Taking stock

2008 will bring with it some big changes for Kingsley College as we go into partnership with Tabor Victoria, with Kingsley becoming Tabor's northern campus, based in Hadfield. What does this mean for the library? The libraries of both institutions will also be amalgamating, and this new combined library will eventually become one of the largest of any comparable institution in Melbourne.

The present Kingsley library will remain open as the branch library of Tabor's northern campus, which will be staffed by me two days per week, with the remainder of my time spent working as part of the team at the Leo Harris Resource Centre which is located at Tabor's main campus in Ringwood. Students will now have access to a wider range of print resources, and will be able to borrow from any Tabor campus library. Another plus is that the library catalogue will be web enabled, allowing patrons to browse the library holdings of any Tabor campus online from home if desired.

Students should also be impressed with Tabor's range of online databases, allowing the library user to access and download an extensive range of full text journal articles and abstracts in a range of subjects. Using Concord's Masterfile software, which I'm looking forward to getting to grips with, there will also be further work done in e-learning and Web 2.0 applications, so watch this space for developments in these areas.

The partnership between Kingsley and Tabor will give our students a stronger library, which I'm glad to see happen, and I'm also looking forward to the challenges and opportunities of broadening my skills in knowledge management, and after 5 years of working alone, which hasn't always been easy, going back to working as part of a team.

Blowing my own trumpet

Recently I achieved something of a professional milestone when I had an article printed in the ALIA New Graduate Group's newsletter, newgradnews. It's not a professional journal in the true sense of the word, but a forum for the discussion of issues relevant to new information professionals. The way it works is that the editors invited contributions, and printed pretty much anything that was submitted to them. My article was a reflection piece on the past four years of my working life in the information profession, and also on some of the challenges of working as a solo librarian in my first library job. It's nice to have one's name in print, and to hopefully also give my peers the benefit of my insight and experience. On the off chance you're interested, click the hyperlink above to read more.

Out of focus

This week has seen Kingsley College hold its biannual spiritual focus week, the emphasis of which was missions. We'll be hosting a number of guest speakers from different mission agencies, including OMF, Pioneers, Interserve, and Wycliffe. It's great to hear about what God is doing throughout the world through people who humbly serve Him. A number of Wycliffe personnel attend my church, so I often get to hear about Wycliffe and its work of Bible translation. In January 2005, I spent 3 weeks in the Phillipines working voluntarily for SIL, an affiliated organisation of Wycliffe. See http://manilasil2005.spaces.live.com/ for more information on this adventure.

To this day, Wycliffe's work remains close to my heart. As a token gesture, I support a Wycliffe missionary couple working in Russia. As we learnt when attempting a basic translation exercise during the Tuesday morning session, Bible translation is a difficult and challenging task, particularly when done without translation aids such as lexicons, language software, or golden tablets, magic peep stones and a hat. The work of Bible translation is important and indeed necessary, because a people group cannot be considered to have been truly reached with the gospel until they have the Bible available to them in their heart language. Wycliffe, and indeed any other mission organisation can always use more support. John Wesley once said that the world was his parish, and it can be the same for us too. Why not consider finding out more about supporting mission work in some way?