Wednesday 14 December 2016
UWA: Information and Digital Literacy
As in all the other university libraries I have visited, there are research committees and teaching and learning committees at all faculties and library staff are members of the various committees.
As I have said before we should try to get invited to similar groups/committees at NTNU. Many researchers and teachers at NTNU don't know what the library and librarians can offer, and being part of these committees would help communicating our services and skills.
Also LibGuides are a very important tool or service for both students and staff at the university. There are LibGuides for all major subjects and general topics like reference management, citation styles or "Getting started in the library". Have a look here for all LibGuides:
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/information-resources/guides
I have been talking about LibGuides for many years, and I have suggested several times to purchase this tool. LibGuides are useful and professionally designed, and they are used in very many libraries/universities worldwide.
Under "Student learning" on UWA's webpage you find "StudySmarter" that helps UWA students getting more out of their study, communication, maths, English language, writing and research skills.
Under that page you have a service called WRITESmart. This service offers drop-in sessions, workshops and other programmes for all students.
Drop-in sessions are offered on weekdays between 10am and 12pm at the Reid Library (biggest branch library at UWA). One will get expert advice and feedback on assignments, study, research and referencing.
The free practical workshops provided are open to all students and there is a huge range of topics covered each semester. Here you have the detailed plan from August to November 2016:
http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2903430/ProgramCalendar_2016_Sem2.pdf
UWA Library will also start working on Curriculum Mapping soon, together with teachers and other university staff. If you do not quite know what Curriculum Mapping means, here you have some links to definitions and explanations:
http://edglossary.org/curriculum-mapping/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_mapping
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/virtualwkshp/curriculum_mapping.shtml
I also got to know that at Curtain University senior librarians have an office in the various faculties. We have been discussing "office time" (kontortid) at NTNU University Library for a long time, but only a few subjects librarians have established this.
As I have said before we should try to get invited to similar groups/committees at NTNU. Many researchers and teachers at NTNU don't know what the library and librarians can offer, and being part of these committees would help communicating our services and skills.
Also LibGuides are a very important tool or service for both students and staff at the university. There are LibGuides for all major subjects and general topics like reference management, citation styles or "Getting started in the library". Have a look here for all LibGuides:
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/information-resources/guides
I have been talking about LibGuides for many years, and I have suggested several times to purchase this tool. LibGuides are useful and professionally designed, and they are used in very many libraries/universities worldwide.
So I still don't understand why we can't have them at NTNU!!!
Under "Student learning" on UWA's webpage you find "StudySmarter" that helps UWA students getting more out of their study, communication, maths, English language, writing and research skills.
Under that page you have a service called WRITESmart. This service offers drop-in sessions, workshops and other programmes for all students.
Drop-in sessions are offered on weekdays between 10am and 12pm at the Reid Library (biggest branch library at UWA). One will get expert advice and feedback on assignments, study, research and referencing.
The free practical workshops provided are open to all students and there is a huge range of topics covered each semester. Here you have the detailed plan from August to November 2016:
http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2903430/ProgramCalendar_2016_Sem2.pdf
As you can see, some of these workshops are like the ones that the Student Service at NTNU is offering. We really should collaborate much more with them!
UWA Library will also start working on Curriculum Mapping soon, together with teachers and other university staff. If you do not quite know what Curriculum Mapping means, here you have some links to definitions and explanations:
http://edglossary.org/curriculum-mapping/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_mapping
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/virtualwkshp/curriculum_mapping.shtml
Does anybody know whether NTNU does Curriculum Mapping? Then we should be part of this work!
I also got to know that at Curtain University senior librarians have an office in the various faculties. We have been discussing "office time" (kontortid) at NTNU University Library for a long time, but only a few subjects librarians have established this.
Thursday 8 December 2016
UWA: Communication, Marketing and Outreach
On another day I had a meeting with Alissa and with Katie, and we talked about the Library's Social Media Strategy and the University Library Engagement Framework.
The UWA Library currently maintains two official social media accounts, one on Facebook (only one for the library!) and one on Twitter.
There is a social media team in charge of the accounts and each member works two shifts per week. Unfortunately I can't remember how many people are in the team and how many hours these shifts last. Anyway, the team is is responsible for monitoring the official feeds daily, creating frequent interesting content (at least three posts per day on Twitter and one unique post on Facebook per day), and responding to direct messages from clients within a certain time. This team also represents UWA Library on other social media accounts, like the UWA Students page.
Most important: there is a social media activity plan, that means much of the content throughout the year is planned.
