Student welcome and induction 2024 – save the dates!

By Angela Young, on 19 July 2024

The LCCOS Induction Working Group has been busy planning welcome and induction for new students for the 2024-25 academic session. With a series of blogposts, we’ll be keeping you up to date with what’s happening, how you can get involved and how we can support you locally.

What’s happening?

New students are being encouraged to come to campus and collect their ID card as early as possible this year from Monday 16th September, so we can expect to see campus getting lively from then (International Student Welcome Week) and really buzzing by the following week.

We will be inviting LCCOS colleagues to get involved in our Induction Taskforce to support our central activities, so pencil the following dates in your calendars and keep a lookout for future updates:

• International Student Library Seminars: 12.15-13.00 every day w/c 16th September in the North-West Wing.
• Support Services Fair: 10.00–15.30 every day Mon 23 – Wed 25 Sep in the cloisters (and Fri 27 at UCL East).
• Explore demonstrations: 12.00-12.30 and 12.30-13.00 every day w/c 23 September in the Science Library G15 Teaching Cluster room.
• Getting Started spaces in Main and Science libraries: 10.00-16.00 every day w/c 23 September, and wraparound TBC at Main Library towards the end of w/c 16th Sep and w/c 30th Sep.

Why get involved?

The Induction Taskforce is a great opportunity for anyone across LCCOS to get involved in meeting and greeting new students, to work with colleagues from across LCCOS, and to develop your experience and skills.

Here’s what some Taskforce members said when reflecting on their involvement last year:

“It’s always good to meet the new students and welcome them. It was good to work with other library team members. It was a very good opportunity to learn from them as well.”

“I learned from this experience and really appreciated the opportunity to contribute.”

“I really liked helping with the Explore session, and engaging with the users in a class setting and on a one to one basis in something specific like searching Explore.”

Supporting local inductions

Local, tailored inductions for students in individual faculties, departments or academic programmes, or at individual library sites, are vital to complement centralised activities and instil a sense of belonging. Take a look at our recommendations on how you might deliver local inductions and what content to include.

Shared (S:) drive administration changes

By Margaret Stone, on 16 July 2024

There will soon be some changes to the way that access to shared drives (S: drives) is managed within LCCOS. This post contains information for staff who will manage access and for all staff who may need to request access to shared folders.

What do I need to do now?

• Be aware that you may receive a message in the coming days advising you that you have been assigned as an owner of one or more top-level S: drive folders.
• Watch out for further communications on changes to the process of requesting access to S: drives.

What is changing?

ISD have introduced a new process where each S: drive (top level folder) has a number of named owners who can grant and revoke access to the folder and its sub-folders. Previously, administration was managed by computer reps, in particular the LCCOS HR Team.

Based on input from LCCOS Section Heads, we will shortly be assigning two staff members as owners of each top level folder. We will contact these owners with more information. ISD provide a management tool, accessible through Desktop@UCL Anywhere, which owners can use to add or remove access to these folders.

Once these owners have been assigned, we will provide a list of folders and owners on the LCCOS intranet. After this, line managers who need to request access to a folder for a member of their team should contact one of the owners to make this request. Similarly, line managers are responsible for working with the folder owners to revoke access when it is no longer required – e.g. when a staff member leaves the team or leaves UCL.

We will also be taking advantage of this opportunity to review the shared folders in use and rationalise/archive where possible, as well as providing best practice information on the use of shared drives alongside other storage options including Teams/SharePoint. Teams wanting to set up a new S: drive folder should discuss the request with LCCOS IT Support, as departmental computer reps.

What is the impact of these changes?

For the first time, we will have a local view within the department of the members of each folder and we can manage access more rigorously and efficiently. Previously, the ISD process was quite opaque, even to departmental computer reps.

By devolving access control to local managers, it will be quicker to grant access and easier to review membership at any time.

In parallel, our review of shared folders and best practice should improve the way we manage information and process data as a department.

What if I have questions?

If you have any questions about these changes, please contact LCCOS IT Support.

LCCOS Career Framework

By Michelle Wake, on 24 June 2024

Are you thinking about developing your career? The Career Frameworks provide you with information about a range of roles across UCL, detailing activities and responsibilities for different roles and transferable skills and competencies. They also promote three key ways that you can develop new skills and experiences; learning from experience, learning from others and formal learning.  Colleagues have also very kindly provided Career Case Studies, which provide an insight into their career journeys.

The Career Framework for LCCOS staff is being launched with the area of Customer Service (Library Services), with other job families to follow.  A family is not a section of LCCOS, but a group of jobs that have similar professional characteristics.  Many job roles within LCCOS will combine more than one of the LCCOS families.

