Panlibus Magazine issue 38 | winter 2015

ISSUE 38| WINTER 2015

Nurturing communities Using the latest in library technology to inform, inspire and connect with communities of all shapes and sizes Hitting the mark The new Better connected website lives up to its name in helping council libraries improve customers’ digital experience

How to transform a library Best of both worlds – historic Manchester Central Library’s amazing makeover has a cross-generational appeal

Open Access Week every week?

Jisc addresses valid concerns for university libraries

Gaming for Libraries

Game Pack 2 Available Now! To watch the video and find out more visit www.librarytreasures.com

WELCOME TO PANLIBUS MAGAZINE, ISSUE 38

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The winter issue 2015

Taking stock in North Ayrshire

Hello and welcome to Panlibus Magazine, issue 38, winter 2015.

The stories in this issue made us realise just how much digital technology has helped so many organisations reach out to all kinds of people, both individuals and groups, and how it can make important connections, build relationships and nurture communities, virtually or face to face.

10-12 New Better connected site goes live

4-5 Open Access Week every week? Has the UK’s open access movement now reached a tipping point?

Mafalda Picarra (PASTEUR4OA) and Neil Jacobs (Jisc) address some valid concerns for university libraries.

7-8 Keeping libraries open in times of austerity: Peterborough City Council’s story Open doors! Lisa Roberts describes how Bibliotheca’s open+ is keeping libraries open in more ways than one.

10-12 Council digital services in spotlight as betterconnected. socitm.net goes live Visible results – find out how your council library’s doing digitally on the newly launched Better connected website.

14-15 Taking stock of Capita’s Soprano solution at North Ayrshire’s libraries Alison McAllister highlights how Capita’s intuitive web-based application improved library services across the Scottish mainland and islands.

16 Events, training and webinars Let’s meet up! Keep up to date with the latest developments and boost your continuing professional development.

18-19 Manchester Central Library – transformation success Best of both worlds – historic Manchester Central Library’s amazing makeover has a crossgenerational appeal, and has turned the historic landmark into an inviting and innovative community hub.

22 Nielsen LibScan data With the Top 10 School Textbooks and Study Guides titles.

At a local level, on page 7 Lisa Roberts shares how Peterborough’s libraries are giving customers what they want – access outside of normal opening hours – thanks to Bibliotheca’s awardnominated open+ solution. Broadening community appeal was behind the £50m refurbishment of the iconic Manchester Central Library, which showed the city’s commitment to preserving its heritage while looking to the future with state-of-the-art Apple Mac computers, gaming consoles, interactive floor projections and much more. Read all about it on page 18.

But we all know the strength of any technology depends on how user-friendly it is. Turn to page 10 for the latest on the Better connected research programme and the new website where you can find out how easy (or not!) it is to navigate council libraries’ online services for tasks such as ‘Find out how to borrow e-books’. Talking of tasks, a complete stock take can be quite daunting for library staff, especially when libraries are spread across the Scottish mainland and islands. On page 14, Alison McAllister describes how switching to Capita’s cloud solution, Soprano, saved time, improved accuracy and simplified the process for North Ayrshire Council.

Of course, as geographical boundaries become irrelevant with new technology, so do academic ones. Open access means that more academically rich publications now reach a wider audience, but new requirements may put libraries under pressure.

On page 4, Jisc’s Neil Jacobs and Mafalda Picarra believe that the way forward is collaboration, simplicity and strategy.

We hope you’ll be inspired by reading about how the right technology can bring people together, improve services for users and make information more accessible than ever before.

If you’d like to share any of your own stories, ideas or experiences, we’d love to hear from you.

Victoria Wilson Editor, Panlibus Magazine panlibus-editor@capita.co.uk Panlibus Magazine is a Capita production

ISSN 1749-1002 6190 Knights Court Solihull Parkway Birmingham Business Park B37 7YB United Kingdom 0870 400 5000 www.capita.co.uk/libraries

The views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors for which Capita accepts no responsibility. Readers should take appropriate advice before acting on any issue raised. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohibited. ©Capita. All rights reserved. Capita and the Capita logo are trademarks of Capita or its licensors in the United Kingdom and/or other countries. Other companies and products mentioned may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

www.capita.co.uk/libraries | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | Panlibus Magazine

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Jisc

Open Access Week every week?

Has the UK’s open access movement now reached a Mafalda Picarra Project Officer (PASTEUR4OA), Jisc Neil Jacobs Head of Scholarly Communications Support Jisc Libraries are frequently at the mercy of radically changing policy, and nowhere is this more salient right now than in the world of academic research output. As everyone working in UK research knows, the funding councils have said that from April 2016, all research outputs must be available in open access (OA) if they are to be eligible for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF).

But what does this mean for university libraries? Libraries will need to assess how this affects their approach to access to resources alongside the many other disparate methods of resource provision for their students in a seamless and intuitive way.

The move to OA involves the whole scholarly communications infrastructure in which librarians play a central role, so they need to be involved in any conversations such as those about journal subscriptions and managing costs.

Jisc’s Neil Jacobs and Mafalda Picarra suggest that universities and their libraries need to come together to decide now on a robust and practical response to ensure compliance with the post-2014 REF OA policy.

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Certainly, some have been taking steps towards implementation of the post-2014 REF OA policy; back in the summer Jisc commissioned a review1 to assess institutional readiness. And even without the funding councils’ deadline to focus on, the UK’s higher education sector now has access to a wide range of resources and tools to help it make important strides towards full open access and all the benefits that this will bring, both to research and to the wider UK economy.

Longer term, library staff in many universities are perhaps more likely to provide expert advice and support in the process.

Different approaches

Making open access simpler

Returning to the funding councils’ requirements for a moment – from April 2016, research outputs will be eligible for the REF if they have been placed in an institutional repository with accompanying metadata at the point of acceptance for publication, and then made openly available after any embargo period. If this is not possible for any reason, application must be made for an exemption.

