LILAC is an annual conference organised by CILIP’s Information Literacy Group, “aimed at librarians and information professionals who teach information literacy skills, are interested in digital literacies and want to improve the information seeking and evaluation skills of all our library users whoever they may be”. Information Literacy (IL) skills underpin the training I deliver here at the UCL Institute of Neurology, so I’ve been hoping to attend LILAC for quite a while. For 2016, the LILAC team chose not to set any explicit themes for the conference, instead inviting papers covering any aspect of IL but asking authors to emphasise their innovative practice or research – this was particularly attractive to me and I was looking forward to presentations full of practical ideas.

LILAC runs over three days and, to be honest, it offers far too much for one person to take in. It’s very well-organised but, with over 70 parallel sessions, it really is impossible to attend everything and you have to choose the sessions that are closest to your interests and hope for the best, while following the conference hashtag (#lilac16) for an insight into what else is going on. If you decide to check out that twitter hashtag, be warned, it turns out that IL librarians like to tweet, a lot.

Luckily, I’ll be able to catch up on the sessions I missed when the presentations appear on the LILAC website (and it’s worth checking out some of the content from previous years too) but, for now, here’s a brief overview of ‘My LILAC’. If anything here takes your interest, please feel free to ask me for more details.

First, let’s get the three keynotes out of the way, they were all interesting even though I was most keen to hear about the practical stuff, in the parallel sessions. Day 1 saw Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley talking about the use of games for teaching IL skills. This was hugely entertaining, very noisy and slightly chaotic. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the techniques would work for me, though doubtless they are very useful for anyone who needs to engage large groups of students in a lecture theatre setting. On Day 2, Char Booth was the talk of the coffee queue having inspired everyone with a talk about reflection, generally and in IL teaching – for more information have a look at Char’s slideshare. The keynote for Day 3 was James Clay speaking about Digital Capability which he summarised as “being able to live, work & learn in a digital world” – there is a Jisc project site for this initiative.

The bulk of my time was spent flitting between parallel sessions, many of which were full of practical ideas and some of which enjoyed an excellent view of the O’Brien Centre for Science. The sessions I chose included: a pair of librarians from Colorado who described how they build assessment into their teaching sessions; a librarian from a small health library who uses paper-based tasks to focus students’ attention before getting into hands-on PC work; a librarian from City who is gathering researcher case studies, hoping to map their needs onto the content of IL sessions; a librarian from Sussex who is harnessing the power of 6 second vines to promote IL sessions; a pair of librarians from Coventry who are shifting the focus of their IL sessions by reducing the ‘How to’ elements and building in more conceptual underpinnings; researchers from Brunel & Robert Gordon who are studying researchers’ use of social media and how libraries can help to integrate it into the research workflow; a Manchester-based librarian who detailed his tactics for communicating IL principles to international students; two librarians from Birmingham who deliver IL to distance learners and offered a wealth of do & don’t advice (they also proved they can engage an audience face-to-face by giving us popcorn).

Just a couple of the parallel sessions were not such useful choices, for me. While it was interesting to hear a Canadian librarian describing how her team has applied the ACRL IL framework, it didn’t feel like something I could apply at one small site. A group of librarians from New York described a huge ethnographic study of users’ needs they have been undertaking. To be fair, their findings are still being analysed but their setting seemed too different to mine for me to draw direct lessons. Perhaps UCL needs its own librarian-anthropologist?

As well as the business side of the conference I had chance to explore the University College Dublin campus (www.ucd.ie). I hear that some people find the campus, on the outskirts of Dublin, a bit grim but I loved it – a lake, lots of leafy walkways (perfect for spotting birds while getting lost on the way back to my accommodation) and some strong architecture, old and new (including lots and lots of concrete which, I’m told, is not popular with everyone!). There were a couple of social events in the evenings, with librarians from all over the world getting together at two Dublin landmarks: the Chester Beatty Library and the hugely impressive Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

New Student Centre

Work to prepare the new Student Centre site is under way.  On the old ‘Beach site,’ previously housing the welfare cabins, contractors are currently working to clear the ground of concrete and other large obstructions.

Demolition of the Node to the rear of the Bloomsbury Theatre is expected to commence on March 31^st.  This work is scheduled to take 10-12 weeks.  Contractors will be using the technique of core-drilling to minimise disruption to surrounding buildings.

Working hours on site will be 8am – 6pm approximately.

Pedestrian access – Gordon Street

Pedestrians will still be able to use the Gordon Street entrance/exit during the Node demolition (although one side of the pavement will not be in use).

Wilkins Terrace project

The steelworks and concrete pouring are continuing on the new terrace on the site of the old ‘Physics Yard’ and further works on service Tunnel A are taking place.

Works during the Easter break (March 25^th – 30^th)

The Easter break will see an increase in the construction activities taking place on both sites, and an increase in noise experienced in reading rooms in the Main Library and in the Roof Garden Student Hub, both of which are open during the Easter break.

Students planning to use the Main Library for quiet study over Easter will be pleased to know that the Science Library and Cruciform Hub will also be opening to students over Easter.  Situated away from the construction works these libraries offer alternative quiet study rooms. The SSEES Library will also be open on March 29th and 30^th.