If you have any questions or need further information please contact Michelle Wake

Enhancing Explore – UX Project Report

By Jonathan Fowles, on 18 June 2024

In early 2024, we decided to investigate the challenges that UCL students face when navigating the library resource discovery service, Explore. As part of this project, the LCCOS UX Group conducted research exercises to gain some insight into how our students use this service. This information will be combined with quantitative data from other research methods, such as heat mapping and benchmarking exercises, to influence the direction of future Explore service improvements.

The UX Group invited ten individual participants to take part in the exercises, selected from a group of volunteers to represent a cross-section of our student customer base. The UX methods used were:

• A five second test to establish first impressions of the Explore landing page.
• A simple card sorting exercise focussed on landing page menu options, to help us determine user priorities and their understanding of terminology.
• Usability testing to better understand the needs and priorities of customers when searching for resources.

These exercises were conducted in March 2024. Several areas of interest emerged, such as:

• Relocating the position of features to improve the instinctive user journey.
• Reconsidering menu item terminology to better represent purpose and improve communication with our users.
• Highlighting useful and underused features.
• Investigating how customers navigate to Explore through search engines.

Having reviewed the data collected from the three exercises, including an analysis of automatic transcripts, the research team produced a series of recommendations to take forward as we enhance Explore. These recommendations included:

• An investigation into the search ranking of the Explore landing page, and how this could be improved.
• Removing superfluous menu options.
• Rearranging the order and location of features to make them more user friendly.
• Conducting further reviews into the use of language.
• Improvements to accessibility in Explore, particularly regarding screen reading software.

Additionally, when evaluating the UX exercises conducted for this project, the research team noted some considerations for future UX work. These include:

• Being mindful of designing exercises to better accommodate and consider skill gaps between participants.
• Exploring alternative methods of volunteer recruitment to encourage the participation of non-student customers.
• Evaluating the benefits of hosting sessions online, instead of in person, to improve the quality of automatic transcription.
• Modifying the design and setup of future UX sessions to remove situational bias and encourage more authentic responses and behaviour.

The full report from the UX group can be found at the following link: Enhancing Explore – UX Project Report.

If you are interested in joining the LCCOS UX Group, or if you have any questions about our work, please contact Jonathan Fowles (j.fowles@ucl.ac.uk) or Bethan Smith (bethan.smith@ucl.ac.uk).

The UX Group plans to produce a UX toolkit in the future that will be available to all teams in LCCOS, compiling a list of resources, guidance documentation and reports from previous projects that may be helpful for anybody planning their own UX research project.

Photo from Card Sorting Exercise

UCL LCCOS Staff Summer School 2024 – Entire programme now available

By Angela Young, on 24 May 2024

The UCL LCCOS Staff Summer School is a series of training and development sessions, events and online activities aimed at staff from across LCCOS, to support their ability to answer enquiries and to provide support, training and advocacy to users and stakeholders. Sessions are generally delivered by colleagues, so we can share our expertise.

Five ways to make your documents more accessible

By simon.bralee.15, on 16 May 2024

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than one billion people in the world with disabilities/impairments.

In LCCOS, we are committed to removing barriers that may prevent students, staff or visitors from making the most of our services. Ensuring all content that you share is accessible with the people who will use it is vital. You should anticipate additional requirements to make content accessible.

There are a few small things you can do. Let us know in the comments if you have any further suggestions, questions or comments.

1. Make your Microsoft documents accessible

It’s relatively easy to make Word and PowerPoint documents accessible by following a few easy steps:

• Use appropriate document headers.
• Add meaningful hyperlink text.
• Give every slide a unique title.
• Make sure slide contents can be read in the correct order.
• Add alt text to images.
• Check font size and colour contrast.
• Ensure videos are accessible.

When finalising a document, you should use the Microsoft Accessibility Checker which reviews documents and offers an easy way to make improvements such as adding alt text to images and checking content order on slides.

This is especially important if you are uploading the document onto Moodle as Blackboard Ally, will automatically create accessible formats from Word and PowerPoints, but the original document must be accessible.

Read more

• Make your Word documents accessible (Microsoft Help Pages)
• Make your PowerPoint presentations (Microsoft Help Pages)
• Blackboard Ally (UCL news article from 2019)
• Blackboard Ally-What it is, why use it

2. Use alt text

Alt text or ‘alternative text’ explains what an image is showing. It is read by screen reader software

You can easily add alt text to images in MS documents, on webpages and on most social media platforms.

VPEE recommend the following for writing alt text:

• Keep it short – just describe the most relevant aspects.
• Mention colour if it’s relevant.
• Include keywords appropriately for improved SEO, if relevant.
• Use proper nouns and names, if relevant.
• Use plain language and spell out acronyms.
• Skip writing ‘photo of’ etc.

