Week 1 – 31st March 2008

This week has launched me into a new way of thinking about libraries. Having had many months of working as a library officer and acting technician on a part time basis, it was rather alien to pass the issues and returns area and know that I did not have to participate in a busy morning shift. Strange also to be here on a Monday with staff acknowledging my presence on such an early day in the week.

My introduction was an induction by Swee Kit. A brief overview of a well structured timetable that allows me to have access to reference Librarians and experiences across the multifarious faculties, including a few days at Joondalup. Having not been there physically, but virtually, I was looking forward to having a library experience from the other side of the software – the systems management, acquisitions and collection services that you hear about and imagine what staff do at their workstations.
An overview of the structure of the KITSC business area was complimented with background history of ECU library services and the role of Swee Kit as the senior library manager.
My first reference posting was with Lyn Leslie. We discussed the various databases with their search strategies and interfaces, wildcards and those with Australian content. Several students came for her assistance, with the most interesting request for the history and symbolism of the paint brush. A very interesting question and I will see what I can locate for myself if there is a quite moment. Lyn focuses on educating the student about the catalogue services of the library, and directs a search through the Ecu catalogue first, with particulars on the existing reference collection for a primary source of information, then on to the online world of Google Scholar and online databases. Students were shown various search strategies and how to access the search results, as an abstract, full text document or pdf file.
I assisted students with non-reference queries with the most popular being the location of a particular music score for choir which will see over 200 students involved.

After lunch break Julia Gross, Faculty librarian briefed me on the flickr project which requires the creating and classification of stock photos for public relations purposes at the Mt Lawley library. My points of interest were the format and size, some artistic quality and hope to snap at just the right moment in time. Some time was spent looking at existing library photos and examples on the flickr web site. I sourced the official photo release form as a link on the ECU governance web site, located a fine camera for the task and sold the project to several staff members who were willing to volunteer their services in a few posed photos. I think I will need to provide morning tea as part payment!