Notes From The Library, Issue No. 79

Abstract

[evdate 2011-02-15] Notes from the Library Year of the Rabbit Issue No. 79 February 2011 http://library.ust.hk/

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Table of Contents The Big Move - Where are the Books? <#feature> BookTalk - Principle of Relevance <#booktalk> Collection Spotlight: Leisure Reading <#spotlight> VuFind for HKIR <#vufind> President's Cup in Digital Archives <#archives> Database Updates <#updates> Security and Behavior <#security> Helping Students to Give Effective Presentations <#presentations> Construction Updates <#construction>

The Big Move - Where are the Books

Construction for the new Learning Commons on LG1 will occur throughout the summer of 2011. The bound periodicals will be moved to the compact shelves on LG4, but we need to make space there first. The Library has already reached over 90% of its shelving capacity in all areas, and more than 80,000 volumes need to be relocated to create space for the Learning Commons.

Big Move - Shelving Ready on LG5

The Library has done a review of the collection on a massive scale. A consultation process with the University administrators, faculty members and departments was completed in November. The finalized lists of items that need to be stored include: journals with complete run of electronic coverage; and books which are dated, low-use, duplicates, earlier editions, and inactive reference. These items have to be picked from all the floors throughout the Library and relocated to an offsite facility.

Space also needs to be made on LG4 to house all the bound periodicals from LG1. Therefore Library items in LG3 and LG4 need to be moved, squeezed, and reshuffled in order to create that space. It is a massive moving project involving the whole collection of over 600,000 volumes.

The 80,000 volumes will initially be housed in LG5 of the Library Extension while a storage facility is built next to the Library on LG3. In the longer term, these stored materials will be housed in the Joint Universities Research Archive (JURA), a central storage facility proposed by the eight UGC-funded university libraries and supported by UGC.

Big Move - Moving Items Out

On January 3 the big move was launched with many library staff and student helpers working 160 hours per day in shifts. The pick teams pick items from the shelves according to the lists provided. Picked items are scanned into a program for updating the Library Catalog with changes in location and status. The move teams transport the items through the elevators to the Library Extension in LG5. The squeeze teams squeeze remaining items on the shelves and reshuffle the rest of the collection. With a daily average of 8,000 volumes relocated, we expect to have the project done before the end of February.

Big Move - LOading the New Shelves

Items in storage will show a location of 'On call collection' in the Library Catalog and can be requested. You can enter your ITSC user name and password when requesting these items, which will be delivered to the Circulation counter for pickup in one working day.

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BookTalk - Principle of Relevance

Do you suffer from information overload? Do you sometimes feel that you have lost control of your time barely treading water in a sea of emails, text messages and phone calls? On February 22nd, at 5:30pm in the Library Gallery, Ms Stefania Lucchetti will talk about how to manage our time and attention better. She will discuss her recent work, /The Principle of Relevance,/ copies of which will be available for sale and signing.

In March, Ms Lucchetti will also offer two workshops in conjunction with the Undergraduate Core Education Office. The first, 'Ideas to Reality', will be held on five Tuesdays in March: (March 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 ). It will teach students how to bring their ideas closer to fruition. The second workshop, 'Self Leadership Starts From Owning Your Time', will be held on five Thursdays in March (March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31).

This is the seventh in an occasional series of BookTalks (http://library.ust.hk/info/booktalk/) </info/booktalk/> given at HKUST Library. At each booktalk, we invite an author to share with us on the book he or she has written, and sometimes their experiences and beliefs about books and reading in general.

The sixth BookTalk, 'Murder on the High Seas: The Joy of Reading' was given last November 18th, by Dr David Mole, HKUST's Associate Provost (Teaching and Learning), who shared his love of detective and adventure fiction to a fascinated gathering. Opening with the memorable statement 'This is not a book cover, it is a door', and sometimes reading examples from some of his favorite stories, he led the audience on a tour of great novels and stories.

Book Talk - author David Mole

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Collection Spotlight: Leisure Reading

'A book holds a house of gold.' Italo Calvino and Charles Van Doren cannot agree more with this Chinese proverb. Their books /Why read the classics? <http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/bib/b860067>/ (PN81 .C25513 2000) and /The joy of reading: a passionate guide to 189 of the world's best authors and their works <http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/bib/b1079599>/ (Z1035 .V26 2008eb) lay a feast of books before us. Explore these personalized guides to see if they can ignite (or re-ignite) your interest in classics. You may even build your own reading list or 10-year reading plan!