Read more

• UCL Accessibility on Social Media Guidelines

3. Colour contrast / Avoid using colour alone to convey meaning

Colour is a powerful way to communicate and we’re not saying you should avoid using it, but make sure that colour alone is not used to convey meaning. For example, if you use ‘traffic lights’ or ‘Green and Red’ for stop and go, make sure the words ‘Stop’ and ‘Go’ are also included.

If you are using colours other than black and white, check the colour contrast. UCL provides guidance when using the brand colours. There are several tools for checking contrast freely available online.

Read more

• UCL Colour Palette
• Contrast checker tool from Web Accessibility in Mind.

4. Videos and recordings

When creating videos or recordings, you should consider alternative ways for people to engage with the content. Does it have clear audio and captions so that people can follow along?

This could also help people who aren’t able to play the audio or similarly are listening to a recording while doing something else.

Several programmes now have automatic captions. As anyone with an accent can attest these are not always accurate, but they are definitely getting better all the time. If you are uploading a recording, I would recommend checking over the captions just in case.

Read more

• 5 reasons why you should caption your video content (UCL VPEE)
• Lecturecast and other multimedia (UCL Digital Accessibility)
• Present with real-time, automatic captions or subtitles in PowerPoint (Microsoft Help pages)
• Use live captions in Microsoft Teams meetings (Microsoft Help pages)

5. Avoid PDFs or at least make sure they are accessible

PDFs are not great in terms of accessibility. Screen readers cannot always read them and unlike most webpages they are not responsive, meaning users may struggle to read smaller text. I would encourage you to think carefully about whether you need to create a PDF. Often a web page or Word document will be more suitable for your purposes.

If you do need to create a PDF, then make sure it’s accessible. The easiest way to do this is to turn an accessible MS document into a PDF (making sure to check the ‘Document structure tags for accessibility’ option first).

It can be difficult to make a PDF accessible after this. You can add tags using tools like Adobe Acrobat Pro, but the more visual and complex the design, the harder this is to do. One solution is to share alternative file formats. UCL have done this on their strategy pages, providing a ‘glossy’ PDF and a plain text Word document of the same item.

Read more

• PDF documents (ISD guidance)
• Create accessible PDFs (Microsoft Help Pages)
• Creating accessible PDFs (Adobe Help pages). This is more advanced.
• Why GOV.UK content should be published in HTML and not PDF. An interesting blog post from the Government Digital Service outlining why PDFs are not great.

What support is available to staff and students at UCL?

• Digital Accessibility Services
• UCL Digital Champions Network
• UCL Library Services – Accessibility

Reading accessable content from LCCOS

Thanks to Paula Dale and Jonathan Fowles for contributing to this list. Please also check our social media accounts for related posts using #GAAD. 

Introducing the UCL Copyright Literacy Community and new resources.

By Christina Daouti, on 13 May 2024

UCL Copyright Literacy Community

My LCCOS colleagues understand all too well how copyright considerations shape decisions we make in our roles. In some cases, the answer to a copyright question is straightforward, for example whether using a resource is covered by the terms of a licence. However, more often than not the decisions we make (to share, digitise, include, copy, and support others in similar decisions) involve a degree of interpretation and risk. Copyright literacy is, among several definitions, about acquiring the knowledge, skills and confidence to deal with uncertainties around copyright (see, for example, Morrison and Secker, 2021).

A new UCL Copyright Literacy Community is being launched this summer. The community, which will have representation from UCL academics, students and professional services staff, will gather together to identify areas where an understanding of copyright is necessary for specific academic, research and professional practices, including open science practices. Members will have opportunities to discuss challenges they share in their area, put forward suggestions and work together on any projects that emerge. Crucially, the community will also review and enhance the current copyright programme at UCL. For more information, see our blog post or contact c.daouti@ucl.ac.uk.

Call for action

We are seeking academic staff and students to take part in the community. There are also some limited opportunities for LCCOS colleagues to take part in the community, with more places available in the future as the community expands. Copyright knowledge is not necessary, but an interest in this area, with insights on how it applies in your role, is what the community is about. Please share this information with your contacts and let me know if you are interested in joining.

New copyright resources

Online tutorial: Copyright and your Teaching

A new ‘Copyright and your Teaching’ online tutorial has just been published. The tutorial is designed for anyone with teaching responsibilities in mind.

Like Copyright Essentials, this new tutorial addresses copyright scenarios inviting you to consider copyright exceptions and make some judgements. While Copyright Essentials appealed even more to Star Wars fans, this new tutorial is for anyone who likes the work of Christian Marclay (there are many copyright-related reasons to choose this example). GenAI is also addressed.

Please complete the tutorial when you have time and consider promoting it if you can. Your feedback is also very valuable.

