Flooding at Gardens Point

GP campus was badly damaged in the recent extreme rain and flooding event. Luckily the Library escaped major damage, but we will continue to monitor for mould. I would like to thank staff for their continued resilience in the face of this challenge.

GP Library Adviser team

The GP LAs have done some fantastic work in February, under very unusual circumstances, serving at least 550 students!!!

• 95 students helped via Chat, emails & appointments
• ~ 460 students helped in 10 library workshops.  Survey feedback is not yet available, but very favourable (unsolicited) student comments during online workshops include:
  • • “great presentation, extremely valuable. Thanks!”
    • “Thank you! This was super useful 🙂”
    • “I’m going to all the workshops ….. Thanks for running them 🙂 “
    • “Thank you guys! Super helpful 🙂 “
    • “Thank you so much, it was really helpful”
    • “Awesome, thank you guys so much”
    • “Thank you so much for your time! 🙂”
    • “Thank you for all the information today. Much appreciated”
    • “Thanks for an engaging and informative session!”
    • “Thank you very much for this! Very informative and helpful especially for someone who is bad at navigating websites 😂”
    • “The library website is so useful, Thank you!”

While all of this is part of their usual LA role, it was achieved under quite unusual circumstances.  They began February working remotely in preparation for the covid peak, they adapted to changes in service provision methods with the conversion of all O week activities to online only, then ended the month with the extreme weather event and all the changes and additional considerations that required.

We continue to be impressed with their resilience, teamwork, willingness, and ability to perform exceptionally well under trying times.

Activities

Displays

We have installed a temporary installation in the level 6 stairwell showcasing images from QUT Digital Collections. A lovely partnership has emerged between Jill Rogers and Stephanie Jacobs, who have led this work. Thanks Steph and Jill!

Facilities

• HiQ Activity Room on level 3 is now ‘owned’ by Innovation Central Brisbane (ICB) – a university-industry research collaboration hub and partnership between QUT and Cisco. We will watch the use of this space with interest as it is already impacting on GP Library room bookings.
• Jenny met with Disability Services and FM to improve sit-stand facilities in GP Library and to refurb the level 7 bathrooms (hooray!)
• Many meetings were held between the Library and its partners in order to get ready for 24/7 opening.

Celebrations

• We threw a little party for Graham who ‘celebrated’ a big birthday by undertaking massive flood cleanup. We hope you get to celebrate properly in the near future Graham!

External Engagement 

• Kate Thomas was appointed to the QULOC Workforce and Organisational Development working group. It will be great to have Kate on board! Jenny T is Convenor of this group.

Web & Digital Engagement Service

• Appointed Stephanie Jacobs, Thu Hoang and Katerina Borcherdt to work on Researching By Study Area guides and Course and Unit guides. They will work closely with Michael Hawks for LL input in establishing best practice and governance of the guides.
• Jenny and Gabrielle continued to work with SSG on a rewrite of the HiQ Study pages – https://qutvirtual4.qut.edu.au/group/student/study
• Helen Davies ran some workshops for the LAs running through the updated Vancouver style. Helen basically led this re-write which was a lot of work, thanks Helen!

Coming up for the Web service … plenty …

• Jenny T will work with Joanna on determining the statistics that are to be kept for the service
• FAQs in AskQUT relating to the web service were audited for relevancy over summer and certain FAQS will be deleted or have ownership transferred
• Will pull together a group to work through video-hosting