A New Library Catalog and Discovery Solution
This summer, the Library Catalog will get a new look. Not only at HKUST, but at all 8 UGC-funded university libraries (known as JULAC) as well. We are migrating from 8 separate systems to a cloud-based Shared Integrated Library System (ILS), the first of its kind in Greater China if not Asia. Together we have chosen the ExLibris Alma® library management platform and ExLibris Primo® discovery and delivery solution. This deep collaborative effort involves consolidation of 18.4 million bibliographic records to facilitate over 90,000 students’ unified access and retrieval of information.
What are the benefits of a shared system? From the user side, the new system will provide a one-stop shop for accessing, retrieving and requesting print, shared electronic and digital resources from 8 libraries. It will also increase user fulfillment, especially of electronic resources. From the management side the new system will provide options for more collaboration, identify areas to reduce duplicate processes, and increase productivity. There will also be positive change management in place after the project implementation.
The 8 university libraries selected representatives to form an Implementation Committee and 7 Functional Sub-Groups to launch the migration. The project is also coordinated by an Implementation Manager, Change Manager, and Executive Officer – thanks to special funding approved by the Heads of Universities Committee, HUCOM.
JULAC members have a long history of collaboration, sharing practices and collections and to support a number of collaborative programs. For example, HKALL allows users from each university to easily request print books from other libraries in JULAC. Between 2005 and 2015, the total number of HKALL loans reached 1.8 million. Another example is consortial negotiation. JULAC has negotiated successfully with publishers and vendors to lower many subscription and one-time purchase prices. Other JULAC programs include a common borrower card that allows access to other libraries; cooperative purchasing of databases, e-journals, and demand-driven and licensed e-book collections; and shared staff development activities.
Library E-Discovery Week 2017
Mark your calendar! The long-awaited E-Discovery Week will run from February 20-24. Our motto is “Learn, Search and Win.” The goal of the event is to spark our users’ interest in the Library’s quality electronic resources in a fun-filled interactive way. Come visit our exhibition booths at the G/F entrance area on Feb 22 and 23. Twelve workshops will also be held throughout the week by local and overseas trainers. All HKUST staff and students are invited to Learn, Search and Win!
There are two ways to win exciting prizes. Take our E-Discovery Challenge by completing a quiz, verifying your answers at the exhibit booths, and submitting your completed quiz. Or join workshops and complete their quizzes. To maximize your winning chance, you can take both the E-Discovery Challenge and take ALL workshop quizzes. You can enter a Grand Lucky Draw if your answers are all correct. We have 15 great prizes including 8 iPAD Minis, one Apple Watch, and six Eslite and Apple store vouchers.
Course Enhancement Funds (CEF)
Information literacy (IL) is a set of abilities requiring individuals to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information.” – ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education
Background: The Library is part of a University Grants Committee (UGC) Teaching and Learning Project on Information Literacy aiming to enhance information literacy among students. Funds were granted to develop and implement shared interactive multimedia courseware to foster the capacity to use information to learn, and to build students’ awareness of themselves as informed learners. This project contains several parts: Research Readiness Self-Assessment (RRSA-HK), Shared Online IL Courseware, and Course Enhancement Funds.
Course Enhancement Funds: CEF is a core part of this project. It provides opportunities to further develop strong partnerships between librarians and faculty members to enhance IL teaching and learning in a subject-related course context. Particular focus is on curriculum with strong research components.
Each institution will develop 5 CEF projects. Last fall, the Library was privileged to collaborate with the Department of Chemistry to offer our first CEF project, CHEM 4689 – a capstone project with Dr Emily Tsang, Dr Jason Chan & Dr Dennis Chan. In order to enhance students’ information literacy skills, librarians and instructors joined hands to develop a new curriculum which included librarian-hosted instructional workshops and individual consultation sessions on literature search and referencing.
Another workshop was arranged introducing an updated trend of using infographics in conference poster design. Students created their own posters with skills they obtained, and presented it in a final celebration mini-conference in early December.
These activities are tailor-made to achieve the different needs of students. The Library seeks to partner with all schools, departments, and faculties. If you are interested, please contact your subject librarians or write to lbref@ust.hk.
The New Library Mug!
The new 2017 burgundy Library mugs have just arrived! They are the perfect companion for those long days and nights working at the Library. They are also collectible souvenirs for your friends and family. Get one now at the circulation desk for just HKD$48.
