Kia ora koutou

Summer sure is making its presence felt today… take care all, and rest, hydrate etc. as need be.

It’s been a busy week, and I’ve had a number of one-on-one catch ups with many of you.  I’m finding these kōrero a wonderful way to broaden my understanding of our service, history and context, and to get to know people!  Please feel free to book in a future catch up with me, if you’ve not had the chance already.

In other highlights this week, I spent some time in our Te Rua | Makerspace (ngā mihi Jessica and Rachel!), sewing myself a wheat pack. I really appreciated the chance for some hands-on experiential learning in our primo ‘bump space’.

A couple of Finance meetings took place, giving me a deep dive into our 2023 budget and financial reporting.  And I received an introduction to library projects and Project Board (ngā mihi, Stuart!).  I’m really impressed at the rigour here, to support us all to progress, monitor and deliver on various initiatives. Fab to see.

On that note (initiatives to deliver on), library managers will looking in detail over the next couple of weeks at finalising our Operational Plan for 2023. We have a hui coming up next week on our bicultural services mahi, and then the week following another hui is booked to draw all themes together for the coming year.

I’ve also been invited to present to SLT next Tuesday on my background, initial impressions here at UC Library (as described in my first “kōrero with Kat” column) and thoughts on our focus areas for the coming year.  This is essentially headlines from our 2023 Operational Plan, and as this takes further shape, we’ll look forward to sharing this with you all!

For now, I hope you’re finding some way/place to keep cool in this sultry weather. Have a safe and happy long weekend.

We have recently had a few queries about when the items in Store H will become available again that are currently tagged as temporarily unavailable. The availability will depend on the call number of the item.

The good news is that we have now unpacked some of the collection onto the shelves in the new Store H location (Otakaro Annex) and we hope to make the A-HM call number range available for requests again once term begins from 20 Feb 2023.  The HN-Z items will remain unavailable until further notice, and some may not be available until possibly May 2023 or later, but I can’t give an exact date at this stage.

Please continue to refer any requests for material to our Interloans team, and any questions about the Henry Field relocation to myself or Helen Thomas.

We are aware that this is a large inconvenience to our researchers to have this collection unavailable for such a long time (since 27/5/2022). It is definitely my priority to get this project finished as soon as possible.

Jenny Owens

**The Education Classroom/historical collections in Store H will remain unavailable

Kia Ora,

Thank you to those who have already put their hands up to help out but there is still plenty of room for more helpers!

O week, which will probably end up more like an O-Fortnight, is the library’s first chance each year to put on a welcoming face. It lets our students get to know us as recognisable individuals rather than as an institution. It could make a personal connection that makes it comfortable to be in here and easier to ask us for help.

Here’s what is on the cards so far:

• Guess the jellybean jars in all 3 libraries (plus the stall) – winner will get enough sugar to last them through the first assignment…
• Coloured pathways to help with queues and to help students navigate the enrolment processes that take place in PJH.
• More sugar to soothe frayed nerves while waiting in those queues.
• A relaxation lounge – with tea, coffee, water, juice and hot water set up to give a space to step out of the hurly-burly.
• Puna passport introducing the three libraries to students – this may be reworked a little
• UV markers to help students ID their laptops etc for the year ahead to guard against theft. (O Day Stall).
• O Day stall – 17 February most of the day
• Floating meet-and-greet station in the foyer. Something Sara and I tried for the UX course back in October which seemed to have potential. We will be the first people students see when they come in; the first welcome they get. That will make library staff the first people to be seen and identified – the first to make a connection, the first to help, direct and assist. For 99% of students, it will be a simple greeting or even just a smile. For those that look a bit overawed or uncertain, it could be a bit of a lifeline.

If there is an activity that you’d like to get involved with, let me know of put a comment on the Teams channel into the chat.

Right now, there is a word document in the Files area of the channel with a table for you to slot yourselves into for the O-Day stall (17 Feb) and our floating welcome desk in the foyer (13 to 25 Feb). No special skills are necessary! You don’t need to be a massive extrovert – just be able to smile, believe in what you do for a living and be ready to talk about it to total strangers!

Ka Kite, Simon

Kia ora koutou

If you are going to be remoting to your UC computer via go.canterbury.ac. this evening between 5pm and 9pm  – Digital Services are upgrading that system and have stated the following:

Users will be disconnected twice if using go.canterbury.ac.nz during the upgrade but will be able to log back in immediately.

Student remote access will be down for 30 minutes during this time.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Systems)

Kia Ora –

The AED Sara purchased late last year has finally been mounted in its cabinet (BEIMs be praised!).

It is mounted on Level 2, on the right-hand pillar as you approach the Te Pātaka desk, facing the entrance. This seemed the most obvious, visible, available position.

The cabinet is alarmed, and this will sound if someone opens the cabinet door. Should we wish to open the door for some reason without putting it into screeching error mode, then I have a [tiny] key in my top desk drawer that does this. I will move it to the keypress in our workroom as soon as I can find a key tag I can use and label.

Ngā Mihi, Simon.

