TABLE OF CONTENTS
Your Library — Your Say! Library Services Quality Survey 2007
International Conference on Information and Learning Commons
Searching Business Dissertations for Your Graduate Research
Trial of RAPID for ILL
Collection Spotlight: Expanded Engineering Collection
Library Wireless Network Expansion The New Library Website
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Issue No. 66 November 2007 http://library.ust.hk/
Your Library — Your Say! Library
Services Quality Survey 2007
he HKUST Library strives to provide excellent service for you - our users. In order to get your feedback, the Library is currently conducting a Services Quality Survey among all HKUST students, faculty, and staff. The survey was activated on October 15th and will run through December 8th. The survey will benefit the HKUST community by providing the Library your feedback about our
strengths and weaknesses. This information will assist us in developing services to meet your expectations.
The survey will help us to understand your expectations for these services:
The Library as Study & Collaboration Space Modern Technologies used by the Library Scope & Quality of Collections
Responsiveness to User Needs Information Accessibility Service Efficiency
Please access the survey at
http://library.ust.hk/Services-Survey-2007.html. The survey only takes about 10 minutes of your time to provide us with your valuable opinions. At the end of the survey, you may enter your HKUST email to join a lucky draw for 50 prizes including an Apple iPOD and $500 and $200 coupons from the Bookstore!
The HKUST Library is participating with other libraries at UGC-funded institutions to provide the 2007 LibQUAL+TM Survey for comparable analysis of our services with our peer institutions. The survey is designed to help the Library better understand our users' perceptions about our service quality. As of spring 2006, more than 700 libraries have participated in the LibQUAL+TM survey throughout the US, Canada, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. The survey was designed by Texas A&M University and is provided by the US based Association of Research Libraries. The survey instrument is based on a service-quality assessment model in which, "only customers judge quality; all other judgments are essentially irrelevant" (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, Berry, 1990, p. 16).
The survey results will be released in the Spring and we will share these with the HKUST community through the Library web site. The survey provides interesting analytical data for the different factors. For example, some responses are mapped to "radar" or "spider" charts in which each axis represents a different survey question in the three dimensions of the survey. Radar charts are an effective way to graphically show strengths and weaknesses by enabling you to observe symmetry or uniformity of data. In the example above, points close to the center indicate a low value, while points near the edge indicate a high value. The LibQUAL+TM organization will provide the HKUST
Library with a detail report of the responses to questions by each group of defined users. This report will include graphical analysis of these responses as well as comparison to the other Hong Kong university libraries.
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contact lbsurvey@ust.hk.
Be sure to go to the Library website to take the survey today and - have your say!
International Conference on Information and Learning
Commons
n December the Library will host an international conference on the role of information and learning commons (IC/LC) in academic learning and collaboration. The conference will bring experts from different countries across the world to our campus for an inspiring and exciting meeting. The Library set up its Information Commons as a pilot project last Fall. After one year's operation the IC has gained great popularity among library users, especially our students.
To help us with future planning, we think this is an opportune time to organize a conference to share our experience with other library professionals and academic administrators, hear from them about their challenges and successes, and to discuss with experts what the future holds.
Being the first Information and Learning Commons Conference in Hong Kong, response to our call for presentations is amazing. We are able to draw informed speakers from different parts of the world, making the conference truly international and representative.
University administrators, library professionals and colleagues interested in partnering with libraries to foster learning and teaching at universities will find the conference informative and useful.
Harriette Hemmasi, University Librarian at Brown University, will give an overview on the whys of IC/LC in her keynote speech.
Belinda McLennan, Pro Vice-Chancellor, and Philip Kent, University Librarian, at Victoria University of Australia will discuss the development of sustainable staffing models that underpin IC/LC.
D. Russell Bailey, Library Director at Providence College in the US and also a notable figure in the field of information commons, will address the evolving concepts of IC/LC over time.
