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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