Achievements

The Library began extensive planning and preparation for the developing of the Guangzhou Campus.  Library staff have participated in planning with senior university administration, senior faculty members of the Hubs and Thrust areas, other service units (e.g. ISO, ITSC, MTPC, etc.) and the architects.  We have laid our concrete plans and timelines for creating  the physical and cyber infrastructure  for service delivery as well as the physical and online collections to support HKUST-GZ’s teaching, learning, and research.

As part of our continuing efforts to provide service excellence to the University community, the Library conducted a  LibQUAL+^® Suvey for the 4th time, from 28 October to 1 December 2019. The previous surveys were done in 2007, 2011, and 2015. This year’s LibQual  was a joint project of 5  of the 8 JULAC libraries), which can also give a comparative analysis of our services with our peer institutions in Hong Kong.  Go here for more details.

Compared to the scores obtained in the past 3 Surveys, we have improved our services since 2007. In 2019, the Library achieved the highest Perceived Mean Score of 7.11, and the smallest gap in Superiority Score of -0.36.

This year, we emphasized user safety to protect against COVID-19. This included:

• Extensive & frequent furniture and signage shifts  to accommodate changing opening hours and service modalities (due to protests and the COVID-19)
•   70% of seating was removed from public access areas, with the numbers going up and down as the situation altered. 
• Front-of-house was converted to a book lookup and pickup station with user-facing UV-C sterilizer (for a few weeks)
• Collaborating with HKUST’s fever self-check team to install an automated thermal sensor system at the Library entrance

The Library gave strong support for HKUST for RAE 2020 by coordinating the bibliographic preparation in the year leading up to the final submission. Over 20 library staff members plus 4 student helpers participated in the project, which was in full force (“full gear”) from May to December 2019.

Three teams handled the full text, metadata and copyright clearance for:

• 1,625 research outputs
• 200 underlying references for impact case
• 20 book titles (80 copies) for physical submission.

After assisting in the consultation on the Archives Law in 2018-19, the Archives played an active role in the implementation of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system in the university by drafting the University Records Retention and Disposal Schedules and reviewing the Guidelines on Electronic Records Management as drafted by ISO. Briefing sessions were conducted to solicit feedback.

In collaboration with FYTGS, ARO, ISO and the Library thesis team, we developed a unified Thesis Submission System to facilitate the implementation of the new e-copy only policy.

Starting in Fall Term, RPG students can use this new system to submit their theses, which will then be deposited to the theses repository as the official version. This system is a part of the Unified Submission System Project, to streamline not just the submission of theses, but also research datasets, management plans, and IR documents.

After much research, product evaluation, and automation programming, the library Systems unit launched the enterprise-level Library Data Analytics Platform in March 2020.  It provides interactive data visualization and analytics functionality to support the Library’s data-driven decision making needs and generates charts.

• Seven dashboards were rolled out in the first batch & more will be added  in the coming year.
• By adopting an open source software for the Platform, we saved HKUST money.

In 2020, the e-book collection (893,500 titles) overtook the print book collection (735,000 volumes).  This growth has been part of the Library’s strategic plan for more than 5 years. E-books have made it easier for HKUST students and faculty to get the materials they need for learning and research, even when the Library was shut down because of Covid19.

In 2018, the HKUST community’s e-book usage surged 23%, reaching 99 chapters per student FTE.

This increase in e-book chapter access reflects the Library’s efforts to continue to increase the e-book collection. July 2018 also marked the crossing point where the number of e-book titles (574,207) in HKUST’s collection topped its paper book collection (529,288).

E-book usage recorded a slight increase of 1% in 2019 (97-chapter downloads per student FTE) while E-journal usage jumped 21% (223 article downloads per FTE).

The Library continued to play an active role in nurturing general education among the HKUST community, despite the challenges of moving online. In 2019-20 we organized more than 20 activities and programs, including 8 Exhibitions and 4 iTalks.

