Category: Uncategorized

Greetings, everyone!

I started working for my new employer, United International College, on November 10, and have been busy ever since. The college is still under construction which is expected to complete in one year’s time. Right now there are 1200 undergraduate students. When the college is in full operation, the student population will be 5000, including post-graduates.

As head of the library, now I have only two staff members, young and hard working, plus 10 student library assistants. The library was opened one week after I started working. It’s a temporary one of two classrooms. The new library will be a stand-alone building of 10,000 square meters with 3 floors beset in the hills. (The view will be excellent.) I have attended one meeting with the construction team for what kind of library building we’d like to have. I’ll visit university libraries in Hong Kong next week to get some ideas of library buildings and facilities. Other major issues on my agenda for the new library include selection of Integrated Library System and venders, collection development, staff building (30 FTE), departmental structuring, and policy making. All these jobs are very challenging to me as I’ve never been a library manager, but I have the confidence I can do it and do it well as I know I am a quick learner with potentials.

I would like my library to be distinguished in three areas in China. First, excellent customer service. For example, having visited several academic libraries in China, I am very surprised that none of them has a reference service desk in the library. I have been thinking that, in three years time, many library professionals in China will come to visit my library to see what a reference service is like. Second, best collection in the English language in some subject areas. I can do this fairly easily because I can take advantage of the fact that my college is one of the only two colleges in China where all courses are taught in English. Imagine scholars and researchers in China will have to seek help from my library by inter-library loan for some English books in five years time. Third, creating an excellent study environment in the library building, making it more humane and more catering for library users with better space management and technology/facilities convenience.

I live in a rented apartment of two bedrooms in one of the two best residence compounds in the city. It’s very convenient to work, 20 min bus-drive or 10 min school shuttle-bus drive. I always eat out either by myself or with colleagues/friends. It is cheap: 2.5 Canadian dollars for a steak with rice or spaghetti, and it tastes good!

Anyway, I pretty enjoy myself here. Come and visit me when any of you are in this corner of the world.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Henry

Today one of my club members delivered his Competent Communicator (CC) #10 – Inspire your Audience. The title of his speech is How to Overcome Adversity. There are three Ps I will always remember:
–Adversity is not permanent – you can overcome it by never, never, never giving up;
–Adversity is not personal – you are not specifically targeted;
–Adversity is not pervasive – it does not follow you around.

Please excuse me for not being in contact with most of you – I was homeless, sort of. Believe it or not, I moved 4 times in less than a month. Thanks to Jing for letting others know that I was still alive and well. I eventually moved to a permanent apartment last week that I call it home now. I do not yet have Internet access at home. I am temporarily using someone’s wireless connection. Anyway, I have been thinking about posting. Trust me, I am missing all of you!

Life in Montreal is quite different from Vancouver, not to mention the challenges from the work, especially in the begining. I am glad that things are starting making sense to me now. As a member of the systems team, my job is to maintain the Integrated Library System and work on other information technology services related tasks. The job seems to be what I was looking for. I am happy and excited about what I am doing. I believe I will never get bored with my job. There are always new things coming up to force one to learn. Fortunately, I am working with a group of talented and friendly people, who are there for questions and help. From school to real professional world, what I can say to those who are getting their degrees is that how little I know about the profession and how little I can offer. Besides that, I find communication skills extremely important from my short experience (I guess Linda would like to hear that).

I hope you all are doing well. Please feel free to write. On another note, my UBC interchange account has expired recently. Please use my gmail or hotmail account for future contact. I will send you my new address and phone number by email shortly.

Take care and keep in touch,

Heather

$15 per person, and discount price is $12 for adults and $5 for kids.

Library and Wikis

I am now working on the World Cultures Committee at FVRL. One of the tasks assigned to me is to find out ways for access to our multilingual collection (it’s a 12 non-English collection) through OPAC. As far as I know, this is one of the most challenging topics in our profession. Many organizations and individuals have ended up with despair because of daunting contraints such as language expertise, lack of funding, and technology. I think as new librarians working in a non-Chinese speaking environment, everyone of us will take on a task of this kind one day or another. So, I invite you all to join the discussion.

There are organizations, such as large academic libraries and national libraries jointly across countries, working on the issue. To me, they are in a good position to tackle the issue as they have better resources. However, my concern is what we can do for a minor system with less resources, i.e. individual local libraries with a growing multi-ethnic population. I am thinking of providing access points through OPAC, such as subject headings and name headings in English. Are there people out there who have experience in this field and can offer me some advice?

转自 http://www.uv.mx/usbi_ver/unesco/images/invcn.jpg

你是否开发过信息文字资源 (Information Literacy Resources)
创建课程，开发标准或评估工具，或是写过这个题目的论文？
你是否愿意让你的信息文字工作被国际上看到？
如果是的话，我们邀请你来参与一个激动人心的新网络目录，国际信息文字资源目录 (the International Information Literacy Resources Directory)。
这个网络知识库由IFLA的信息文字部门在联合国教科文组织资助的一个项目中设计，这个目录的目标是使全球范围内信息文字的共享成为可能。这个数据库对所有人免费开放。
访问这个网址：www.uv.mx/usbi_ver/unesco，并对你认为最有用的资源编写条目。你的参与将丰富这个网络从而使其成为全球信息文字交换中心。你可以立刻开始提交你的记录。
请与相关人士共享这条信息来帮助我们促进这个项目。

Jesus Lau

项目总协调人
信息文字部/IFLA主席
Director, Universidad Veracruzana, USBI VER Library
Veracruz, Mexico

Enjoy more photos …

关于花的参考咨询问题很有趣，尤其在图书馆被花海包围的季节。刚刚很费劲地纠正学普通话的一位先生，那是“山茶花” （camellia) 不是“仨擦花”； 还逗一位老外朋友，“中国也有杜鹃和山杜鹃 （Azalea and rhododendrons)，而且中国的杜鹃是加拿大杜鹃的祖宗。有书为证。”