Many universities are likely to decide that all research outputs should be managed in this way so that researchers are able later to identify their four best ones for submission to the REF.

Greater simplicity would also be extremely helpful.

It is a significant change to current working practices so it is not surprising that some institutions choose not to rock the boat with academics. Often, their solution is to manage new processes on behalf of researchers, tasking library staff (usually) with handling the business of depositing research and metadata, and then managing embargo periods. Despite the intricate manoeuvring that this sometimes requires, it often works well while publication in OA is relatively rare – but will it be possible to scale up when activity increases and still keep core library operations running as well as they need to? In these times when library spending is often being cut it seems unlikely.

Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

Other universities have decided on a different approach, making academics responsible for managing their own publications. But, in either case, institutions will need to provide clear leadership, workable policies, robust systems and good-quality training to ensure that people have the right knowledge and skills.

In the UK, the enthusiasm with which funders, research institutions and other stakeholders have embraced OA has created complications. According to the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP)2, there are currently well over 100 open access policies in the UK, around 15% of the world’s total. Policies have been developed when things are changing rapidly and most have different requirements that make their details relatively different. As a result, researchers who work in collaboration with others, perhaps with funding from more than one source, can feel that they are working in a complex policy landscape.

But, in the last few years, there have been important efforts to iron out the differences.

In 2012, the European Commission (EC) recommended closer policy alignment. The funding councils’ OA policy is relatively aligned with the EC’s Horizon 2020 policy. What’s more, many universities are starting to devise ways to streamline their policies with those of major funders.

Jisc

tipping point?

These are positive steps towards policy alignment, which has also been a significant focus of the European PASTEUR4OA3 collaboration. Over the past few months it has produced a suite of resources designed to help universities and funders at every stage in their transition to OA. Alongside policy templates and case studies, key resources include a brief on open access in the UK, describing how OA policy has developed over the last decade.

It offers insights into policy development and practical ideas on testing funding and publishing models – and it explores the development of infrastructure to support OA, such as institutional repositories.

There is also a brief on OA policy effectiveness, setting out the various elements that a successful OA policy needs to cover. PASTEUR4OA created it following analysis of 120 mandatory institutional policies to identify five policy elements that have proved effective in improving the proportion of research outputs that are published in OA. They are that: 1. research articles must be deposited in the institutional repository 2. the above action can’t be waived, whatever the conditions of any embargo 3. items deposited must be made OA immediately after any embargo period ends 4. if the policy states that an author should retain certain rights over their published work, this cannot be waived 5. the deposit of articles is linked with research assessment and the performance evaluation process.

Open access tools As we’ve seen, increasing policy alignment will make the task of compliance much less onerous; there are also a growing number of tools that have been developed to help.

SHERPA/FACT4 is one of these. It supports the policies of the Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) and Research Councils UK (RCUK), helping researchers to select a journal by enabling comparisons between journal policies and those of their funder. The tool flags up any areas of potential conflict – for example, where a publication insists upon an extended embargo period. It was found in a recent study to be more than 95% accurate5.

In the study, the SHERPA/FACT advisory group compared information provided by SHERPA/FACT against information resulting from a manual check by members of the United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR). Where discrepancies occurred between the two sets of data there was a further investigation to discover which was correct – SHERPA/FACT was right in almost every case, compared with 57% accuracy for expert manual checks. In other words, SHERPA/FACT offers researchers a highly reliable way to decide where they publish their outputs. It is worth pointing out that the ongoing work on closer alignment of policies, as described earlier, and efforts to simplify the expression of those policies, will further improve the accuracy of SHERPA/FACT.

The latest news is that, at the funding councils’ request, we have developed a new SHERPA/REF tool that will facilitate compliance with funder policies. Like the other SHERPA tools it will be an open, free service; expect a launch before Christmas.

Strategy, not sticking plasters We’re working with other stakeholders in the UK and overseas on developing the new ways of working that OA will require. In the summer 2015 edition of Panlibus, Liam Earney described Jisc Collections’ latest work on the total expenditure on journals in open access, and we have recently set up expert groups to work with funders and publishers to ensure that policies can be expressed more clearly and brought into closer alignment.

At Jisc, we have been working on open access at a strategic level for more than a decade.

We’d be the first to admit that all this sometimes seems like hard going; there are days when anyone involved in furthering the cause of open access can expect to go home with an aching brain. But we do it because a fully open access research environment has the potential to bring so many concrete benefits to research and to the wider economy.

These are now tantalisingly within our grasp.

FIND OUT MORE www.jisc.ac.uk 020 3697 5800

1

http://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/ wp/2015/06/02/implementation-of-the-hefce-open-accesspolicy-for-the-post-2014-ref-a-progress-report-to-jisc/

2

http://roarmap.eprints.org

3

http://www.pasteur4oa.eu

4

https://jisc.ac.uk/sherpa-fact

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https://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/researchers-offered-95accuracy-on-publisher-open-access-policies-02-jul-2015

www.capita.co.uk/libraries | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | Panlibus Magazine

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open ™ Here in Peterborough, we’re keeping our libraries open for longer with open+...

“With open+, our libraries can decide the days and hours they open for the community to supplement access outside of the times when staff and volunteers are present. The system is really easy: it’s an extension of our current RFID system, so many of our patrons are already accustomed to using selfservice. Users can come in, use the building, do what they need to do and then leave, or if they need staff assistance they can visit us during staffed hours.”

