Achievements

Two digital collections were developed and added to the Rare & Special e-Zone.

• Paul Lin and Soong Ching-ling Correspondnce – which includes over 70 letters and greeting cards exchanged between Soong Ching-ling and Paul Lin from 1950 to 1980
• Sha Fei Photographic Collection – 82 photo images of wartime China captured by Sha Fei from the late 1930s to 1940s

The Library assigned DOIs to these digital objects so that they all have a permanent identifier that facilitates visibility and accessibility

The Library’s E-Discovery Week was organized to encourage users to learn about quality subscribed library e-resources and inspired them to use authoritative e-resources for research and generated positive feedback.

Over 150 staff and students took part in the twelve E-Resources Training Workshops. The E-Discovery Challenge on February 22nd and 23rd attracted over 600 participants to take the quizzes and visit our exhibition booths

• 100% respondents agreed that they learn more library e-resources via this event.
• 78% agreed they would use more library e-resources for research and study.
• 72% of them agreed that the resources learned in this event were useful for their research and study.

To nurture students’ artistic awareness and appreciation of art and culture, the Library hosted 6 exhibitions in 2016-17. Over 365 participants joined the guided tours and talks organised for these Exhibitions. The exhibitions were highly valued by the University community. Some of them also supported the academic curricula of University courses. These exhibitions were:

• From Canton Trade to Colonial Hong Kong: The Pearl River Delta before and after the Opium War (June to Nov 2017)
• Where Time Turns Black: A Photo Exhibition by Agnes Ku (May – July 2017)
• Chinese Wartime Science through the Lens of Joseph Needham (March – May 2017)
• Sha Fei: A Humanist Photographer at War (1912-1950) (March – May 2017)
• Re-creating Masterpieces: A Closer Look at Song, Yuan & Ming Paintings (Feb – June 2017)
• Tartary from Marco Polo to the Enlightenment Maps of Eastern Central Asia from the 16th to 18th Century (May – Dec 2016)

More than 560 book lovers joined the six book talks. Over 90.1% (155/172) survey respondents said they “strongly enjoyed” or “enjoyed” the events. The book talks were:

• The Making of an Economic Superpower: Unlocking China’s Secret of Rapid Industrialization by Dr Yi WEN (May 4, 2017 )
• 迷宫：敘述蛇道上的夢幻與現實 by Prof. Lianke YAN (March 29, 2017)
• 誰把爛泥扶上壁 – 你所不知的香港建築故事 by Prof. Raymond Fun (March 7, 2017)
• – 想走 · 就走 by Mr. Sam Kwok (Feb 17, 2017)
• The Meaning of Wealth: A Scholar’s Pursuit in 3 Books by Prof. Billy So (Oct 6, 2016)
• 1849 日出日落: 企業家眼中的中國、香港與英國 by 甄子明; (Sept 22, 2016)

The Library again received positive feedback from CTLQ on its 2015-16 Annual Report on Teaching and Learning.

“The Committee was pleased with the overall quality of the Annual Reports and congratulated the Report authors for their conscientious efforts, particularly in identifying areas of concern or areas for improvement through self-reflection and stakeholder feedback, with thorough discussions. In particular… [the] Library [and other units] had substantiated their discussions with appropriate Action Plans (indicating breakdown tasks, timelines and responsibilities).”

The Library was also commendable in its quality assurance mechanisms and processes, major initiatives, external inputs, and benchmarking data. Several good practices were also noted

The new Library website was rolled out in August 2016, with massive content migration completed in that summer. It replaced our 20 years old in-house developed library website system with a completely new look and design. The website was so well developed, it was granted the Best in Class Award in the 2017 Interactive Media Awards competition, indicating that the project had met and surpassed the standards of excellence, and the website had met strict guidelines in all areas – an achievement that only a small fraction of sites in the competition could obtain.

As one of the favorite spots on campus, the Library provides HKUST staff and student an enriched learning environment for personal development. Among the  28 activities organized this year, “Transforming Lives: An Exhibition for HKUST 25th Anniversary” was the most ambitious. Celebrating 25 years of HKUST history and achievement,  the Library and the Publishing Technology Centre (PTC) created ithis multimedia exhibition with the help of many  individuals and units at HKUST.

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary, the Library also created 6 videos that have been featured on the University E-Board and other places throughout this milestone year.

HKUST, Our Story

• The Birth of the University, 1986-1991
• The Nestling Years, 1991-1996
• Flying High, 1997-2001
• HKUST Soars, 2002-2006
• Our Miracle Continues, 2007-2011
• Innovating Today, Imagining Tomorrow

Due to strong demand and keen competition for limited study space, the Library reviewed and revised its access policy. After installing new entry gates on the Library’s Ground Floor,  the new access policy was implemented on May 9, 2016.  The Library hopes this will help maintain a high quality and pleasant learning and research  environment. and will  prevent over-straining of Library’s space and services.

