University of Reading Library review 2012-13

Library

Library review 2012–2013

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Contents Onwards and upwards 2 Improving Library space 4 Collections 5 Systems and service initiatives 7 Helping and teaching 8 Contributing to our communities 11 People 14 Statistics 17 Timeline 18

Onwards and upwards In last session’s Library review I wrote about building new beginnings. We ended the 2011–12 session with two floors undergoing rewiring, and already planning significant further changes. The 2012–13 session ended with two different floors in flux but undergoing radical transformation into truly inspiring study environments.

This was the session that the Library arrived firmly on the University’s agenda, clearly recognised as key to student life, reflected in student surveys as an investment priority. The University listened, and acted, with more funding:

Surveyed students said / we did Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Bell, and RUSU officers, Kara Swift and James Fletcher, promote the National Student Survey – we listen and act on what students say.

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Library review 2012–2013

for Library information resources; to pilot 24-hour opening in the revision and examinations period; for substantial refurbishment in 2013, plans for more in 2014, and a desire to go further still in the future.

Our Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Bell, firmly supported and enabled all of the above, confirming the high value of the contribution that the Library makes to the University community and to students’ education and experience. Similarly the Head of the Student and Academic Services Directorate, Dr Richard Messer, remained constant in his encouragement and championship of the Library. Thanks are also due to Professor Hugo Tucker, Chair of our Advisory Board on Information Services, for his focus on, and commitment to, strategic priorities for the Library.

with increased funding; introducing Patron Driven Acquisition; self-service collection of ‘holds’; enhancing training and study advice with screencasts and videos; 24-hour opening. And all of this undertaken alongside the significant additional work and effort of the rewiring and refurbishment projects and the inevitable disruption that these bring.

Library staff proved their mettle, the show went on and just got better.

Julia Munro University Librarian

And so thanks too to the Library staff, always striving to provide a modern, dynamic Library that best serves the University, and without whom there would be very little to write about in this review.

The following pages are full of their achievements: completion of the marathon five-year Collections Project reviewing the entire Library stock; purchasing even more new information resources

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Improving Library space This session the University truly demonstrated its belief that improving the Library environment significantly adds value to our students’ experience.

Having listened to what students said via the National Student Survey and the Students’ Union, we concentrated on providing more collaborative study space and additional power sockets.

First £2 million, first two floors Head of Collections and Space, Paul Johnson, shows local MP Rob Wilson summer 2013 refurbishment plans for collaborative and silent study areas.

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Over summer 2012 our Rewiring Project to update the building’s original 1960s electrical provision reached the Ground (staff and services) and 3rd (Arts and Humanities) Floors, improving green credentials and safety. However, the Feasibility Group on the Library building recognised the worth of expanding the rewiring work planned for summer 2013 into a £2 million Refurbishment Project. Approved in January, the (now) Project Group planned improvements to flooring, redecoration and study furniture on both the 2nd (Sciences) Floor and

Library review 2012–2013

the 5th (Silent Study) Floor. All stock and shelving was cleared from the 2nd Floor reading room and 5th Floor by early June (after exams) when work began. Access to 2nd Floor stock was maintained throughout the summer, with necessarily crated material available on request. Staff relocated.

The 2nd Floor will have 350 study spaces, each with a laptop plug point. The high-ceilinged area to the front of the building will be for collaborative study in group study pods; diner-style seating; two-person and large table seating. Glass walls will separate the book stock and individual quiet study seating towards the back of the building. The 5th Floor will include two long, silent study rooms with laptop plug points at each desk; an open soft-seating area without power sockets for conventional reading; and more single-sex and disabled toilets. Further study places will overlook the 4th Floor central area through a glass screen, re-instating a feature of the original 1964 building.

Collections This session officially saw the end of our ambitious Collections Project 2009-2013. During the course of this project, we reviewed all of our collections and space, allowing us to incorporate material from Bulmershe Library, which closed in 2011. This was done by creating an off-site store for lesserused material, which allowed us to keep the most in-demand material on the open shelves. This also gave us the opportunity to create more study space and notably created the space for collaborative study on the 2nd Floor.

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The University also acted upon students’ views communicated

by National Student Surveys, that more Library resources would enhance their time at Reading by providing an additional £680,000 for information resources this session. The Library can now buy more copies of print and e-books to support courses, and regularly subscribe to key journals and databases to significantly improve research and learning. Individual departments enjoyed their increased allocation in various ways. For instance the School of Systems Engineering increased the availability of textbooks on reading lists by 25%. Schools like Chemistry offered undergraduates the chance to suggest book orders for the Library. Education subscribed to Education research

Adding value £680,000 more this session bought additional information resources to enhance learning, teaching and research at Reading.