Lisa Roberts, Strategic Client Manager: Culture and Leisure at Peterborough City Council

www.peterborough.gov.uk/libraries lisa.roberts@peterborough.gov.uk

www.bibliotheca.com/open+ info@bibliotheca.com

Peterborough City Council’s story

Keeping libraries open in times of austerity: Peterborough City Council’s story Lisa Roberts Strategic Client Manager: Culture and Leisure Peterborough City Council With many public library services currently undergoing extensive cuts to their funding, we wanted to champion Peterborough City Council’s story to share our knowledge and experience, with the aim of helping other authorities to explore their options when faced with similar challenges, and to result in the best outcomes for libraries and the communities they serve.

Listening to the public voice

Peterborough is one of the fastest-growing cities in the UK. The library network, which is run by the independent trust Vivacity, currently comprises 10 libraries and a mobile service across the city centre and rural areas, all of which are well used and valued by the community. In 2014, the council conducted a review of the library service

following significant expenditure cuts. This led to a public consultation to understand how residents use, or would like to use, Peterborough’s libraries.

The results of the public consultation revealed that the way in which patrons use the library service is changing. Now 90% of book loans are completed through self-service kiosks, and this frees staff to focus their time supporting library users with more specific enquiries. The responses to the consultation also showed that the most valued aspects of libraries are the ability to borrow books, access to information and location. In addition, when asked “What would make you use your library more?” 75% of respondents stated that access outside of normal opening hours was important.

The council analysed the results and explored several different options to determine the best way to meet the required saving, but also to continue to provide the kind of service that library users had asked for. For example,

we had considered closing all local library branches and turning the central library into one city-centre library hub. However, this option failed to accommodate the needs of residents in more rural locations who told us that the proximity of their local branch was key in their library usage.

Flexible opening hours

After careful consideration of the public opinion and exploring the various options available, we chose a route that allowed us to keep all of our library branches open with longer opening hours, as well as enabling us to operate within budget. We achieved this by implementing Bibliotheca’s open+ solution throughout our library network, becoming the UK’s very first library to roll out an ‘open library’ concept.

With our new library model, we can be flexible with the days and hours we open for our communities and can supplement access outside of the times when staff and volunteers are present.

Our staff have adapted extremely well to the new system; the technology is easy to use and it’s a simple extension of the RFID system we already had in place. It links up to the doors, alarms, CCTV cameras, speakers and lights, automating the building via verification through our library management system to provide a safe environment.

With so many of our patrons already accustomed to using self-service equipment in our libraries, they find accessing the building during open+ hours an intuitive and straightforward process. Patrons that have opted in to use open+ simply scan their library card and enter their usual pin number at the external access control panel. They can come in and use the building as usual, do what they need to do and then leave, or if they need staff assistance they can visit during staffed hours.

www.capita.co.uk/libraries | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | Panlibus Magazine

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Peterborough City Council’s story

A change for the better By changing the way our libraries operate, we were able to save £305,000 a year by combining 149 staffed hours with 238 selfservice hours to serve our community.

In essence, this reduced the cost of the library service by over 20% and provided almost a 50% increase in opening hours.

Moreover, we have managed to give our library users everything they asked for: longer opening hours and all local library branches remain open.

The council is pleased to report that the system has proved to be a success. No issues have been encountered and none of the libraries have suffered any damage at all.

We have also benefited from being able to distribute staff members to better utilise their skills throughout our network, allowing them to undertake more customer-focused duties across fluctuated staffed opening hours.

What’s even more of a success is that since the initial implementation, over 7,000 library members have opted in, with a peak usage of 250 visitors in one day. Our patrons have found it really easy to use open+, they are grateful that we have managed to keep our libraries open and for longer, and people are using them. The library buildings are more alive now than they have ever been before with groups independently utilising the space. Users can now access the service at their convenience and they appreciate the choice that the new system offers.

The future looks bright

Having future-proofed our service for the next five years, open+ has enabled all of our libraries to remain open, offer longer opening hours and successfully overcome the challenge of transformation in times of austerity.

Peterborough’s libraries look forward to embracing more community-wide innovative use of the library buildings to create multi-user sites, and we invite any library authority that would like to see our system in action to get in touch and try it out.

Recognition at the V3 Technology Awards At a time when many other councils are having to close libraries, we are delighted that Peterborough City Council has managed to employ our open+ solution to help develop a service with extended opening hours to meet the needs of its residents, whilst making the required savings to continue meeting the needs of the whole city.

Peterborough’s new service model has proven such a success that we were nominated alongside them in the V3 Technology Awards in recognition of our collaborative project.

Our innovative technology partnership that has transformed Peterborough’s library service was selected by the V3 editorial team as a finalist in the Movers and Shakers category for Customer Project of the Year. The 2015 categories covered the business technology spectrum from mobility and security through to innovation and the Internet of Things. The awards shortlist focused on both vendors and individuals who have innovated and achieved in the last year.

The award ceremony was held on Friday 27th November at the Montcalm Hotel in London. There were many inspirational technology solutions shortlisted in each category, and the competition was of the highest calibre. The Movers and Shakers category winners were revealed as the grand finale to the award announcements, during which Dell and The Translational Genomics Research Institute, TGen – the force behind the most ground-breaking research into paediatric cancer, won the Customer Project of the Year.

It is a fantastic achievement that a library project made it to the finals, and we thank our customers, partners and the library community for their votes and support.. Both Bibliotheca and Peterborough City Council are honoured to have been celebrated in this prestigious category, and we are proud to show how technology and partnerships are transforming public services and safeguarding them for the future.

Darren Ratcliffe UK Managing Director Bibliotheca

FIND OUT MORE Watch the video case study: www.bibliotheca.com/peterborough lisa.roberts@peterborough.gov.uk www.bibliotheca.com info@bibliotheca.com

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Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 36 Winter Summer 2015 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

‘’D-Tech understood what our success meant to us’’

RFID / SECURITY / RFIQ / PEOPLE COUNTERS / EM / STOCK MANAGEMENT / RF / LAPTOP SECURITY / VENDING / SELF SERVICE

betterconnected.socitm.net goes live

Council digital services in spotlight as betterconnected.socitm.net goes live Vicky Sargent Programme Director Better connected

The performance of library services online is a key area of focus for Better connected, the long-running and highly respected research programme on councils’ digital performance.

