👀 This Month’s Image…

A dashing pair: Dennis Wickham (with pie) and Addan the camel. By Cynthia O’Gorman (1976) Camels, Mooloolaba, Queensland. “Wonga” was the Bain family beach house at Mooloolaba, Sunshine Coast (out of shot; see in other photos under link). Dennis Wickham took tourists on camel rides, and “Camelot” was the property in Buderim where Dennis kept his camels.

🔦 Highlights

On August 1st, following a gap of two months, LRS was joined by its new Resource Team Leader, Kendall Kousek. Kendall joins us (most recently) from Macquarie University: welcome, and may the onboarding fun begin!

• MLRS attended two of four Applied Coaching workshops with FIREUP Coaching (organised by QUT’s Performance, Leadership & Capability team, HR); met with her QUT coach for two of five sessions; and met her ALIA mentee from CQU for the first of five sessions
• Close of two LRS jobs: HEW6 (Resource Coordinator (Readings)), and HEW4 (Library Resource Assistant) – then shortlisting, interviewing, and deciding. Many thanks to the two wonderful colleagues from Strategic Procurement who sat on the panels. Also to Bruce (MLS, KG)
• MLRS and RTL joined the UL in a meeting with the Student Guild to discuss textbook models and ratios
• Hosted Ken Beutel (Director, QUT College) for a lightening overview of LRS work tasks
• Library hosted the Education Portfolio meeting and lunch.

🔎 Issues (from last month and emerging)

• Juggling staff gaps – end in sight.

⛷️ Major Future Activities

• Onboarding two new staff, next month
• Licences, negotiations, talking with vendors… renewal season.

👐 Indigenous Strategy

• Being progressed by the UL – consultation forum with Indigenous QUT academics planned to discuss the proposed Indigenous Primo View
• Digital artwork approved for use in the Primo View
• 4th QULOC Indigenous Strategy Reference Group meeting held: Leslie Acres spoke about UQ Library’s cultural audit of their thesis collection
• Team purchased books for the Murri School.

Owned Services

📈  Information Resources:

• RTL working on QUT’s annual insurance submission (print collection figures)
• CAUL Content Coordinators’ meeting: renewal season focus
• Meetings with EBSCO, QUT Accounts Payable (Finance), and LRS to iron-out remittance wrinkles and choose a new subscriptions renewal process
• Mammoth annual EBSCO renewals process concluded, and submitted: thanks Mary, Susan and Adam!
• Virtual vendor meetings: ProQuest
• Funds reallocated within Alma, to accommodate uptake of ordering via Rialto
• Privacy around user data – on the Library’s and CAUL’s minds.

📷  QUT Digital Collections:

Total number of items in QDC – 6,728

Total number of accesses, August – 29, 567 (QDC new record!)

August: Specific Collection Use

• Great help as always from CA staff at GP and KG, digitising items. Brett (CA GP) continues to work on digitising a beautiful book on Brisbane from 1823 to 1923 lent by Dr Lyndal O’Gorman.  Rosie and Cameron (CA KG) are helping a couple of hours each per week in the QDC area with the scanner, and slides
• Zach Dominello and Helen McMahon are continuing to assist with metadata and other tasks. One hour per week, usually from their desks
• Jasmine Smith (Assistant Curator, Galleries and Museums), was very happy with photographs scanned by Adam Hall for a publication re: William Robison: “Images are fantastic, thank you!” (29/8/2022 email)
• Google Arts and Culture now has 1249 QDC images loaded in the preview area. We continue to work with Google Arts and Culture staff on a launch for World Environment Day, 5th June 2023. Jill working on writing engaging exhibitions/ stories around the images.  The platform is a bit more cumbersome and time consuming than we initially thought re: the layout and getting the items in, however they display very cleanly
• Jill has been communicating with Kerry Raymond from Wikimedia Australia, re: placing QUT Digital Collection images into Wiki Commons and Wikipedia. Further engagement could be generated globally via this partnership.

📖  QUT Readings:

• RTL and MLRS attended the Preparing for Canvas staff forum
• Link checking has been completed for Semester 2 (4 units to follow up)
• Roster 3 procedure has been updated due to new requirements and further improvement.
• Not peak time for Roster 1 (incoming digitisation requests) & 2 (AskQUT Readings email inquiries).

💐Bouquets