Two long serving kaimahi from the Library Team have celebrated significant milestones with colleagues gathering in Te Puna to reflect on their service and achievements.
Resources Specialist Metadata, David Church is celebrating thirty years at Unitec this month while Subject Librarian, Norasieh Md Amin is celebrating her tenth year.
“I’ve worked alongside David for a number of years and he is a highly experienced Cataloguer, very skilled in working with metadata,” says Subject Librarian, Donna Salmon.
“David was an early adopter of Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori Subject Headings) in Aotearoa, and he continues to work closely with the National Library to suggest and discuss these subject headings.”
Māori Subject Headings provide subject access in te reo Māori to materials for and/or about Māori. The thesaurus framework offers a structured path to a Māori world view within library and archival cataloguing and description.
“I acknowledge all that David has done with Maori subject headings. He retrospectively catalogued all the Maori collection with those headings and the Research Bank, and worked with the National Library,” says Library Manager, Anna Wheeler.
David says he would like to push the National Library to create something comparable to the Maori subjects in Sāmoan.
“As the third largest linguistic group in Aotearoa after English and Te Reo, it is important to establish a similar controlled vocabulary for Sāmoa – for the same reasons. To my knowledge nothing is forthcoming. The National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) could play a role perhaps, but with the resource constraints there, they naturally concentrate on meeting tāngata whenua needs.
Originally from the United States, David moved to New Zealand at a young age in the 1960s. He holds a BA in Māori and Anthropology from the University of Auckland, a certificate from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and a Post-graduate Degree in Library Science from the University of Canberra in Australia.
Before joining Unitec, David worked for the University of Auckland, Auckland College of Education, and the National Library and Department of Defence in Australia.
Reflecting on his time at Unitec, David admits “it’s not something I think about much”, but the satisfaction he gets from his mahi is what motivates him to turn up to work every day.
“I really enjoy it here, the people are great, it’s also good to see the material coming through because it’s stimulating,” he explains.
“I never know what item I get to describe. There is such a variety of content, and form of that content. And I take simple pride in seeing it on a public facing platform which is shared with other libraries world-wide.
David says the main change to his role since 1995 is the constantly changing systems, which is why “I keep my ears and eyes open” for the latest tech developments and trends.
“Thirty years ago print was king,” he remarks.
Ms Wheeler adds: “David is also one of our most innovative staff is one of the key users of AI in our team.”
David says AI is especially suited for his line of work, as description and subject analysis involves structured data and authorised terms.
“It can do some of the grunt work so I can concentrate on more interesting aspects. I still need to vet and consider what comes back from MS Copilot of course, but it makes the process much quicker,” he explains.
Since 2013, David has been collaborating with kaimahi from four other ITP’s (Eastern Institute of Technology, Otago Polytechnic, Toi-Ohomai and Southern Institute of Technology) on maintaining the Research Bank, a repository for research outputs administered by the Unitec Library.
Norasieh is celebrating a decade at Unitec and 20 years since migrating with her family to New Zealand from Malaysia in 2005.
After completing her PhD in education from AUT, she came to work for Unitec, initially as a specialist in 2015.
According to Ms Wheeler, Norasieh is currently leading a collaboration with Unitec’s Research Office to update the scholarly communication guidelines, which haven’t been updated in a decade.
“They were written by Unitec’s library director and research director at the time and Norasieh is leading that review,” says Ms Wheeler.
Norasieh also enjoys using online tools such to work with students.
“I have created some interactive tutorials which teaches students to learn about the library and the catalogues
“The tutorials are tailored to their requirements and of the programmes they are studying. I have also worked on projects to help students decide on which courses to take.”
Find out more about the Library team and their work at https://guides.unitec.ac.nz/library
Well done guys, proud of your achievements.
Great work David and Nora, kia ora.