CUHK Library E-newsletter

Lee Quo Wai Law Library Renovation

Welcome back to the CUHK Law Library in the new academic year. During the summer, the Law Library underwent a renovation, which provides more space for our legal collections and a better study environment for students. We chose a bold colour on the main wall, which gives a fresh new look to the Law Library. A new set of mobile shelving was installed, which helps us to house the increasing collections. Study carrels were refurbished, and new sockets with USB were installed. We changed the seating to more comfortable chairs as well. All the changes aim to provide better facilities for your studies in the CUHK Library.

We also created a virtual tour that provides 360° photos of the Law Library. You can virtually experience the environment and atmosphere.
https://www.360easyvr.com/gallery/vrview/1010

New Additions Page

The New Additions page has been revamped with a new look and new functions. It can be accessed via the "New Additions" button on the Library home page, or by the direct URL https://www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/newtitle.

The Home page provides a quick glimpse of selected new book cover images of both physical materials and electronic resources. Click the cover image or the title will link you to the full record on the LibrarySearch.

The Full List page provides a filtering function. Click Show filters to expand the filtering options to find new library-subscribed materials on your topics of interest from the last four weeks

The Menu page provides quick links of categorised new additions. You can also subscribe RSS feeds for weekly updates of new additions.

Emergency Temporary Notebook Loan Scheme (2020-21 Term 1)

The emergency temporary notebook loan scheme (2020-21 Term 1) provides support to students who have difficulty accessing a suitable device required for online learning. To be eligible for this scheme, applicants must be full-time undergraduate or postgraduate students of CUHK currently residing in Hong Kong and do not have access to a suitable device, for example, a tablet, desktop or notebook computer at home for online learning.

Besides the emergency temporary notebook loan scheme, students may also consider purchasing a notebook with a discounted price from the Student Notebook Ownership Program 2020.

For more details, please visit https://www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/about/news/notebook-loan-scheme-2020.

New Development in Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) Submission Workflow

The CUHK Library is collaborating with the Graduate School and ITSC to streamline the Postgraduate Student Thesis Submission process. Through the customisation of CUSIS (CU Student Information System), postgraduate students will no longer be required to store the thesis files on CD-ROM or DVD for their submission.

In the redesigned workflow, metadata related to the thesis and student portfolio will be sent via the new outbound interface in CUSIS Thesis Monitoring System (TMS) whilst the thesis PDF files will be transmitted directly to the Library via Secured File Transfer Protocol (sFTP).

The transfer protocol via tangible disk carrier will be completely replaced by Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) via CUHK Digital Repository. OAI-PMH is a web-based mechanism for repository interoperability whereby the Data Providers can transfer theses related metadata to the Service Providers via the harvesting protocol within HTTP request.

The User Acceptance Testing (UAT) has been conducted in mid-September, and the new submission workflow has been launched in October 2020.

We are pleased that postgraduate students, the Graduate School and the Library will all benefit from the streamlined workflow; and we look forward to a new phase of making CUHK electronic theses available in a more efficient and timely manner.

Plan Ahead on the Management of Your Research Data

Research Data Management (RDM) has become a hot topic in the academia. It covers the organisation, process, storage, preservation, sharing and reuse of data. The data life cycle starts with data management planning. Considering data management of a research project in advance not only can prepare for the human and financial resources needed, but also can promote the FAIR data principle for data and scholarly publishing—Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability—that facilitate the discovery, sharing, and reuse of research data. Some funding agencies are also requiring a Data Management Plan (DMP) in research grant proposals. During the preparation of a DMP, one may consider the nature of data and the principles in managing them. In addition to our growing workshops on data analysis and visualisation throughout the year, the Library has organised in this semester online RDM workshops related to the early planning stage:

Mastering Data Management Plan in One Hour
This workshop introduces the benefits of having a DMP, the tools for preparing a DMP, and the practice of creating and managing a DMP.
Research Data in the Big Data Era
This data literacy workshop discusses what data are, the principles in managing data, and some concepts of data science and analytics.

Details and registration are available at the Library workshop webpage.

Nàng Tự Do – The archive of Art In the Camps (Garden Streams) and the traces of Vietnamese boatpeople in Hong Kong

Co-organised by the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Library and Garden Streams, the exhibition Nàng Tự Do features the life of Vietnamese boat people in the detention camps in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s and is held at the University Library from now until 16 April 2021. The exhibition aims to address the relationship between “refugees” and contemporary society by reviewing this unique piece of almost forgotten history.

"Nàng Tự Do" means "Miss Freedom" in English. The title of the exhibition is drawn from Tự Do (Freedom Magazine), a magazine that was published by the boatpeople in the detention camps   at that time. As the magazine is written in Vietnamese, it has never been heard of by people outside of the camps. From the 1980s, Hong Kong society became gradually less accommodating with the waves of refugees, renaming the Vietnamese as “boat people” instead of “refugees”, suggesting that they were poor and lacking education. In fact, the definition of refugees is wide. As well as wars, natural disasters and economic considerations may also be reasons for people to become refugees. This exhibition displays the archive of Art In the Camps (Garden Streams) from a contemporary point of view, instead of presenting the works as stereotypical views of the Vietnamese boat people’s identity, and reveals the life they led in Hong Kong.

The exhibition includes nearly 50 paintings from the archive of Art in the Camps, as well as a dozen photographs, taken in the detention camps, which have never been displayed before, along with specific newspaper clippings and other documents related to this piece of history. Contemporary artists from Hong Kong and overseas have been invited to react to this archive through their art works, including an interview with a Vietnamese man who grew up in the detention camp, some items from a magazine published by Vietnamese boat people in detention camps translated for the first time into English and Chinese, and a Polaroid image recording the very moment a batch of Vietnamese refugees landed in Hong Kong for the first time. A series of public programmes including online talks, workshops and a field trip will be organised throughout the exhibition period, to give audiences a deeper understanding of Vietnamese boat people’s life in Hong Kong. Please visit the Library website for details.