Kia ora koutou

Minisis was upgraded this morning and this seems to have broken the registration process for new Kā Kohika users (e.g. to be able to request art and archive material).  We have reported this to our Minisis vendors and hopefully will be fixed soon.

In the meantime MB staff should be able to request/retrieve items on behalf of people that can’t create accounts.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Systems)

Margaret Adam is retiring from UC and we are having a morning tea to farewell her on her last day of work. Details below.

10am Friday 31 March 2023 in the Level 5 staffroom of PJH.

Please join us if you wish, to say goodbye.

Margaret has worked with the Library Systems team as a computer programmer for many years, and even though her role was officially moved into the Digital Services team, we still think of her as part of the Library team.

Jenny

Kia ora koutou,

We would like to invite colleagues from all teams to consider joining a working group focussed on Bicultural Professional Development  Group to support our ongoing growth and work. Other members of this group will include Lani, Tim, Sara, Fiona and myself.

You don’t need to be super knowledgeable but a commitment to supporting thinking and working in a bicultural way will be needed. If you are interested, please talk with your manager and check you have their support, and then send through a brief EOI via email to me by Friday 17th March.  It doesn’t need to be long- 1-2 paragraphs that outlines why you would like to be involved would be perfect.

As a start, we will look to have 1 person from each team on the working group. If we have more people who are keen than this, we will likely have other pieces of mahi that come up over the year that those who have signalled an interest may be able to contribute to.

I’m really excited about the mahi we are hoping to do in this space and looking forward to making a start on this work.

Ngā mihi,

Aurelia

Kia ora koutou

And just like that, it’s March!

I’ve enjoyed spending some time this week (as with prior weeks) in kōrero with many of you, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes in a group setting (thank you ELS for inviting me, Aurelia and Helen to your team hui this week!); sometimes booked; sometimes spontaneous; but always, without fail, so very valuable.  These conversations and moments of sharing are helping me form a fuller picture and appreciation of all that’s come before to get us to where we are now. This, in turn, will help guide us into the future.

On which note, this week saw the ‘launch’ of the 2023 Library Ops Plan!  As highlighted in my Counterculture post, while the Ops Plan provides opportunities for us all to get involved with strategic initiatives and whole-of-team development, the Library Management Team and I also want to underscore and value the crucial Business as Usual (BAU) mahi that we all undertake every day, as part of our core service and in line with our core values. Also please note this is an organic, evolving document which should and will flex and evolve, as priorities shift through the year and/or new opportunities arise.

This week I thoroughly enjoyed reading my first Hui-tanguru Pānui, and welcome future questions and discussion themes for me to ponder and respond to, through this channel 😊

I also spent some time this week meeting Jane Angel, the new Executive Director of CAUL (Council of Australian University Librarians). Jane and I shared a bit about our backgrounds, and I reflected with her on our (Aotearoa) bicultural commitment and what this means for our service and how we undertake our work.  I found our kōrero to be so uplifting, as CAUL seem very keen to learn how they can be more inclusive for Aotearoa membership and wonder how best that might be achieved.  I’ve started a discussion on this with CONZUL colleagues, to seek their views, and am finding this a very thoughtful and reflective process which I appreciate.

I also met today with Dr Katharina Stirland, Researcher Development Team Leader in the newly formed Te Kura Tāura (Graduate School).  Katharina (known as Kat, just to keep everyone around us on their toes!) and I identified numerous touchpoints and collaborations already in place between our teams (L, T & R and the Graduate School in particular).  We’re looking at coming together in an extended team hui in a few months, once Kat has appointed two new Kaitoko in her team, to support the ongoing development and delivery of this mahi.

Kia pai tō rā whakatā!

Kia Ora everybody. It has taken me a lot longer than it should have done but the Service Standards are finished and have been signed off by Managers.

Thank you to all of those who have contributed either with feedback or in our little working party. Special thanks to Sara who really took these on and kept them moving. The standards are designed to be a high-level approach to how we conduct our service. They will not be and cannot be encyclopaedic or capture every nuance. There is hopefully still grey left in there – which I think is a virtue rather than a flaw.

They will assuredly not be perfect. I have set a review date of November this year to look at these again and to fine-tune them after a year of experiencing them in our environment. I’d like us to give them a go until then. However, if there are any mistakes in people’s names or specialties in the Appendix, please let me know.

I have put them into the Files section of the Service Standards Channel of the All-Staff Team (2023 Library_Service etc., etc.). I had issues with CC this morning, so this post is a delayed one.

Ngā Mihi, Simon

Please note the Q section of books that was at the end of the Classroom Collection on level 4, is now situated between P and R on level 4, between the lifts.

Coming soon to a mahi tahi near you, here’s the freshly minted Library Operations Plan for 2023
Co-created by the Library Management Team, our Plan for this year seeks to strike a happy balance between aspirational and achievable. We want to acknowledge and value the crucial Business as Usual (BAU) mahi that we all undertake every day , as part of our core service and in line with our core values.
And we want to provide inspiring opportunities for strategic initiatives, and whole of team development programmes.
There is, we hope, something in here for everyone!
That said, this is an organic, living document which can and should evolve, as new opportunities arise and as Business from Leftfield (BFL) makes an unexpected appearance!
Any questions or comments most welcome 🙂
Kat and the Library Management Team

The Library Systems team is one staff member down at present and there is also a lot of work still to be done with troubleshooting VuFind and completing changing links in various places.  While there is added pressure on the team, there are a couple of things you can all help with to make things a little easier over the next few months.

• Please direct all emails to the shared email account (eservices@libr.canterbury.ac.nz) rather than to Romy, Donna or Leah individually.
• Please be patient, some requests may take a little longer to respond to.
• We will stop doing any enhancement requests to Horizon.  We will still fix any troubleshooting issues, but not do any development to the System and how it works, given the process to replace Horizon is now well underway.

Ngā mihi,
Jenny