Other speakers from Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and Hong Kong will cover the assessment of IC, explore collaboration in the use and re-design of learning spaces between academic units, librarians and students, and discuss the development of IC/LC in their own institutions.
The conference will be held on 10-11 December in Lecture Theater D. UST members who are interested in knowing more about information and learning commons are welcome to join us in this exciting event.
Visit the conference website (http://library.ust.hk/conference2007/) or call 2358-6707 for more information.
Searching Business Dissertations for Your Graduate Research
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database (PQDT)
issertations written by HKUST students are housed in our Library's collection, and you can find the electronic copies in our E-Theses Database and Institutional Repository via the Library Home Page (http://library.ust.hk/). However, obtaining dissertations from other universities can sometimes be challenging as many of them are only available from the originating institutions. The ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database (http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/pqd.pl?diss)
contains a comprehensive collection of doctoral dissertations and master's theses. It covers more than 2.3 million citations and abstracts from over 1,000 universities worldwide. In addition to providing citations and abstracts as well as 24-page previews, the full-text of business dissertations from 1935 to 2004 are now available to the HKUST community.
The Library has now loaded over 21,500 of ProQuest's records of business doctoral dissertations from HKUST and global universities into the Library Catalog, making them locally searchable and improving their accessibility. The subject areas covered are wide-ranging; including corporate finance, monetary policy, organizational behavior, accounting and taxation.
To locate the full-text images of the dissertations, perform a keyword search by combining the database title and a topic of your interest (e.g. "Proquest dissertations and theses and corporate finance") in the Library Catalog. To browse the entire collection, do a title search for "Proquest dissertations and theses". You can also sort the results by publication year.
Dissertations in other subject areas can be searched and purchased from PQDT. You may also request the items through our interlibrary loan services
(http://library.ust.hk/serv/docd.html#borrowing). Charges are applied for items acquired from overseas. Please contact the Document Supply Service for enquiries at 2358-6755 or lbill@ust.hk.
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Trial of RAPID for ILL
ince the beginning of August, the Library has been doing a trial of RAPID - a low-cost, speedy and effective reciprocal borrowing service. RAPID consists of over 90 libraries, predominantly academic and research libraries in the United States. These libraries are grouped into different 'pods' based on their research activity, collection size, journal subscriptions, etc. HKUST Library belongs to the Academic Research pod, which means we can share journal resources with some of the most well-known research universities in the U.S., such as Cornell University, Columbia University, MIT, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.
RAPID libraries can request journal articles from other pod members through their local systems. All documents are delivered electronically, usually within 24 hours. There is no per-document charge, but a reasonably-priced subscription fee is required to become a member.
RAPID was built upon an existing interlibrary loan workflow, hence article requests and document delivery can be processed in a simple and smooth manner. Given RAPID's accurate holdings matching mechanism, requests are sent to libraries which actually have the specific journal issues -that's why the success rate in receiving the requested documents may reach 95% or higher.
Although our participation is still at the trial level, we have already seen the benefits of RAPID. Articles unavailable in Hong Kong can be obtained from overseas libraries free-of-charge; we can also share what we have in our journal collection with other pod members. The Library will decide on whether to join RAPID based on the results of the trial.
Collection Spotlight: Expanded Engineering Collection
hrough the years, the Library has been rigorously developing a comprehensive electronic collection for our Engineering school. Notable databases in the collection include IEEEXplore, ACM, EngNetBase, SciFinder Scholar, Inspec, ASTM and BSI standards, and Scopus. Major reference works and e-journal packages, both through consortia and individually, were also subscribed/purchased from ASCE, Blackwell-Wiley, Elsevier and Springer.
Largely due to ongoing user demand and the high usage of the e-books, the Library has expanded its subscription/purchase of e-books substantially in the past year.
For Books 24x7, the second most highly used database in our collection, we added another 1,150 engineering e-books to complement the 6,120 IT Pro e-books.
The Safari Tech Books Online has been expanded to include over 100 items published by O'Reilly and Pearson.
