Encouraged by the results of our on-going collaboration with our TUG partners at Guelph and Laurier, the Library was involved in several collaborative projects with groups across campus during the past year.
One of these was the result of a disaster discovered early one Sunday morning in the Dana Porter Library. An air vent on a pipe had failed, resulting in water damage to periodicals on the second and third floors. Library staff and staff in Plant Operations and Food Services acted quickly to avert disaster. Wet volumes of bound periodicals were packed in plastic tubs and transported to walk-in freezers on campus, where they were frozen and stored until they could be sent out for drying and rebinding. As a result of this quick thinking and teamwork, most of the damaged volumes were recovered. The cost of recovering most of these materials was less than half the cost of replacing them and much less labour intensive for library staff.
Other successful collaborations were somewhat less spontaneous. In February 2000, library staff met with staff in the Finance and IST departments to find a way to reduce duplication in the processing of library invoices. After much hard work by staff in all three departments, the process has been streamlined so that anything added to the TRELLIS system is now automatically loaded into the financial system, saving a considerable amount of staff time in both the Library and Finance.
Library staff also worked closely with staff in Food Services to bring latté to the Library. In late summer, Browsers, a new coffee shop on the main floor of the Dana Porter Library, opened for business. An audit had revealed that at least 90 per cent of patrons eat and drink in the Library. Browsers provides them with a convenient place to purchase drinks and snacks as well as a relaxing place to read, study, and meet with friends.
In June 2000, the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (LT3) settled into new quarters on the third floor of the Dana Porter Library, making ongoing collaboration between LT3 and library staff easier. In addition to working with faculty members and graduate students on "learnware" projects through the Centre, library staff members offer courses on keeping up with research electronically and organizing references with Reference Manager or Endnote. Recently, the Library put forward a proposal to the Centre to develop an online, interactive program to promote the development of information literacy skills among students.
A new flexible learning experience lab on the third floor of the Dana Porter Library, part of the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (LT3), features laptop computers and furniture that can be arranged to facilitate various methods of teaching and learning.
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Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
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