2013/14NTU LIBRARIESYEAR IN REVIEW

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All of us, whether we are students, professors, administrators or researchers use information to continuously build our knowledge as we engage in learning, teaching and research activities. Our Library, like other leading academic libraries worldwide, not only provides access to valuable scholarly information resources but more importantly, supports our users in engaging with information effectively, turning it into knowledge that is unique to each of us.

For example, we teach students essential information literacy skills so that they can use systematic approaches in gathering information when undertaking academic research, are keenly aware of academic integrity issues and in general, become better self-directed and life-long learners. For teaching staff, we explore with them new ways to enhance their work, for example developing course blogs and providing open educational resources and clearing copyright in creating online training course materials. For researchers, we find ways to enhance their presence in the scholarly communication environment through open access initiatives and anticipating data management requirements.

In this annual review, we highlight some of the key activities that our Library engaged in during AY13/14 to help contribute to the success of our users. We designed the review for easy reading and with just enough information to give readers a flavour of activities of our library staff. We hope that you will find it informative and that it will encourage you to continue to make effective use of our library services and to work together with us on developing and improving our services to you. Choy Fatt Cheong, University Librarian

MESSAGE FROM THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN

“Our Library’s mission is to enable staff and students in NTU to engage optimally with the ever changing information environment in order to succeed in their

research, learning and teaching goals.”[ ]

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01 04

02 05

03 06Partnering in Teaching And Learning

Ensuring Information/Digital LiteracySupporting Online Learning InitiativesCustomizing Blogs For Course Support Creating Vibrant Learning Communities

Collaboration And Knowledge ExchangeLibrary LeadershipInternational PartnershipsCampus CollaborationPapers and Presentations

Organizational Directions - Shifts, Emphasis, Strategies

Streamlining Resource Acquisition And DiscoveryRedeploying To Support New InitiativesSubject Librarians In ActionInvesting In Expertise At All Levels

Library Statistical Highlights

Partnering in Research And ScholarshipFacilitating Open Access To ResearchPreparing For DataProviding Quality Citation ServicesSupporting Digital Scholarship

Harnessing The Digital EnvironmentE-books and Other E-resourcesTechnology

contents

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01. HARNESSING THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

E-books and Other E-resources

E-booksOur e-books collection is poised to outnumber print in the very near future with over 642,000 titles in our collection. Taking advantage of emergent pay-per-use and patron-driven-acquisition models add over 200,000 more titles. Depending on publisher models, many of these books can be downloaded to mobile devices for offline reading, meeting the preferences of our users for on-the-go access.

Advanced digital collections and technology-enriched services are a hallmark of NTU Libraries, allowing anytime, anywhere access to resources and services from your desktop or your preferred mobile device. Our electronic collection is of world-class calibre, and our innovative use of technology underlies ALL library services and functions, helping our users adopt and adapt to an increasingly digital environment.

E-journals, databases and other resourcesUsage of our entire collection (e-journals, databases, e-books, etc) is consistently very high, evidence of the impact of such collections on the University’s teaching, learning and research. On average, our users download about 20,600 articles from our various resources per working day. Still... print resources also remain highly used, especially books in certain disciplines and textbooks in all disciplines.

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01. HARNESSING THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

Technology

Discovering the most relevant resources in an electronic environment is a challenge – our response is continuous improvement in interface design and functionality. An enhanced search interface to the Library’s main search engine, OneSearch (based on the EBSCO Discovery System), was designed and released, allowing users to easily narrow by type (books, articles, AV, etc.) and also to easily launch into more specialized databases when needed. Response from users have been uniformly positive. We have also implemented a book cover display widget to aid in online discovery of new titles; book return bins were upgraded with RFID technology for real-time updating of records; and a new “digital asset” module was implemented for the development of NTU digital projects. This module allows for the showcasing of NTU’s unique and innovative digital research output and facilitates the discovery and use of this valuable content by a global audience.

