Kia ora koutou

The new catalogue is unable to process renewals for overdue items  – this is something Horizon enforces so will probably take a while to work around.   We didn’t pick up on it in initial testing as it only happens when DayEnd has run and generated an overdue item block for the items (renewals do work on items with edited back due dates).

In the meantime, we have edited the error message (for those items to the below (alas we can’t put in the actual clickable link to the old my account, plain text only in these error messages)

This item could not be renewed: Item is overdue and currently cannot be renewed here – please renew via Old Library Catalogue link in footer or contact library staff.

We will keep working on a solution as realise this is not ideal for our users.

NB: looking into this today has also delayed our plans to identify adn fix items with too long due dates from last week’s American date format renewal issue – apologies for the delay on this.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Systems)

Kia ora koutou,

An update on Romy’s earlier post about the issues people were reporting with renewals.

The issue is now resolved thanks to a mammoth effort today by Romy and Margaret Adam.

There will be a bit of work to do early next week to fix up some of the due dates as a result of the issues (caused by some pesky American date formatting).

Ngā mihi nui,

Leah (on behalf of Library Systems)

Kia ora koutou

A nice short week, though I am feeling as though five days’ mahi crammed itself somehow into four calendar days!  And I sense it’s a “buckle your seatbelts” moment for what’s ahead over the coming few weeks, with Eke Panuku and a number of Orientation celebrations and activities taking place.  I’ll be out and about as much as poss for this and know you all will be too.  It’s such a key opportunity in the university calendar for us to be visible, make connections and share proudly the range of valuable services and support we offer!

On Tuesday this week, I presented to SLT (senior leadership team) about myself, my first impressions of UC life (as shared here in my first “kōrero with Kat” column) and the focus areas that are already in train, or emerging, for 2023.  These focus areas are shared below and will take shape as our Library Operations Plan for the year ahead.

It was also signalled at this SLT meeting that an external peer review of the Library will take place during the year ahead.  There are four main outcomes sought from this peer review.  Findings will enable us to:

• Define our value proposition and service offer, and share this so that we (library staff) can see where we contribute and can on-share this message with our community
• Ensure our services, people, content, spaces, technology align directly with the University’s strategic priorities
• Flexibly reconfigure our physical spaces in all UC Library locations, to best meet student learning needs at different stages of their university experience
• Ensure we are as effective and as efficient as we can be

I see this as a great opportunity, as findings from this peer review will ‘future-shape’ and clearly define our strategic focus. It is early days – the terms of reference and scope are yet to be drafted – but I’d welcome any kōrero and pātai you may have about this. This could be together with colleagues, your manager, or one-on-one.

And here are the emergent, or in-train, focus areas for 2023 (in no presumed order of priority):

• Continuing UX of our physical and digital environments, to inform design, wayfinding, visual identity and layouts of buildings and systems, to provide manaakitanga for all
• Focus on bicultural library service development & delivery, and developing our teamwide cultural competence and confidence (Library managers had a planning hui on this earlier today)
• Library Management System (Horizon replacement) project
• Activate our UC Library Engagement Strategy to increase connection with our university community
• Undertake workforce planning & development – with a focus on change and change leadership, and bicultural competence – to support our staff hauora wellbeing and success
• Review our internal library communications/governance – are our comms channels and meeting set-ups working well or do they need a revamp?
• Increase awareness of Open Access publishing and its positive social and research impacts, and support our UC research community to submit more outputs more regularly into the UC Research Repository
• Increase awareness and use/creation of Open Educational Resources to support our curricula

This afternoon I attended my first Academic Board meeting, so regrettably missed the Digital Library UX (user experience) workshop some of you participated in today. I did however get a preview session with Rhiannon from Purple Shirt UX yesterday, so have had the chance to share some of my views already. Looking forward to seeing what emerges this afternoon too!

Have a great weekend all.  Enjoy the slightly cooler, but still lovely, weather.

Kia ora koutou

Users have reported getting the following error message when trying to renew items on the new catalogue this morning:

“Connection to the library management system failed. Information related to your library account cannot be displayed. If the problem persists, please contact your library”

I will investigate and attempt to fix but this may require Margaret intervention and she is not working today.  In the meantime if you get queries from users – please give them the old My Account link or renew items on their behalf in Horizon https://ipac.canterbury.ac.nz/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=a&menu=account
If the problem persists, I will add the old link to the error message or somewhere else in the Your Account menu .

