From QUT Digital Collections: Souvenir containing 24 black and white drawings of the the 1893 Brisbane floods, published by Char. Mills at the Telegraph & Week Newspaper Offices Queen & Elizabeth Streets, Brisbane, 1893.

🔦 Highlights

• Month starts with a special day off, followed by WFH due to floods and a rain bomb…
• Discussions with colleagues at Flinders University, and QUTex, re: non-award students access to eresources
• LRS team challenge: Two teams. Two self-assembly glass cabinets. Q: What could possibly go wrong? A: Nothing! One of the cabinets now houses ‘Phyllis’, an 80cm doll made in 1955 by QUT Alumna Phyllis Meiklejohn (nee Kennedy), donated to the QUT Alumni Relations office by her family. Whilst on her 2021 WIL placement with LRS, CA’s multi-talented Arabella Kajewski created an amazing photogrammetry rendering of the doll: see Arabella’s reimagining, here. Other work by Phyllis – her fashion drawings, along with a GIF by Arabella – can be enjoyed here.

IRC meeting no.1/ 2022 highlights (see also SharePoint):

• New privacy statement added to the web Collection Development Manual (General Principle #15)
• IRC Procedures document added to SharePoint to complement the revised Terms of Reference
• 2022 IRC selection processes confirmed, and now available under “General Documents” on SharePoint
• 2022 subscription Bids and Cancellations spreadsheet now available under “General Documents” on SharePoint
• News: 2022-2025 Panel Arrangement for purchasing monographs in place (ProQuest, EBSCO/ GOBI, James Bennett). Extension for a further three years from initial 2019-2022 Arrangement
• Ex Libris’ Rialto marketplace now operating within Alma. Catherine H and Brendan (the IR Leads) are part of the implementation group.

🔎 Issues (from last month and emerging)

• Jean’s last day is 3rd of June. We are very sad that she loves her boat more than her colleagues 🙂
• Service delivery with staff gaps continues from 2021 (1 less RL, and 2 less RAs)
• Non-award students and access to QUT-licensed eresources: learned that commercialisation of material is a red flag in QUT licences.

⛷️ Major Future Activities

Recruit for a replacement Resource Team Leader

👐 Indigenous Strategy

•  Project to enhance discovery of Indigenous content via a Library Search Primo View continues. Includes validation that Dreamtime Stories are sensitively catalogued (DDC, and LCSH) using the AITSIS Subject Thesaurus
• 2nd QULOC ISRG (Indigenous Strategy Reference Group) meeting held. Members are rotating Songline introductions to themselves – awesome initiative. Deep discussion around sensitive cataloguing of Indigenous resources.

Owned Services

📈  Information Resources:

• E-resources usage stats being harvested by the Resource Team, so LLs can make well-informed decisions when reviewing titles for the next round of renewals/ cancellations (with most titles due for renewal in time for Jan 2023)
• Wrangling of the 2022 active subscriptions spreadsheet in preparation for IRC’s annual List of Subscriptions review

📷  QUT Digital Collections:

• Google Arts and Culture platform partnership will give QUT a great place to showcase our exhibitions/ stories and curated collections for world wide access. Asia-Pacific Collection (images by Irathne Childs) to be first story (permission obtained)
• QUT Social Media picked up QDC photo for International Women’s Day, and asked for more ‘flashback’ images. The IWD post was retweeted by the VC:

International Women’s Day, 8 March

(Retweeted by the Vice-Chancellor on the same day). 56 likes, 13 retweets.

Collections

Total number of items in QDC: 6,635

March Accesses: 17,347

Specific Collection Use:

📖  QUT Readings:

• Working Group held first tri-monthly meeting for 2022
• Readings Team updated their maintenance and e-resource linking procedures to accommodate OpenAthens configuration: this includes manually checking 233 Alma Link Resolvers (in progress)

💐Bouquets