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complete, whose full-text research articles significantly improved masters-level projects and benefited the whole University.

We also spent broadly on online journal packages, obtaining extra journal titles in Project Muse, JSTOR and ScienceDirect, which many departments had wanted for some time. We purchased two significant online newspaper archives, the Financial Times Historical Archive 1888–2009 and the Guardian/Observer Historical Archive 1791–2003. Thanks go to our Collections Team who worked hard to order and process the extra resources. (One indication of the scale of their effort is that 156% more book orders were processed in May 2013 than May 2012.)

Extra resources also allowed us to pilot an e-book Patron Driven

Library review 2012–2013

Acquisition project from April. E-book provider MyiLibrary displays links to titles in carefully selected subject areas within our catalogue.

Viewings by several Library users trigger purchase against our deposit. This enables a whole range of e-books to be offered to our users, with only those they decide to use being purchased.

Systems and service initiatives

Library time shifts Some students worked late, others came early when Reassurance Security Services helped us pilot 24-hour opening.

We further enabled independent student learning this session by increasing access to physical Library services. The University again showed its recognition of the importance of the Library to student life and recruitment by investing in the 24-hour opening pilot for exam-time 15 April to 7 June. We had been working towards this with the University and Students’ Union over several years. Between existing evening and day shifts, the library-experienced security firm, Reassurance Security Services, covered midnight to 8.30am, with Library teams extending their hours to cover extra weekend opening.

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Grab a hold!

Rob Boulter was the first student to collect a reserved book from the new self-service ‘Holds’ shelf.

Contributing to the success of this project was the decision to enable Library users to collect ‘holds’ for themselves. Users collect books they have requested other readers to return from the ‘Hold shelf’, placed securely within the alarmed Course Collection area.

Adjacent Self-Service Points allow only the correct person to borrow holds. All self-service units were upgraded for a faster and more reliable service in April. Self-service loans reached a 96.8% May peak but settled to 93% in June, showing that this method is now the norm, having risen from an initial 3% when self-service loans were introduced nine years ago.

We also improved the online experience of Library users who need not visit the Library building. In December, we launched a new mobile website. From July we began the switch to institutional login, a new method of accessing remote datasets employing a University username and password but without the need to download a cookie, as with the previous Athens method.

Helping and teaching

Reid in the win Study Adviser, Michelle Reid won awards for work on screencasts and student transitions.

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The Study Advice Team spent the year developing and evaluating a new method of teaching study skills to students, using ‘bite-size’ screencasts followed by ‘flipped’ workshops to practise and reinforce learning. These built on existing Library expertise in screencast production. Another successful presessional Study Advice day for new mature students in September produced plenty of enthusiastic feedback. In June, we launched our Academic integrity toolkit, a tool to help University staff teach referencing and avoiding plagiarism. This was the major output of collaboration between Reading’s

Library review 2012–2013

liaison librarians, study advisers and International Study and Language Institute staff on a University Teaching and Learning Development Fund project ‘What did I do wrong?: supporting independent learning practices to avoid plagiarism’.

Fair exchange The Library Fair helps orientate students and reward them with information suppliers’ freebies.

Feedback from the University’s Working Group on Transitions into Higher Education showed that students were very pleased with the Library’s Finding your way training for Freshers, commenting on their usefulness and informative nature. As usual we also provided a welcoming ‘Library Fair’ day and roving help up to week 5 of the Autumn Term. We bought iPads so we could better support users when roving, amongst other uses. We introduced more live-action into our Library training videos. What the Library does for us: student views available from September features students talking about how they use the Library.

Welcome to your University Library, summarising how to use our main services, was ready in June and used with new international students whilst the

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Library building was being refurbished. In January, we provided more advanced student training on new Blackboard virtual learning environment module, LibLearn 3: searching databases for your project/ dissertation.

Open Access was a major issue in the academic world following the findings of the Finch report and Research Councils UK’s subsequent policy that the results of publically funded research should now be made available online free of charge to anyone wanting to access that research. Library staff joined the University’s Open Access Steering group, formed in October. In June, Paul Johnson, Head of Library Collections and Space, contributed to a workshop for academic staff on Open Access – recognition of the knowledge and experience librarians bring to Open Access. Significantly the University decided that its institutional repository, CentAUR, will be managed by the Library from next session.

