| “It takes a decade to become a tree and a century to bring up a generation of good men,” says an old Chinese proverb. The maxim illustrates not only how education can cultivate a whole person ethos but also sustaining a crucial relation between trees and knowledge and the students who benefit from it. When papermaking skills came to be popularized in ancient times, they revolutionized the boundaries of knowledge transfer at the time. Since then, paper has been playing an indispensible role in facilitating the knowledge dissemination and tradition inheritance. And now, on the BU campus, a new “green” consciousness is emerging which would reduce our dependence on paper. | | 
Dr. Christie’s office: books as relics | |
Dr. Stuart Christie, Acting Head, Department of English Language and Literature shared his vision of a “paperless” working space with us. Dr. Christie, like most academics, has accumulated a mountain of printed materials such as books, conference proceedings, and student assignments. He points out that running out of local storage space is an increasingly urgent issue for individual colleagues, Departments/Faculties, and the University. Beyond helping the environment, going “paperless” is also good business, as it can help reduce overhead costs for operating units at all levels. - From Paper to Digital Forma
“Do you know how much hard-copy data one CD can store?” Dr. Christie asks. When properly aligned and managed, the three key aspects of effective data management (digital conversion, automation of paper-based administration, and recycling) can all work together to bring staff and students a more environmentally-friendly and organised information management lifestyle, not to mention broadening the boundaries of working and learning. Dr. Christie has started converting his own documents to electronic form and, eventually, will look to the University to take the lead in wiring learning spaces for e-book learning, which will eventually make reading hard-copy books relics of the past. In his teaching, he is also hoping to convert all non-primary teaching materials (primarily critical articles for course readers) into digital format uploaded to the Moodle (the campus e-learning platform). Furthermore, he hopes to ask his colleagues in the Department to approve a paper-reduction policy in form of asking students to submit fewer Honours Projects in hardcopy (resulting, potentially, in the reduction of overall paper consumption by two-thirds.) With the support of colleagues, he is also trying to automate and digitize practices in the daily office administration: “We used to print and copy paper forms for office operation as well as using filing cabinets for [hard-copy] storage. [Through digitizing our record-keeping] now our working procedures are more efficient and space in filing cabinets can be saved,” support staff said. Beyond conservation, digitization of hard-copy records benefits workplace efficiency, sharing of information, and makes for a more comfortable and less-cluttered workspace.
Without raising student and staff consciousness about the links between environmental responsibility and data-storage best practices (including upgrading accessibility to e-book technology), the road to a “paperless” future may be arduous. Dr. Christie thinks that online learning tools are the key to promote paperless awareness among students and teachers, which encourages everyone not only to reduce paper consumption, but over the long term to attempt to eliminate it. The largest data-storage companies world-wide already are encouraging institutions (including Universities) to store data in the “cloud”: that is, by archiving historical records securely and safely off-site using digital networks rather than centralized servers on-site.
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Digital archiving saves space
1 DVD= approx. 1.5 feet paper
University automation brings fewer forms
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| In the end, Dr Christie is a fan of the University’s efforts to reduce the carbon footprint under an invigorated “green policy,” and he looks forward to University planners dedicating a specific administrative post (or portfolio) to help local units’ efforts throughout the University to be more centrally consolidated and planned. The Task Force on Sustainable Campus is only an excellent first step when disseminating the green message University-wide. In terms of HKBU’s whole-person ethos in the Christian tradition, it seems only logical to assume that branding our University as Hong Kong’s very first to implement reasonable targets towards a future paperless University, would help distinguish us from our sister institutions. After all, Baptist University has always excelled by “doing more with less”, and a paperless University policy is merely the next step in our successful evolution toward excelling in our unique mission of inspiring creativity and whole person education. | | | |
