CIO & University Librarian's Message

Welcome back to the University to have a refreshing start for the new academic term.

During the first term and the term break, many library colleagues visited libraries in the Greater Bay Area and participated in international and regional conferences, all with the ultimate goal of continuously improving the library services and facilities. In this new issue of Library Matters, you will learn our unwavering drive to capitalize on the latest digital technology to better our offerings.

On our facilities, we will have a Self-Pickup Locker to facilitate the collection of your requested items round-the-clock; the LU Barn has acquired new equipment to enable the realisation of your design-thinking prototypes; the colour printing service was upgraded; and new touchless drinking water refill stations in various floors of the Library have been available. On our services, a new real-time interactive dashboard showing the contributions of our University’s excellent research to the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has been launched; and there are more Open Access publishing support to academics. On our collections, we have also acquired extra funding from the University to subscribe to lots more electronic resources on a wide spectrum of disciplines including science and engineering to support the academic program development of the University.

I am very proud to announce that our efforts are starting to bear fruit, with users expressing their appreciation and support for our improvements through the LibQUAL+ Survey in mid-2023. In terms of users’ minimum, desired, and perceived levels of service quality across three dimensions: Affect of Service, Information Control, and Library as Place, the results in 2023 surpassed all previous years (2019 and 2015), indicating that although our users have raised their minimum and desired levels of services, the Library was able to meet their demands and exceeded their expectations.

Figure 1: Comparison of LibQual Survey 2023 against 2019 and 2015

I took this result as a testament to our commitment to continuous improvement. All library staff will continue to hear your voices and do their best to serve you.