Details about online performance are about to become much more easily accessible and understandable to many more people in local authority management, now that results from Better connected, covering libraries as well as traditional high-profile services provided by local authorities, are being published online.

Broadening access for more timely information Launched in October, the new Better connected website, www.betterconnected. socitm.net, makes available to all visitors its ‘all council’ reports highlighting digital performance by all councils in all key service areas tested, as well as results about performance on accessibility, usability, access from mobiles, and digital engagement and management. A key objective of the new website is to make the research about online performance much more visible and accessible, so as to better engage service managers and councils’ top teams in dialogues about improvement, with the ultimate goal of getting more people to channel shift and interact with council services online.

Along with the new online presence, Better connected has changed its publishing practice from a once-a-year report in March to a year-round publishing programme.

Surveys about the performance of different service areas online will be carried out and reported separately over a series of months, between October and March. Reporting on library services, and specifically on this year’s task ‘Renew a library book’ is scheduled for February 2016.

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Every UK local authority has its own results page on the site, with employees of organisations subscribing to survey owner Socitm Insight (three-quarters of UK councils) able to log in and see the detail behind the headlines. Library managers can already visit the site to see how their service performed in 2015 on the task ‘Find out how to borrow e-books’. Very soon, they will also be able to see how they performed on the 2015/16 task ‘Renew a library book.’

The research itself focuses on the user experience of accessing council services online. A team of reviewers carries out a structured survey that tests how easy it is to carry out specific tasks. In the last three years, library tasks tested online have been ‘Reserve library book’, ‘Renew a library book’ and ‘Find out how to borrow e-books’. The first task was tested from a desktop device, the last two from a mobile.

Questions cover discoverability of the service from Google; navigation of the organisation’s site, including use of menus, links, search and A-Z functions; information about the task; and the usability of any interactive functions provided.

Reviewers record their experience by answering a series of questions, such as this selection for this year’s survey focusing on e-books: • Am I told how many e-books I can borrow at one time?

• Can I browse the e-books before having to log in?

• Is it easy to see where I enter my library card and PIN in order to borrow an e-book?

They then give scores for how well the task is being promoted and for the quality of the customer experience from the beginning to the achievement of the task.

These scores are aggregated into an overall score for the task.

Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

Stars of the future In another new development for the Better connected programme, individual service areas such as libraries will now be given star rankings based on the outcome of the task(s) surveyed, rather than a simple pass/fail indicator that sat within a wider website ranking.

This move has been made deliberately, to encourage greater engagement by service managers with their results, and to support collaboration between service and web/digital managers about how online services might be improved.

This will be supported by a series of service-specific ‘Learning from Better connected’ events to be run each spring.

Up to now, Better connected has been regarded as a report for web managers. In its new and much more visible guise, it is intended to bring service management’s responsibility for the performance of their online services sharply into focus.

betterconnected.socitm.net goes live

With total monthly web visits across all local authorities averaging around 45 million a month, that means library services account for some 3.3 million individual visits a month, or nearly 40 million a year. This level of usage ensures that library services will always feature in the Better connected testing programme.

So, based on Socitm research, how well do library services currently perform online?

The first thing to note is that huge numbers of people use library services online. This data comes not from Better connected, but from Socitm’s Website performance service,

a customer-completed pop-up survey that collects information about council website usage. The data shows that in 2014, visits to libraries accounted for 7.39% of all visits to council websites.

In terms of current performance, as with all online services there is a wide range between the best library services online, and the worst.

Here it is important to emphasise that the prime purpose of Better connected is to capture, celebrate and share best practice.

Better connected’s ‘all council’ reports publish advice on good and poor practice, and highlight councils that get it right and what they have done to do so, so that others can visit their webpages and actually see what good looks like.

Individual councils can see reviewers’ detailed feedback and pinpoint areas where

poor practice has marred the user experience, as well as benchmark what they have done against their peers.

As with all service areas, performance does vary by the task selected for the focus of a survey, and by whether it is tested on desktops or mobiles.

Better connected has increased the amount of mobile testing it does as mobile usage has risen among the population. Indeed, many councils report that more than 50% of their visits are from mobile devices, while Website performance data puts the average at above 45%.

So, in 2015, the task tested for libraries was ‘Find out how to borrow e-books’, tested from a mobile device. For this task, 35% of councils met the Better connected standard. This compares with 68% that met the standard for ‘Find out how to register a death’ and 27% that met the standard for ‘Find out about keeping fit’. In 2014, the libraries task was ‘Renew a library book’, again from a mobile device, and 48% achieved our standard. In 2013, the task was ‘Reserve a library book’, when 53% met the standard.

Some councils stand out as good performers when it comes to library services, and their sites will be worth visiting to pick up tips. Notable for being recommended as examples of good practice twice in the last three years of Better connected library reviews are Buckinghamshire County Council (2015 and 2013), East Sussex County Council (2015 and 2013), London Borough of Haringey (2015 and 2014) and North Ayrshire Council (2015 and 2014).

www.capita.co.uk/libraries | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | Panlibus Magazine

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betterconnected.socitm.net goes live

Extracts from past Better connected reports 2015 – Find out how to borrow e-books from mobile device (35% met standard) A fast-growing task for many library services is the loan of e-books. Since this service is clearly driven by new technology, ensuring new users understand how to use it does pose some problems. It is critical that the council website makes this technology-driven service easy to use. Some councils do not yet offer the service or are only at the planning stage. In these cases we looked at the reasons given for the lack of a service.

Only a third of councils deal with this task well. Generally, councils do not explain the service very well. Many fall into the trap of relying on the third-party service on which e-books depend, and often the supplier’s help pages may lack quality. Testing this task on a mobile device magnified the problems and added further issues.

