Monica YOUNG, Head of Electronic Resources Management

What is your career journey?

I started my career in academic Libraries in Hong Kong after finishing my studies in Australia. As a young professional, I had put my knowledge into practice and also earned a lot of experience in serials management and audio-visual acquisition at that time. Due to my education background, I got an opportunity to be deployed to deal with library technology and systems which definitely built on my expertise in library automation.

To broaden my horizon and contribute to the education community, I then worked at the Education Bureau for six years. Firstly as a School Library Development Officer to offer advice to secondary and primary schools in setting up their school library and to provide professional support in automation, collection development, library services, copyright matters, as well as organising professional training to school librarians. Afterwards, I was promoted to be a Library Manager to plan and set up the Central Resources Centre at Kowloon Tong to support the increased research and teaching needs of Bureau’s professionals and all teachers in Hong Kong.

In 2008, I joined CUHK as Electronic Resources Librarian to take up new challenges of working in an academic library in the digital era. To cope with the dramatic development of the publishing industry which shifted to digital resources, I assisted in establishing a new department to deal with the large scale of electronic resources acquisition and management, as well as resolving relevant issues, such as license agreements. To support the changing teaching and learning environment, as well as research demand, the services and resources provided to the faculty and students become more dynamic and challenging. With a group of talented colleagues, our department commits to make our resources accessible in the most cost-effective way which benefits all our stakeholders.

What is your educational background?

I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering from Tamkang University in Taiwan and my Master of Information Management in Librarianship at the University of New South Wales in Australia. I also received my Master in Information Technology from Monash University in Australia and Postgraduate Certificate in Education Management from OUHK in Hong Kong.

What are you responsible for?

As the Head of Electronic Resources Management, I am responsible for acquiring all kinds of electronic resources available on the market and to make sure they are readily accessible by our users. I also ensure the acquired materials are used cost-effectively and support our hybrid learning and teaching needs. Besides, I have to monitor the usage of all electronic materials to comply with the license agreement.

To cater for the different demands in delivering hybrid learning and teaching, recently our departments explored video on demand (VOD) streaming licenses, which is absolutely a challenge and an opportunity to the Library. It involves not just technical issues but also engages with different scopes of license, copyright and intellectual property issues. For the time being, the availability of VOD for institutional use are not as abundant as we expected. However, the trend of using VOD may increase and help students to access related film clips remotely. We will keep on sourcing and try our best to meet the needs of the faculty.

I also work closely with other universities in Hong Kong by participating in the consortium to get the best deal on the resources and collaborate with library experts to further develop Library back end services which meet the trend and demand of Open Access, Open Science and Open Research.

You are most welcome to contact us if you have any resources in mind. We will provide our assistance as best we can.