The new policy requires card access at all times. In order to keep the traditional spirit of “open door”, regulated open access is allowed during summertime and term breaks. User feedback was understanding and generally favorable.

In 2015-16, we gave  281 sessions to 7,966 attendees for face-to-face instruction, mostly via continued our collaboration with the Center for Language Education (CLE) and other Departments to develop Information Literacy among HKUST students and staff.

Blended and e-learning continue to be important elements in the Library’s information literacy work. This year, the Library’s 54 e-learning videos and games were accessed   27,662; while the Library’s 179 guides  were viewed 149,974 times, with 4 of the guides created for the sessions for the CLE collaborations (LANG 1002, LANG 2010, LANG 2030, and LANG 2070)  among the top 10.

In collaboration with ITSC, systems staff successfully migrated over 40 public searching computers to run on ITSC’s virtualization platform known as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).

This exercise greatly streamlined operations in management software deployment and security updates. Working closely with ITSC, systems staff members are also doing a study to evaluate the feasibility of migrating Information Common computers to the VDI platform.

HKUST Library and CUHK Library jointly organized a two-day international conference on 2-3 June 2016, held  at HKUST. AL4 “Sustainable Academic Libraries: Now and Beyond” addressed issues of sustainability pertaining to academic libraries, such as:

• How do academic libraries drive sustainability in their innovations and day-to-day operations?
• What are the best practices and emerging trends that help save the environment for posterity while fulfilling at optimal efficiency the current and future needs of library users?
• What are the obstacles or breakthroughs in advancing these goals?

Over 300 people from across the globe attended. AL4 was designed to be a green event, and since then, other units at HKUST have inquired about its practices, hopefully leading to more green conferences here and elsewhere.

This large scale Integrated Library System (ILS) implementation project involves migrating eight separately hosted systems in JULAC libraries to a next generation shared system running centrally in “the cloud”.

The Library actively participated in the tendering and evaluation exercise, and heavily engaged in writing the Request for Proposal (RFP) document and contract reviews.

The tender was awarded to Ex Libris in April 2016 for its Alma/Primo solution. Implementation has begun, with the target to go live in July 2017. JULAC has obtained support from HUCOM to fund two positions hired for this project.

HKUST Library will host  three new JULAC staff for this project, including the Implementation Manager, the Change Manager, and an Executive Officer.

The Library’s 2014-15 Annual Report on Teaching and Learning was reviewed by CTLQ as an exemplary report with many commendable examples of good practice, action plan, external inputs, and positive benchmarking data.

From November 2nd to December 7th, 2015, the Library conducted a Services Quality Survey.

• 3,518 current students, faculty, and staff responded (~20% response rate).
• The Library achieved 7.01 for Perceived level of service, its highest ever (compared to 2011 and 2007).
• The Survey was a joint project of 6 libraries at UGC-funded institutions (JULAC libraries), using LibQUAL+®, a survey instrument developed by the Association of Research Libraries, widely adopted by libraries worldwide.

Respondents’ comments also provide useful feedback to us for making sustainable changes and developing services to meet users’ needs. Of the 1,483 comments received, over 25% were solely positive, and many more combined suggestions with appreciation.

In February 2016, DataSpace@HKUST was successfully released. It allows HKUST researchers to publish and manage their research data.

Datasets published here will be given a HKUST prefixed DOI identifier and a standard citation.

DataSpace@HKUST is both the first such implementation in Hong Kong universities, and was the first system within HKUST to adopt ITSC’s new authentication system using Shibboleth and SMAL 2.0 standard.

It has attracted attention in the Asia-Pacific region, including news coverage from ACCESS@LibraryLearningSpace.

In spring 2016, the Madison ILT post-test was administrated to the first 4Y cohort.

A total of 361 Year 4 UGs took the test in early 2016 (the pre-test was given to the same cohort in 2012). The percentage of students who are proficient has increased from 60.4% in 2012 to 79% in 2016.

Enhance information literacy in HK higher education through the development and implementation of a shared interactive multimedia courseware, a JULAC InfoLit Project was launched and led by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library.

An observation of information task of HKUST SENG UGs took place from 3 to 10 November 2015 while the Capacity Building Programs (CBP) were held at HKUST for 40 JULAC librarians in Jan 18-22 and June 13-14. The trainer was Professor Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe. It helped to prepare librarians for “Course Enhancement Fund” (CEF) partnerships to come.

Ebook usage climbed 4.3%; while E-journal usage increased by 18.3% in 2015. On average, one FTE user downloaded 80 ebook chapters and 190 ejournal articles in 2015