Workshops working Freshers’ feedback highly rated ‘Finding your way’ Library inductions.

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Library review 2012–2013

Contributing to our communities Our Library continues to play its part in the University, academic, international and library communities.

We always contribute to University undergraduate open days but were especially proud to talk to prospective high-achieving students and their parents about the University’s investment in Library resource funding, trial 24-hour opening and imminent refurbishment. Refurbishment was the theme of our Library Community of Practice event in June for ‘Library representatives’, academic staff who assist with departmental spending on information resources. Judith Fox, Map Librarian collaborated with the Museum of English Rural Life’s Sense of Place project. This investigated ways to turn the traditional museum catalogue into a more flexible and interactive resource, engaging and connecting audiences with collections in terms of relevance to geographical, historical and cultural contexts.

Marketing Co-ordinator, Rachel Redrup spoke at the University’s Teaching and Learning Showcase on the benefits of communicating actions taken as a result of student feedback.

All three of our Trainee Liaison Librarians took study tours of European universities funded by the European Union’s Erasmus university staff mobility scheme.

Ruth Jenkins visited the University of Bergen, Norway; Erika Delbecque the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris; and Anna Richards, University College Dublin.

Law Librarian, Ross Connell hosted visits from the

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East China University of Political Science and Law and the University India Bar Council.

Supporting the Library world, Liaison Team Manager Kerry Webb contributed to the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals’ (CILIP) review of their framework qualifications, providing feedback on revised certification and chartership handbooks. Head of Collections and Space, Paul Johnson, and Collections Project Co-ordinator, Claire Cannings, presented a

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paper on our Collections Project to the Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in Social Sciences (ALISS), subsequently published in ALISS Quarterly.

Systems Administrator and Liaison Librarian Sam Tyler talked to the Customers of SirsiDynix International Conference, Brighton about ‘Incorporating archives into Enterprise at The University of Reading’. Ruth Jenkins co-wrote November’s article in CILIP Update ‘Five go to Chicago’ and Library Assistant Marion Harris contributed

Library review 2012–2013

to its February article ‘LIS by distance learning’. In May, Anna Richards’ article ‘An investigation into the viability of LibraryThing for promotional and user engagement purposes in libraries’ was accepted by Library Hi Tech. In July, Erika Delbecque presented a paper on ‘Building a library during the English Reformations: the books of John Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich’ at the Transitions, 1500– 1750 conference at Corsham Court, Wiltshire.

Information Skills Co-ordinator and University Teaching Fellow, Helen Hathaway and Study Adviser, Dr Kim Shahabudin presented papers on the Academic Integrity Toolkit at the Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference and Association for Learning Development in Higher Education Conference respectively. Study adviser Sonia Hood was appointed to the national Steering Committee at the latter conference.

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People

The (new) Professionals Liaison Librarians Ruth Jenkins (far left) and Anna Richards (right) are training to help users find the best print and online information.

Our high standard of support stems from our dedication to staff training and development. We organise a weekly Library Staff Development Hour where we learn about professional and university issues.

We were delighted that Sir David Bell, Vice-Chancellor, talked to us about the University’s aspirations and the role of support services in a popular November session.

We support national librarianship qualifications for CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, mentoring masters-level trainee liaison librarians in three-year

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posts providing a range of liaison, functional and supervisory experience and training. New professionals Ruth Jenkins and Anna Richards joined us in September. They began our Chartership Support Programme in January, along with Rachael Scott, appointed to the new post of Electronic Acquisitions Co-ordinator the same month.

Former Trainee Liaison Librarian Jonathan Jones gained his Chartership in March, a month after progressing to the post of Academic Resource Centre Manager at Henley Business

Library review 2012–2013

I say goodbye, you say hello Arts and Humanities Liaison Team Manager, Christopher Cipkin (shown at his leaving presentation with University Librarian, Julia Munro) was replaced by Kerry Webb.

School. We formally support one Graduate Trainee Library Assistant for a year before library training: this year, Jess Edy. Library Assistant, Marion Harris, began studying for an MSc in Information and Library Studies via distance learning with Aberystwyth University this session.

Teaching and Learning Support Programme. In June Study Adviser Michelle Reid was awarded one of the University’s New Lecturers’ Project Prizes for her project ‘Remembering the neglected transition: study resources for taught masters students’ submitted as part of her Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice.