It was also interesting to hear about an informal survey the library has conducted in 2013. This survey revealed that Facebook was the fourth most popular method that students would like to engage with the library - after email, in person and via askUWA. The survey also showed that students were interested in hearing about opening hours (84%), new resources (84%), new services (82%), IT outages (80%), research support (72%) and ebooks (61%). They were less interested in connecting with staff (33%) and finding out about library news and events (37%).
In addition, there is a YouTube account for UWA Library. You will find lots of useful and interesting videos there and we can get nice ideas for our own videos that we hopefully will produce soon!
I liked very much the video for new students that was called Information Services Undergraduate Orientation or the one about Open Access Funding Mandates and the UWA Research Repository. Just type UWA Library on youtube.com and you will see all the videos, either made by the library or the university.
Another interesting thing is that there is a "Research Week" at UWA once a year. Then the UWA Library runs a session about how to use social media.
This framework is such a useful document and I was impressed by its content. The chapter "About the Engagement Framework" of one of the first versions of the framework states:
"The University Library's Strategic Directions 2015-2010 outline the rationale for stakeholders engagement:
Our aim is to provide innovative and relevant library services to support the University of Western Australia to be a leading global university. This will be achieved through the provision of excellent staff, services, collections and spaces and a focus on the deep understanding of user needs through collaboration and partnership.
This document sets out an engagement framework in supporting of meeting this aim. The Library has a wide range of mechanisms and channels for engagement, and recognises that it needs strategic, consistent and systematic ways to engage with stakeholders and communicate its value on campus.
By establishing and regularly reviewing our engagement framework in the context of UWA strategies and priorities, the Library will be better positioned to communicate effectively about the Library's value and contribution.
This is an internal document for Library staff. It will be updated regularly to reflect current engagement priorities and messages. This document will enable staff to communicate key points effectively in these engagements. It is not intended to be prescriptive but to support Library staff in communicating around our wide range of services."
By working with this document all library staff will have better knowledge about priorities and key messages of the library's services and engagements. And thus the staff is able to communicate the library's value and offered services much better.
Social Media Strategy
The UWA Library currently maintains two official social media accounts, one on Facebook (only one for the library!) and one on Twitter.
There is a social media team in charge of the accounts and each member works two shifts per week. Unfortunately I can't remember how many people are in the team and how many hours these shifts last. Anyway, the team is is responsible for monitoring the official feeds daily, creating frequent interesting content (at least three posts per day on Twitter and one unique post on Facebook per day), and responding to direct messages from clients within a certain time. This team also represents UWA Library on other social media accounts, like the UWA Students page.
Most important: there is a social media activity plan, that means much of the content throughout the year is planned.
A very good example of what to use Twitter for is to tweet about the most used/accessed document in the institutional repository once a week. We could do this as well!!!
It was also interesting to hear about an informal survey the library has conducted in 2013. This survey revealed that Facebook was the fourth most popular method that students would like to engage with the library - after email, in person and via askUWA. The survey also showed that students were interested in hearing about opening hours (84%), new resources (84%), new services (82%), IT outages (80%), research support (72%) and ebooks (61%). They were less interested in connecting with staff (33%) and finding out about library news and events (37%).
In addition, there is a YouTube account for UWA Library. You will find lots of useful and interesting videos there and we can get nice ideas for our own videos that we hopefully will produce soon!
I liked very much the video for new students that was called Information Services Undergraduate Orientation or the one about Open Access Funding Mandates and the UWA Research Repository. Just type UWA Library on youtube.com and you will see all the videos, either made by the library or the university.
Another interesting thing is that there is a "Research Week" at UWA once a year. Then the UWA Library runs a session about how to use social media.
University Library Engagement Framework
"The University Library's Strategic Directions 2015-2010 outline the rationale for stakeholders engagement:
Our aim is to provide innovative and relevant library services to support the University of Western Australia to be a leading global university. This will be achieved through the provision of excellent staff, services, collections and spaces and a focus on the deep understanding of user needs through collaboration and partnership.
This document sets out an engagement framework in supporting of meeting this aim. The Library has a wide range of mechanisms and channels for engagement, and recognises that it needs strategic, consistent and systematic ways to engage with stakeholders and communicate its value on campus.
By establishing and regularly reviewing our engagement framework in the context of UWA strategies and priorities, the Library will be better positioned to communicate effectively about the Library's value and contribution.
This is an internal document for Library staff. It will be updated regularly to reflect current engagement priorities and messages. This document will enable staff to communicate key points effectively in these engagements. It is not intended to be prescriptive but to support Library staff in communicating around our wide range of services."
By working with this document all library staff will have better knowledge about priorities and key messages of the library's services and engagements. And thus the staff is able to communicate the library's value and offered services much better.
I mean this should be a matter of course, but in real life it often is not.
I have a print version of the Engagement Framework and you are welcome to borrow it.
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