38 / 68
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;