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The purpose of this paper is to outline the core ideas of adaptive leadership and relates them to challenges confronting academic libraries.

The paper provides an overview of the adaptive leadership model and highlights the key concepts. Recent initiatives at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library are used as cases to illustrate how the model may guide the authors’ focus to finding leverage points.

Using the model, the key role of positional leaders shifts from the traditional sense of giving direction and protection to followers, to one that orchestrates the change process with the team through difficulties and uncertainties, and to build culture and structure that facilitate adaptive changes.

Academic librarians can use the concepts and framework of adaptive leadership to design change strategies and manage change processes.

This is the first paper introducing the adaptive leadership model to academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to document Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's (HKUST's) experiences in developing its Institutional Repository and to highlight its programming developments in full‐text linking and indexing, and cross institutional searching.

This paper describes how HKUST Library planned and set up its institutional repository, how it acquired and processed the scholarly output, and what procedures and guidelines were established. It also discusses some new developments in systems, including the implementation of OpenURL linking from the pre‐published version in the repository to the published sources; the partnership with Scirus to enable full‐text searching; and the development of a cross‐searching platform for institutional repositories in Hong Kong.

The paper reveals what and why some policy issues should be adopted, including paper versioning, authority control, and withdrawal of items. It notes what proactive approaches should be adopted to harvest research output. It also shows how programming work can be done to provide usage data, facilitate searching and publicize the repository so that scholarly output can be more accessible to the research community.

The paper provides a very useful case study for other academic libraries who want to develop their own institutional repositories.

HKUST is an early implementer of institutional repositories in Asia and its unique experience in policy issues, harvesting contents, standardization, software customization, and measures adopted in enhancing global access will be useful to similar institutions.

Using the HKUST Learning Commons as a case study, this paper seeks to reveal a number of insights on how to effectively engage different user groups within the university.

The case study focuses on the user‐group engagement process, highlighting the promotion plan and factors that enhance the user‐group engagement.

Two positive outcomes of the engagement were identified: the diversity of learning activities in the Learning Commons, and the elevated image of the library and librarians.

The experience at HKUST reported in this paper highlights the need for libraries moving to the new “commons” service model to actively promote the facilities by engaging different user groups. The process itself is a necessary component to the success of the new service and facilities.

The case study uses the user engagement framework to steer the promotion effort. The outcomes of the process have long‐term implications for the image and identity of libraries, and subsequently enhance the library's potential in fund raising and resource allocation.

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of three concurrent demand-driven acquisition (DDA) programs on e-book collection development at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Library.

Counter Book Report 2 reports of the Ebrary, Wiley and JSTOR were analyzed from the launch date of the respective program to June 30, 2014.

The value of two local DDA programs, Ebrary and Wiley, were seen. JSTOR program needs to be evaluated at local and consortial levels when the pilot is finished.

The experience of HKUST Library will provide a reference point for libraries that are yet to implement their DDA program.

The purpose of this paper is to describe HKUST Library’s active participation in helping the university prepare for the 2014 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2014) in Hong Kong. Through the process the authors demonstrated library’s value and librarians’ expertise in supporting research.

This is a case study that highlights how HKUST Library tackled this complex exercise. The effort was delineated as three stages: the design stage when the authors proactively supported the electronic system design for RAE 2014, the formation stage in which the submission infrastructure was built, and the data process stage.

Based on the Library’s experience in creating and managing the Institutional Repository and the Scholarly Publication Database, the participation proved to be instrumental in designing and building the electronic infrastructure for the RAE 2014. After the project, the HKUST research community had higher trust and regard of the Library, both for the research information management systems and librarians’ expertise in providing research support service.

The paper elaborates details of HKUST Library’s effort, including human resource deployment, project management strategy, operational tactics, challenges the authors faced and keys to success. The experience demonstrates that libraries and librarians can establish credibility and gain respect from research communities through delivering tangible outcomes.