Did you know... you are using RFID technology when you return a book in a library book bin?[ ]

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02. PARTNERING IN RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP

Facilitating Open Access To Research

Having long been a pioneer in providing and promoting open access, NTU Libraries welcomed the A-STAR open access mandate in August 2013. We coordinated a major outreach campaign to educate and support our faculty in complying with both the new mandate from A-STAR and the existing NTU open access mandate. Internally coined as our “OA Blitz”, subject librarians personally approached faculty to assist in depositing papers in our digital repository (DR-NTU) on their behalf, resulting in over 1,300 newly deposited open access articles. Over 8,000 new records were added this year and the repository registered more than 760,000 downloads.

More than providing resources for research, NTU Libraries also provide a growing suite of services to faculty and researchers to assist them in successfully undertaking, disseminating and increasing the impact of their research in a changing scholarly communication environment.

Preparing for Data

Data management and curation is an exciting new area gaining increasing importance in major research institutions worldwide. The Library has been playing a proactive role in proposing systematic data management practices to support the University’s research integrity programme. This includes the drafting of a data management plan to aid accountability in the research process and email archiving rules for good record keeping. Our librarians have been able to transform their traditional strength in information organization, metadata standards, search and retrieval to support the research and data management environment.

Photo by Eric Fischer/ CC BY 2.0 /Cropped from original

NTU Libraries is an OA pioneer with DR-NTU being Singapore’s first OA repository back in 2006. [ ]

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02. PARTNERING IN RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP

Providing Quality Citation Services

Who better to ensure your citation count is as complete as possible? Providing support for citation services has expanded this year, as we worked closely with NSS-HR and School HR partners to offer a comprehensive citation report service for faculty who are candidates for promotion and/or tenure. Templates and procedures were drafted and accepted, and we are ready to offer the service with the next round of P&T in early AY14/15. We are confident that providing a standard, non-interpretative, high quality citation report will be a benefit both to individual faculty and to P&T Committees.

Supporting Digital ScholarshipResearch output has gone beyond books and articles, and capturing digital research output on behalf of their institutions is a new role for academic libraries. We embarked upon several pilot projects this year using two different digital project platforms in anticipation of this growing area of scholarship. Our pilot projects included photos, artworks, and original bibliographies, and we anticipate many more to come in the future.

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Our librarians are skilled facilitators of learning in both traditional and non-traditional ways – providing instruction in research skills and academic integrity, supporting online learning with copyright and resource advice, assisting faculty in using social media to engage students, and in creating co-curricular learning spaces in libraries and online.

Ensuring Information/Digital Literacy

With a suite of instructional services aimed to give our students the information literacy “edge” in our complex digital world, and about 70% of all undergraduate students benefiting from such course-integrated instruction at the request of our faculty, we were tasked by the Library Committee with proposing a strategy to ensure that 100% of undergraduates are skilled and thoughtful in this area. The proposal, “Supporting NTU Education with the Information Literacy Advantage: A Proposal for Undergraduate Student Learning” is in pending discussion by the Library Committee. We also focused our professional development efforts this year on teaching and learning, resulting in outcomes-based, activity-centered learning for our students.

Supporting Online Learning Initiatives

NTU launched its first MOOCs in 2014 and the Library was proud to offer its expertise to support this exciting educational endeavour. We worked closely with faculty and learning designers on copyright, licensing, sourcing for open resources, and attribution requirements on both MOOCs and other (internal) online initiatives.

Customizing Blogs For Course SupportOur popular “blogs@NTU” service has expanded and matured in the area of course support this past year. Not only are we providing a platform, but our librarians are embedded into such projects, working closely with faculty and students to support a variety of learning goals. Our involvement ranges from providing advice on the structure and organization of course blogs, to embedding relevant resources and services, to teaching students how to create effective blogs to share information and communicate as part of their coursework.

