorated the various floors with positive quotes from the 2022 Engagement Survey, which gave our attendees great information about what our students enjoyed abut our spaces.
The guided tours were a great opportunity for prospective students and their families to meet more staff members, ask questions, and see the space. The tour ended in the Makerspace, and many of the attendees stayed in there and engaged in some crafting as a break from the busyness of Rā Tōmene. It was great to see some former students bring their children back, and comment on the big changes in PJH, and how much they liked its newer furniture and study spaces!
Rā Tōmene 2023 was a great success, and it was pleasing to hear the in depth conversations happening around the information sessions, as people heard about the great services we provide to our students.
Brian, Isabella, Kerry, Dale, and Lani
Kia ora Koutou,
This message carries hearty congratulations to Hugh Joughin who has accepted a role as the librarian at the Christchurch campus of Laidlaw College.
It also carries commiserations for us, his ELS team colleagues, and the wider library. Hugh has worked for UC Libraries since 2008. Over the last fifteen years you may well have worked with Hugh at the Central Library, Law School Library, Access and Collections teams and the various guises and names that the ELS team has had over this time. Through it all Hugh has brought to bear his inimitable style, sense of humour, care for his colleagues and love of what it is we all do for a living.
This is an exciting new chapter in Hugh’s career, and I know we will all take the chance to wish him well, though we will miss him when he’s gone.
Hugh’s got some Long Service Leave to work through so last day with us will be 6 October.
A farewell will be organised, and more details on this will be forthcoming soon.
Ngā mihi, Simon
Kia ora koutou
Congratulations to Cherilyn Clark who has accepted the role of Kaiāwhina for the Archival Shelving Project. She has great experience using Minisis and of the archives collection. It is wonderful to have her on board for this project!
Cherilyn starts next week until January 2025.
Ngā mihi
Hannah
Kia Ora Koutou!
Thanks to all those who voted for their favoured names in the name poll!
I am very flattered that so many of you considered my name as the best name for this lovely looking fish!
I have however made the decision to take it out of the running – for the main reason that I do not think students will really ‘get’ the joke.
I also made the decision to remove two other names after learning a bit more about them:
2. I’ve also made the executive decision to not put Fishy Mcfishface in the final running. It’s a funny joke, but it is from 2016, when most of our current students were in primary/intermediate school.
This means that the top five remaining names are:
Fin Diesel
Dewey
Neil Finn
Swim Shady
Huckleberry Fin
These five names will now go out to the student body to vote on in Social media for the rest of this week, and we should know the winning name by Monday next week!
Ngā mihi,
Dale