4.1.4 Professional Partnerships
Shehaamah Mohamed, the Snr Librarian: Information Literacy, has contributed to an Information Literacy Task team of LIASA. The task team is responsible for designing an information literacy framework for South Africa. A short survey was administered to the 23 University libraries to establish which frameworks are in use and to determine what the respondents would like to see in a SA Framework. At UWC, where we aim to embed information literacy and work in partnership with academics, it would be advisable to avoid any overly prescriptive, library-centric framework. Mrs Mohamed continues to network with
individual counterparts at Univ of Fort Hare and University of Pretoria who have issued her standing invitations to present on the ACRL Framework and her work at UWC.
5. PROCESSES
5.1.5 Processing
Binding: The library is no longer binding paper theses and only a few selected printed journal titles are still bound. With the emphasis on purchasing ebooks, the prospects for the Bindery need to be determined. In response to declining monthly statistics over the 2016-2017 period, one staff member was transferred to Acquisitions department. The financial costs of repairing broken books should also be reviewed, since Bindery staff report that many of the books brought to them for repair were either beyond repair or not worth repairing, based on the level of use. The hidden costs, including expensive binding materials as well as staff time should be considered when sending older books for repair. A total of 4,806 items were processed during 2017, including repairs and soft binding done by request of departments.
5.3 Library ICT
5.3.1 Alma Library Management System (LMS)
UWC Library migrated from Ex Libris’ ALEPH to Alma, Ex Libris’ new cloud-based LMS. This was a 5 month project with “go-live” in November 2017. Throughout the project Ex Libris communicated through weekly virtual status meetings which kept the library implementation group on track. Since three CHEC institutions had opted to take the journey together, the weekly meetings were conducted inter-institutionally, a factor that tended to inhibit UWC library staff participation. Ex Libris presented one joint 3 day training period in August but a large component of the capacitation was self-managed in that staff in functional areas were required to watch training videos and read technical literature in the Ex Libris Knowledge Centre. Three Library IT staff completed the online Alma certification course and passed the examination. After this, Ex Libris gave these individual system administration rights to control the local setup. The transition to the new system went fairly smoothly with only minor incidents occurring. After go live in November, the system adminstrators have been tweaking functionality and seeing to data clean-ups etc. Self-training is ongoing in order to make full use of alma/primo/analytics capabilities e.g. functional training, javascript programming, xslt scripting etc. The IT staff report that the Alma/Primo implementation project was challenging, but also very enjoyable. To ease some of their regular tasks, a professionally trained IT technician was seconded from another library department. From a manager perspective, the project was a very intensive process that consumed many hours each week and this impacted on other areas of library functioning and development (opportunity costs). The intention is to improve existing library workflows through continuous learning.
5.3.2 Knowledge Commons (KC)
The Knowledge Commons Lab represents the core of IT within the Library. The focus has been placed more on the needs of the students and the service levels in the KC. The student assistants who are rostered to work as peer navigators form a vital part of the student experience. The group was coached on customer service skills, and given an introduction to IT. E-Learning staff provided further in-depth training regarding typical problems experienced by students. The introduction of flexible rosters and a whatsapp communication between staff greatly boosted the morale of the team and staff were clear about the rules and expectations and became more motivated. Visitors to the library remark on the productive environment in the KC.
Printing
Print jobs at the release stations in the KC were slow thus creating long queues. If one printer went down it would also slow down the time it would take print jobs to be released from the printers. It was decided to install printers at three clusters for a trial period in order to see if it would alleviate the printing queues at the release stations. Positive feedback was received from the students and so a further 5 printers were added to five more clusters. The goal for 2018 is to have a printer at each cluster as this seems the best solution for limiting or ending the long printer queues in Knowledge Commons. Lexmark printers will be phased out and replaced with Samsung printers.
PC Reservation
The library is the only area on campus where students may reserve a PC and thus be guaranteed access to a networked PC and printer. The system for managing student PC reservations (both in the KC and on the other levels) was upgraded to permit greater flexibility in bookings. Since the implementation of the new system, LICT is better able to regulate PC resources and promote fair use for all students. Innovative functionality has allowed to team to explore avenues in bettering the student experience and service. This includes options for block bookings - when students need to write online tests and exams, relaxed times – options to extend sessions during quiet times and many more. The total number of logins by students inside the library amounted to 182,833 for the year, roughly averaging at just over 5,000 logins a week spread across the 9 months representing the academic year (ie, excluding June/July, December and January).