03. PARTNERING IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

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Creating Vibrant Learning Communities

We take pride in our role as co-curricular educators providing a range of learning opportunities for the NTU community, in our physical spaces and online. Not only did we curate 46 exhibitions on a range of topics over the past year, but the vast majority of them are in collaboration with students. Student curated exhibitions provide a double learning opportunity - for those students sharing their work, and for those who are subsequently exposed to this work in public spaces. Beyond exhibitions, we organized 45 talks and events on an eclectic variety of topics including creative writing, society and politics, 3D printing, art, MOOCs, and our series of Academic Publishing talks which are very popular with PhD students and early career academics.

03. PARTNERING IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

Learning outside the classroom is alive and well at the Library with over 90 talks, events and exhibitions last year.[ ]

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NTU Libraries is a highly respected, internationally engaged academic library evidenced by requests for our training programmes, our high number of international visitors, and our active participation in local, regional and international library organizations and conferences. We are very proud that our librarians contribute to the excellent reputation of NTU, at home and abroad.

Library LeadershipAs a leader in academic libraries, NTU Libraries was invited to provide an international training experience for 22 academic librarians from across China, with a specific focus on subject librarian services and scholarly communication trends, areas in which we are known to have strong expertise. Our Professional Internship Programme for International Librarians (PIPIL) was offered this year (every 2-3 years) and was fully subscribed yet again with future library leaders from around the region. We get many requests to run this month long intensive programme more often than we can manage – a sign that it is well regarded and highly appreciated in the region.

International PartnershipsTwo new MOUs were signed with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Xiamen University for the purpose of collaborative projects, professional development and resource exchange. As part of regional and international library groups AUNILO, LATN and IATUL, this year we have engaged in projects on library support for open education, professional development strategies, and information literacy.

Campus CollaborationLibrarians work closely with many campus partners to achieve university goals. Beyond those examples found in other sections of this report, this past year WKWSCI took our hugely successful student FYP Exhibition from the Communication and Information Library “on the road” to Junior Colleges to help in recruitment activities. Our Chinese Library has worked with the Chinese Division on a multi-pronged approach to promote their Chinese-Writer-in-Residence program with events and a blog to collect and collate all materials related to the programme over time. We provided a total of 6 lectures on library management to senior Chinese university administrators in collaboration with the Nanyang Centre of Public Administration. Beyond our international librarian visitors, we also introduce our library to a range of visitors as part of broader campus initiatives.

04. COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE

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Papers and PresentationNTU librarians are active conference presenters and invited speakers, sharing our knowledge and learning from our global professional colleagues.

Chia, Y.B., Sum, W.Y., Tan, , Wee, J.F. & Wilcox, E. (2013). Enhancing learning using emotional capital theory. Poster presented at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2013 satellite conference “Redefining and refining information literacy and reference services in the digital age”, 15-16 August. Singapore.

Chia, Y.B. & Wee, J.F. (2014). Altmetrics is an indication of quality research or just hot topics. Paper presented at the 35th International Association of Technological University Libraries Conference, 2-5 June. Espoo, Finland.

Choy, F.C. (2014). Organizing librarians for greater user engagement. (Invited speaker) 59th Indian Library Association Conference, organized by Roorke Institute of Technology, 22-24 Feb. Roorke, India.

Choy, F.C. (2014). Libraries as a total learning system in the digital age. (Invited speaker) CIVICA Annual Symposium 2013, “Navigating the Digital Minefield – Perspectives of Professionals”, organized by CIVICA and MoE, 6 Nov. Singapore

Choy, F.C. (2013), New media in academic libraries. (Invited speaker) 3rd PERPUN International Conference, 28-29 Oct, Penang, Malaysia.

Choy, F.C. (2013), Social media engagement in libraries. (Invited speaker) iKMS Pre-Conference on Social Media Applications, organized by Information and Knowledge Management Society (Singapore), 2nd Oct, Singapore.

Choy, F.C. & Cmor, D. (2014). Open access in Singapore – drivers and trends, players and progress. (Invited speaker) COASP Asia Conference, 2-3 June. Bangkok, Thailand.

