Update: 26 to 30 September

In this post the following information will be shared:

·         Faculty Librarians

·         Feedback from Campus Librarians meeting

·         Feedback from the Mancom meeting

·         Unisa postal collection

·         Security issues

Faculty Librarians

I would like to congratulate the following people who have been recently appointed as Faculty Librarians on APK:

Lizette van Zyl for the Law Faculty,

Pavlinka Kovatcheva for the Sciences Faculty and

Ronel Smit for the Humanities Faculty.

The Campus Librarian meeting was held on 27 Sept, from this meeting the following:

·         Dr Van Vuren mentioned that she is satisfied with the progress made with the One-book-one Library-project. According to the statistics the circulation of the book is progressing well. Please keep in mind that Deon Meyer will be visiting our library for a discussion on 18 October at 12 o’clock in the auditorium on level three. Posters to inform students accordingly will be put up in due course.

·         The marketing of ILL and ICL are going well. I am sure that by now you have all noticed the ICL posters that have been put up in the library. Please remember to market these services to our clients.

·         The new library structure, and developments regarding this, was discussed and the outcome of the faculty librarians (as mentioned above) was communicated. A workshop will be arranged with all faculty librarians in order to make it clear what is expected of them. In addition to this, a meeting with all UJLIC staff will also be arranged to explain the role of the faculty librarian to all library staff.

·         Our library will receive 15 iPads which will be mounted on stands. The iPads will be placed on level one and will have Wi-Fi connection. This forms part of a case study to see how students respond to this technology. Below pictures of iPads:

The Mancom meeting was held on 28 Sept, from that meeting I would like to communicate the following:

·         Feedback was given to Mancom members regarding the progress of the new structure. The feedback was the same as mentioned in the campus librarians meeting (see above).

·         Members were informed that Julia Paris and Hettie Wentzel will be the representatives for the library for the UJ Transformation Office. The Transformation Office had a second workshop this month. Due to Hettie not being available, April attended on her behalf.

·         The proposal to have monthly skills sharing sessions was accepted. April will draft an action plan for the way forward.

·         Three library staff members will be attending the Liasa conference next month. Staff attending will also be presenting papers.

Unisa Postal Collection

We received formal communication from Unisa that their postal collection will from now on only be available to Unisa students. External members of Unisa (through the letter of introduction process) will still be allowed to make use of books in the open collections. They kindly requested that we inform the students accordingly.

Security issues

We are still experiencing problems with theft in the library (as mentioned in the 9 September post). The good news is that during the past two weeks, six individuals were caught and dealt with accordingly. However, I would still like to remind you not to leave your valuables unattended.