Working at a university library: Various changes I've noticed in the last 5 years

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  • Completely new, improved, more user-centric library website
  • Increasing trend towards purchasing eBooks over print and using PDA (Patron Driven Acquisition)
  • Bibliographic services team has been whittled down, with staff who have left not being replaced
  • New liaison librarian positions created 
  • Research Publications Officer role created (to guide students with submitting their theses online)
  • Lending staff taking on bib services jobs, e.g. mending and spine label replacement 
  • More and more services have become self-service, e.g. requesting interloans, checking out holds and there has been a big push to get patrons using the self check-out machines
  • More study spaces created
  • Integration of the research help desk and lending desk into one service desk covered by lending staff
  • Introduction of "roving" library assistants during busy hours
  • No more fines for overdue main collection items (only for recalled books and overdue course reserve items)
  • 2 hour course reserve items can be taken out of the library
  • CD ROM's inside textbooks no longer catalogued
  • Relaxing of rules regarding bringing food and drink into the library
  • Large scale weeding of print serials, with more to go
  • All reference collection items relocated to the main collection
  • Demise of Borrow Direct, a reciprocal borrowing service between NZ university libraries
  • Book donations discouraged with donors required to submit a list of items they wish to donate first
  • Undergraduates can now request interloans 
  • Earlier closing hours over the summer holidays
  • Launch of library social media campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram 
  • Introduction of Summon, a web-scale discovery service
  • Change from Voyager to Sierra (later this year)
  • Te Puna interloan network now hosted on OCLC's VDX resource sharing system
  • WebChat service launched
  • FollowYou printing introduced
  • Upgrade to EndNote X7 (still being tested) 
  • Support provided for Zotero, an alternative to EndNote

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