Library Xpress Volume 7 Issue 2 January 2013

Museum

NTU Museum - An Exhibition for the Environment

Contents Museum NTU Museum - An Exhibition for the Environment

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New Staff: Patricia Ong

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Info Buzz E-Book-on-demand Service: Electronic Book Library (EBL)

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Finding a thesis and reading the full text online has never been easier! p3

Resources A Glimpse of the Exhibition Gallery

Co-exist with nature; think before we consume and exhaust; consider the implications of uncontrolled and careless activities on our environment.

Over 40 contemporary artworks and installations, including inter-disciplinary creations of art-biologyscience were exhibited at the Innovation Centre’s multi-purpose hall from 17 August to 17 September 2012.

This exhibition was accompanied by a series of conservation-related programmes which included a talk on the art and science in paintings conservation; a visit to the Heritage Conservation Centre; and a visit to the two new conservatories, Cloud Forest and Flower Dome at the Gardens by the Bay. This exhibition was curated in collaboration with NTU Libraries, and with the support of the School of ADM and Nanyang Innovation Enterprise Office.

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Library e-Resources for Cultural Anthropology

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Events & Activities

These were the messages in Earth Messages - Perspectives from Environmental Artists, an exhibition organised by the NTU Museum. It was opened in August to coincide with the official opening of the Sustainable Earth Office on 18 August 2012.

This exhibition gathered the artworks of 13 artists who presented their perspectives on different environmental issues, in particular, problems caused by man’s endless material pursuits and the negative effects of uncontrolled developments.

Warc

Listening to Our Users

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Snapshots New Staff: Dianne Cmor, Debra L’Angellier, Law Loo Shien, Leena Shah, Hedren Sum, Joan Wee 2020, Wilfred Lim, Archival Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Paper, 2012. 2020 shows a series of 6 imaginative images of marine life in its mutated form, due to the negative impact of oil refinery activities. Wilfred Lim is an undergraduate from the School of Art, Design and Media.

If you have missed this exhibition, you can visit it in NTU Museum’s virtual gallery at http://museum.ntu.edu.sg/ from 26 November 2012.

Look out for NTU Museum’s upcoming exhibition, happening in March 2013 at Lee Wee Nam Library’s exhibition area.

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Do You Know? 王赓武图书馆早期课本 特藏

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A Word from the University Librarian Insights on Library Users The IATUL Conference

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Email: library@ntu.edu.sg

Faith Teh Head, NTU Art & Heritage Museum faithteh@ntu.edu.sg

Online version and archives at www.ntu.edu. sg/library/pages/ xpress.aspx

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Museum

New Staff Patricia Ong Assistant Director Curator, NTU Art & Heritage Museum

patriciaong@ntu.edu.sg

Patricia joined NTU in September 2012 as Assistant Director and Curator of NTU Museum. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Social Sciences (majoring in Economics and Chinese Studies) from the National University of Singapore and Master of Arts (Museum Studies) from the University of Leicester, UK.

She started her museum career in 2000 with the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), an institution of the National Heritage Board (NHB). She joined The National Art Gallery, Singapore in 2009. At both museums, Patricia was in-charge of the Collections Division of the Curatorial and Collections Department. Her core responsibilities included museum development and policy matters on museum collections policy, artwork acquisitions and exhibition development guidelines.

Concurrent to her planning portfolio, Patricia was also a member of the Museum’s Curatorial team responsible for the research and planning of exhibitions at the museums. During the course of her work, Patricia worked closely with artists, collectors, government ministries, corporate organisations and other museums, both local and overseas. She enjoys travelling, reading, sketching and is also actively involved in the local visual arts scene.

Info Buzz

E-book-on-demand Service: Electronic Book Library (EBL)

Have you seen this screen lately when accessing an e-book?

This is a preview e-book service provided by Electronic Book Library (EBL).

Read on to learn more!

Searching EBL e-book in library catalogue Go to http://opac.ntu.edu.sg Type keyword with “and EBL” in subject field Once you find an EBL title, click the URL hyperlink to access the e-book page

Accessing EBL e-book Click on “Read Online” on the title page to start reading via EBL Online Reader.

After the free browse period, you will be prompted to loan the e-book.

What is an e-book?

E-book is a short name for electronic book. It is a book in a digital form. You can access our e-books any time by logging in using your NTU network account. There are different ways to use e-books depending on the publisher. Some require you to view them on your computer screen while others allow downloading to your e-book reader devices or computers.

