BOOKENDS January 2023, Volume 6, Issue 2

The KU Library hosted an Open Access Awareness Day event in October 2022. As the significance of Open Access grows both globally and specifically at Khalifa University, the goal was to allow all KU authors and Open Access publishers to gather under one roof and provide an overview of the latest developments and advantages of OA publication.

Dr. Bayan Sharif, the Provost and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science made the opening and welcome remarks.  KU has agreements with four invited publishers: ACS, Wiley, IEEE, and PLOS. Each publisher highlighted the importance of OA publishing and the current trends. Also, there was an online session by a representative from LinkedIn on how to make your profile visible. The event was successful and many found it useful with the content covered by various speakers.

While the OA project is limited to only these four publishers for the time being, we are going to be announcing details about the newest OA approved publisher(s) expanding into areas, which have not been well covered by the existing publishers.

Anyone seeking more information about Open Access can access the OA website, contact the librarians through the library portal: https://library.ku.ac.ae/ or reach out to us by email at: Libse@ku.ac.ae

Professor Antony in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Khalifa University has recently won three major International Awards for his book entitled “Ten Commandments of Lean Six Sigma” published in November 2019. The book won Walter Mazing Book Prize from the International Academy of Quality (IAQ), Japan in 2021; the prestigious Crosby Medal from the American Society for Quality (ASQ), USA in 2022 and recently the Book of the Year Award from the International Lean Six Sigma Institute, UK. The book was published by Emerald Publishers, a leading management journal publisher located in the UK. Lean Six Sigma is a powerful methodology that reduces waste and variation in an organization and ultimately minimizes operating costs, optimizes productivity, and maximizes customer satisfaction.

The success stories speak for themselves, but not all LSS stories have a happy ending, and a large body of scholarly research shows why. What is needed now is a set of accessible general guidelines for organizations seeking to implement and sustain such a powerful, but at times perilous, continuous improvement strategy. The "Ten Commandments of Lean Six Sigma" provides just that, offering guidance from the perspective of practitioners, researchers and academics who have been involved in training, teaching, researching and consulting on various topics of quality and continuous improvement such as Lean, Six Sigma and LSS. Delving into the cutting edge of business process enhancement, this book is an essential and practical guide for senior managers and executives who want to achieve operational and service excellence in manufacturing, service and public sector organizations of any size.

Professor Antony joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at KU in August 2021 and he is a triple-certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt through the American Society for Quality, Institute of Six Sigma Professionals and the International Lean Six Sigma Institute. He is the author of 14 books on quality management, quality engineering, Six Sigma and Operational Excellence topics. He has published over 500 journal and conference papers with an H-index of 92 and over 32,000 citations according to Google Scholar, which is the highest in Khalifa University and the UAE.

In 2013, the American Library Association (ALA) announced a collaboration with the Sharjah International Book Fair, which became part of the Sharjah Book Authority. The ALA conference gathers librarians from the region, the United States, and other countries around the world. Every year, this partnership offers high-quality professional development and continuing education programs to librarians interested in their professional growth and development in the field.

As they do every year, Khalifa University librarians participate in this conference by submitting poster presentations. During the November 8-10, 2022 conference, KU Librarian Muna Abdulla presented a poster titled ‘Information Literacy Services and Workshops’. The poster presentation highlighted the main Information Literacy (IL) modules that are offered to serve KU students of all academic levels and disciplines: preparatory, undergraduate and post-graduate. These sessions/classes are offered throughout the year, with special attention at the beginning of each semester, to fulfill the educational needs and study requirements of the students. The IL instructional sessions modules include: a basic introduction to library resources & services and how to find information, search databases, research process, plagiarism and academic ethics, literature and patents search, citation managers and bibliographies, e-Resource search techniques, and many more.

The poster presentation also covered the major library outreach programs that are comprised of events and workshops organized and conducted throughout the academic community, in raising awareness about recent e-resources and meeting the research needs of faculty and staff. The poster presentation defined a number of IL and workshop sessions conducted using diagrams, which illustrate the diverse methods and modules utilized. To stress the importance of continuous enhancement of KU Library services, it was also highlighted by sending out surveys after every Information Literacy and workshop session to obtain feedback from faculty, students and staff. The collected data is used to assess and continuously improve our IL program and workshops.

It is no secret that when it comes to hearing the words “Japanese books”, the first thing that might pop up in your head is “Manga”, since Japan has been well-recognized for many years for providing an incredible quantity of comics worldwide.

