Category: General

Lockdown has been no meltdown for the faculty librarian team of the Library and Information Service. During Covid-19, faculty librarians have overcome various challenges to assist clients with their information needs including moving from face-to-face to online training, providing off-campus information assistance and overseeing access to library buildings.

Group training meltdown averted

Traditionally, SU faculty librarians present information literacy classes in a face-to-face classroom environment. These sessions are presented to clients on campus. Literally hundreds of these sessions are presented each year. As a result of the success of these training sessions, librarians are very comfortable in the classroom environment.

When Covid-19 lockdown kicked in, the situation drastically changed and suddenly librarians were forced out of their comfort zones. Ice-cream floats started to melt. Not for long though… Training for the 2020 academic year was an ongoing concern, because SU management was adamant that the 2020 academic year would be completed successfully. Librarians therefore had to step up, adapt and create new comfort zones using online collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams.

Faculty librarians quickly learned the Teams tools of the trade and learnt a valuable lesson along the lockdown route: find a library buddy to assist you with technical challenges such as log-in problems, connecting latecomers and answering chat questions during Teams training sessions. Ice-cream floats to all trainers during lockdown.

Client assistance meltdown averted

Information assistance to off-campus clients is not new, but previously faculty librarians delivered this service from the comfort of their office chairs. Now librarians were also working from off-campus and experienced the same frustrations that our off-campus clients periodically experience with accessing information. Mark that down to another lockdown reality check.

Fortunately, faculty librarians’ service commitment went into overdrive: support your clients by whatever means necessary (within the law, of course). Call it over-servicing or assisting, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Faculty librarians had to ensure the clients’ 2020 academic year stayed afloat. Practical example: With support from Technical Services, clients received access to new e-books at the speed of lightning. Ice-cream floats to the Technical Services colleagues.

Library access meltdown averted

Fact: Clients missed the library building. Faculty librarians received numerous requests during lockdown as to when the building would re-open. When it finally did, with all the necessary safety protocols in place, clients were tremendously relieved, even though they were still not allowed ice-cream floats in the building. The circulation staff were crucial to welcome our clients back and ensure everyone’s safety in the libraries. The circulation staff all deserve ice-cream floats for their professional, patient, and friendly (but firm) welcoming of returning clients to the libraries.

It just goes to show what great teamwork can accomplish.

Pieter du Plessis

Photo: Google Images

The Library and Information Service is pleased to inform clients that the Bellville Park Campus Library (USBL) reopened on Tuesday 8 September 2020 after five months of lockdown. This brings to five the number of libraries open for service: Stellenbosch University (SU) Library, Engineering and Forestry Library, Medicine and Health Sciences Library, Music Library and USBL.

Read here for all the details about opening hours, booking a visit, as well as services and resources that are offered. Clients are welcome to bring their own devices to the library.

Students wanting to borrow books from the SU Library need to submit a list of the books to the circulation desk (contact details in above notice) before visiting the library. They will be contacted when the books are ready and the circulation staff will book a time for them to collect the books.

Clients must comply with Covid-19 protocols which ensure their safety and that of library staff. This includes a limit to the number of users allowed in a library at a time.

Clients are welcomed back to the libraries for study and research purposes. We are here to support you to successfully complete your academic year.

Much progress has been made on the new Makerspace area in the Stellenbosch University Library. January 2021 is the new date that clients can look forward to the opening of this service. The Makerspace will support research creativity and innovation, drawing together students with ideas and those with the technical skills to turn them into reality.

 

Construction work on the area is complete. A brand new, signposted entrance to the Makerspace has been created from opposite the fire escape doors of the Learning Commons. In addition, this appealing space now boasts Wi-Fi, electrical outlets, an extended fume hood and has a fresh look.

The goal of the Makerspace is to enable students to create new digital artifacts and materials, adapt new digital tools, processes, and methods and participate in innovative projects, communities, and discussions. This will be accomplished by using digital desktop tools to create designs for new products and to prototype them (digital DIY). A booking facility will be available to reserve a construction or design workstation and to book the tools and equipment a client needs for a session.

A Makerspace Library Guide, as well as an information page for the Library website, has already been compiled by eager library staff working from home during Covid-19. Both resources are ready for publishing.

The Library looks forward to welcoming students to unlock their creative potential in this fantastic space.

Update on application to SU Strategic Fund and progress with implementation

The Library and Information Service’s application to the SU Strategic Fund to assist with the financing of the subscription cost for the Leganto course reading management system was successful, and the Library has commenced to install the system on its existing infrastructure. The Library will receive funding from the SU Strategic Fund to subscribe to Leganto for the period 2021 – 2023, with a first integration of the system into SUNLearn set for 1 December 2020.