The e-book collection at the Library consists of mainly academic books in wide ranging subjects. The Library provides two types of e-book models for access: subscribed e-books and e-book-on-demand service.

What are subscribed e-books?

These are e-books owned by the Library. You can access these e-books by searching our library catalogue or directly at the e-book provider website listed at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library/collections/ebooks/.

The e-book content can be viewed online in the format of PDF (Adobe Reader) or HTML (Web page).

What is e-book-on-demand service?

The E-book-on-demand service allows you to preview over 40,000 e-books both owned and not-owned by the Library. For the owned EBL title, you can view it online immediately. As for a not-owned EBL title, you can preview the e-book content for 5 minutes before requesting for a short term loan (1 day or 7 days). You are allowed to loan out one EBL e-book at a time. EBL titles are searchable at the library catalogue.

For EBL e-book owned by the Library, simply click “Yes (create a loan)” and you can continue to read online for 24 hours (1 day).

For EBL e-book not-owned by the Library, you can request for a short term loan. (NTU Library will be charged for each loan). Loan period is 1 day or 7 days.

Download for offline reading You can download the e-book for offline reading for a period of 1 to 7 days. Click on “Download” tab in the Online Reader, you can choose the download period.

Note: you need to install a free Adobe Digital Editions program in order to download and read offline.

Printing and Copying There is a restriction on how much content you can print or copy on each e-book. Printing is restricted to 20% of each e-book, and copying is 5%. You can view the print and copy balances for each e-book on the “Details” tab in the Online Reader.

The use of e-book materials should comply with the Copyright Act and e-resource license agreements. For more information, please visit www.ntu.edu.sg/library/collections.

David Tan Senior Librarian (Acquisitions) cwtan@ntu.edu.sg

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Info Buzz

Finding a thesis and reading the full text online has never been easier!

Most universities deposit a hard copy of students’ theses in the library and many of them now require students to also submit a soft copy of their thesis in an institutional repository (IR).

A growing number of these institutions make the full text of their theses available to the world to view. There are over 200 IR worldwide that provide open access theses and some of these institutions are MIT, Caltech, Cambridge, University of Birmingham, University of Toronto, University of Melbourne, University of Hong Kong, and University of Tokyo.

According to the Registry of Open Access Repositories, there are over 200 theses repositories worldwide (Oct 2012).

Among the open access initiatives implemented by NTU, we have enabled free access to the full text of over 1,000 NTU PhD theses through the institutional repository DR-NTU (http://repository.ntu.edu. sg).

Searching for a thesis is a breeze because we are able to find and discover these materials through Google and other search platforms.

The Library will continue to add research theses to the open access collections periodically and this enables free access to our scholarly research output.

If you are looking for a specific thesis and have the title information, consider the following approaches:

Between the local institutional repositories of NTU, NUS and SMU, there are more than 7000 theses freely available for viewing.

Google search: enter search terms e.g. title of thesis between quotation marks, e.g. “Investigation of structure and particle fabrication of ferritin”.

Number of views and download statistics are available within DRNTU and this information provides an indication of use. An example of usage statistics is provided below. At present there are 71 titles in the SCBE Open Access theses collection and there were more than 370 downloads over a period of 3 months (Jul – Sep 2012).

If the university awarding the degree is known, search its institutional repository if it has one.

Depending on the field of research, it may be necessary to include theses as part of a literature scan. Under such circumstances, it may be more convenient to search national, regional or international theses repositories and specialised theses databases.

These theses repositories aggregate content at the national, regional and international levels: By country

Australia Trove; Japan JAIRO; UK EThOS; Netherlands NARCIS; Canada Theses Canada

Regional

Europe DART; Scandinavia DIVA

International

NDLTD OPENDOAR WorldCat

Notes: 1.

2.

Links to the repositories are available at NTU Science Library blog post (http://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/library/science/index.php/2012/08/06/ searching-for-phd-theses/) Full text may not always be freely available in these repositories

Statistics Total Views All Collections

Views

SCBE Theses (Open Access)

133

Top city views

Total Views Views

City

Views

China

37

Singapore

25

Singapore

25

Beijing

13

United States of America

19

Mountain View

6

Germany

13

Shantou

4

Brazil

3

Louvain

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Country Code

ProQuest Dissertation & Theses This specialised database, subscribed by NTU Libraries, contains more than 1.9 million full text theses (PhD and Masters) mainly from North American universities. About 70,000 theses are added each year.