Cmor, D. (2014). R/Evolutionary opportunities for subject librarians. (Invited speaker). Office of Academic Resources Conference, 28-29 May. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.

Cmor, D. and Chia, YB. (2013). Making professional development “sticky”. Library 2.013 Conference, 18-20 October. Online. http://www.library20.com/page/2-013-recordings

Cmor, D. & Litwan, R. (Spring 2014). Should we retire the catalog? Reference & User Services Quarterly, 53(3).

Men, Y. L., & Chia, J. (2014, June). NTU’s “playbook” for promoting & populating our institutional repository. Poster session presented at COASP Asia Conference, Bangkok, Thailand

New Media Group, NTU Libraries (2013, August 17). Social media strategy in academic libraries. Workshop delivered for 79th International Federation Library Associations and Institutions World Library and Information Congress (IFLA WLIC): future libraries infinite possibilities, Singapore.

Sam, L. C. F., Ramakrishnan, R., & Venkatachalam, K. (2013). Information services for the engineering community: explorations in the hybrid environment. 79th International Federation Library Associations and Institutions World Library and Information Congress (IFLA WLIC): future libraries infinite possibilities, Singapore.

Sum, W.Y. & Chia, Y.B. (2014). Using a portfolio platform as a tool to engage: A case study of Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design and Media. Poster presented at the 35th International Association of Technological University Libraries Conference, 2-5 June. Espoo, Finland. Wee, J.F. & Sagun, K. K. (2014). 23 MobileThings: A Case Study. Paper presented at the M-Libraries Conference, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 27-30 May. Hong Kong.

04. COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE

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05. ORGANIZATIONAL DIRECTIONS -SHIFTS, EMPHASIS, STRATEGIES

Agile shifts in response to changing higher education, research and publishing environments allow NTU Libraries to continuously feed a vibrant community of scholars hungry for learning, research and knowledge, whatever the format, whatever the device (Is a print book a “device”? Sure it is!)

Streamlining Resource Acquisition and Discovery

With the changing nature of information resources and workflows, three divisions (acquisitions, serials management and bibliographic services) were merged to form one operational unit – Acquisitions & Collection Management. The restructuring has resulted in more efficient utilization of human resources, improved user service via a single point of contact, streamlined financial transactions, minimum double handling, and higher productivity through job enlargement, job enrichment and staff empowerment. Changes such as these ensure a versatile workforce, trained to meet new environments.

Redeploying To Support New Initiatives

Streamlining “back-room” processes allowed us to redeploy to new library services in need of resources. Four librarians and two staff members were shifted into our Scholarly Communications Group in order to forge new services in the areas of data management, digital projects, copyright and open licensing advisory, and citation services. With a focus on NTU research and scholarship, this group will be instrumental in assisting our faculty in successfully engaging in new scholarly communication paradigms which will increasingly focus on activities beyond traditional publishing.

Electronic resource management involves license negotiations, mass record ingestion and management, integration with authentication systems, and setting up paths for user discovery and access.[ ]

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Subject Librarians In Action Investing In Expertise At All LevelsOur expertise is the most important service that we offer to our community, so we have continued to ensure that continuous professional development and upskilling is a keystone of our regular work. Alongside a variety of personalized learning plans and activities, we held 45 internal training/briefing sessions during the year. This included our monthly series of half-day professional development seminars for librarians, and intensified service excellence training for support staff both generally, and specifically on referral and triage, which is crucial when providing research assistance services. Several of our support staff have been working towards their WDA Higher or Advanced Certificate in Library & Information Services, resulting in excellent service that is grounded in solid knowledge of library operations.

askalibrarian@ntu.edu.sg

Did you know... Research shows that an important information resource is “someone I know”. We strive to ensure staff and students know their subject librarian![ ]

05. ORGANIZATIONAL DIRECTIONS -SHIFTS, EMPHASIS, STRATEGIES

Our subject librarian model continues to work well for us, as both core services and new initiatives were delivered to our users in the context of disciplinary needs and behaviours. Communication and relationship building was undertaken through targeted outreach programmes such as the freshman ”personal librarian” programme, and one-on-one orientations for new faculty and research staff. In the past year, subject librarians taught discipline-specific information literacy classes, partnered with faculty and students on co-curricular learning activities and events, and played a key role in educating the NTU community about the A-STAR open access mandate and open access in general, again, in the specific and unique contexts of disciplinary norms.