Please see https://betterconnected.socitm.net/services/libraries/find-out-how-to-borrow-e-books/2015 for full list of questions and breakdowns of the task.

Good practice in 2015 North Yorkshire County Council: Very good promotion, and full mobile responsiveness: an excellent user experience, commensurate with the digital nature of the service itself! A very futuristic libraryborrowing experience from beginning to end. The only quibble I have is that the Help features of Overdrive – which are very good – could be made a tiny bit more prominent than a small question mark near the top of the online catalogue.

35% met the standard

North Ayrshire Council: This site has a good explanation and also has an image on this page that shows you which part of the library card number to enter.

Haringey London: I am very impressed with this task. The council explains exactly what information I will find within Overdrive, which other councils have not. It’s easy to find and simple to use.

How effective is this council promoting this as a task?

Overall, how do you rate the journey plus task completion?

Key Very good Satisfactory Poor No information

2014 – Renew library book from mobile device (48% met standard)

2013 – Reserve library book (53% met standard)

Renewing a library book online is a highvolume task and it is also likely to be high volume for access by mobile devices, with nearly a quarter of all mobile visits being about library services. Being a relatively simple transaction, it is suitable as an online offering.

This is most probably the second highestvolume transaction for libraries after renewing a book, and it will save journeys to the library, as well as librarian time dealing with a personal caller.

Please do go and visit the new website at www.betterconnected.socitm.net and have a look at the ‘all council’ libraries report for 2015.

If your authority subscribes to Socitm Insight, and the chances are it does, have a look at the detailed report on how your library was assessed for presenting an e-books service.

Assessment in 2012 of this task on the desktop showed that, on most council websites, this was not a well-designed task for the customer (51% passing our standard at that time). Using smartphones, we found many of these problems magnified.

On most council websites this is not a well-designed task for the customer, often taking too many steps to complete. The main issue is lack of care at each step, especially at the interface between the council’s website and the third-party library system on which the task depends.

You may also like to identify some of the top-performing council sites for library services and see if their approaches are worth borrowing. And finally, as this task will be assessed in 2015/16 Better connected survey programme, you may want to make your initial task search ‘Renew a library book’.

Good practice – Warwickshire County Council: Thank you, Warwickshire, for showing everyone else how to do this task.

Every path leads me quickly and easily to t he library account log-in screen, which looks great on my mobile. Logical, thoughtful and easy. Excellent.

Good practice – Buckinghamshire County Council: Well promoted, simple to find the book I was looking for, clearly identify the library and a warning that a cost may be incurred. Design fitted well with the main council website design too. Feels like this task has really been thought about.

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Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

FIND OUT MORE https://betterconnected.socitm.net/services

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• Rooms • Appointments • Media/AV equipment • Events and courses

Solutions accessible via web or kiosk. Integration possible with all leading LMS providers.

Call: 01992 415505 Visit: www.lorensbergs.co.uk Email: enquiries@lorensbergs.co.uk Follow us: @lorensbergs

Taking stock in North Ayrshire

Taking stock at North Ayrshire’s libraries Alison McAllister Systems and Support Officer North Ayrshire Council

With a combination of branch libraries, secondary school and mobile libraries to manage, North Ayrshire Council’s stock take had historically been carried out section by section, making it a complex, time-consuming task, where errors had more chance of creeping in.

Alison McAllister, Systems and Support Officer at North Ayrshire Council, explains how by switching to Capita’s web-baed staff interface, Soprano, they were able to carry out their very first complete stock take, save staff time and improve accuracy.

North Ayrshire: facts and stats • The population of North Ayrshire is around 138,000 • The council covers approximately 886 sq.km; half of that land is on the Scottish mainland and the other half is made up of islands • The council manages 17 branch libraries, nine secondary school libraries and two mobile libraries, one on the mainland and one on the Isle of Arran

North Ayrshire Council’s thriving library service is well used by its community of 700,000 customers and visitors. Along with the traditional books and publications, we have started to offer our customers a whole range of innovative services including a libraries app, and opportunities to listen, read and research online.

Our challenge Previously, we had carried out the branch libraries’ stock take with library staff scanning each item in and then manually matching this list up to the catalogue of stock we expected in each library as well as the issue lists, to disregard items that were currently out on loan.

This involved comparing three spreadsheets and manually hiding any items that we matched. What was left, after many hours of matching up, was the list of outstanding stock that had not been accounted for.

This process tied up the time of our central library staff and meant that we ran the risk of some inaccuracies in our catalogues. It also meant we had never been able to do a complete stock take as we had to break the job down into sections, so did not have a truly accurate picture of stock. We felt this needed to change and so we turned to Capita to help.

Streamlining the stock take We have had a strong, long-standing relationship with Capita’s library business spanning 14 years, and in that time, there have been some exciting developments in library technology. So when Capita launched Soprano, a web-based application that allows you to access your Capita library management system (LMS) from any device, it made sense for us to take a closer look at how the solution could help us to keep track of stock across our 17 libraries.

We chose Soprano because its stock management module would eliminate the task of manually matching stock that is in the library with stock in the catalogue. Because Soprano is so intuitive, it also meant it wouldn’t require very much training at all.

But as the needs of our customers evolved, we felt that it was time to improve some of our internal processes, and one of these was the stock take.

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Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

Putting knowledge at librarians’ fingertips My colleague, Heather Benson, Administrative and Performance Officer at North Ayrshire Libraries, was closely involved in the project, and she explains how it progressed. “Our central team trained staff in how to use Soprano at their branch. As Soprano is so easy to use, the library staff had no problems following the instructions, and they were able to get on with the stock-taking process immediately.

“Whenever we had any questions, Capita were very responsive, and because we have worked with them for so many years, we knew that they could support us through the transition.”