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Systems)

The NZLPP Project is a programme of work to inform and change UC Libraries’ practice and service design to achieve better outcomes for Māori communities.

This hui is open to all UC Library staff who are interested in learning more about the New Zealand Libraries Partnership Programme (NZLPP) and University of Canterbury Library’s research project.

Come along on Thursday 16th February, 10-11am, to find out about the objectives of the project, progress to date, and what is coming up in 2023.

Everyone is welcome, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Please RSVP by accepting or declining the Outlook calendar appointment to let us know whether you’re coming.

Ngā mihi nui.

I have been weeding the classroom collection (non-fiction children’s books) over the summer. The withdrawn titles are progressively being plonked on the floor on L5. Thanks to all the folk in ELS who are doing much of the mahi. Also in the fray are some CD’s,  DVD’s and posters. This is a reminder to everyone that you are free to come and fossick.

Kia ora koutou,

UC is undertaking a project to implement a document management system that will ensure we can store, find, and manage our documents in an easy and intuitive way(!).  The plan is to use SharePoint and to create a taxonomy for use across all functions of the university.

This is a massive (and possibly thankless) task, and past experience shows us that it is not easy to create a system that is used consistently by all and enables us to be compliant with our document management obligations.

The first step of this project is to create the taxonomy that represents the work of the university.  Dale, Erin and I have met with the project team to discuss what the Library needs from a taxonomy and we have agreed some top-level functions.

If you are interested to see the structure so far, or to have a chat about the project and what it means for us, please get in touch.

We expect this work to continue for some years as our document systems are reorganised retrospectively.

Ngā mihi,

Sara

On Monday (13th February) the ELS team will be inducting new staff and part of the induction will be Health and Safety procedures. I will host this session 11.20am-12.20pm and staff who would like a refresher or update are most welcome to come.

Tim O’Sullivan

Kia ora koutou

From tomorrow morning we will begin replacing links to the old catalogue to the new one in places.  We’ll start with the library website links to Library Catalogue and MyLibrary Account and MultiSearch (this needs to be done by external vendors so not entirely sure when the change will kick in there).  Then incrementally approach links in other places like library notices/etxts, library web pages (e.g. instructional pages), LEARN, LibGuides, and many more.  We’ll be trying to use bulk/batch changes as much as we can to avoid individual staff having to edit every single one of their links – aiming to get as much done as we can before term starts.  This work will take a fair while and we will not be switching off the old catalogue until that is complete.

We have put out communications on Tū ki te tahi, Library News and submitted a post to Tūpono (hasn’t been accepted for publish yet at time of writing) about the upcoming change.  We are aiming to do some social media posts for students once more of them are back on campus too.

RE MyLists from the old catalogue – we looked into bulk migrating these across but it is just too complicated to do en masse.  The best thing for users to do is to recreate the lists via the new catalogue (it is much easier to do this there and also can just save the search itself as an easier alternative to individual items).  We should be able to do a workaround for people who have a lot of short lists (basically pulling out all the bib numbers from their MyLists and constructing a VuFind saved search link) so if you get queries from concerned old catalogue users you can forward them to eservices@libr.canterbury.ac.nz

Thanks for all your help and feedback testing out the new catalogue.  It is still very much a work in progress and a learning experience for our team and we’ll continue to make tweaks to it as we go on.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Systems)

Kia Ora Koutou,

On Friday what with the heat, and the need to get some sort of fresh air, the doors and windows were open onto the patio / balcony areas. They were still open on Saturday morning when the team came into work. Security should have caught this on their second sweep through the building (we don’t check L5 as part of our closing down routine) but they did not.

If it is close to home time, and you notice the doors and windows open in the tearoom or around the office space, please do take the opportunity to close everything up. These are mostly internal facing spaces, so our risk from international grade cat-burglars is probably low. Hower, the risk from a sudden change in the weather or sparrows is something more to be reckoned with.

Ngā Mihi, Simon