Charlie Carpenter, Arts & Humanities Team Leader became an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in October after passing the University’s

Kerry Webb joined us in July as Liaison Team Manager (Arts & Humanities) / Course Support Coordinator, succeeding Christopher Cipkin.

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Library review 2012–2013

Statistics 2010 – 2011

2011 – 2012

2012 – 2013

Total

25,087

21,934

22,367

Students

20,097

16,864

17,222

4,324

4,466

4,601

666

604

544

Number of user visits

958,001

1,028,621

1,237,749

Number of items borrowed

589,776

531,601

525,534

3,566

4,242

3,590

277

198

208

1,758

1,913

2,406

788

978

951

81.2

79.1

73.5

1,136,986

1,103,854

1,083,846

7,120

7,182

8,142

Current periodical subscriptions

26,274

29,001

34,260

Electronic periodicals

24,213

27,962

33,295

281,651

283,245

290,271

13,803

8,888

8,888

1,542

1,455

1,455

228

214

214

32

38

38

£1,551,600

£1,868,895

£2,669,028

Number of registered Library users

Staff External users Use of the libraries

Items borrowed from other libraries Items supplied to other libraries Number of enquiries in a sample term-time week Number of Library staff hours spent teaching Library staff Full-time equivalent Information resources Catalogued books Books added in the year

E-books Library buildings Total area occupied (sq m) Study places Study places with PCs Study places with network connection (laptops) Annual Library expenditure Information resources

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Timeline

October 2012 We provide a Library Fair and training sessions for Freshers.

August 2012 Journal loans extended from one day to seven days.

Study Adviser, Michelle Reid wins LearnHigher ‘Animation Challenge’ prize.

Law Librarian, Ross Connell hosts East China University of Political Science and Law officials.

Refurbished Library staff room reopens.

University forms Open Access Steering group, including Library staff as members.

Ross Connell hosts visit of Indian Bar Council.

December 2012

Payment by credit/debit card possible in Library

New mobile Library website launched.

September 2012

November 2012

January 2013

New Trainee Liaison Librarians, Ruth Jenkins and Anna Richards arrive.

University Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Bell, presents Library staff development hour session.

Self-collection of holds begins.

Pre-sessional Study Advice day for mature students.

Library’s 3rd and 5th Floors reopen to users after rewiring; staff return to rewired Ground Floor.

Library staff receive Teaching and Learning awards at University ceremony.

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Charlie Carpenter becomes an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) on passing Teaching and Learning Support Programme (TLSP).

Library receives good feedback in Freshers’ review.

Rachael Scott appointed to new post of Electronic Acquisitions Co-ordinator.

Initial discussions on summer 2013 Library refurbishment.

LibLearn Tutorial 3: searching databases for your project/ dissertation goes ‘live’.

Library stays open despite snow (18–20 January).

Library review 2012–2013

June 2013

April 2013

February 2013

24-hour opening pilot project begins (15 April–7 June).

Funding for 24-hour opening for exam-time confirmed.

Library pilots Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) allowing users to select e-books.

Findings on Library support for researchers considered.

Library awarded Silver Green Impact Award.

5th Floor and 2nd Floor Reading Room closed and staff relocate as refurbishment work begins.

Academic integrity toolkit launched by Study Advisers.

Open Access workshop for academic staff takes place, with contributions from Library staff.

New live-action introductory video launched on website.

March 2013

May 2013

July 2013

Library improvements Feasibility Group becomes a Project Committee. Staff visit furniture suppliers to plan summer refurbishment.

Open Access information added to Library webpages.

New Liaison Team Manager (Arts & Humanities) / Course Support Co-ordinator Kerry Webb starts.

Jonathan Jones, former Trainee Liaison Librarian, now Academic Resources Centre Manager for Henley Business School awarded chartership.

Acquisitions staff process 156% more book orders than in May 2012.

Self-service loans reach 96.8% peak.

More journals move to Off-Site Store.

Collections Project ends after five years.

Switch to Institutional Login from Athens authentication begins.

Remaining Bulmershe Collection items moved to single location on 4th Floor.

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Library review 2012–2013 For more information, please contact: Julia Munro, University Librarian University of Reading Library Whiteknights Reading RG6 6AE library@reading.ac.uk Tel (0118) 378 8770 Fax (0118) 378 6636

www.reading.ac.uk/library

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