Counting the benefits Each library involved in stock taking has Soprano on their computer and they simply scan in each book as normal. We do it via our desktop computers, but you can use any mobile or tablet device to do the scanning work too.

Once the scanning is completed, Soprano does the rest. It links directly to our LMS in real time to identify items that should be in stock and those out on loan and simply reports on unaccounted items. The simplicity of the process meant we were able to carry out a complete stock take across all our libraries at the same time – which resulted in our first fully accurate picture of our catalogue.

Sound information We are finding that librarians at the branches really welcome the opportunity that Soprano offers them to be more responsible for the stock taking. Also, the library staff now feel confident that the catalogue is correct and they know exactly what we have in the library at any one time.

This means that we avoid the frustrating situation where someone requests a book that appears in the catalogue, but we no longer have at the library.

Taking stock in North Ayrshire

Time saving Another key benefit for us is that the physical stock-taking process is so much quicker than it was before, and this is having a huge impact on the libraries. Previously, staff in one of our branches would take three or four days to scan in all the stock, and then it could take another week or so to process all the data and pass it back to the library to be rechecked.

The stock take in our largest library used to take weeks; with Soprano it only takes five days.

Now that staff at each of our libraries are responsible for their stock takes, there is less pressure on the central team, who are freed up to carry out their other roles. They can now spend more time on day-to-day tasks such as reviewing the stock, ordering new items and answering questions from customers, therefore providing a better all around service.

It also means that the team can get out and about promoting the library too, encouraging more customers to use our services.

Looking ahead We would be keen to enable our school libraries to carry out their own stock takes using Soprano too. This way, the school libraries will have a much better idea of the stock they are holding, and it will release even more time for central staff to spend on developing library services for the community here in North Ayrshire.

The benefits of Soprano’s Stock Management module: • Improved efficiency as staff no longer need to manually check stock lists, rekey information or use paper lists • Faster stock takes which can be carried out at the shelves rather than trolley by trolley • Increased accuracy of library catalogues as they are updated in th e LMS automatically • Improved customer service as librarians know which items are held in stock at any time

Why use Soprano?

• Soprano is designed to be used in a mobile environment, freeing staff from behind service points and allowing them to assist users at the shelves, or outside the walls of the library altogether.

• The highly intuitive interface gives staff the flexibility to navigate around the system with ease and with only minimal training.

• Tasks such as picking reservations, stock taking and bulk changes to stock can now be carried out at the shelves in real time eradicating the need for printed lists and drastically improving the time taken to update vital information for borrowers.

• As a fully web-based solution, Soprano is being kept up to date with regular releases every 6-8 weeks. This removes the need to schedule in downtime for a staff interface upgrade and gives staff small and regular updates and improvements to their user interface.

FIND OUT MORE www.capita-software.co.uk/soprano www.northayrshire.gov.uk/resident/libraries libraries@capita.co.uk

www.capita.co.uk/libraries | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | Panlibus Magazine

15

Events, training and webinars

Events As the year draws to a close, it’s always seems appropriate to look back and reflect. We’ve had a great 2015 meeting new friends and old throughout the UK and Ireland. We can only hope that 2016 holds the same success…

Many events are still in the planning stage but come 2 January 2016, we’ll be back, hitting the road in earnest. And we hope to see you all at library-focused events as the year unfolds.

As ever, if you’d like to secure some time with us at any upcoming events, please get in touch to book an appointment slot. Simply email libraries@capita.co.uk with your details and the event at which you’d like to meet us.

Full Library Discovery Executive Briefings Academic libraries Thursday 21 January 2016 – The Portland Hotel, Portland Street, Manchester, M1 6DP Tuesday 26 January 2016 – The Royal Beach Hotel, St Helens Parade, Portsmouth, PO4 0RN

Public libraries Tuesday 2 February 2016 – DoubleTree by Hilton, London West End, Southampton Row, London, WC1B 4BH You can sign up to these free events and to receive your Full Library Discovery report online, simply visit: www.capita-software.co.uk/fldbriefing

The Edge Conference ‘Changing Challenge to Opportunity’ Thursday 3 to Friday 4 March 2016, Edinburgh CILIP LMS Suppliers Showcase Friday 4 March 2016, CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE To ensure you have the opportunity to meet with us, we are now offering you the chance to book an appointment directly with us by emailing libraries-enquiries@capita.co.uk To see all Capita’s upcoming events, please visit www.capita-software.co.uk/librariesevents

Training Whether it’s a refresh of your existing knowledge around your LMS or a session for new staff members, we have just the thing for you. However, if you can’t find a course that fits your needs, we’ll arrange something dedicated to just you and your team.

Using Decisions: A refresher on reporting basics Tuesday 26 January 2016, 10:00-11:00 (training webinar)

Scheduling in Decisions Tuesday 15 March 2016, 10:00-11:30 (training webinar)

Exploring the Decisions universes Tuesday 23 February 2016, 10:00-11:30 (training webinar)

System Manager: Beginner Tuesday 12 April 2016, 10:00 (practitioner led in Capita’s Solihull offices)

Visit www.capita-software.co.uk/training to find out more about each webinar and register to attend.

Webinars How could your library software solutions improve the service your library offers to users while delivering efficiency gains? Find out with one of our informative and free webinars. Visit www.capita-software.co.uk/webinars to find out more about each webinar and register to attend.

Chorus: Your LMS in a hosted environment Wednesday 20 January 2016, 11:00-12:00

Getting the most from your notifications Wednesday 24 February 2016, 14:00-15:00

Getting more out of Soprano Stock Management Wednesday 27 January 2016, 11:00-12:00

Prism: Augmented Discovery – surfacing data from other sources Wednesday 9 March 2016, 14:00-15:00

Prism: Refreshing your knowledge, improving services to users Wednesday 10 February 2016, 11:00-12:00

For further details and to book your training course(s), register for a webinar or find out what event Capita will be at next, please visit www.capita-software.co.uk/librariesevents

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Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

The Diplomat™ LMS

Intelligent lockers make a smart addition to your Capita LMS! More and more libraries are offering the opportunity to borrow a laptop or similar device for short periods of time. Offering this type of service is a great way to enhance the users experience and present a value-added extra to your library service.