The Japanese books collection is one of the library’s special collections that has been growing notably recently, whether they were received as a generous donation or bought after receiving supportive suggestions from our patrons. If you are wondering whether you will find something interesting to read, the collection is expanded from children to adult level. To mention a few genres of the collection, not only do we have comics, but the collection also contains a variety of classic literature, lifestyle books, history books, bibliographies, educational books and travel books. The Japanese books are available in both campuses and are written in Japanese, English, and Arabic. If you are into heritage sites, you might want to check out our books that show the beauty of the country, such as “Japan's World Heritage Sites” and “Japan: A Pictorial Portrait”. Or if you are into some traditional practices like the Japanese art of arranging flowers, the book “Ikebana” will definitely charm you with the simplicity and beauty of this old practice.

If you have any title suggestions that would help expand the collection, please visit the library’s page and fill out a “New Title Request”. The Library is fortunate to have a staff member, Library Specialist Khawla Al Hadrami, who is fluent in Japanese, to catalog the Japanese language materials. 

Self-help is a prominent publishing genre, with a multitude of books on habits and self-improvement. Of these many options, I believe that the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear will always be one of the finest.

This book clearly and concisely details the rules and strategies for changing bad habits and developing good habits. It offers tips and techniques for building enduring habits. It clearly explains how with small changes and adjustments in our lives, we can remove bad habits and replace them with good habits.

Each chapter starts with a real-life story of how actions impacted the life of a person or group of people. The key concepts of the book are:

• The importance of consistency
• Habit stacking, which is adding a new behavior to already existing behaviors
• Many small changes in the present become big changes in the future.
• The need to reflect on how we feel about ourselves and our changes
• The Four Laws of Behavior for habit change:

1. Make it obvious (CUE) - know yourself and what you need to change
2. Make it attractive (CRAVING) - Make your new habits fun and exciting
3. Make it easy (RESPONSE) - Always persevere, even when not doing your best. Never give up, just make it easy!
4. Make it satisfying (REWARD) - it helps us to stick to our goals and use self-reflection.

By following the advice in this book, you will make good habits feel easy, attractive, obvious and satisfying. And your bad habits will likewise seem boring, difficult and unattractive to you!

I would highly recommend the book to everyone and you will find it easy to apply. It's simply doable. if you are interested to read this remarkable book, get your copy from the Library.

Using Our Webforms to Request Library Services

The KU Library homepage contains lots of information about our services that are available to members of the KU community. Some of the most important are our webforms, which allow users request services. You can see these under the "Web Forms" on the main menu.

The first form, "ILL Requests" allow users to request copies of articles from journals that the library does not have a subscription to. Though we try to provide access everything that our users might need, there is occasionally a need to obtain items from another library. Just complete the citation information from the item you need, and our Document Delivery staff will quickly obtain your item, if possible.

The next form, "Library Instruction", allows professors to request a session for their class to learn from a librarian how to best find the information that they need for any research project or assignment that they have. These sessions can be done via an online meeting or in person here at the library. Just tell our librarians what you need and when.

The next form, "Tours", is useful if you would like to arrange for your class to come see the library and learn from our staff what resources we have and how to access them.

"Course Reserves" is for professors who would like to place any physical material in the library (either something that the library owns currently, or something that is owned by the professor and is being temporarily located at the library) so that it can be used by class members for a short period of time.

The "New Title Request" form is the best way for the KU community to let us know about items that they believe that we should make part of our collection. So whenever you find title that is important to your research or just your field of study and that the library does not currently own, just submit a request to us for it. We will notify you as soon as it is available for you to use.

If you have something that we need to know about and that does not fit into any of the other options, just submit it to us via the "Comments and Suggestions" form. We always take these comments seriously and address any issues that are reported to us and address them to the best of our ability.

Last, whenever we are testing a new database for possible adoption, we provide the community with a chance to evaluate the product through the "Trial Database Evaluation". These evaluations are vital for us in determining whether to permanently acquire databases or not.

Our goal is always to provide you with best service that we can, and these webforms are an important way for users to share their needs with us.

Here is a short video demonstrating on how to search and find a book. 

• The longest marathon of reading aloud is 124 hours and was achieved by Rysbai Isakov (Kyrgyzstan) in Bursa, Turkey.
• The most published works by one author is 1,084 by L. Ron Hubbard (USA).
• The best-selling book of all time is the Christian Bible.
• The fastest selling fiction book in one day is "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", which sold 8.3 million copies in 24 hours or 345,833 books sold per hour.
• The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with more than 173 million items.
• The largest book in the KU Library collection is the Earth Blue by Millennium Publishing which stands at 61 cm high and weighs 30 kg!