24 MARCH 2010

We learnt about Digital Preservation on this day, the Presenters were Ria Gronewald and Heila Pienaar of the University of Pretoria.

Digital Preservation is the management of digital information over time.

The Client Service Presentation, was done by Hilda Kriel of the University of Pretoria, made me think about the service we provide in our Library.

I have learn that in order to provide a better service within our Library we must be committed to providing efficient and prompt service to our users, interact with them in order to determine what are their needs, review users complaints and feedback.

Ms. Christa North, head of quality assurance from the University of Pretoria talked about Quality assurance.

Quality assurance is defined set of activities that are carried out to set standards and to monitor and improve performance so that the care provided is as effective and safe as possible. http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/CityHealth/QualityAssurance/Pages/QualityAssurance.aspx

The Presenter for the second session was Dr Nisha Sewdass from University of Pretoria, she talked about Competitive Intelligence.

Competitive Intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_intelligence
Competitive intelligence is not industrial espionage; it is the process of finding information about your competitors so that you can improve on the service you provide.

Competitive Intelligence is important in organizations because it makes them to strive for excellence service and to produce highly quality products, retain intelligent and hard working staff members.

The organizations compete for Products, Finance, Technology, People Reputation and Image.

She also mentioned that we must be able to indentify our competitors.
In the Library sector our competitors are Publishers, Booksellers, other Institutions for example in Pretoria; University of Pretoria Competitor will be Unisa.