A Campus Engagement Team comprising staff members from the Library, faculty, Blended Learning Coordinators, academic support divisions, the SU ICT Division and the SU Disability Unit will oversee the implementation process during the next 3 months. The implementation project will include a review of end-to-end lecturer workflows, ensuring the technical readiness of the Alma and SUNLearn platforms to exchange data, and training of Library and academic staff members to improve the online accessibility, format and structure of course reading lists.

By implementing Leganto the Library aims to proactively assist lecturers to create and maintain course readings by adding both print and electronic materials to the same list and showing real-time availability of both. It will assist lecturers in their blended learning offering for the modules for which they are responsible by embedding reading lists as a component of lecturer workflows and not as a separate system that the lecturer needs to access. As described in the application to the SU Strategic Fund, after 1 December 2020 the adoption process will continue into 2021 for full adoption across all possible modules by 2023.

Wouter Klapwijk

New appointments

The Library and information Service welcomes three new members of staff.

Mr Siviwe Bangani was appointed as Director: Research Services in the Library and Information Service, SU, from 1 April 2020. Siviwe previously worked at the North-West University Library and Information Service as a Manager: Information Services (Mafikeng Campus). Siviwe was the 2018 LIASA Librarian of the Year. At the time of joining SU, he was the chair-elect of the LIASA North-West Branch.

 

Mr Norman Hebler was appointed as Junior Librarian: Information Literacy and Learning Commons with effect from 1 December 2019. Norman is originally from Limpopo and studied at the University of Pretoria for his BA. After working in the UK, he came to Cape Town where he worked in the private sector. Thereafter, he joined Library IT at UCT Libraries where he worked for 10 years before joining SU.

Mr Sarfaraz Mohamed was appointed as Linux Systems Administrator with effect from 1 July 2020. Sarfaraz previously worked in the ICT Division at SU in the Linux Team. He has worked on various projects from SUNLearn to security and vulnerability patching. His role is to manage the Linux infrastructure at the Library and to maintain and improve the overall Linux systems.

 

We wish Siviwe, Norman, and Sarfaraz well in their roles at the Library.

On Thursday 21 May, Elizabeth Moll-Willard (Faculty Librarian: AgriSciences) presented part of a webinar titled “Setting students up for success with science literacy”. Elizabeth spoke about creating a self-directed course for postgraduate students to equip themselves with essential research and information literacy skills. The course was created with Kathryn Wirth’s input (the Blended Learning Co-ordinator for the AgriSciences faculty) and placed on the SUNLearn postgraduate module. The point of need, standalone course covers the following areas:

1. Finding information, which covers how to put together search strategies, the different types of databases, and recommending which ones are best to use for quality, peer-reviewed information.
2. Surviving information overload, which focuses on how to analyse and read articles – using tools such as the basic CRAAP (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose) test as well as an in-depth explanation of how to test for bad science, and then knowing when the point of saturation of knowledge is reached.
3. Following academic breadcrumbs, which includes searching using citations and reference lists.
4. Breaking through the reading barrier – which shifts to working with the information, breaking it down into how to skim read, how to map articles by theme or by method, and then reminding students of the importance of doing the test of “does this fit into my research hypothesis”.
5. Principles of writing – which cover basic technical issues such as what kind of language should be used for writing, all the way to the technical structure of a paragraph (topic sentence, etc.), to an outline of a literature review and what is expected in the different sections. It also covers writing a scientific article, and how that differs from a thesis.

The role of the library in relation to Science Literacy, and specifically the creation of such a course was the main aspect that was discussed in Elizabeth’s presentation. The webinar was well attended, with 457 participants, and the rating received from most participants was 5 stars. The presentation also resulted in a Library Connect blog article which can be viewed here.

The webinar was recorded and can be viewed here.

Elizabeth Moll-Willard

Sorry, this entry is only available in Afrikaans.

“Fake news will remain with us” – this is the view of Ms Ellen Tise, Senior Director of the Library and Information Service of Stellenbosch University (SU), who was sharing her perspective on the role of libraries in the fight against misinformation as part of a UN Library international panel.

In her remarks, Ms Tise stated that fake news seems to flourish when there is a crisis and uncertainty, as with COVID-19. She linked that to other crises that have bred fake news in South Africa, such as HIV/AIDS and xenophobic attacks. She pointed out that during the COVID-19 pandemic, fake news has centred on five areas, namely the origin of the virus, the existence of the virus, why the virus exists, infection rates and who can be infected and miracle “cures”. Ms Tise pointed out that although libraries (or anybody for that matter) cannot eliminate fake news, they can play a role in neutralising its worst effects. The role of libraries in the fight against fake news has been mainly around creating awareness, providing credible information resources, sensitising library clients to the harmful effects of fake news and empowering people to differentiate fact from fiction. Ms Tise was in the company of three other esteemed panelists from other countries.

