Achievements

The Library continued its involvement with international associations and cooperatives. We successfully maintained membership in the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO), remaining the only member in China. We are also full members of the Cooperative Online Serials Programs (CONSER) of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). PCC is an international cooperative effort aimed at expanding access to library collections by providing useful, timely, and cost-effective cataloging that meets mutually-accepted standards of libraries around the world.

In August 2012, we successfully completed the Resource Description and Access (RDA) in NACO training by PCC and were granted independent status. The PCC coordinator sent a complimentary note: “The HKUST Library has demonstrated a high level of competence in RDA authority work, and all of this was accomplished in a very short time. This is an outstanding and commendable achievement”. In May 2013, PCC also granted us independence in Series Authority Record work.

Library Systems staff developed a wide array of tools for Library users and staff.

Most important and widely used is the sophisticated Library Floor Plans interface for desktop and mobile devices. It is paired with a digital signage system, and also integrated into the SmartCAT and the University’s m.HKUST app.

2012 was another busy and event-filled year for Library Facilities. Highlights included:

• Adding an entry gate system for the Learning Commons, which enabled more secure and flexible 24-hour access
• Adding user-controlled ceiling lighting in the ‘point’ area of LG4, allowing more flexible use of this space
• Cutting a second door for access to the LG4 rear terrace, to reduce program interruptions and expand the availability of the terrace for students
• Adding more study tables for the rooftop garden
• Upgrading older group study rooms, starting with wall-mounted display screens for each room
• Adding another couple hundred power sockets for users, especially on the LG levels
• Swapping group study rooms from LG3 to LG4, to reduce conflict with users of the quiet floor

As expected, 334 led to increased use of the Library space and facilities, more breakdowns, and more mess. Extra cleaning was arranged, including shampooing of the Refreshment Zone carpet. In the Learning Commons, these efforts were difficult to plan around the expanded 24/7 operation.

The Library has organized 9 international symposia and conferences in tits first ten years. In 2001, it was Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) Annual Conference co-hosted with City University of Hong Kong, Academia Sinica in Taipei, and the California Digital Library of University of California at Berkeley.

PNC is an international body formed by institutions of higher education on the Pacific Rim to explore issues of information and technology exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Library completed installing a transparent mechanism for authenticated remote access to the Library’s subscription resources: EZ-Proxy.

For over ten years it has allowed HKUST students, faculty, and staff to use the Library’s subscribed e-resources from any computer connected to the internet, anywhere in the world. This service is one of the most significant parts of creating a true “Library without Walls”. More information available at: http://library.hkust.edu.hk/collections-resources/databases/ezproxy/.

The Library launched the HKUST Institutional Repository (http://repository.ust.hk/), the first institutional repository in Hong Kong and Asia. Created to allow faculty to self-archive their publications, it digitally preserves HKUST’s scholarly research and makes it more accessible.

Using DSpace software, developed at MIT, it complies with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI).  This makes it easier for articles to be discovered by Web search engines, and raises HKUST’s faculty members’ visibility.

The Open Access Initiative (OAI) attempts to regain lost access to academic publications caused by skyrocketing journal prices. One OAI is for academic institutions to collect, disseminate and preserve their scholarly output in digital format: create Institutional Repositories (IR)

On December 9-10, 2004, HKUST Library held the “International Conference on Developing Digital Institutional Repositories: Experiences and Challenges”. Jointly organized with the California Institute of Technology Libraries, the conference attracted 130 local and overseas participants.

HKALL (Hong Kong Academic Library Link) allows faculty, students and staff to borrow books directly from any of the other JULAC Libraries. Starting in 2005-06 with less than 7,000 loans and borrowing; by 2009-10 HKUST was lending over 15,000 a year to patrons at other libraries and borrowing over 16,000 per year.

This service gives HKUST students, faculty, and staff access to ~ 8,000,000 volumes from universities across Hong Kong, arriving within 3 working days of request.

22 September 2006 saw the official opening of the Information Commons, a library service facility for the University community that combined information services and technologies to support learning beyond classroom lessons.

It is a dynamic space where students and other library users inquire, research, and learn while being able to collaborate with each other and receive support from expert staff. It pioneered this type of information and learning space at HKUST Library.

From 15 October to 8 December 2007, HKUST Library users responded to LibQual, a  web-based survey used by academic libraries across the world, designed to define and measure user perceptions of library services.

1,887 HKUST respondents filled-out the questionnaire, rating their perceptions of service quality. In this survey, HKUST Library received better average scores than the average JULAC group scores. But, the Library is not complacent. It used the LibQual data to improve services and facilities even more.

On 29 October, 2008, Library celebrated the donation of Professor Ta-Kuang Lin’s (林達光) personal collection of 5,500+ items (manuscripts, books, photos, etc.). This collection illuminates the study of contemporary China, especially the Cultural Revolution.

More information is available: http://library.hkust.edu.hk/collections-resources/special-collections/lin/.

This year also saw the donation of John Dolfin III’s collection of works on ethnic minorities in China.

In Spring 2009 the Postgraduate Studies Secretariat of the VPAA Office conducted a Research Postgraduate (RPG) Alumni Career Tracking Survey. 800+ alumni of RPG programs responded. One of the questions asked the respondents to rate their experience at HKUST with various support services.

On a 4-point scale (1 being poor and 4 being excellent), the Library scored 3.6 overall. This was the highest among all academic supporting services.

HKUST’s Library Catalog became searchable via the m.HKUST application http://mobileguide.ust.hk/.

A joint project of the Library and the Publishing Technology Center, this free mobile app was developed based on the RSS syndication features offered by SmartCAT http://catalog.ust.hk/

With this app you can search for library materials, see if it’s available, find out which book shelf it is on, and more. This was the first of many enhanced e-services for mobile users

HKUST Library was instrumental in bringing INNOPAC out of the USA and in providing expert knowledge to assist them in enhancing the system to support Chinese characters.

We also served as the only beta site for debugging and product testing. Since then, all academic libraries in Hong Kong and many others in Asia  adopted INNOPAC.

To enrich the cultural life on campus, the Library organized the first art exhibition featuring art works of prominent artists Huang Miaozi (黃苗子) and Yu Feng (郁風). In the Library’s first decade, over 20 art exhibitions were held in the Library Gallery. These exhibitions represented various media and art forms including Chinese calligraphy and painting, watercolor painting, sculpture, oil, collage, photography, print, rubbing, and seal carving.

Through the years, the Library has introduced many new technologies to the Hong Kong Library Community. In 1993, the Library worked closely with a US-based system vendor to develop an innovative “Image Management System”. This system scanned faculty’s handwritten notes, images, assigned reading materials, etc; and provided sophisticated searching capabilities. It was the first of its kind.

The Library installed Compact Shelving on LG4 – a safe, elegant and user-accessible electronically operated mobile shelving system that was the first and the largest of its kind in Hong Kong.

In 1998, similar compact shelving systems were installed to hold the growing collection of microfiche and microfilm and for the University Archives.

When the web technology was first unveiled, HKUST Library responded enthusiastically by developing its website immediately. This server allows users seamless access to library information and collections and provides a gateway to electronic resources worldwide.

• May 1995: 18,180
• May 2001: 1,217,336