Exhibitions

• Glimpses into the Past: Chinese Seals and Seal Impression Catalogues through the Dynasties (May to Oct 2020) + 1 talk, 1 tour & 1 demonstration
• Stencil Paints by Yu Ping and Ren Ping (Mar to Sep 2020)
• Photographs by Jin Shouxian (Dec 2019 to Aug 2020)
• The City of Victoria – Old Maps and Photos of Hong Kong (Jul to Oct 2019; Oct 2019 to Feb 2020)
•  From the Consoling Lotus to the Red Plum: The Legend of Tong Tik-Sang’s Creative Career (Sep 2019 to Feb 2020) + 1 singing performance
•  Plastic Fashion: Participants’ Work Showcase (Jul to Dec 2019)

iTalks –  The Library hosted 4 talks face-to-face (fall 2019) and online (spring 2020) with over 400 attendees

• Oct 25, 2019 – 無言老師的生死學問 / 伍桂麟先生
• Nov 8, 2019 – 生死之約 / 伍桂麟先生
• Mar 6, 2020 – 死亡事件簿 / 伍桂麟先生; 李衍蒨女士
• April 28, 2020 – 與抑鬱共舞 / Dr. Christine Lau Pui-ting

The challenges of 2019-20 did not stop librarians’ collaboration with course instructors to improve students’ information literacy. By switching to online instruction on spring 2020, we continued to deliver library sessions and maintained good quantity and quality compared to recent other years.

• 258 sessions for 8,893 attendees in both face-to-face and online mode across both seemsters
• Spring 2020: 88 Zoom sessions delivered to 2,439 attendees.
• 52% of the attendees were UGs, 30% were RPGs, and 16% were TPGs

Research Support team redesigned the workshops using the four themes: Authorship, Copyright, Data, and Impact.

• There was a total of 48 sessions, with 1,888 participants 
  • Authorship: 18 session
  • Data: 12 sessions
  • Copyright: 15 sessions
  • Research Impact: 3 sessions

All sessions supported PDC for research postgraduates; and were conducted online from November 2019.

2019-20 saw many large-scale facilities projects launched and completed:

• The Research Carrels Replacement Exercise launched. This targets replacement of roughly 450 study carrels from the early 1990s.  Focus groups were held, and user feedback helped drive the completed design brief.  The project should be fully implemented during the coming year.
• Study carrels were also added to the Learning Commons Extension, in areas freed up by removal of the media counter and the elimination of obsolete media formats. 
• Some reference shelving on G/F was removed to provide additional study space, and other shelving was repurposed as study furniture for standing and highchairs.
• Toilet Upgrades were performed on all floors (except the LC, which was already renovated).  This brought them into line with modern standards.  Contactless flushing and motion-activated faucets were installed, along with improved ventilation and new partitions and fittings
• All classroom and presentation spaces were enhanced. All rooms were upgraded to the new campus Mic4Me system.  Simultaneous interpretation equipment was added to the multifunction room, along with upgraded tables and chairs.  Mobile foldable white boards were also provided for more flexible program utilization in teaching spaces.

Systems continued to develop the  Library’s linked data infrastructure and pioneered SPD as a linked data source.

• This facilitated semantic information retrieval of HKUST researchers’ outputs. 
• HKUST was the first library in the world to implement Schema.org based linked data for an institutional repository.

By interlinking with publisher’s open access policies data from Sherpa Romeo, the Library  enhanced SPD’s data analytics capability. This has helped the Library make informed decisions when negotiating transformative agreements with publishers, and supported our response to UGC for their open access consultation survey.

“The Library as Space” remained important, even with online-only teaching and learning.

SENG instructors made use of E-Classroom A for invigilating 5 sessions of online examinations. The built-in cameras in the iMac workstations with a good supply of headphones (with microphones) were the main attractions of this venue. Library staff provided on-site support.

Teaching assistants from SSCI and SENG reserved 58 sessions of discussion rooms to conduct online tutorials from February to April 2020.

In response to changing needs and resources, the Library did some successful re-alignment, streamlining operations in several departments.

• The Learning Commons and Media Resources units merged & streamlined counter services.
• The Department of Resource Management transformed the 2 functional teams (Acquisitions and Cataloging) into 2 process teams (a Monographs team and a Serials & Media team).
• The Library as a whole reduced staff from 93 to 89.

2017-18 saw an all time high of 9,313 attendees for the Library’s information literacy programs.

•  9,313 people attended 268 sessions of face-to-face instruction.
  • 56% of the attendees were UGs, 26% were RPGs, and 17% were TPGs. 
  • 65% of UG workshops were given in collaboration with the CLE classes.
• Blended & E-Learning
  • 123 Library guides – 179,789 views
  • 60 objects –  37,127 views