Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Intern Alert

Published4th April 2018 Post authoradmin

Welcoming our new intern Pfumelani Ngobeni to The Technical Library team.

Pfumelani Ngobeni (30) is a University of Johannesburg graduate, who holds a BA degree in Information Science, as well as a BA Honours degree in Public Management and Governance. She recently started her internship at The Technical Library and her main duty is cataloging of reports.

Pfumelani is a team player. She is goal orientated, punctual and career driven. These are values that The Technical Library looks for in its employees. We are happy to have her on the team and hope that she will have a successful journey with us.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

Flashback Friday (#FBF): First Lunch at the Library

Published23rd March 2018 Post authoradmin

The Technical Library’s first event.

In March 2015, The Technical Library hosted their first event called Lunch at The Library. The purpose of this event was to invite clients to come and have a look at the new premises that the library had moved to. This was an opportunity to for us to mingle with clients and to reassure them we will continue to provide them with excellent library services.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

How The Technical Library makes a difference

Published15th March 2018 Post authoradmin

How The Technical Library was established

The Technical Library was originally an in-house library serving the Anglo American Corporation. When Anglo American decided that they no longer wanted to carry the overheads of having a library on its premises, they chose to outsource their library and information management services. As a result of this, The Technical Library was established and our products and services are now available not only to Anglo American, but also the wider mining and engineering communities in South Africa and across the globe.

What makes us different

The collection available to our members has been built up for over 70 years now and new information is added to the collection on a continuous basis. The industry in which we operate is very complex and requires a high level of research. The Technical library consists a of a highly skilled team of professionals that have a combined total of more than fifty years working experience in the technical library industry. We all believe that we make a difference because our objective is to deliver a quality service utilizing the systems and resources that are available to us.

The Technical Library is a deadline-driven organization and our main priority is making sure that our clients are always happy and satisfied with the services that we provide to them.

Please contact us if you are interested in becoming a member of The Technical Library

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

New Bulletin Format Alert!

Published7th March 2018 Post authoradmin

How to access the Monthly Bulletin.

The Technical Library provides research and technical information within the fields of mining, engineering, safety, metallurgy and related disciplines. In order to receive the bulletin (as well as our other products and services), you need to be a member of The Technical Library. There are various membership options available, please contact us for more details on how to become a member.

All members of The Technical Library have access to the Library Catalogue and are added to the monthly bulletin mailing list.

Look out for our new bulletin format.

The Technical Library has recently launched a new design for the monthly bulletin. This new format draws attention to some of the more interesting articles across the different disciplines which are published in the bulletin. Please request any articles you find interesting. If you are a member of The Technical Library and are not receiving the bulletin, please contact us.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

The Technical Library’s rising star …Lyborn Mabapa

Published21st February 2018 Post authoradmin

About Lyborn Mabapa

Lyborn holds a 4-year degree in Bachelor of Information Studies from the University of Limpopo as well as a Postgraduate Programme in Archival Studies from the University of South Africa. She worked at The Technical Library as a Library Assistant from August 2016 until January 2018. Lyborn was employed at the Technical Library through the “Pay It Forward” internship program.

Lyborn’s duties included:

Classifying and cataloguing books and conference proceedings.
Administrative tasks around preparation of new books for the shelves.
Compiling monthly user statistics.
Shelving of books and shelf reading.
Digitizing of paper copies of journal articles.
Performing general administrative duties such as filing and photocopying.
Data capture of monthly bulletins, technical reports and memorandums.

Lyborn gets a job

The Technical Library is pleased to announce that Lyborn has recently started a new job at the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. We certainly hope that the skills she has learned and training she has received while working at The Technical Library will help her in her new position We are very proud of Lyborn and we wish her all the best in her future career.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

A day in the life of … Nasiphi Ntloko

Published14th February 2018 Post authoradmin

Background

Nasiphi Ntloko is a Durban University of Technology graduate who has a qualification in Library and Information studies. She started working at The Technical Library in August 2016 as she was one of the successful candidates that were chosen to be a part of the “Pay It Forward” internship program.

The Technical Library has provided her with excessive training throughout the past two years and this has tremendously transformed her into a skilled and qualified librarian.

Nasiphi’s main duties include:

Shelving of books, data capturing for The Technical Library’s monthly bulletin, cataloging of books and bulletin articles as well as labeling and preparing books which have been cataloged for the shelves.

She has also worked on the RCN project, which entailed the digitizing of old articles that clients could require for future reference. Nasiphi has been a part of many projects, including the 6/45 Anglo American project which involved cataloging, editing on the catalog record and shelving books accordingly. She is now working on a project for Anglo Platinum.