Manually loaning out the devices is time consuming and often restricts when the device are available. So how can this service be automated?

The LapSafe® Diplomat™ LMS self-service device loan lockers makes device loans easy to manage.

It allows users to borrow devices at any time of the day or night offering 24 x 7 x 365 access whether staff are present or not.

The Diplomat™ LMS integrates with most library management systems including the popular Capita LMS. It always deploys the best-charged device and loans laptops or similar devices just like a library book.

Deploys best charged device

Various ID options

Only issues the device with the most charge.

Biometric, MiFare™, magstripe and barcode.

SmartLine™ with PowaSave™

19” touch screen interface

LapSafe®’s unique integrated charging.

Easy to use and fully customisable.

Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Brookes University and Dublin City University are just a few customers using the Diplomat with Capita LMS

lapsafe.com/news/case-studies

Call the experts today to book a free demonstration on 0800 130 3456

Transforming Manchester

Manchester Central Library – transformation success Manchester Central Library reopened to the public after a £50m refurbishment that saw an amazing transformation of both the building and the services offered to its customers.

The Central Library building looks almost the same from the outside but inside the transformation is amazing and opens up a whole new exciting library world to its visitors.

The library’s fantastic Grade II listed building has restored many of its heritage features, such as the Reading Room, alongside adding new technology and digital features in a state-of-the-art Media Lounge with over 200 computers including a new suite of Apple Mac computers and the latest gaming consoles.

“In the old library, 70% of the building was not accessible to the public. We’ve reversed that so now 70% is open.”

Neil MacInnes, Head of Libraries at Manchester City Council.

The Wolfson Reading Room has been magnificently restored for public use as shown below

Manchester Central Library has also become completely Wi-Fi enabled throughout its buildings so visitors can bring their own devices and get connected at various places around the library.

The Children’s Library, themed on The Secret Garden by local author Frances Hodgson Burnett, includes digital interactive screens and interactive floor projections to thoroughly engage with its younger audience.

As a forward-thinking library service, Manchester Central Library had previously implemented self-service facilities within many of its libraries including Central and realised the benefits this offered to its public customers and indeed the staff.

Exterior view of Manchester Central Library

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Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

The great new open public spaces

Transforming Manchester

The role of Insight Media in the success of Manchester Central Library’s transformation As a major supplier of PC bookings, print management and public wireless solutions to libraries, Insight Media were pleased to offer assistance in providing its iCAM PC Management solution to control and support the suite of Apple Macs in the new Media Lounge at Manchester Central Library. These devices, which are different to standard Windows-type PCs, required specialist software, and the iCAM-developed solution allows the public to reserve devices easily in advance or gain quick self-service access to these devices.

The Media Lounge and Apple Macs

Andrew Jackson, Manchester ICT (formerly based at the Central Library), was involved in many of the IT elements for the new library transformation project. He stated “The Apple Macs are very popular with members of the public and are widely used.

Allowing easy public access to the Macs with session control were key requirements, and Insight Media came up with the right solution that allowed us to continue with our efficient self-service objectives.”

The library has always offered an excellent range of reading material and this continues alongside the creative and innovative flow of technology in its public spaces.

Within its famous landmark shell lies an amazing mix of the original library features, all of which have been sensitively restored and preserved yet fully complement the inspirational next-generation and futuristic library transformation.

Anyone who walks through the library door will find the surroundings inviting and interesting, and is sure to be amazed and impressed by what’s been achieved. It’s like going back in time but also with a quantum leap into the future. Insight Media believes this clearly demonstrates the effective use of selfservice technology, and Manchester Libraries certainly looks to provide a wide range of

services in a relaxed yet exciting and vibrant environment that makes life easier for both public and staff users.

This is indeed a success story on how to transform a library!

FIND OUT MORE info@insight-media.co.uk www.insight-media.co.uk 0844 335 6350

www.capita.co.uk/libraries | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | Panlibus Magazine

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Success breeds success “The tender submission and presentation exemplified the core culture of 2CQR as a company who think seriously about libraries.

The unique response to the brief helped win the tender, while their high level of attention to detail, ease of software and hardware personalisation combined with solid project management and responsive attitude made this a very successful…

Read more:

“Finalising migration to RFID - ‐ The University of Exeter” www.2cqr.com/thinking/news/

TakeAway Library Vending

Wonderwall Multimedia Promotion

Totem Self-Service

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Pop up Library Portable stock

2CQR House, Triangle Business Park Long Bennington Lincolnshire NG23 5JR

Thinking Libraries

S O L U T I O N S

Security Gates

T: 01400 283850 info@2CQR.com www.2cqr.com

S U P P O R T

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R F I D

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Discover more…

Give your customers the full picture with Full Library Discovery

By widening the net but narrowing the search, Full Library Discovery (FLD) takes the unearthing of often inaccessible and under-utilised resources to the next level by aiming to provide a single search box that enables users to discover absolutely everything the library has to offer.

To launch our briefing paper focusing on Full Library Discovery, we’re hosting three executive briefings at the start of next year. Each of these events is perfect for any member of your library management team.

Learn how Full Library Discovery enables: • Users to discover the best resources for their task • Libraries to provide a better customer experience • Libraries to increase usage of precious resources and unique collections.

Register to attend the events Academic libraries

Thursday 21 January — The Portland Hotel, Manchester Tuesday 26 January — The Royal Beach Hotel, Portsmouth Public libraries

Tuesday 2 February — DoubleTree by Hilton, London West End Each executive briefing will be hosted from 09:00-13:00, is free for all to attend and will include a complimentary breakfast.