According to Mr Thanos Giannakopoulos, Chief Librarian of the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library, the webinar was well received with more than 90 attendees from all over the world.

The annual Research Week of the Library and Information Service of Stellenbosch University (SU) kicked off later than usual this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The original date of 27–31 July coinciding with the 2020 Olympic Games. But with Covid-19 everything changed, and we had to move Research Week to the new date of 24–28 August. Since plenty of time had been spent on planning and preparation, we decided to stick with the original theme of “Going for research gold in 2020”, even though the Olympics had been postponed.

This year’s Research Week was presented in an online format for the first time and we were excited to see what the reception of this format would be. We reached a wider audience, including participants from Medicine and Health Sciences, the USB and postgraduate students from all over the country. Registrations and participation far exceeded our expectations.

Research Week was launched on Monday 24 August, where Ms Ellen Tise welcomed everybody, with a special welcome to Professor Cloete and guest speaker Dr Balindiwe Sishi. Ms Tise reminded all that the aim of a research week is to inspire and equip Masters, PhD and emerging researchers  with practical knowledge of research essentials. Professor Cloete commended the library for still managing to hold the event online. He pointed out that this is a reflection of a “world class library and information service with world class facilities for researchers”.

Dr Sishi’s presentation, titled The journey through my eyes, started off by reminding all that Research Week falls within Women’s month. She then relayed her journey towards attaining a PhD, which included the challenges of finishing her first degree on time, death of close family members, struggling to fund her postgraduate studies and numerous rejections to study for her favourite area, medicine. Dr Sishi stated that her struggles taught her the importance of having a plan B in life. It is always important to “do the best you can with what you have. Do not focus on the door that is closed but the one that is open”, she stated. Later, as a promising emerging researcher, Dr Sishi told of how she was honoured to be selected for a conference attended by a number of Nobel Laureates. Among her take home messages was that emerging researchers should always find themselves good mentors, collaborate, choose important and fascinating topics, and focus on achieving their goals. True to her promise, Dr Sishi offered some pointers to a “recipe for a Nobel Prize”. The recipe included the importance of collaboration, publishing, and producing many PhD’s as some of the ingredients for attaining a potential Nobel Prize.

Presentations during the rest of Research Week skilled participants in conducting efficient literature and systematic reviews, and in making optimal use of some of our subscription databases. Practical sessions included how to use Mendeley, gaining and keeping momentum in academic writing, the use of Turnitin and SUNScholarData, as well as how to manage stress and time during the postgraduate journey.

Presenters from the library, as well as other SU support divisions had the opportunity to showcase the support services on offer and provided useful guidance to the participants.

Kirchner van Deventer and Siviwe Bangani

Exciting new developments are on their way at the Library. They include a refurbishment of the Stellenbosch University (SU) Library, the opening of a makerspace and a new data visualisation service.

When the SU Library (previously known as the JS Gericke Library) opened its doors in 1984, it was a state-of-the-art library. Visitors were greeted by rows of card catalogues and the circulation desk was a hive of activity involving the issuing and returning of books, all supported by manual systems. Since then, libraries have undergone vast changes: our processes have been automated, most of our resources are now available in electronic format and electronic access systems have become the norm. Since that time, incremental changes have been made to meet the needs of a new generation of students and to accommodate developing technologies. The building soon became more than a traditional library and a masterplan was developed for its redesign and refurbishment. For example, in recent years some library spaces were transformed into a learning commons, a research commons and new staff spaces. We are delighted to announce that we are now entering the next phase of our refurbishment plan and that users of the SU Library can look forward to the renovation of the upper level of the Library. The entrance, circulation and computer areas, areas for collaborative learning, the security area and the ablution facilities will receive a face-lift befitting a modern academic library. Planning for the refurbishment will be finalised in the second semester of 2020. Here is what you can look forward to:

Architect’s drawings of some of the refurbished areas in the SU Library

Students’ learning will be further enhanced with the opening of a makerspace and the provision of a data visualisation service. The makerspace service will open in the SU Library in the second semester. Designed to support research creativity and innovation, it will draw together students who have ideas and those with the technical skills to turn those ideas into reality. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the context for providing this service. The appealing space will enable students to unlock their creative potential along with that of new technologies. Three-D printing and scanning, electronics and 3D design software will be some of the latest technology available.

The data visualisation service will support research analysis and visualisation. Students and researchers across all disciplines will be introduced to aspects of data visualisation. Visual data literacy training will be provided. The service will be in a dedicated environment, with expert consultancy services and specialist equipment on hand.