There is very few case studies in the literature on libraries’ participation in and contribution to RAEs. This paper fills a gap in the area.

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the strategic repositioning of an academic library using the dynamic capability framework.

The discussion is based on the re‐organizational process of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library. Three stages are focused, illustrating how the library managed to be dynamically capable, including: sensing the environmental impacts; realigning and reconfiguring its resources; and implementing effective strategies to respond to these challenges.

The library adopted a multitude of channels and media in sensing environmental challenges. By going through a strategic reorganization, the library has realigned and redeployed its staff resources to better prepare for incoming changes. The reformed organization moved ahead with renewed culture and values, including better internal communication, team spirit, collective learning mechanisms, and effective user communication.

Reorganization is complex and can be highly stressful. Participative culture and effective communication seem to be successful mechanisms.

Cross‐training on work procedures and routines in other units provided organizational learning mechanisms. This collective learning broadened staff's work knowledge, enlightened their understanding of complex processes, fostered good team spirit, and improved overall effectiveness, as more staff become aware of the overall performance implications of their actions.

The paper shares various reorganization concerns and how they were handled. The benefits of a large‐scale cross‐training program are outlined.

The purpose of this case study is to describe the space transformation of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library (HKUST Library) into a learning commons and how learning activities have been substantially multiplied by engaging academic and supporting units. This experience is used to posit a number of anticipated directions for library space planning.

This paper focuses on the design elements of the learning commons and how these elements have created an effective platform for a variety of learning activities. It outlines an assessment study on how students liked the transformed space and viewed its added values.

In the digital era, academic libraries can be transformed for new, effective and collaborative use. By integrating technology and flexible design, the new space excites existing scholars and attracts a broad range of new users. Students, faculty and administrators react positively to the new space, as it offers effective learning ambience. By engaging and co-creating with university partners, the new space functions as an active facilitator of learning – a hub that supports interaction and an effective platform to support pedagogy towards team projects, multimedia work and whole-person development. Future library spaces need to exhibit characteristics tailored to various user groups and their specific usage needs.

The experience of the HKUST library will have broader implications for other academic libraries embracing their mission-critical nature and assets. It shows that libraries can embrace challenges in the digital and virtual world by creative and innovative use of their physical space.

This paper proposes describing how reference librarians in an academic library recruit content for its institutional repository, and how their roles have been changed in the process.

This paper describes the background on how institutional repositories have developed in response to the open access movement. The case of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Institutional Repository is described in detail, showing different strategies that reference librarians employed in recruiting content. The strategies include encouraging researchers to self‐archive papers, scanning web sites, capturing pre‐existing collections of grey literature, and downloading from open access sources.

The paper illustrates how the roles of reference librarians are changed in the process of building the institutional repository. There are extensions of existing roles in terms of system evaluation, advocacy and reference services. Brand new roles include content recruitment and interpreting publishers' policies. It also points out possible directions which can make the repository sustainable.

The paper provides a very useful case study to which other academic libraries may refer when they plan to develop their own institutional repositories.

This paper provides in‐depth descriptions on the changing roles of reference librarians not covered in previous literature. Discussions on policies, strategies, barriers and challenges will have reference value for academic libraries who want to embark on a similar project.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a collaborative project on issuing a library card for common access among all eight higher education libraries in Hong Kong.

The project was undertaken by two committees and a task force of cross-institutional membership. The new common library card adopts the “patron-record-on-demand model,” reducing the risks involved in patron data transfer across institutions. Historical narrative combined with usage analysis from the launch date of the project was outlined.

The new common library cards were well received. About 63 percent of old cards were replaced by new ones. New applications jumped 43 percent while physical access to host libraries increased by 8 percent during the reporting period.

This paper describes in detail the processes of developing a common barcode, an automated card registration system and the issuing of the common library cards. Libraries pursuing an efficient way of sharing library resources will be inspired by the level of collaboration involved in this project.