Book your free place at our executive briefings at

www.capita-software.co.uk/fldbriefing Alternatively, if you can’t make our events simply sign up online to receive the report digitally at www.capita-software.co.uk/fldbriefing

Nielsen

Nielsen LibScan Public Library Borrowing data Period 8 Library loans through Nielsen LibScan show an overall increase of 27.7% between Period 7 (four weeks ending 11 July) and Period 8 of 2015 to a total of 7.4m books borrowed in the four weeks leading up to 8 August. The Children’s category has seen borrowing increase by 60.7% but other categories also benefited from the summer boost.

Adult Fiction loans grew by 7.1% and Trade Non-Fiction grew by 7.9%.

However, year-on-year, library borrowings have dropped when compared with Period 8 of 2014. The overall number of library loans through Nielsen LibScan decreased by 2.9% with Adult Specialist NonFiction loans decreasing by the biggest percentage, -8.6%. In contrast, Children’s book loans have increased year-on-year by 0.9% to reduce the overall decline.

Overall titles for Period 8 2015 (four weeks ending 8 August): Position

Title

Author

Volume

Format

Pub Date

1

Personal: Jack Reacher

Lee Child

2,530

BB Hardback

28 Aug 14

2

The Girl on the Train

Paula Hawkins

2,180

BB Hardback

15 Jan 15

3

You are Dead: Roy Grace

Peter James

1,861

BB Hardback

21 May 15

4

Mightier than the Sword: The Clifton Chronicles

Jeffrey Archer

1,818

BB Hardback

26 Feb 15

5

Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee

1,774

BB Hardback

14 Jul 15

6

Truth or Die

James Patterson

1,748

BB Hardback

4 Jun 15

7

Time of Death: Tom Thorne Novels

Mark Billingham

1,744

BB Hardback

23 Apr 15

8

14th Deadly Sin: Women’s Murder Club

James Patterson

1,730

BB Hardback

26 Feb 15

9

Memory Man: Decker and Lancaster

David Baldacci

1,707

BB Hardback

23 Apr 15

10

The Burning Room

Michael Connelly

1,687

BB Hardback

6 Nov 14

Despite the growth of Children’s book borrowing in libraries, Crime, Thriller and Adventure is still a dominant category when it comes to the top titles; 35 of the Top 100 books borrowed in Period 8 2015 fall under the Crime, Thriller and Adventure category, and Lee Child has kept the top spot with Personal in the last four weeks to 8 August.

Since loans within the Children’s category have increased, it’s worth looking at which areas of Children’s have prompted the change.

The largest two categories, Children’s Fiction and Picture books, have grown by 0.6% and 2.4% respectively year-on-year. Meanwhile, Children’s General Non-Fiction loans have increased by 18.6% to 138.5k when compared to the equivalent period of 2014.

One area of Children’s that has seen particular growth due to the time of year has been the School Textbooks and Study Guides, which increased by 70.4% between Period 7 (four weeks ending 11 July) and Period 8 (four weeks ending 8 August) 2015.

When we look at the top titles in School Textbooks and Study Guides category it shows that books from the Hachette Group are the favourite in this category. More specifically, the Franklin Watts imprint of Hachette has 25% of the loans in the Top 5k for this category in Period 8 and Wayland Publishers, another Hachette imprint, has 22.8%.

The Top 10 School Textbooks and Study Guides titles are: Position

Title

Volume

Format

Pub Date

1

The Greedy Pirates: Tiddlers

563

BC Paperback

8 Jan 15

2

Little Owl: Tiddlers

447

BC Paperback

8 Jan 15

3

Clever Little Monkey: Tadpoles

437

BB Hardback

12 Feb 15

4

The Hungry Little Monkey: Tiddlers

411

BC Paperback

13 Oct 11

5

Jump, Toad, Jump!: Reading Corner Phonics

387

BC Paperback

11 Nov 10

6

Harry and the Horse: Tiddlers

381

BC Paperback

15 Sep 11

7

Pirate Picnic: Tiddlers

364

BC Paperback

23 May 13

8

Double Decker Donald: Tadpoles

363

BC Paperback

12 Feb 15

9

Treasure Trail: Start Reading: Detective Dog

361

BC Paperback

14 Oct 10

10

Sniff Gets Digging: Reading Corner Phonics

354

BC Paperback

14 Oct 10

[© 2015 Nielsen Book Services Limited [trading as Nielsen BookScan and Nielsen LibScan]). For further information about Nielsen BookScan TCM Panel or LibScan panel, email: info.bookscan@nielsen.com

FIND OUT MORE www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk info.bookscan@nielsen.co.uk

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Panlibus Magazine | Issue 38 Winter 2015 | www.capita.co.uk/libraries

3M Library Systems

On site, on time, on side.

On site, time, on side.

The bestonservice and 3M is committed to support for 3M customers.

3M Library Systems

providing customers with the best library service.

3M engineers have of We aim to arrive on years site within experience in supporting our 8 hours of notification of the Sortation Systems, Self-Service problem and solve 95% of them andthe Detection Systems. on first visit. www.3M.com/uk/library www.3M.com/uk/library

Metadata has huge potential Realise it... for everyone

The online multimedia resource from BDS that reveals the remarkable world of your library catalogue

Ability to download quality, information-rich records Create and share reading lists Images, screenshots and music artist biographies Look inside the book to assist with selection Streaming video and audio clips Item availability on an ISBN and a supplier basis Unique access to BDS’s trade database Authority-wide – no need to “pay per seat” BDSLite mode for relevant and extended content to customers

Now available to Capita customers

www.bdslive.com For your community, your library and your catalogue

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Contact Sarah Armitage +447860 324570 sarah.armitage@ bibdsl.co.uk.