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06. LIBRARY STATISTICAL HIGHLIGHTSRESOURCES

Material type Total % Increase

Books (print), vols 906,269 4.22

Books (electronic), title 642,188 26.05

Audio-visual materials, items 73,122 35.87

Periodical titles (print) 713 0

Periodical titles (electronic) 58,941 4.24

Databases, title 223 0.90

Exam papers 21,404 6.46

Student theses & reports in DR-NTU1 35,321 11.8

Open access staff publications in DR-NTU 14,744 42.9

Bookings for facilities in learning commons 16,137

By types of facilities in learning commons No. %

Learning pods 9,549 59.17

Multiscreen monitors 4,439 27.5

Language learning rooms 1,312 8.13

Recording room 596 3.69

Cinema (including ADM Library) 241 1.49

No. of document purchase requested& fulfilment rate

1,571 95%

Request from No. %

College of Engineering 731 96

College of Science 163 97

College of Humanities, Art & social sciences 510 91

Nanyang Business School 33 92

Others 129 97

No. of full-text document downloaded 5,155,069

No. of sessions accessing to No.

E-journals, databases and e-books 2,643,616

DR-NTU 608,563

Library website 1,358,480

Library Catalogue 972,551

Loans of materials 280,506

By Type No. %

Circulating collection 233,014 83.07

Reserves 30,603 10.91

AV 16,889 6.02

Visits to all libraries 1,728,238

By Library No. %

Art, Design & Media 98,064 5.67

Business 222,610 12.88

Chinese 141,626 8.19

Communication & Information 37,753 2.18

Humanities & Social Sciences 96,935 5.61

Lee Wee Nam (Engineering & Science) 1,109,906 64.22

Wang Gungwu 21,344 1.24

Total number of enquiries answered 16,496

By Type No. %

Research consultations 331 2.00

Research enquiries 3,218 19.50

General enquiries 12,947 78.49

By Mode (Research enquiries)

In person 2,003 63.75

Phone 137 4.09

Email 1,067 31.83

Social Media 11 0.33

By Mode (General enquiries)

In person 10,025 77.43

Phone 748 5.78

Email 2,162 16.70

Social Media 12 0.09

Total floor area in all libraries (m2) 15,065

No. of seats in all libraries 1,847

No. of computers for users in all libraries 627

By Library space Floor area Seats Computer

Art, Design & Media 1,295 79 22

Business 2,735 415 132

Chinese 1,040 145 24

Communication & Information 354 38 10

Humanities & Social Sciences 953 114 20

Lee Wee Nam (Engineering & Science) 7,604 1,009 415

Medical 150 20 6

Wang Gungwu 352 12 4

Instructional Commons 582 15 -

USAGE

Total no. of FAQs accessed 29,026

No. of blogs created for users 130

No. of exhibitions, events & talks held 91

Bookings for media stations (BUSL, ADML & CMIL) 6,686

SERVICES

FACILITIES

No. of users trained in instructional classes 15,065

No. of instructional sessions conducted 1,847

By users from: Users %

College of Engineering 3,256 43.88

College of Science 1,135 15.30

College of Humanities, Art & social sciences 2,062 27.79

Nanyang Business School 512 6.90

Others 455 6.13

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Produced by Nanyang Techological University Libraries50 Nanyang Avenue, North Spine 3Singapore 639798

www.ntu.edu.sg/library

© 2014