Macquarie University Library - figures and organisational structure

The third library I was visiting in Sydney was Macquarie University Library. 

The university was established in 1964 and has about 40,000 students and a bit more than 4,000 staff.

The library was established in 1967, and in 2011 a new library building was opened. This building has five floors and each featuring colour-coded furniture and signage. The library offers 2,800 (!) seats and two service desks. The number of full time equivalent staff is 129.

The library was the first one in Australia to purchase and use an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). As you can read on the webpage: "This key innovation allows the Library’s whole collection to be stored on site and be immediately accessible. Items stored in this system are referred to as the Automated Retrieval Collection (ARC). You can request an item from the ARC online via the Library Catalogue. You can also view the ASRS from two viewing windows outside the western side of the Library if you are curious."

Another very interesting thing is that you cannot only book one of the 200 computers, but also Ultrabooks and iPads (24 hour loan) and Muse Meditation Headbands (maximum period of 16 weeks).

At the moment there are two Associate University Librarian under the University Librarian, one for Information Access & Advisory Services and one for Collections, Discovery and Technology Services.  I don't have an online version of the chart, so please ask me for the print version. It's very big since they have ALL staff (with their names) included in the chart, something I found cool. In this way everybody can feel being an important part of the library.

Under the Associate University Librarian for Information Access & Advisory services there is one manager for Information Access Services and one for Advisory Services. The liaison librarians or Library Discipline Groups are under the latter one. The groups include research librarians, service librarians and clinical librarians (in the group for medicine, health sciences and human sciences).

Before the restructure liaison librarians did all the traditional tasks regarding learning, teaching and research support. Now there is a Information Literacy Support & Development team that works on research and learning support. That means this team creates learning materials, gives advice to the discipline groups/research librarians, offers tailored support, and it gives generic courses to undergraduate students.

More about the discipline groups and their research and learning/teaching support in the next blogpost.