Issue 116

Welcome to the first issue of Connections for 2021. We are excited to be back for a new school year, and we look forward to engaging with you at upcoming events, via our social media channels and term newsletters, and through our new SCIS Data user surveys.

Our strategic priorities for 2021 include ensuring that we provide a consistent and reliable service to our users, maintain the high level of quality of SCIS Data cataloguing records, and retain our high customer hit rate, which has hovered consistently around the 92–95% mark. A high hit rate means that we likely have the catalogue records that library users are searching for.

We appreciate how critical it is for teachers and students to be able to find the right resource with ease, and we recommend using SCIS Authority Files to enhance the user experience and to make the most of your resources. Authority Files link terms between records – to display the ‘see’ and ‘see also’ references – and allow you to download Subject, Name and Series Authority Files from the SCIS website, and upload them to your library management system. This is where you’ll truly see the magic of metadata with a rich search and discovery experience for your students and teachers. Read more about Authority Files at scisdata.com.

SCIS aims to support library staff and teachers in their efforts to engage their students as readers and users of digital content. This year we will be sharing new SCIS Data user surveys. These aim to capture SCIS Data user feedback on all manner of topics, such as the quality of SCIS records, our customer service, professional learning offerings, our communications to you and more. Your feedback will help us ensure that we have a clear picture of the most important aspects of SCIS to you, the users.

We were very pleased to welcome two new members to the SCIS team in November 2020. Heath Walsh joined our cataloguing team. Heath is an experienced cataloguer and metadata specialist who has worked across several organisations and universities, most recently working for the very busy RMIT University library. We also welcomed Ceinwen Jones to the team as our School Liaison Officer. Ceinwen is a qualified teacher librarian who has worked across a number of school settings and brings valuable insight that will assist her in supporting our growing number of SCIS users.

The SCIS team look forward to engaging with you across 2021 and invite you to stay in touch with us by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If we can be of help, please get in touch via [email protected]. Thank you.