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Mangosuthu University of Technology Annual Report

36

5.7 Significant Development And

Achievements In Library Services

Kobo E-Readers

Five hundred Kobo touch e-readers were bought for the

library through funding from the teaching development

grant. The three Faculties were each issued with10

e-readers, and the Teaching and Learning Development

Centre was issued with 23. The remaining 447 were

available for use by students and staff. Access to e-books

is made possible through these readers.

Openathens Usage

The library subscribed to OpenAthens from the 1st of June

2015. OpenAthens is an access management system which

simplifies off-campus access to subscription-based content

by giving users a single username and password, instead

of having different passwords for different databases. Both

staff and students are required to register on OpenAthens

to be able to access databases off-campus.

Calibre and Adobe Digital Edition (Ade) E-Book

Management

With the purchasing of the Kobo e-readers and e-books,

the library had to have e-book management software to be

able to have a link between the e-books and the e-readers.

The library is therefore using Calibre and Adobe Digital

Edition e-book management software. Calibre is a free

open source e-book management software which allows

the library to easily load e-books from their source to the

Kobo e-readers. It also allows one to find book metadata

based on existing title/author or ISBN information. Calibre

automatically downloads various types of metadata and

covers for downloaded books. ADE is also an open source

software which is used as a platform for the use of the

Ebsco e-books in particular. Both Calibre and ADE have

made it much easier to manage the e-book usage.

Marketing Department Interns (Faculty of Management

Sciences)

A group of eleven young people with disabilities

were placed at Mangosuthu University of Technology

(MUT) in April 2015. They were registered for the End-

User Computing Learnerships Programme. This is a

collaboration project between the Education & Training

Development Seta that facilitates the qualification, the

Disabled People’s Society of South Africa which provides

the financial support, the Durban University of Technology

which facilitates the training component, and MUT which

provides the workplace training. Ten (10) students were

placed at the MUT Library Services and one was allocated

to the Finance Department. A total of eleven (11) students

were trained and empowered.

Handy Café

The net-book area in the library is reserved for students

who want to use databases for research purposes and

information access. During busy periods students are

allocated one hour at a time. To control and monitor the

time spent by each student using the net-books Handy

Café was implemented. It is an Open Source software

meant to manage, monitor and control internet access.

The software was installed in all the netbooks.

Library E-Books-(Ebsco, Amazon, and Oup)

The library purchased 140 000 e-books from Ebsco and

14 e-textbooks from Amazon, Ebsco and the Oxford

University Press (OUP). These e-books are accessible

through any of the electronic devices via the library

website as well as through the Kobo e-readers.

Smartdraw Subscription

The library subscribed to SmartDraw. The software assists

with conducting surveys and other teaching and learning

processes.

Open Access

The library investigated and uploaded links of invaluable

Open Access databases for access to MUT students

and staff. These databases are freely available to all and

users could access them directly at any time without IP

authentication.

5.8. Significant Developments and

Achievements in Research

Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer Strategic

Plan

The objectives of the Research, Innovation and Technology

Transfer Strategic Plan for 2013 – 2017 are:

Objective 1:

Ensure that the research niche areas are

aligned to MUT’s mission and strategic

priorities and are supported by a critical

mass of researchers and allocation of

resources;

Objective 2:

Identify and nurture core fields of

research activity for which MUT has

strategic advantage;

Objective 3:

Review the role of the professoriate

in developing academic and research

leaders in areas where the University

has strengths at the undergraduate

level and develop strategies aimed at

widening research participation and

productivity;