Winter solstice is the time of year when the pole is tilted furthest away from the sun.  In the northern hemisphere (where Hong Kong is located) our winter solstice is in December.  In 2023, it will be Friday, December 22nd.  In many cultures this time of year, with the shortest days and longest nights, are a time of festivals and significance.  Many celebrations have ancient roots and influences. 冬至 -  (dung1 zi3 - Cantonese) | (dong1 zhi4 - Mandarin) Close to home:  this is a straight forward festival, usually celebrated on the evening of the solstice. In Hong Kong, many businesses let staff out from work early to make it easier for them to gather with their family for a reunion meal. Often sweet dumplings called 湯圓 (tong1 jyun4-2 in Cantonese, tang1 yuan2) feature at the meal. There is a saying, ""冬大过年" - roughly translated as "Winter solstice is more important than New Year".   The general reasons given are because for an agricultural people, solstice as the coldest and darkest part of the year made it more important, for example in this article 2021 article from the Zhejiang Daily "冬至了！为啥广东人说“冬大过年”？"  and this  2022 one from HK01  "冬大過年！8項冬至習俗一定要知吃這些能添福招財帶旺桃花運". If you have trouble reading Chinese, try opening the articles in Chrome and use GoogleTranslate. ZHAO Rongguang  states, "During the Tang and Song Dynasties, the winter solstice was regarded as important as the New Year. "*. Perhaps the influence of the Tang dynasty practices remained strong among the Cantonese? After all, the overseas settlements of ethnic Chinese were self-names as "唐人街".

From 29 November to 1 December, we had the privilege of hosting three exceptional student poster presentation sessions for CENG 1600 Biotechnology and Its Business Opportunities and CHEM 4689 Capstone Project. These sessions were a testament to the remarkable collaborative efforts between our esteemed faculty and dedicated librarians, whose fruitful partnerships have flourished since 2018 and 2016, respectively. In addition to providing the LG4 multi-function room as the venue for these presentations, our SciTech Librarians have been unwavering in their commitment to supporting the CENG 1600 and CHEM 4689 courses. They offered tailored workshops, equipping students with quality search tools and effective strategies to locate relevant and reliable information sources. Emphasizing the ethical and responsible use of information sources, our workshops covered essential aspects such as proper citation, copyright compliance, and creative commons licensing. Moreover, our librarians extended personalized consultation sessions to assist students with their research endeavors (CHEM 4689) and provided a rubric to facilitate the evaluation of the students' poster presentations (CENG 1600). Throughout the research process until the final presentation, students acquired invaluable skills in critical thinking and analysis, enabling them to translate their ideas into thoughtfully designed posters. The insightful feedback received from faculty members, librarians, and peers further enriched their understanding of various research domains. The collective creativity and enthusiasm displayed by the students left our faculty, teaching assistants, and librarians absolutely thrilled! We take immense pride in our commitment to supporting our students and faculty members in their academic pursuits.

Meet the Team behind the Library's Systems and Digital Services! Franky, Joey, Adrian, Andrew, Leo, Sam, Terry, Martin, and Holly.   Among many other things, they manage over 55 computer servers with well over 70 individual applications – from simple things like LDAP identity lookup to complex beasts like our Room Booking System. Most of those servers have been running on CentOS7, which will reach its end-of-life by this coming Summer. Since these applications are mission critical, all these servers need to be upgraded to a new OS (operating system). That is a crazy big job to manage, when every application has to be tested and adjusted to work on the new server. All the people in that photo are heroes to me. Except the guy in the red jacket – that's me and I just offer support and encouragement. Everyone else there does the real work. To make things more complicated, several of the larger applications need to be upgraded just to work on the new OS - a double set of upgrades!

If you look, you often find wonders at the Library – big and small, indoors and outdoors. Admire this full moon captured on November 27 by my colleague Ada, Head of Resource Management.  It was taken from the Library Garden.  Doesn't it put us all in awe? I am entranced every time I see the Moon rise over the sea by our campus. At HKUST, you can find many spots that give you an open view facing east, such as the lookout at Atrium ("Mushroom Window") and the Fok Ying Tung Sports Center at Seafront. To me, my favourite spot is of course the Library Garden! When the weather is comfortable, like recent days, the Library Garden is a beautiful place to take a break from your study, to have some fresh air, to hang out with friends, or just to have some time alone with the view, daytime or night. And, don't forget, you can say "Hello" to George too! Ada took this poetic photo a little after 6pm.

Do you know there was a commemorative stamp of HKUST in 1989? I did not, until I saw it today in the Library! The stamp was presented in a first day cover of a set called "Hong Kong Building for the Future," issued on October 5th, 1989. Colored in gold and featuring the academic building, it portrays a budding campus aspiring to be a world-class university. Our University Archives curates a collection of artefacts to preserve the history of the university. Some of them are now being shown on the Library 1/F. Besides the first day cover, another exhibit I find fascinating is the original sketches of the graduation gowns. Thanks to archives colleagues who organize the display, we get to see these interesting items that inspire us to reflect on the growth of HKUST. By the way, "Hong Kong Building for the Future" was a set of 6 stamps. The other five were Cultural Centre, Eastern Harbour Crossing, Bank of China, Convention and Exhibition Centre, and Light Rail Transit.