Text by: Ada Poon
I would like to thank Becky for taking me on a tour of the Polytechnic University’s Pao Yue-kong Library and showing me their website. This was my first time to visit the Pao Yue-kong Library. The environment is comfortable. We walked around the library from the basement to the third floor.
Firstly, the Pao Yue-kong Library is more digitized and hi-tech than the school library where I work. It offers various types of electronic resources such as e-databases, e-books and e-journals, whereas my school library is all printed resources. Another difference is the hardware. It provides self-check machines for circulation services but we have circulation counter only. It also offers mobile devices loan, for example laptops and tablets to support e-learning. Those facilities and software maximizes user access to information resources.
Secondly, the Pao Yue-kong Library has more collaborative space. It contains a discussion zone, group study rooms, seminar rooms, multimedia commons and group viewing rooms for users to exchange knowledge and discuss projects. A variety of settings in different rooms can foster group discussions. In the 24-Hour Study Centre, students can gather around these clusters for group work. Likewise, the need of collaborative learning is increased in secondary education, discussion areas are provided in our new library.
Thirdly, the website of Pao Yue-kong Library is more user-friendly. It is a responsive website which responds based on the device. Although the design of responsive website is simple, it is clear to link to the important information. For my school’s library website, we do not have mobile version that users may zoom in to read the library information. For the site search, users can search the library information on the website of Pao Yue-kong Library directly. In our library website, the search results will include the related information of school website. It is convenient to search the information directly on the particular web site.
This was a valuable opportunity to visit the Pao Yue-kong Library and know more about my mentor and academic libraries.