Text and Data Mining guidance

New guidance on Text and Data Mining (TDM) is now published on the copyright website, complementing the existing LibGuide. The guidance was developed in collaboration with colleagues from e-resources, Open Science and Library Skills. The guidance focusses on the copyright exception for TDM and other copyright considerations. Please also see our guest post on the Open Science blog.

Collaboration across LCCOS

Copyright support is all the stronger when informed by different areas of practice. The tutorial was reviewed and subsequently improved by the LCCOS Copyright Literacy Steering group. Likewise, the TDM guidance brought together perspectives from various colleagues and was approved by the LCCOS Collections Management committee. The aims of the new UCL Copyright Literacy Community reflect this spirit of collaboration.

If you would like to get involved or perhaps refresh your copyright knowledge first, please get in touch. Copyright sessions are also available on demand: please contact c.daoutis@ucl.ac.uk to arrange a session at your library site.

UCL Open Days – your help is needed for an LCCOS welcome

By June Hedges, on 9 May 2024

UCL Undergraduate Open Days are taking place on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 June 2024. Campus will be buzzing, and prospective students and their families are invited to come into the Main Library and Science Library, find out about LCCOS services, collections and resources and undertake our online self-guided library tours. In the Flaxman Gallery in the Main Library, we will have a staffed stand to welcome attendees, give information about LCCOS and answer questions, enabling us to showcase what LCCOS is all about, and inspire prospective students to come and study at UCL.

All LCCOS staff are invited to contribute to staffing the welcome stand. Full briefing will be provided. If you do not normally work on the days of the open days, you may claim time in lieu (any Grade of staff) or overtime (Grades 1-6), so if you don’t quite have enough annual leave left for that summer holiday you are dreaming about, this could be just the opportunity for you to earn extra time off!

Staffing of the stand will be in 1 hour shifts from 10.00-16.00 on both days. We invite you to contribute to between 1 and 3 non-consecutive shifts on either or both days, depending on your availability and the number of volunteers.

This is an opportunity to meet and work with other colleagues from across LCCOS, to broaden your experience of providing customer service and develop or enhance your professional skills.

To get involved, with consent from your line manager, please sign up by Friday 14 June and we’ll come back to you to finalise your contribution.

Sign up to contribute to the UCL Open Day LCCOS welcome stand

If you have any questions, please contact Angela Young angela.young@ucl.ac.uk

Contributed by Peter Dennison, June Hedges, Angela Young

Diversifying reading lists: Economics project

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 26 April 2024

Recent work by the Economics department ‘How diverse is your reading list? An analysis of BSc Economics curriculum’ has been published on the UCL Education Conference blog.

Economics approached the Library for help extracting data from ReadingLists@UCL to undertake a quantitative analysis of the diversity of their undergraduate reading lists.  They used the bibliographic data to look at the authors’ gender, ethnicity and geographic location, and discovered a ‘significant lack of diversity’ in their lists. After taking steps to diversify a reading list they also identified additional actions to expand this work.

For LCCOS this shows how Library teams (Subject Liaison and ReadingLists@UCL) can help support a department, working together to fulfil a novel request. It also showcases one of the ways the data in ReadingLists@UCL can be utilised to support faculty research or pedagogy.

• If you are interested in Liberating the Curriculum or other diversifying work, do visit the newly announced UCL Library Liberating the Collections webpages
• The ReadingLists@UCL Guide: Liberating the Curriculum page supports teaching staff to develop more inclusive reading lists
• And for more on reading lists see our ReadingLists@UCL webpages.

Library Liberating the Collections website launched

By Rozz Evans, on 23 April 2024

The Library Liberating the Collections (LLTC) Group are delighted to announce that we have just published some web pages about our work and the projects and issues we are engaging with in relation to improving the inclusivity and diversity of our collections.

The group formed in July 2020 to bring together and oversee strands of activity in the EDI space specific to our library collections.  Our focus is on assessing where collection development and management over the 200 years of UCL’s history reflect (and in some cases confirm) inherent bias and structural inequalities in the university and in society; and making changes to our processes and decision making to address the impact of this.

Our work aligns to the LCCOS Strategy Accessible Collections theme, specifically the goals around a) improving our local discovery and access systems for a better user experience when engaging with UCL collections and b) continuing to invest in the inclusivity of our physical and digital collections.

We have an action plan which is an agreed strategic set of actions intended to open up the collections, ensuring that works by under-represented authors on race, sexuality, gender and disability are more visible and promoted within UCL and to external communities.

We hope that the website will not only be a way to acknowledge and be transparent about some of the issues we are dealing with but also to celebrate our progress and, most importantly, demonstrate our commitment to this area of work and ensure opportunities for dialogue and engagement.