Contributors include University of New South Wales, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Yale University, McGill University, University of British Columbia and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich.

Samantha Ang Deputy Director (Scholarly Communication) samantha@ntu.edu.sg

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Resources

Warc Warc is a database on marketing related subjects that NTU Libraries has recently subscribed to. It provides a range of resources for those who are researching in the fields of marketing.

Forecasts & Data Data on advertising expenditure from 80 global markets, global media costs and forecasts on advertising spending for 12 countries. It also provides charts for downloads which can be used for presentation purposes.

To access Warc database:

Case Studies 6,000 case studies categorised by industry sector, campaign objective, media used, target audience and region for easy searching. Campaign videos from market-leading brands are also available for viewing.

Topics & Trends

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Go to Library Homepage at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library

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Under the Finding Information section, choose Databases

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Select Business from the Subject List followed by Management and Marketing

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Click on the database title Warc

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Provide your NTU network ID and password if prompted

Marketing related articles and best practice guides on various marketing issues such as communications and consumers, and the company profiles of 200 global consumer goods and services companies.

News & Opinion Keep up-to-date with the latest happenings and trends in the marketing world through the daily bulletins and the Warc blogs. Gain access to conference reports from the industry’s major events. Find quotes and classic speeches from famous people in various industries.

Business Librarian (Marketing & International Business) alanchoy@ntu.edu.sg

Events & Activities

Listening to Our Users All aspects polled showed higher ratings than the first survey conducted in 2008. This is an indication that the Library has consistently delivered above our users’ expectations. Many respondents shared the same appreciation for library staff and returned numerous compliments on their positive experience with library staff members in the open comments section.

However, the results also showed the users’ persistent concern regarding the Library’s space provision, despite this being the area which had shown the greatest improvement. Library resources and access were also of increasing concern for users in this survey. Although the Library’s performance has shown improvement in these areas, there is an expectation gap that remains to be filled.

Third year aerospace engineering student Dominic Lee (above, left) has a reason to be pleased with NTU Libraries. Earlier this year, he won one of the top prizes among 3,473 NTU staff and students who responded to the Library’s 2012 LibQUAL+ user survey. This is an international outcome-based assessment instrument which measures how well a library serves its users.

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Alan Choy

Fuller details of the survey results can be found at the Library website (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library/about/survey).

Wendy Ong Senior Assistant Director (Quality Assurance) wendy@ntu.edu.sg

Resources

Library e-Resources for Cultural Anthropology “Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”

- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

To access Ethnographic Video Online, visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library/ databases Alternatively, do a subject search in the Library Catalogue for “Ethnographic Video Online” to discover more titles.

Related Databases eHRAF World Cultures Culture has been identified as a core concept of anthropology. Through different lenses we observe and understand our own and others’ cultural worlds. We explore the process of human history and appreciate the human diversity.

One of NTU Libraries’ streaming video collections– Ethnographic Video Online, developed by Alexander Street Press, is a visual encyclopedia of human behaviour and culture. This resource provides access to “hidden archive” collections and previously unpublished footage from working anthropologists and ethnographers in the field. This includes classic and contemporary documentaries, edited field recordings, and interviews; accompanied by a synchronized and searchable transcript. You can create your custom clips, playlists and permanent URLs for sharing with others.

An online cross-cultural database produced by the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University. It is a specially organised collection of books, articles, and dissertations on cultures from all regions of the world, and is subject-indexed at the paragraph level. This database is useful for anyone looking for information on particular cultures, ethnic and indigenous groups, or cultural practices.

AnthroSource AnthroSource is an online database for the study of anthropology developed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA). It offers access to more than a century of full-text anthropological resources, including AAA’s peer-reviewed journals, newsletters, and bulletins in one portal.