Kia Ora all,

Since Meeting Room 9 is no longer present on the new booking system, I am just putting a post out here: on Friday 3rd February we will be using it all day for recruitment. 

I will put a handwritten note on the door too, as I take bold strides into the early 20th C of room management.

Please do let me know if this is going to cause any issues (like if you too wanted to use it for recruitment or some such), and we can probably work something out.

Ngā Mihi,

Dale

Kia Ora Koutou!

The Engagemnt Survey 2022 Teams is pleased to share with you all the final report from the Engagement Survey conducted in 2022. This report is a summary of the results as a full analysis would be significantly longer! As it is, we hope this repot can give you an overview of the results and an idea of further insights we can glean from them with some more focused analysis over the next year or more.

I have also sent a full staff invitation to a teams meeting where the survey team will report back on the findings, go through some more of the data with you all, and answer any questions.

This was a large project that took a lot of the latter half of last year to complete and I want to acknowledge all the support of the library managers, the work of the Survey team (Isabella Stainthorpe, Juliet Lackersteen, Margaret Paterson, Sarah Johnson, and Kerry Gilmour) and to thank all those who took part in the consultation meetings last year, as these were great for ensuring all the important mahi you do was represented in the survey, as well as all those who supported us as we engaged students with the survey.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me, and I will try to answer them at the report back hui on the 9th February.

You can find the report here: K:\Projects\Engagement_Survey_2022\Report_final_survey_2022.pdf

Dale and the Survey Team

Kia ora koutou

Wow – what a week!
I attended an Academic Board (AB) induction on Monday, where the VC shared her optimism for the year ahead, epitomised by 150^th celebrations, by our ability to re-galvanise in-person and kanohi ki te kanohi again (after various Covid disruptions over the last 3 years), and by our positive enrolment numbers which are tracking above target.

My main observations from this are that we have a flatter governance and reporting structure, and more membership and ‘voice’ at AB (50-80 attendees, depending on agenda items), than I’ve seen in other Universities. The emphasis on casting a pan-University lens over our full suite of academic endeavours was also evident, and the focus on consistency of practice, and consistently good practice.  Great to see!

I had the first of my regular fortnightly catch-ups with Ian earlier this week as well.  We focussed on the finance and health & safety aspects of my induction, and I’m pleased to report (after some excellent time with both Finance and Library colleagues) that I’m feeling well-informed and ready for action, on both scores.

I also shared with Ian feedback from many of you about how nice it was to see and hear from him at my wonderful welcome morning tea last week.  Ian said he’d be very happy to join us again at the next opportunity, to give a “state of the nation” update and answer questions.  We’ll keep this a promise!

And Ian will arrange some time on an upcoming Senior Leadership Team (SLT) agenda for me to meet & greet the leadership team and share my initial impressions and focus for the coming year.  I’ve shared a bit of the former in my column here last week, and will be sure to share the latter also, in future columns.

Other hui this week included:

• a couple with Elizabeth Hopkins (Director of Research and Innovation) for a meet & greet, and to look (along with Helen, Stuart and Kiera) at our reporting KPIs and what else we might be keen and able to track in terms of research funding, outputs and open access activity
• My first of the weekly catch-ups with Te Pātaka leads, which focussed on O-Week activities and an agreement on the importance of lots of visible staff (e.g. wearing large lanyards) to provide manaakitanga and ‘sense-making’ help to all our newcomers coming to campus
• An initial meeting with Dana Burnett (Director of Product and Delivery) and Nancy Godwin (Product Manager UC Online) to talk through all the exciting digital initiatives ahead for 2023 and start thinking about library input and support for UC Online

Outreach, connection, relationship-building and awareness-raising are all themes that have cropped up in many kōrero with various folks over the last two weeks, and I was delighted to see the culmination of these ideas in the launch of our UC Library Marketing Group Engagement Strategy 2023-2025 this week!  This is really impressive mahi, with so many hands/minds/hearts clearly involved, and such explicit connection into the UC values of manaakitanga, whanaungatanga and tiakitanga. I look forward to seeing this strategy guide and enable our efforts in this important area.

Finally, I’ve been really delighted by the spontaneous “kia ora” chats I’ve enjoyed with many of you, and have received a few calendar bookings to have a longer chat together in the next week or so.  Please do feel most welcome to flick me an invite, to get to know each other better as a first priority, rather than necessarily talk too much about work (but happy to do so, too!).

And I can’t pass up the opportunity now to comment on this weather.  Glorious!  I do hope you have something lovely lined up for the weekend ahead. Mā te wā!

The Love to Ride challenge starts on Wednesday 1 Feb. Information : Love to Ride NZ. We currently have 24 library riders in our team.

The aim of the challenge is to help people discover the joy of riding and get out there and try it.  If that’s not your thing, but you still have access to a bike, logging one ride still puts you in the running to win prizes (e.g. sweet turntable, clothes vouchers plus bike stuff)

If you need help registering, some advice on the best commuter routes, or just where nearby is fun to take your whānau for a weekend pootle, I’m happy to help.

Ngā mihi, Helen