If classics and literature sound daunting, turn to the Library's wide selection of popular novels, and enjoy the gripping experience of a compelling page turner. As an academic library, our collection is naturally geared towards study and research. Yet to nurture whole-person development, the Library also buys popular books to promote reading for enjoyment and enrichment. You can find works of literary giants together with bestsellers like the Harry Potter series, /The Lost Symbol/, and /The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/. The Library carefully selects prize winners and long-standing bestsellers from authoritative reviews. Visit the Leisure Reading page at http://library.ust.hk/info/leisure.html </info/leisure.html> to learn more.

Worth special mention is our collection on science fiction and crime and mystery novels. The Library collects every winner from the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C Clarke awards. All three are prestigious international Sci-Fi prizes. To get started, check out /Anatomy of wonder : a critical guide to science fiction <http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/bib/b857789>/ (PN3433.8 .A52 2004). As for the genre of crime and mystery, apart from works of western icons in the rank of Agatha Christie and P. D. James, we recently added many works of 東野圭吾 and 松本清張 two Japanese masters of this genre.

If you think the Library should add a certain title, please send your suggestion to LBCOLL@ust.hk <mailto:LBCOLL@ust.hk>. Happy 2011! Happy reading!

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VuFind for HKIR

Do you know the names of the researchers in the eight Hong Kong universities who have produced the most journal articles? What are the top research topics at HKU, CUHK and HKUST? Where can I get a list of publications by a HKUST researcher? The answers to these and similar questions can be found in a single place, with the recent release of the /Hong Kong Institutional Repositories (HKIR)/ search interface (http://hkir.ust.hk/) <http://hkir.ust.hk/>.

HKIR is a meta-index to the institutional repositories of the eight government-funded universities. It was developed and maintained by the HKUST Library since 2006, covering citations of journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, books, patents and others published by researchers of the eight universities. The new search interface has greatly enhanced searching capability. Based on the open source software /VuFind/, provides faceted browsing and other Web 2.0 features, making it easier to find information and perform analysis.

The HKIR cross-searching system is made possible by individual institutions' efforts in building their own repositories of research output. HKUST was the first in Hong Kong to establish its /Institutional Repository/ (http://repository.ust.hk/) <http://repository.ust.hk/>, which was created in 2003 and contains openly accessible full-text documents of HKUST scholarly output.

To expand its coverage, the Library is now building the /Scholarly Publications Index/ of HKUST researchers. It is a joint project of VPRGO and the Library to provide a complete list of the University's research publications through these years with citation counts and links to the full text articles. This Index is also available in the HKIR, although it is still under construction and we are working through various sources to improve its comprehensiveness.

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President's Cup in Digital Archives

The University Archives (http://library.ust.hk/archives/) </archives/> is a permanent repository for all important University records, documents and publications. In addition to institutional records, the Archives also collects personal papers, memoirs, and other materials that are of significance to the teaching, research and administration of the University.

Since last year, Archives staff, in collaboration with the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education, have been working to preserve the award-winning projects of the President's Cup. As an annual event for undergraduate students to compete for awards based on outstanding achievements in research and innovation, the President's Cup has been awarded for 9 years.

Project reports kept in Dean's Office were transferred to the University Archives where they were scanned and digitized. At the same time, Archives staff contacted the award-winners to ask for permission to provide open access to their reports and a soft copy of project posters for permanent retention. We have successfully gotten in touch with some alumni and obtained their approval and poster files.

The full text of project reports and posters are now available via the /Digital University Archives/ (http://library.ust.hk/archives/da-president-cup.html) </archives/da-president-cup.html>.

Take a look at these outstanding achievements. If your award-winning projects are not included, please contact us via email to lbarsc@ust.hk <mailto:lbarsc@ust.hk>. We will continue our efforts to preserve those forthcoming projects and make them freely accessible.

Of course, you can access a wide variety of other materials via the Digital University Archives (http://archives.ust.hk/) <http://archives.ust.hk/>, such as newsletters, press releases, administrative records as well as video recordings of distinguished lectures. If you have any questions about using this database, feel free to contact Archives staff at 2358-6783.

President's Cup

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Database Updates

*Asia-Studies Full-Text Online </cgi/db/com.pl?asia-studies>* This new service is a convenient starting point for study of the modern Asia Pacific. It contains thousands of reports, working papers and journal articles related to 55 Asia-Pacific countries in a broad range of social sciences subjects. Specific areas include finance, trade, environment, government, education, women's studies and many others. The Humanities section is devoted to studies in Asian languages, arts, culture, history and religion. Also available are annual statistical overviews together with multi-country and Asia-wide comparisons.