Jenny Wong Nanook of the North (1922) by Robert J. Flaherty (1884-1951)

Dead Birds (1964) by Robert Gardner (1925- )

Snapshots

New Staff Dianne Cmor Deputy University Librarian

dcmor@ntu.edu.sg

After finally abandoning her secret desire to be discovered as the female Jackie Chan, our new Deputy University Librarian recently left Hong Kong for the breezy shores of Singapore. In professional circles, she claims that the real reason for her move was that she was attracted by the opportunity to work in one of the most dynamic academic libraries in the region. We may never know for sure …

Social Sciences Librarian (Sociology) jennywong@ntu.edu.sg

Dianne has worked in academic libraries for over 15 years and has had the opportunity to do so in several locales – Canada, Qatar, Hong Kong and now Singapore. Her most recent previous position was as Head of Information Services at Hong Kong Baptist University where she was responsible for developing a suite of research and instructional support services for faculty, staff and students. Dianne received an MLIS from McGill University and an MA (English Literature) from York University, but somehow managed to find herself working as a science and medical librarian for much of her professional career.

She is interested in assessing, increasing, and broadening the impact of library resources and services on student, teacher and researcher success, and on communicating that impact to the NTU community to ensure that everyone will benefit from all that libraries and librarians have to offer.

Dianne is looking forwarding to exploring Singapore and the surrounding areas, and is very excited about all the new food opportunities – so much so that if anyone has a second hand bike to sell, please contact her. She may need more exercise than usual!!

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Snapshots

Debra L’Angellier

Leena Shah

Librarian (Administration)

Librarian (Library Technology & Systems)

Communication Librarian (Advertising, Public Relations, Broadcast & Film)

Science Librarian (Earth Sciences)

dblang@ntu.edu.sg

Debra joined NTU Libraries on 24 Oct 2012 as the communication librarian for advertising, public relations, broadcast and film. She also has a concurrent role as an administration librarian.

Debra obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies degree from Australia’s Murdoch University in 2004. Upon returning to Singapore, she started her career with the Singapore Institute of Directors and the Institute of Public Relations Singapore planning and co-ordinating instructional courses, focus group sessions and seminars. For a brief while in 2006 she was also a freelance research writer for a publishing house focusing on myths and legends of Singapore and the world.

In 2007, Debra took a different direction in her career and started working in Singapore Management University’s Li Ka Shing Library. She planned library events and was involved in various task forces and projects including Library Marketing Taskforce, Strategic Planning Taskforce and SMU’s first Oral History Project. After obtaining her MSc (Information Studies) at NTU in 2011, she worked as the manager of the National Archives of Singapore reading room.

leenas@ntu.edu.sg

Leena graduated from Bangalore University, India with a bachelor degree in electronics engineering. She started her professional career as an IT application developer and worked for several years in the IT industry in Singapore.

Intrigued with the digital information deluge she was inspired to pursue her MSc (Information Studies) at NTU. She has a keen interest in technology and new media and its role in facilitating information to users.

Leena is currently with the Library Technology Group where her responsibility includes managing the library systems and IT infrastructure.

She is also a subject librarian for Earth Sciences and looks forward to her role in this new area.

In her spare time, Leena likes to travel and visit historical sites to savour the local culture. On weekends she likes to cook for her family and friends and enjoys watching both ‘Bollywood’ and ‘Hollywood’ movies.

Debra enjoys watching movies and is a great lover of music – she was once a DJ for the campus radio music in Ngee Ann Polytechnic where she was a student.

Law Loo Shien

Hedren Sum

Senior Librarian (Bibliographic Services)

Assistant Librarian (New Media)

Communication Librarian (Research & Journalism)

Art Librarian (Design)

looshien@ntu.edu.sg

hedrensum@ntu.edu.sg

Loo Shien is an alumnus of NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information twice over, having graduated with a Bachelor of Communication Studies in 2004 and a MSc (Information Studies) in 2010. He joined NTU Libraries on 22 Oct 2012 as a communication librarian, together with a concurrent operational role as a bibliographic services librarian.

Loo Shien started his career with a Japanese multi-national advertising agency as a strategic planner doing market research and account planning.

In 2006, he joined the National Library Board (NLB) as an executive for a division that served as the secretariat for two national language campaigns (Speak Good English Movement and Speak Mandarin Campaign). With NLB, he went on to become a librarian in the western cluster of public libraries in Singapore. As a public librarian for about four years, during which he completed the MSc (Information Studies) programme at WKWSCI, he developed and managed collections, provided advisory services and conducted user-education workshops. He also organised outreach programmes and produced other marketing initiatives.

Loo Shien likes to read, watch dramas and explore new ideas and things.

He also enjoys occasional games of basketball, soccer and badminton with his friends.

