Enhancing Our Internal Processes
Library Objective:
Develop efficient information infrastructure
| Planning and quality | System developments | Library committees and working parties |
| Policy and process review | Lending service developments | |
| Library system | Records and Archives Office |
Planning and quality
The Division revised its initial 2004 Strategic Plan due to staffing issues. A number of key staff resigned during the early stages of the year thus making it difficult to achieve our goals. The Division achieved a number of the revised goals, in addition to partially meeting goals. A few goals were not achieved at all due to external factors or internal resource issues.
Work continued on improving our quality framework which is based on the Business Process Model and the Balanced Scorecard.
The 2005 Strategic Plan was developed primarily on the basis of the Library Review. A number of initiatives identified in the 2004 plan flowed through to the 2005 plan.
One of the major planning initiatives during 2004 was the finalisation of the Division's Marketing Plan. Some of the initiatives of the plan include:
- 2005 'O Week' activities
- Developing communication standards
- Finalising and promoting the Service Charter
- Developing the Library logo
A tremendous amount of effort was invested by staff to upgrade the staff website. The new website is based on the University template, provides much more up-to-date and relevant information and is indexed.
During the year the Director visited all campus libraries to meet with students in client feedback sessions to ascertain their perspectives on the Library. Important issues raised included:
- monograph collection size and availability,
- opening hours,
- high level of service provided by staff, and
- online access.
A number of local issues were addressed in response to the feedback received.
The Division continued with its ongoing Compliments/Comments/ Complaints (CCC) process of monitoring client feedback. A total of 82 client submissions were received from the following Library service points -- Rockhampton (43), Mackay (21), Technical Services (8), Bundaberg (5), Lending Services (4) and Sydney (1).
In response to the feedback action included:
- The opening hours of the Capricornia CQ collection at Rockhampton were
extended from July to include a full day on Wednesdays.
- Requests to purchase resources were passed on to the relevant Faculty
Liaison Librarians or Campus Manager and some were subsequently purchased as
funds became available.
- Facilities Management were requested to investigate / fix a number of
building-related issues identified in CCCs.
- A smaller training room was set up in Rockhampton for classes with
only a few students, freeing up the computers and the larger training rooms.
Students were also reminded that they could use the training room computers if
there were no classes using them at the time, by checking the booking sheets
outside each door.
- In Mackay the carrels which were moved from in front of the computer room
window were returned as requested.
- Bundaberg Library started opening 15 minutes earlier from Winter term.
- An air-freshening product for the toilets in Mackay was sourced and
installed.
Policy and process review
New and revised policies in 2004 are listed below. A complete list of
publicly available policies is available on the Division's
policies page.
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Client Privacy |
Work placements |
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External Consultancy |
Library Service for Continuing Education Students |
Library Resources and Intellectual Freedom |
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Incremental Payment of Library Penalties |
Value Added Services for Students Living Within a CQU Campus Library Catchment Area (excluding Emerald) |
Intranet Policy |
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Long overdue or lost library items |
Volunteers |
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Multiple Holds Policy |
Waiving Fees |
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Library system
The Library stayed on the same version of Virtua (42.4) throughout the year. Virtua related activity during the year included:
- The generation of Review, Overdue, and Long Overdue notices were reviewed and modified to use system parameters and to generate accurate data for the reworked Peoplesoft Student Financials interface.
- Scripts were developed to allow the easy modification of existing and incoming Virtua bibliographic records. They were initially used to change existing and incoming 65x marc tags that have subfield x Periodicals to v Periodicals and subsequently used for other modifications.
- Review notices were generated daily to alert students via Email when borrowed items are due for return.
- Student IDs were changed to lower case in Virtua to be consistent with other University systems.
- A Peoplesoft view and data import script was modified to allow the Library to include mobile phone numbers in the student record.
System developments
Major developments included:
- 24 computers were purchased for student use in public areas of the Library. 12 were installed in Rockhampton and 4 each at Bundaberg, Gladstone and Mackay.
- 25 new staff computers were purchased and rolled out using the University Managed Operating Environment.
- A new server (Lulu) was set up and configured for use as a staff intranet server.
- Systems staff spent considerable time locating and identifying items shown as missing or surplus in the Peoplesoft equipment stocktake reports.
- Systems staff reviewed the section's web pages for the staff intranet and transferred pages into the new template format.
- Intranet files accessed from a network drive and a web server were indexed for full text searching.
- CQU Campus in-house usage files generated and processed to determine the in-house usage of items that are used within the Library.
- A new self check machine was purchased for Rockhampton with the replaced
machine sent to the Mackay library.
Lending service developments
Stocktake of the 001-371 section of the monographs was completed by early
March 2004. Checking shelves for items identified as missing proved very time
consuming as three locations needed to be checked - Store, CM and the monograph
collection. Many of the missing items were located in Store. The Lending
Services Manager made a recommendation that the next stocktake should be of
Store so that items without that location can be identified and corrected. The
stocktake of Store was undertaken and completed early November.
A significant amount of collection relocation and weeding was undertaken during
the year. The weeding and re-location of Serials to Store commenced a number of
years ago and was finalised in 2004. This was a major undertaking and
required diligent work by staff to ensure the accuracy of database records was
maintained. The Reference Collection was weeded with material either
being sent to Store or discarded. Staff assigned extra time to this project to ensure
completion in a reasonable timeframe.
The Standards collections was relocated to the Reference area.
The 001-370 and 629-999 sections of the monographs collection were moved to
accommodate additional material and the 900's were moved to accommodate the Nulloo Yumbah collection. This collection was relocated from Nulloo Yumbah to
the Library.
The weeding and relocation of reference and serials identified a serious
space problem in the GM Store. Staff from Faculty of Business assisted in
identifying the law related material that could be discarded. Finding a home for
the excess shelving from Reference was impossible and as a result surplus
shelving was sorted and rationalised. Two small compactus stored in GM were sold
to Plant Sciences.
Records and Archives Office
The Office focussed much of its attention on completing the implementation project for the Chancellery and Registrar's Office. Records and Archives staff have worked quite closely with Chancellery staff to develop guidelines for capturing records and data entry standards, and to establish procedures for capturing committee documentation. As a result of working closely with these staff the Office has been able to promote good recordkeeping practices amongst executive support staff throughout much of the University.
During the year 5511 records were captured into Trim. The large number of recorded in November was due to capturing a large backlog of committee documentation and correspondence
Library committees and working parties
A major internal initiative during the year was to ensure all Divisional committees and working groups had terms of reference, reporting lines and in the case of working parties timelines. These were all achieved with the result of all groups now working in a more streamlined but formal manner.
The Divisional committees and working parties that functioned during the year were:
Committees
- Central Qld Campuses
- Disaster Contingency
- Health & Safety (Library)
- Marketing
- Planning & Development
- Information Services
- Section Heads
- Staff Development
- Virtua Operations Implementation Committee
- Intranet Committee
Working Parties
- Collection Development
- E-print Archives Working Party
- Floating Collection
- Deep Linking Working Party
- Library Review
- MetaSearch Implementation Working Party
- Orientation
- Public Web Site Development Group
- Staff Web Page Development Group
- Usage Working Party
- Virtua Development Working Party