*MyiLibrary </cgi/db/myilibrary.pl>* The size of the *MyiLibrary* ebook collection has almost doubled with the recent purchase of 3,660 new titles. Out of a total of 8,085 titles, around 1,400 of them are in science and engineering while the rest are in various humanities and social sciences subjects. The entire collection is fully browsable and searchable via http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/myilibrary.pl </cgi/db/myilibrary.pl>. The new titles will gradually appear in the Library Catalog as they are cataloged.

*PsycArticles </cgi/db/ebsco.pl?pdh> and PsycInfo </cgi/db/ebsco.pl?psyh>* The above /American Psychological Association/ databases used to run on the Ovid platform, where users reported problems retrieving full-text documents. To improve the overall search experience, the platform has been switched to EbscoHost since November. Users can now cross-search these 2 psychology databases with other EbscoHost databases.

*Roubini Global Economics </cgi/db/com.pl?roubini>* *RGE* is an economic research platform which produces daily analyses of the global economy and financial markets in the form of /Critical Issues/ (key economic developments), /Briefings/ (background information and context), and /Analysis/ (exclusive research produced by *RGE*). It also includes research reports and papers sourced from leading economic think tanks and organizations. First-time users must create an account using a valid HKUST email.

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Security and Behavior

The Library is a busy public place. Laptops and other valuables left unattended make tempting targets for theft. Since the semester began, Library staff have been removing unattended valuables to the Circulation Counter for safe-keeping. However, this is not sustainable. *The Library cannot be responsible for the security of unattended belongings.* Library users must look after their own things.

In order to improve security, starting on November 15th, if Library staff pick up your unattended belongings, you may be liable for *3 demerit points*.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that the Library is a place for study and research. It is important for all Library users to help maintain a quiet and clean study atmosphere.

* Mobile phones should be switched off, or set to silent, while in the Library. Use of mobile phones is restricted to designated areas (restrooms, the enclosed lift lobbies, and study rooms) of the Library. * No food or beverage (except water in spill-proof containers) is permitted in the Library. Food and drink attract insects and rodents and may damage Library materials.

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Helping Students to Give Effective Presentations

Presenting in class has become a major component of many courses. The Information Commons provides space and facilities for you to prepare and practice presentations. In November 2010 we launched a new service for students, the *Presentation Skills Advisory* (http://library.ust.hk/serv/ic/psa.html) </serv/ic/psa.html>. You can make an appointment with the Information Commons Coordinator to observe your rehearsal. Through comments on your timing, speaking style and organization of content, you can work towards a more effective approach to handle your materials and yourself as a presenter. In the second half of the Fall term, the service helped a dozen groups of undergraduates and postgraduates.

The Information Commons Coordinator noticed that most students can lift the quality of their performance significantly by:

* Introducing oneself or the team properly * Working out a presentation message * Giving an outline of the presentation * Making the slides more meaningful * Avoiding tables and large block of texts in slides * Using terms that the audience understands * Providing a summary at the end * Closing the presentation properly * Speaking slower; with pauses to emphasize key points * Connecting with the audience by eye-contact * Preparing effective cue cards using keywords

There are many factors leading to presentation success. Among the most important are substantial practice, a clear message, the presenter'ss passion and a genuine respect for the audience. Presentation is a life-long skill that you improve continuously throughout your study and career. As a start, visit the Library guide to /Effective Presentations/ (http://lbguides.ust.hk/subject-guide/36) <http://lbguides.ust.hk/subject-guide/36>.

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Construction Updates

It's been a very busy holiday season for our building efforts!

*Furniture Samples Area*

A new furniture samples area has been established near the front of the Library, around the corner from the Reference Desk. As samples for the extension or Learning Commons are received, we will place them here and post sheets for your comments.

Furniture Samples for the Extension

There has been a lot of feedback for the chairs under consideration for one area of the extension, and the Library will use these as a major element of our decision - thanks!

*Building Efforts*

COmments on Furniture Samples

Some very noisy and disruptive demolition works to prepare for the Learning Commons were done during the Winter break (http://library.ust.hk/blog/2011/01/01/lc-demolition-started/) </blog/2011/01/01/lc-demolition-started/>, with some smaller works to be finished next month. This will allow the remaining LC construction to be completed during the summer - for an exciting fall term!

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