Having Nasiphi has allowed us to devote our time to other projects that we previously did not have time for, and for that we are truly grateful to have her on The Technical Library team.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

A day in the life of … Debbie Lievaart

Published7th February 2018 Post authoradmin

Debbie has two primary responsibilities.

She is Collections Manager of The Technical Library. This involves the ongoing selection (in consultation with Katinka van Straaten) of all new books, conference proceedings and journals purchased by the library. Once these books are received, Debbie is responsible for adding them to the catalogue, which includes the abstracting and indexing of content. All journal articles added to the catalogue are also indexed by Debbie. These articles are compiled into a monthly bulletin which is published by Debbie on the first of each month.

Debbie is also responsible for marketing The Technical Library products and services and attracting new clients. Visits are undertaken to different mining and engineering companies informing different technical staff how The Technical Library can assist them in the work that they do.

Contact Debbie if you have any conference proceedings or books which you would like to have added to The Technical Library collection, or would like to find out more about the products and services offered by The Technical Library.

In addition you can watch this video where Debbie talks about her roles and responsibilities at The Technical Library.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

The Technical Library drives careers

Published1st February 2018 Post authoradmin

Internship program 2018

The Technical Library introduced an internship program in 2016 with the view to ‘giving back’ to the industry that we have all worked in for so long. The idea behind this program is to develop the careers of young individuals by providing experience, skills and on the job training that can be added to their CVs and help them become more employable in the future.

In 2016, we had two interns who joined The Technical Library team. They have had a remarkable journey and we are pleased to say that they have accomplished a great deal from being with the company. The skills and experience they have gained during the past two years will surely take them a long way within the information industry.

We are proud to introduce two new interns who started with The Technical Library at the beginning of January 2018. We would like to congratulate and welcome Thulile Phoseka and Dineo Molebatsi to The Technical Library team.

Thulilie has a qualification in Library and Information Science and her main focus area will be gaining experience in all aspects of library work including cataloging, data capture, checking in of journals and general library administration. Dineo has recently just completed a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) in marketing management and she will be assisting with tasks that are associated with the marketing division of the organisation.

With the enthusiasm that they have shown for learning, we certainly hope that their journey at The Technical Library will be a fruitful and successful one.

Dineo Molebatsi

dineo@techlibrary.co.za

A day in the life of … Pamela Hutchison

Published3rd March 2017 Post authoradmin

Pam is responsible for a lot of things that happen ‘behind the scenes’ at The Technical Library.

Pam’s role as a systems administrator ensures that both clients and staff can access library products and services from their desktop.

Pam designed and is responsible for The Technical Library’s website. Here clients can access the Public catalogue, find out about products and services offered by The Technical Library, and read the current library blogs.

Every business has day-to-day IT issues, and as our systems administrator, Pam takes care of these for staff of The Technical Library. She also manages and maintains the content of the library servers and Cloud storage.

Pam maintains the distribution lists for the monthly bulletin, so please contact her if you would like to be added to the list. She also manages the journal subscriptions by checking that all paper copy journals are received, and liaises with the vendors to obtain any missing issues. She supervises the checking in of these journals and oversees the quality of all data capture done on both catalogues.

Contents pages of all conference proceedings purchased by The Technical Library are read, and relevant papers are selected and added by Pam to the catalogue.

She also manages all invoices issued and payments made by The Technical Library and is responsible for submitting vendor registration documents to companies to facilitate payments.

Watch this video where Pam talks about her roles and responsibilities at The Technical Library.

This blog is written to promote the products and services of The Technical Library. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Debbie Lievaart

The Technical Library Pay It Forward

Published14th December 2016 Post authorDebbie Lievaart

This blog tells about The Technical Library’s internship program.

‘Pay it forward’ is an expression for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it to others instead of to the original benefactor.

Staff of The Technical Library have a combined total of nearly 100 years experience in the information industry. We are all very grateful for the opportunities the industry has given us, so thought to give something back by introducing an internship program at the library.

We placed an advertisement on the Liasa (Library and Information Association of South Africa) website. The criteria was that all applicants should have completed either a library degree or diploma and be unemployed. We were amazed to receive 89 applications!

After sifting through many very deserving CVs and interviewing five candidates, Lyborn Mabapa (L) and Nasiphi Ntloko (R) started work at The Technical Library on 1 August 2016 on a six month internship program.

They are both learning and gaining experience in all aspects of library work including cataloging, data capture, checking in of journals and general library administration. The idea is that they become more employable by being able to add this experience to their CV.

Their youthful enthusiasm, eagerness to learn, amazing work ethic and willingness to carry out any task we ask of them has made the past four months an absolute pleasure! Their contracts have been extended for a further six months until July 2017.

They have allowed us to devote our time to other projects that we previously did not have time for, and for this we thank them.

Debbie Lievaart