The Springer e-book collection provides our users access to over 2,350 engineering books.
Most recently, we added another 81 Wiley e-books in IT and electrical and electronic engineering to our collection.
Another major addition is Knovel, a database that offers fulltext searching of 800 reference works and handbooks published by major publishers. Currently, the Library subscribes to three of its collections - the Engineering; Safety, Health & Hygiene; and Biochemistry, Biology & Biotechnology collections.
The Engineering collection includes subseries in Aerospace & Radar Technology, Civil Engineering & Construction Materials, Environmental Engineering, General Engineering References, Mechanics & Mechanical Engineering, Oil & Gas and Semiconductors & Electronics.
Knovel supports browsing by book titles and cross-searching of all works in the database. A large number of tools are available allowing users to manipulate data from live tables, resolve equations and plot graphs and perform "what if" experiments on data.
Library Wireless Network Expansion
s you already know, the Library has worked with ITSC to ensure that wireless network access is available throughout all areas of the Library. With the start of the Fall semester, this coverage was significantly enhanced, with two additional wireless networks being made available: "Alumni" and "eduroam".
The "Alumni" wireless network provides access for HKUST graduates who have an Alumni e-Nation account, and have registered with ITSC . While computers connected to this network do not have direct access to all Library subscription resources, Alumni e-resources subscribers to the Library's
Alumni E-Resources program (http://library.ust.hk/serv/e-alumni.html) will be able to use those resources in the same way as they do from off campus.
The "eduroam" wireless network provides access for all faculty, staff and students from participating academic institutions, including most of the UGC universities in Hong Kong.
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So visitors from HK Polytechnic, for example, can use this network to access the Internet with their portable devices. Computers connected to this network also do not have direct access to all Library subscription resources. Connections to databases and e-journals must be authenticated in the same manner as for off-campus access. Note that this is a reciprocal service, so you can connect your laptop to the Internet from many areas when visiting our fellow UGC institutions.
In an upcoming expansion, ITSC will be extending the "PCCW" wireless network to allow PCCW network customers (including Alumni who may not have signed up for the Alumni e-Nation service) Internet access within the Library. Again, connections to databases and e-journals must be authenticated in the same manner as for off-campus access.
Information about these expanded wireless network options can be found on the Library website at
http://library.ust.hk/serv/wireless.html, or in greater detail from ITSC at
http://www.ust.hk/itsc/wireless/.
The New Library Website
he Library website (http://library.ust.hk/) has been revamped with enhanced user functionality. With the new layout, you can access electronic resources more conveniently, connect to library online services readily, and find library information at your fingertips.
The Library website not only informs you of library services and news, its vital roles also include online services provision, and it serves as the gateway for all the electronic resources subscribed to by the Library. To enhance such
functionality, the new web structure is designed with a user-oriented approach. Whether you are a student, faculty or staff member, or an alumnus, you can find an informational page with relevant service links specially selected for you. These pages are centrally located on the home page under the heading "Services for".
To help you find various kinds of library materials, there are new pages that provide pertinent links, and guide you through the process of locating the information, either in print or electronic format. These guides are also prominently listed on the home page under the column "Guides to Resources", together with a well-established collection of subject guides on a rich variety of topics.
A major section on the new home page is the "tabs area". It lets you search the Library Catalog and access databases and electronic journals right from the home page without the need for further navigation. These tabs are a great help in making library resources more visible to you.
Another very welcome improvement is the quick menu bar below the top banner; it lists the most popular library services. You can now make a room booking, check your library account, find a library form, and access other frequently used library services with just one click!
The new Library website makes information seeking and users' needs the central foci. To ensure that you will continue to find the site current and useful, the Library has formed a new working group to manage the content of the website. Sustaining a healthy growth of the Library website is an important and ongoing effort; you can help us by giving your comments and suggestions through email to library@ust.hk.
last modified 31 October 2007