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Hedren joined NTU Libraries in October 2012 as an Assistant Librarian for New Media and subject librarian for Design. He received his Bachelor of Science (Information Systems Management) with a second major in Marketing from Singapore Management University in 2011.

His interest in library science started during his education at Temasek Polytechnic. After completing the Diploma in Information Studies, he worked in NTU Libraries on library promotion projects.

Hedren has a strong passion and experience in design and the effective use of media. He had been involved in planning and designing successful marketing campaigns and materials for both corporate and government agencies. He had also conducted workshops on the creative use of different media in Taiwan and Brunei.

During his free time, Hedren enjoys travelling, playing the piano and spending time with family and friends. He also sits in the executive committees of the Singapore Computer Society (SCS) Young Professionals Chapter and Student Chapter (Alumni). He was also the chairman of the organizing committee of SCS Splash Awards, an annual nationwide IT competition.

Snapshots

Joan Wee Senior Librarian (New Media) Social Sciences Librarian (Economics)

joanwee@ntu.edu.sg

Joan joined NTU in September 2012 as senior librarian with the New Media Group and subject librarian for Economics. She likes to keep abreast with emerging technology trends and hopes to explore and develop innovative ways to engage students and faculty in their learning and teaching.

She loves interacting with students who kept her young at heart and with Professors whom she finds intellectually fulfilling. Having majored

in economics and general mathematics at the National University of Singapore, Joan is looking forward to getting into her role as the Economics Librarian. To her, economics is stimulating and fun as it tries to rationalise and analyse the point of equilibrium in dynamic and volatile environment.

She completed her MSc (Information Studies) at NTU. She is passionate about libraries and librarianship and is a co-opted Council member and volunteer with the Library Association of Singapore. She loves water colour painting and hopes to illustrate a picture book one day.

To get to know her better, look out for her postings on blogs@NTU (http://blogs.ntu.edu.sg).

Do You Know?

王赓武图书馆早期课本特藏 重视教育是中华民族的优良传统。海外华人在筚路蓝缕，辛苦 创业的同时，很好地继承并发扬了这一传统。自清康熙二十九年 (1690)，华侨在印尼雅加达创办明诚书院起，华侨教育从草创到 蓬勃发展，再到走向衰落，无论其以何种面貌呈现，均铭刻着华 人社会变迁的深深烙印。研究海外华人的教育，不仅有助于我们 理解海外华人在经济政治方面地位的变迁，也有助于厘清海外华 人对身份认同和中华文化认识的嬗变。而课本，作为教学不可或 缺的工具和信息载体，为研究海外华文教育提供了重要的信息资 源。

检索时，输入“华文”、“华文教材”、“国语”或“历史课 本”等词组，选择题名或关键字作为检索项，在图书馆栏则选择 王赓武图书馆便可检索相关书目信息。

王赓武图书馆早期课本特藏便是为此而创建。受益于印尼华人 温戴奎教授、新加坡南洋女中及新加坡华侨中学的捐赠，室内收 藏了从二十世纪初期到六、七十年代在中国大陆及东南亚地区所 使用过的部分课本。当中以新马地区和中国大陆为主，少数为泰 国、印尼、菲律宾及柬埔寨等东南亚国家华校所使用过的课本。

周一至周五：8:30am-5:00pm 周末及公共假期闭馆。

特藏室以古朴的中国传统橱窗展出了一百多种极具特色的课本， 包括尺牍、国文、历史、地理、数学、佛学、公民等各科目。收 藏于橱内的课本记约有二千册。特藏室内还设有电子触摸显示 屏，读者可获取更多关于王赓武图书馆、课本特藏及华文教育研 究书目等丰富信息。此外，室内陈列有近十件艺术珍品，可供读 者欣赏，还设有早期华侨学校所使用的课室桌椅，给读者营造出 一种历史的氛围。

早期课本特藏室内景

欲检索课本书目信息，可访问南大图书馆联机编目检索系统 (http://opac.ntu.edu.sg).