ORCID Identifiers in the HKUST Research Community
How many variants can your name have? Try to include different languages and initials combinations; and imagine how likely it is for others to have the same name as one of yours! In the academic research community, which is growing more global and interdisciplinary, a researcher using the name alone is often not able to identify oneself uniquely. A unique researcher identifier helps to distinguish one’s scholarly activities; attributes research outputs and impacts to the proper owner; and facilitates efficient communication among publishers, funders, research institutions and professional associations.
ORCID is a non-profit, cross-disciplinary effort to create and maintain a Registry of unique and persistent researcher identifiers. By the end of 2016, close to 3 million ORCID iDs have been created. Research funders and institutions worldwide are joining the effort to integrate ORCID iDs into their systems. At HKUST, EVPPO is requiring all faculty to have ORCID iDs and connect them to the HKUST Scholarly Publications Database (SPD). Starting in October 2016, the Library and the Office of Planning and Institutional Research (OPIR) joined hands to work with all the schools and departments to assist faculty members to create ORCID iDs, and connect their IDs with their profiles in SPD. After two months of collaboration, close to 90% of HKUST faculty had their ORCID iDs. A few departments are at 100%! [ update: as of 17 January, 100% of HKUST faculty now have their ORCID iDs! ]
ORCID works to embed the Registry deeper into the global research ecosystem. In the long term, the Registry will disambiguate researchers and their affiliations. This will make impact metrics and university ranking data more retrievable and reliable. Meanwhile, more publishers are requiring ORCID iDs in paper submissions; these include the Royal Society, PLOS, IEEE and others (https://orcid.org/content/requiring-orcid-publication-workflows-open-letter). With ORCID’s Auto-Update function, one’s work attached with the contributor’s ORCID iD will be automatically updated to his/her publication list without any manual updating once the work is published.
To learn more, visit http://library.hkust.edu.hk/sc/author-tips/create-orcid-id/
Special Collections Gallery and Digitization Projects Completed
In the past summer the Library completed two projects to enhance access to and use of the University Archives & Special Collections. These projects were made possible by a generous donation from Dr Ko Pui Shuen and a corresponding matching grant from the HKSAR Government.
Building the “Hong Kong Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce Ko Pui Shuen Gallery”
A Special Collections Gallery for materials from our Special Collections and University Archives was constructed in summer 2013. It has movable displays, flexible furniture, a PC booth, LED display, and projectors. Since its opening, the Gallery has become popular for exhibitions, meetings, seminars, and even a President’s Tea gathering with students. As of June 2016, we had staged 7 exhibitions and organized 2 talks and 47 exhibition tours supporting HSS and HLTH1010 programs. Over 200 tour groups and 6,300 guests visited the Gallery.
Digitizing and Expanding Special Collections and University Archives
The second project involved scanning selective materials in our Special Collections and University Archives and developing an in-house digital content management system. From 2013 to early 2015, about 375,000 pages were scanned – 350 maps, 2,200 rare and Chinese thread-bound books and travelogs, and 970 HKUST posters. We also created the Rare & Special eZone (http://lbezone.ust.hk/rse/), a search and retrieval interface for accessing digitized materials. The high quality images in the eZone facilitate global discovery and exploration of our collections. From August 2013 to June 2016, there were over 120,000 downloads and 1 million pages viewed from the eZone.
The Library also purchased 5 databases and ejournals, plus a few rare books, maps, and reference materials. An RA was hired to study and analyze our antique maps and rare books, providing additional reference to enrich the Collections.
Acknowledgment : The Library would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr Ko Pui Shuen for her unwavering support. Not only have the projects raised the visibility and usage of our Special Collections, they also benefit scholars around the world.
Pacific Rim Research Libraries
HKUST Library is one of the 39 academic libraries in the Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance, PRRLA. The Alliance focuses on resource sharing, cooperative collection development and the use of technology in support of document delivery in the face of growing constraints. Directors of member libraries gathered to share experiences, best practices and solutions to common issues. In 2016, the Annual Meeting was hosted by the University of Melbourne in Australia on December 5-7. A total of 13 presentations on the theme “From Vision to Reality: PRRLA Libraries as Strategic Assets for Research, Teaching, and Learning” were made by directors and senior staff.
Ms Diana Chan, our University Librarian, presented on our strategic alignment with University priorities. Also present were Chinese University of Hong Kong, Peking University, University of Auckland, University of California (Berkeley, LA, Merced, and San Diego), University of Melbourne, University of Oregon, University of Southern California, and University of Victoria. In 2017, Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China will host PRRLA’s 20th anniversary!
