It is with sadness that we inform you of the passing on of Mr Oupa Edward Bantsijang, Library Assistant on the Mafikeng Campus. Oupa has not been well for quite some time. He passed away on Sunday evening. Our sincere condolences to his family and also his colleagues at Mafikeng Library.
LIASA MAIG Seminar
Erika Rood and Louise Vos attended a MAIG Seminar: Marketing and Advocacy for Librarians, tips of the trade on Friday 18 August at the University of Pretoria. MAIG (Marketing & Advocay Interest Group) aims to support and unitw library staff interested in marketing and advocating Library and Information Services in South Africa. In a presentation by Theuns Kotze, lecturer at UP: Marketing your library on a shoestring, he shared ideas on how the library can market library services with a small budget. He emphasised that we need to understand users’ needs, tailor library services to assist users in every step of the research process, and effectively communicate our services to them. Ina Smith, LIASA Librarian of the Year 2016 did a presentation on Digital Marketing tips, Tools & Tricks for Librarians. René Schoombee, LIASA Librarian of the Year 2007 shared practical examples of next level marketing initiatives.
Theology Librarians Workshop, Kenya
Hester Lombard, Branch Librarian at Theology, attended the NetACT Multi-School Library Resource Project Planning workshop from 2-7 July at Scott Christian University, Machakos, Kenya. The librarian workshop was held simultaneously with the NetACT annual general meeting. NetACT (Network for African Congregational Theology) assist their member institutions with developing congregational theology, leadership and governance. The management of NetACT identified access to information at the African universities as a problem, and arranged this library workshop for 16 Theology librarians. Six of the attendees were South Africans, and the other librarians were from other countries in Africa. During the workshop a web portal was developed to provide theology students of universities who are members of NetACT, with information.
Vanderbijlpark Library Community Outreach
SunCrest High School asked Information Services to assist their Grade 11 students with information for the “2017 Environmental sustainability Project Research Paper” for SAIIA (South African Research Institute on Regional and International Issues). They assisted with the format of the paper, as well as the bibliography. Six learners were chosen to use these information for a debate that will take place later in August.
Martie Esterhuizen visited the school afterwards for a follow-up to ensure that the project was on track. The staff were thankful for the library’s involvement to empower their learners, because they don’t have a library at school. During the visit, Louise Harmse presented stationary gift bags to the debate team. The gift bags were sponsored by Van Schaik Bookstore.
Staff News
Congratulations to the following staff members who were appointed recently:
| Mahikeng | |
|---|---|
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Rouxshane Bosman Senior Administrative Assistant from 01 July 2017 |
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Benford Rabatseta Senior Librarian: Information Resources from 01 July 2017 |
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Clement Lebeya Temporary Library Assistant from 01 July 2017 |
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Nontobeko Welaphi Library Assistant: Loan Services from 01 August 2017 |
| Potchefstroom: | |
|---|---|
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Meisi Makauza Library Assistant: Education Sciences Library from 01 August 2017 |
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Jan Mompe Library Assistant (Evening shift): Loan Services from 01 August 2017 |
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Jonathan Nyebeleza Assistant Librarian: Education Sciences Library from 01 August 2017 |
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Lucas Van den Heever Senior Library Assistant: Library Systems from 01 August 2017 |
The following staff members resigned, we are going to miss you!
| Potchefstroom | |
|---|---|
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Megan Petersen Information Services |
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Isabel Vogel Loan Services |
Mandela Day: Mafikeng Library contributes to Meal-a-Day Project
The Meal-a-Day project provides a meal to deserving, needy NWU students. The project has made a significant contribution to the physical well-being of students over the past years. Mafikeng library staff participated in the Mandela Day activities by donating non-perishable food and toiletries to support this Project. The food and toiletries which were collected will be handed over to the co-ordinator at Institutional office (IO) to be distributed to needy university students as part of NWU’s Meal-a-Day project.
NWU library staff attended Sabinet Regional Meeting – 25 July 2017
Staff members from the NWU Library Services attended the Annual Regional Meeting of Sabinet held at the scenic Woodmead Country Club on the 25th of July.
Eric van Lubeek of OCLC Netherlands introduced products and services available with special focus on the new WorldShare Interlibrary Loans System that NWU is going to implement soon. This new system is cloud-based and more patron-centered. Sabinet appealed to the stakeholders who need training on the new ILL to ensure that staff are adequately trained.
Pierre Malan (Director Client Services: Sabinet) discussed how they add value to Information Services through Sabinet Legal, SAMedia, Interlending (Worldshare) and SAePublications journal platform.
Some impressions from staff:
“The meeting was informative in seeing what other services are available through Sabinet, a great place to network with fellow librarians.”
“It was good to meet our colleagues and get together as a profession. It is important to be informed and updated with the latest developments on different platforms.”
Investing in Digital Humanities Research
Kirchner van Deventer, a Faculty Librarian at Education Sciences recently attended the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School. Part of NWU Library Services strategic agenda is to develop our capacity for Digital Humanities projects and the research potential that can stem from it. With support from the NWU Research Unit for Languages and Literature in the South African Context, Kirchner attended the Summer School’s Introduction to Digital Humanities lecture series. The lectures included:
Digitization for Research: Creating Tools for Active Scholarship
An Introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative
Reborn Digital: text, transmission, technology
Reproducible Research in the Humanities
An Introduction to Databases
Introduction to Visualization for Digital Humanities
The most important things he learned from the Summer School included that Digital Humanities has enormous research potential for a vast range of disciplines and is not just limited to linguistics or literary studies, but can benefit other social and humanities disciplines as well. It is the role of academic librarians to encourage their respective faculties to develop their understanding of what Digital Humanities scholarship entails and to further provide technical support and training in the use of tools that have been developed for Digital Humanities research.
AfLIA President visits North-West University
The North-West University Library and Information Services had the honour of being visited by the African Library and Information Association and Institution (AfLIA) president, Mr John Tsebe, on 11 July 2017. John Kgwale Tsebe became the first black national librarian in South Africa in 2004. In 2013, he was elected the first AfLIA president, a body whose vision is to be “the trusted voice of the African library and information community in Africa’s development”. As the president of AfLIA, John is involved in several projects to promote librarianship in several African countries. John retired as a National Librarian of South Africa in 2014 but is set to continue in the role of president of AfLIA until 2019. Currently, he also teaches at the University of Limpopo.
During his visit, Mr John Tsebe shared some of his experiences in various roles as a university librarian at the University of Limpopo, National Librarian of South Africa, Professor of Librarianship, and AfLIA president. Through to his character, Mr Tsebe could not miss the chance of touring our library and he was impressed by the level of discipline shown by our users and the NWU LIS facilities.
Siviwe Bangani