读者也可使用 “One Search” 检索系统(http://onesearch.ntu.edu.sg) 输入以上所列词组或字段等进行检索. 想要参观早期课本特藏室的读者，可直接前往王赓武图书馆参 观，无需提交申请。

开放时间：

联系方式 : 65138682 或 65138680

书名: 公民范本

书名: 初中公民

索书号:

索书号:

JQ1063.A92G638f

JQ1063.A92X6c

书名: 中华外国历史

书名: 小学历史课本

索书号:

索书号:

D23.L926

DS734.97.C5X6

书名: 国文

书名: 初中语文

索书号:

索书号:

PL1065.G977wh

PL1065.C559y

罗必明 图书馆员(王赓武图书馆) bmluo@ntu.edu.sg

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A Word From University Librarian

Insights on Library Users – The IATUL Conference Supporting our users, whether they are students, faculty staff, researchers or administrative staff is the key focus of our work in the Library. Our goal is to ensure that users make optimal use of the information resources in their learning, research and personal and professional development. Throughout history, progress and understanding of the world is dependent on the wealth of knowledge that has cumulated in different fields of knowledge in the past and at present. Libraries help people tap into this fount of knowledge.

Although an increasing amount of information is now easily accessible online, we are also living in a more complex information environment.

Having access to lots of information does not equate to gaining knowledge.

The Library provides relevant and appropriate resources and services to help our users make better sense of the collective memory and cumulated knowledge of the world.

As people today have overwhelming choices on how to spend their time at work and play, libraries, like any other services or products, have to compete for the attention of their users. Even when there are clear benefits for users to be more engaged with information resources provided by libraries, it remains challenging to reach out to them more widely and deeply. It is with this in mind that the Library decided to dedicate an entire international conference to discuss this topic recently in June 2012. The theme, “Library Strategies for New Generation Users” at the International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries (IATUL) 2012 Conference was apt and timely.

Padmaja Muralidharan, Senior Librarian, from NTU Library, presenting “Initiating Information Literacy Instruction: Collaboration with the NTU Engineering Community” to Mr. Sophal Nan, Hun Sen Library, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Three invited keynote speakers led the Conference in discussing the subthemes of the Conference. Professor Rakesh Kumar, Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Australia was invited to give his views as a user of libraries. A popular veteran teacher and researcher, Professor Kumar emphasized the importance of academic libraries as an academic unit within the university in supporting learning and he views librarians as valuable colleagues. He hopes that libraries and librarians will continue to provide enabling skills, especially for beginning undergraduate and research students, Librarians must continue to contribute to enhancing the learning environment, be involved actively in educational design and development and directly support individual researchers and the institution’s research enterprise.

Mr Joe Murphy, the second keynote speaker is an independent consultant from the United States representing the younger generation of information professionals. He gave a comprehensive and enthralling overview of new social media technology at the disposal of young people today. Libraries need to be involved in using these new and developing tools in order to engage a new generation of users today.

IATUL Board Members Back Row(L to R): Marek Gorski, Imogen Garner, Louis Houle, Alena Ptak-Danchak, Jim Mullins, Choy Fatt Cheong. Front Row(L to R): Elisha Chiware, Anislie Dewe, Irma Pasanen

NTU Libraries is a member of IATUL which was founded in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1955. It is an organization made up largely of the directors and senior staff of libraries from around the world with scientific and technological focus. Four years ago, IATUL decided to hold its first conference in Asia at NTU in 2012. The event, from 4 – 7 June, was opened by the President of NTU, Prof Bertil Andersson. It attracted 185 delegates from 25 countries. Papers presentations by librarians and academics provided useful insights in understanding and working with library users.

“

Our goal is to ensure that users make optimal use of the information resources in their learning, research and personal and professional development.

“

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Finally the last keynote speaker, Dr Susan Gibbons, University Librarian at Yale University spoke on the research work she has done in studying the real instead of perceived needs of students. Her ethnographic approach where students were followed and “shadowed” throughout a semester in completing their assignments and using the library provides insights on their real behaviour which will allow libraries to design and implement better services.

On the final day of the conference, 5 local users were invited to share their experience and views on the use of social media at an engaging and highly participative panel discussion. The panel was chaired by Mr Aaron Tay (Librarian, NUS). The members of the panel were Mr Raymond Lau (student leader, NUS), Mr Preetam Rai (Lecturer, Ngee Ann Polytechnic), Isaac Teo (National Library Board) and Associate Professor Ravishankar Sharma (WKWSCI).

Together with the 49 paper presentations from 23 countries, the 4-day event provided conference participants and our Library with valuable inputs that will help shape our approach to user services in the future.

Choy Fatt Cheong University Librarian librarian@ntu.edu.sg