Sunday, June 17, 2012

Study Visit 6 - University of Southern Queensland


My final study visit was to the library at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba campus. The library is large and spacious, spreading across a number of levels. There was an assortment of study areas: large computer area, carrels, relaxing bean bag area, discussion rooms, casual seating areas and even an internal coffee shop and snack bar. I thought the mini bean bags to rest iPads on were especially cute and hope to buy some for my library.

I was envious upon hearing that this library operates on a single line budget each year, providing the head librarians the luxury of deciding how they spend their allocation. My budget allocation each year is divided into capital and expenses and every year I run out of capital but have thousands left over in my expenses budget. It would be so much more convenient if I could convert the excess expenses budget over to capital.
 The librarians informed me that every two years, university students across Australia are asked to complete an InSync survey about their satisfaction with the services provided by their library. With much pride, the librarians boasted that this library has come out first in Australia in the last two surveys. This has inspired me to add a survey in Moodle to my ‘to do’ list to find out what our school community thinks about our primary library.

Every so often librarians from the region get together for ‘stirring the pot’ sessions whereby they throw out a radical idea for discussion. At their next gathering, they intend to discuss the ramifications of moving away from a library management system. When they saw my mouth drop, the librarians explained that they don’t necessarily intend to do this, but that discussing something so ‘out of the box’ sparks really good discussion and often leads to other ideas being discussed and developed. I understand the merit of this and have already mentioned it to my team as a possibility of something we can also do.

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