Newsletter No. 105

CUHK Newsletter No. 105 4th April 1997 3 TheUniversity Librarian isAnxious that You Know What's Going On Inside the Librar y New circulation counter Anyone who has been trying to steal books from the University Library must have noticed that the process has become so much of an ordeal in recent years— with locked windows and an alarm system— that it is not worth the trouble. Anyone who has been deliberately hiding books or the cards in the card catalogue now finds the little game rendered futile by improved stack management and the online catalogue. Anyone who has been conning their way into the libraries with an invalid library card will be caught beginning next semester by a scanner that reads the barcode on library cards. A lthough 'New Developments in the University Library System as Seen through the Eyes of an Academic L ow - L i f e' can be a potentially stimulating piece, it falls short of capturing all the wonderful and exciting changes that have actually taken place in the library. For example, the acquisition and cataloguing of books and other materials is now three to four times faster than, say, four years ago. Whereas it took six months to a year for a book to make its way to a shelf, it now takes about three months on the average, and sometimes only a month. Instead of requesting the use of a key-counter to make photocopies in the library, teaching staff can use their own stored-value cards. Departments can obtain the cards for their staff from the library and pay direct to the Accounts Office. And of course no overview of the library's developments is complete without mentioning computerization. A ll modules on the I BM mainframe Dobis/E system have been migrated to the user-friendly INNOPAC library system, resulting in greater efficiency and improved services. There are currently over 350 terminals in the different libraries on campus and users can search the on-line catalogue in Chinese, English, Japanese, French, and Italian. The card catalogues, to which no addition has been made in the last seven to eight years, will be completely replaced by the end of 1997 when all the records of books written in Chinese will have been included on the library database. Staff-saving e-mail is now used to handle communication between the library and its users, such as reference enquiries, requests for books, circulation notices, overdue notices, suggestions and complaints. Accessible through all the library's computer terminals are full-text databases as well as citations and ULS holdings. Users can search multiple databases simultaneously and there are FirstSearch databases to supplement the library collection. There are also changes in the main library's physical layout, including a revamped circulation counter, two new user-education rooms for regular library skills seminars, compact shelves on the lower ground floor for bound journals, as well as a renovated and expanded audio-visual department. 'We're evolving every day,' says University Librarian Dr. Michael Lee. In effect, plans for most of these major changes were drawn up three and a half years ago, when Dr. Lee assumed office in the library 一 a point perhaps more pertinent than his modesty would allow him to admit. But how does the library involve its users in its perpetual evolvement? How does it for example help those who are pining away in nostalgia for those quaint little card catalogue drawers? 'User education,' says Mrs. Melissa Ng, senior sub-librarian. Mrs. Ng, who has been with the library for over 25 years, has been busy planning and organizing seminars to teach users how to utilize the new technology. She continues, 'For promotion and education purposes, we are running library skills seminars and have sent the schedules of these seminars to teaching staff and students. We hold four orientation sessions daily for the first three weeks of each semester in the new user education rooms. We also hold workshops for graduate and undergraduate students three or four times per week in October and November. Besides we run sessions at the request of staff members.' There are also brochures, on-line assistance, and new signage to help users find their way, both figuratively and literally. In short, the library is not the mysterious, labyrinthine product of Borges's world if users would acquire the right skills 一 'would' because, according to Dr. Lee and Mrs. Ng, user education is difficult to promote. 'The library is not a restaurant that clients can choose not to visit if they don't care for it,' observes Dr. Lee. 'Yet we can't force people to learn how to use the new technology. We try our best to promote our services but it is sometimes very difficult. We often wish library skills could be made a required course for students, because this is the way libraries develop.' The adoption of new technology and the change in operational procedures have also resulted in greater management efficiency. 'We've been able to reduce staff by around two persons per year for three years now,' says Dr. Lee. 'We're the first unit in the University that has achieved staff reduction and increased productivity at the same time.' It is doubtless desirable not to fall behind the times but the other side of the coin is keeping up. In face of a budget cut, Dr. Lee's concern is precisely that: 'Keeping up with new technology requires having an ample budget to buy new equipment, software, furniture, and so on .' And then there is the all-time Hong Kong problem—space. 'The whole University is suffering from a shortage of space. The library is no exception. Students are fighting for space everywhere, and with our budget, we add around 60,000 books every year. Naturally we need more shelving and studying space,' Dr. Lee points out. Despite these constraints, the library will continue to enhance existing services and launch new ones because, to quote Dr. Lee, 'Change is the only permanence.' Piera Chen