Collection Spotlight: New & Expanded
BrowZine Web: Launched in late 2013, the BrowZine app has been an excellent companion for researchers who opt to read journal articles on mobile devices. To complete their research ecosystem, the app now has a desktop version, BrowZine Web. The BrowZine experience on desktop computers should be very similar to that of the app, but with larger screens.
BrowZine consolidates thousands of scholarly journals from multiple publishers and platforms into a single user-friendly format. Current and past issues of journals back to 2005 can be browsed. It is also easy to discover holdings prior to 2005 by choosing “View all back issues and sources for this title.” Personalization features like My Bookshelf and My Articles require individual BrowZine accounts.
CAJ Full-Text Database: Engineering (中國期刊全文數据庫:理工): Two new engineering series are now available via the CAJ database, covering subjects from Aeronautics to Materials Science in over 2,000 additional journals.
Digital Dissertations Consortium: The Library recently joined the DDC, which delivers thousands of full-text ProQuest dissertations mostly from North American universities. This complements our existing subscription to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses A&I which is an index service with full text limited to business and HKUST-affiliated content. Over 50,000 full-text dissertations published between 2013 and 2016 are available via DDC. You can search by keywords and limit by publication years for which full text is available. Years prior to 2013 have abstracts only.
Library Book Talks
After a busy fall season, the new Library Book Talk series will kick off in February with Mr Sam Kwok, CEO and Co-Founder of Skyyer/Sky Publishing (長空出版社). He will share fascinating stories and challenges in the local publishing industry, and how he moved his company from a traditional book publisher into a leading social media platform of travel information.
The next book talk will be hosted by Mr Raymond Fung (馮永基先生), a renowned architect and ink painter. Mr Fung is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Board Member of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Honorary Advisor of Art Museums in Hong Kong, and Member of the Advisory Committee on Revitalization of Historic Buildings. Mr Fung will share his own struggling stories, along with many interesting architectural projects like Hong Kong Wetland Park and Hong Kong Central discussed in his recent book “誰把爛泥扶上壁 : 你所不知的香港建築故事” (Call number: NA1546.H66 F867 2016).
In April, we will have the honor of having Dr Yi WEN (文一), Assistant Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Dr Wen will discuss his book, “The making of an economic superpower: unlocking China’s secret of rapid industrialization” (Call number: HD3616.C63 W46 2016). The book challenges accepted explanations for the industrial revolution and for the rapid rise of China as a global manufacturing powerhouse.
Dr Wen was an Assistant Professor of Economics at HKUST from 1996 to 1999.
Sha Fei (沙飛): A Humanist Photographer at War
The exhibition “Sha Fei: A Humanist Photographer at War. From Guangdong to Shanghai to Jin-Cha-Ji War Front (1922–1950)” will open in the Ping Yuan and Kinmay W Tang Gallery on March 6 and run for two months.
Sha Fei photographed some of the most iconic images of wartime China from the late-1930s to mid-1940s. His name was erased from history following his tragic execution at age 38 in 1950, though his images survived. Thanks to his daughter Wang Yan’s tireless research and her generous donation to the HKUST Library and Archives, photographs in this exhibition illustrate Sha Fei’s journey from a cosmopolitan, modernist artist to a humanist photographer on the war front in Jin-Cha-Ji Border Areas.
Sha Fei was born Situ Chuan 司徒傳 in Guangzhou in 1912. He participated in the Northern Expedition as a wireless operator and later joined the Shanghai-based “Black and White Photographic Society” (黑白攝影社). Sha Fei’s iconic photos of Lu Xun (魯迅) on October 8, 1936, eleven days before Lu’s death, established his national reputation as a leading photojournalist.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, Sha Fei went to the frontline in Shanxi Province to report Chinese resistance. He formally joined the Communist-led Eighth Route Army in October. During the eight-year war, Sha Fei took thousands of photos, founded the Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial 晉察冀畫報, and trained a corps of photographers.
In 1948, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he was hospitalized. One year later he killed his Japanese doctor during a seizure, for which a military court sentenced him to death.
This exhibition is curated by Professor David Cheng Chang of the Humanities Division and Alice Ho and Marco Caboara of the HKUST Library. In connection with this exhibition, Professor David Cheng Chang is teaching a course on “Picturing History: Photographers and the Making of Modern China” HUMA 4560, Spring 2017.
last modified 01 February 2017