Achievements

Students, staff, and faculty continued to use Library e-materials at a high rate. E-article downloads continued to soar in 2014, with a 20% increase over the previous year, with 1,950,125 e-article downloads. Meanwhile, the drastic rise in e-book use calmed down in 2014, with 935,545 chapter downloads.

To support and encourage your use of e-resources, especially books, in 2014, the Library added another 48,545 e-books to the collection, many in Chinese.

In October 2014, 8 JULAC libraries were invited to merge two proposals on improving information literacy among Hong Kong students in higher education into one project. In spring 2015, UGC agreed to fund the project (HKPolyU will be the project leader). Other project related activities in the coming three years will stem from this grant, to further enrich and develop students information literacy.

An ORCID iD integration services was launched in March 2015 to assist HKUST researchers in creating and managing their ORCID account to make it easier for their research results to be discovered and used. A program was developed to automate the feeding of the SPD & publication data profile into ORCID accounts. 80 faculty members and 286 RPGs have created accounts using this service.

The Library seeks to develop and improve its research support services. To that end, in Spring 2015, we conducted the Ithaka S+R Survey among HKUST faculty members. 78 completed the questionnaire. Other UGC libraries participated in this survey as well.

The results will guide our plans for strengthening research support services to you in the future.

This year, the Library successfully completed a project to assign DOIs to over 5,500 HKUST. With these unique document identifiers available in the CrossRef registry, online access to HKUST’s theses collection has improved and become easier.

Thanks to ITSC’s generous provision of virtual computing resources, over 30 servers originally hosted on the Library Server Virtualization Platform were migrated to the Virtual Data Center (VDC). These included some of our mission critical servers such as EZProxy, Room Booking, and Library Event Registration.This has improved the reliability and speed of the Library’s online resources and services. The plan also included moving physical servers to VDC, including SFX, ILLiad, and the Digital Archives

3-D Printing for all HKUST students, staff & faculty

Launched in Fall 2014, the Library has 2 printers (MakerBot and Up Box), using PLA filament, a biodegradable polymer. HKUST community members made 198 requests in the first year. with a 75% success rate.

In addition to allowing HKUST community members to experiment with 3-D printing at low cost; this bookable service also provides design resources and a Gallery of 3-D Printed objects made with this service.

The Library also hosts Open Houses to promote the service within the HKUST community. 2014-15 saw 12 sessions given to 130 attendees.

Major renovation work on 1/F and LG1 created a better learning and study environment with a 12% overall increase in seating (57% increase on LG1).

The renovated Media zone on LG1 then became spill-over 24 hour space in 2015 spring exam period, as it will continue to do in the future. On 1/F the new furniture and carpet gave a new look and feel, while the Thesis Room was upgraded and fitted out as a “deep quiet” study spot.

The number of power sockets doubled on 1/F & LG1, satisfying a long-standing student need, while the Idea Wall in LC (created for students to write or draw on freely) has proved popular.

In response to user requests, the Library increased opening hours to 98 per week and increased loan quota for faculty and other researchers.

• Faculty & staff loan quota increase by 50 to now 150 at a time
• Library now open until 9pm on Saturdays

More students, faculty, and staff are using InterLibrary Loan and Documents Supply services. After increasing 22% in 2013-14, it increased another 7.3% in 2014-15, while the fill rate continues high at 98%.

This year we also increased access for HKUST users, by entering into ILL agreements with the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences and with the 500-member China Academic Library & Information System (CALIS)

As part of being a learning organization, the Library encourages staff to develop professionally, and share their knowledge and expertise locally and globally, with the goal to improve HKUST Library’s services and resources provision. As a result, HKUST Library staff gave 18 conference presentations and published two articles and one book chapter this past year.

As part of the Library’s continuing professional development, in order to improve library services at HKUST, the Library held: 16 Library Connects (514 attendees), 9 Fun 紛 Cafés (248 attendees), and the Library Staff Retreat ( two half-days on June 18 & 19, 2015).

Library Connect is a forum for staff to share their professional knowledge and conference experiences. 2014-15 topics included Library signage, 3-D printing, Library marketing, & the new ACRL Framework on Information Literacy. Fun 紛 Café is a lunch-time gathering where staff share hobbies and interests, such as photography. The Staff Retreat is now an annual event, and an integral part of the Library’s strategic planning methods.

DDA ensures that the Library buys e-books that will be used, by allowing patron usage to trigger purchases.

This year the Library participated in 3 concurrent DDA programs: Ebrary, Wiley, and a Joint JSTOR DDA program with 8 JULAC libraries.

2013 saw a tremendous increase in the use of e-resources.

• E-book downloads rose from 288,884 to 1,015,084 (85 per FTE).
• E-journal article download gains were more modest: from 1,345,907 to 1,623,570 (136 per FTE).

In spring 2014, we administered the Madison Assessment of information literacy to 255 third year students as a post-test (following up on the fall 2011 pretest given to 266 of the same cohort when they were first year students).

The students showed statistically significant improvement in their overall information literacy proficiency. They went from only 54% of them proficient to 77.6% of them proficient or “advanced” proficient.

December 16th, 2013 was a happy day. It was the submission deadline for RAE, Prof Joseph Lee, VPRGS, and Prof Tongxi Yu, submitted the data to UGC on behalf of HKUST in the Library’s Special Collections Gallery.

Since October 2011, the Library worked closely with UGC, JULAC, VPRGO and cost centers on RAE 2014.

• We helped to process research outputs, obtain full-text, input and verify metadata, clear copyright and create the Document Repository.
• We were involved with training and meetings with cost centers.
• With other UGC libraries, we contacted 161 major and 1,300 minor publishers to clear copyright.

A long and arduous task for many at the university, the Library and its staff were proud to participate and help

A major renovation work was completed to create the Hong Kong Chiu Chow Chamber Of Commerce Ko Pui Shuen Gallery. This gallery space now has increased security and acoustic control. Three exhibitions plus some meetings have already been held in this multi-function gallery.

With funding provided by Dr. Ko Pui Shuen, we also completed the digitization of antique maps, maps of China, HKUST posters and architectural drawings, which are now available in the RSE – the Rare and Special E-Zone http://library.hkust.edu.hk/rse.