Earlier this month I attended a remarkable conference at the British Library. For the first time, academics and representatives of the publishing industry in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa were brought together to discuss their experience of producing, distributing and accessing academic books. The conference, on 7th and 8th March, was part of the Academic Book of the Future project, in which UCL is involved, and was funded by the AHRC and the British Library.

The two days were of great potential use both in trying to understand how to expand our range of resources from the Global South and in ensuring that the resources we produce here are accessible throughout the world. A detailed account of the whole conference has been created from tweets by delegates. At the risk of oversimplifying, I will try to summarise here just the main messages in the following areas: publishing, access, and digitisation:

Publishing

Academic publishing in the south is clearly facing numerous problems, starting with a lack of investment in education and a lack of training in academic writing, editing and publishing. Data on the publishing industry is patchy and multinationals dominate the markets, with pressure on academics to publish abroad and with big name publishers rather than at home. Censorship and civil unrest in some countries can stifle academic work in the social sciences and some publishing markets (Syria, Libya, Iraq, Sudan) do not function, although the market in Iran is now opening up. E-books are published in “walled gardens” on incompatible platforms, and print is still the dominant medium. The language of publication can be a political issue, with local languages not considered acceptable. Piracy is a big problem and a disincentive to multinational companies to license content. Open access publishing was described as a “doubtful panacea”, privileging the few readers with good Internet access and  institutions with technical knowledge, but disadvantaging authors – presumably because they can’t pay Gold OA fees. Academics in the south need to be more involved in peer review. There was some self-criticism and a desire for southern publishers to be better at promotion, and for southern universities to collaborate in negotiations on price. Differential pricing for different countries would be helpful but is unusual. There was an emphasis on the need to involve the public outside universities. One example of this from India was the vibrant Bengali blogosphere focusing on cultural debate.

Access

Access both to print and to the Internet is very restricted, and the mobile phone is the technology with by far the greatest reach. Even in South Africa the example was given of an article taking four hours to download. Books and journals published in the North were too expensive, and the example was given of a £50 book costing a month’s wages in Africa, although locally published versions of the same title were seen as less desirable. Multinational publishers were criticised for buying archives and local collections and them putting them behind paywalls, making them inaccessible in their country of origin. When material is published in local languages there are few translations.

Digitisation

Like open access, digitisation was presented as potentially useful but problematic. One audience member pointed out that it can be seen as theft, and there was general agreement. Funding from external sources can be short term, and can distort the value of local collections. Shamil Jeppie from the University of Cape Town, talking about his work with the Timbuktu manuscripts, pointed out that digitisation cannot capture the tactile physical nature of this material or help with problems like dating mss. Digitisation was just a gateway, although essential to capture vulnerable collections. He reminded us of what is being lost currently in Iraq and Syria. Dr Satti, the Director of the National Library of Sudan, pointed out that the selection of content for digital projects could be divisive in culturally diverse societies if the processes were not participatory and transparent. A cultural revolution was needed to deal with the debates over freedom and state control generated by the rise of digital technologies. Again lack of technical infrastructure was a problem. It was not possible to know what collections had been digitised in India because they were not accessible. Digital tools and metadata schema for local languages did not exist. No Indian language has a working digital lexicon for digitised content. On the positive side, Tanzania is about to have the first official Trusted Digital Repository in Africa.

Among all the problems summarised above there were many positive moments and some memorable ones too. Sukanta Chaudhuri used his keynote to advocate an alternative knowledge order, with wider social sharing of knowledge, breaking down institutional barriers and involving amateur scholars as well as academics. More south-south collaboration was essential. He also asked that all digitised content that is out of copyright should be made available free of charge.

On a practical level the importance of recognising the ubiquity of the (not necessarily smart) mobile phone was stressed, with a need for small packages of content that are easy to download. Simple, static websites were recommended for the same reason.

Examples of good practice include the African Books Collective, which distributes African writing from 149 publishers in 24 countries. It is based in Oxford but is managed by a consortium of African publishers. The Knowledge Unlatched model was also presented as a possible model for collaborative publishing in the south.

Finally, among many highlights there were two particularly memorable moments. The first, to universal hilarity, was when Sukanta Chaudhuri, from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, accidentally referred to the British Library as the British Empire. Everyone laughed, including the British Library curators in the audience.

The second memorable moment was when Sari Hanafi, Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut, held up a copy of his book on Timbuktu. It was the British Library’s copy. He didn’t have a copy of his own, as the publishers (Routledge) either could not or would not ship to Beirut. That seemed to symbolise the gulf between the north and the south.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Sarah noted in her post under this heading last month, these meetings are convened by UCL Communications and Marketing (CAM) and involve a discussion of the key news and communications issues for UCL.
Below are some highlights from the meeting on 9th March

 

Roundup of 3 key UCL stories in the news

Grey Hair Gene

 

Why We Post

 

EU Referendum

The Provost’s View

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key messages
Clare Bowerman & Melissa Bradshaw talked about developing a clear set of messages as an objective of Enabler F in the UCL 2034 strategy, which is concerned with how we at UCL communicate and engage effectively with the world. There are 6 principal themes and you can find out more here. The speakers stressed that we are all advocates so take a look at the messages  and the accompanying Powerpoint presentation.
Competition & Markets Guidance
Katie Grocott talked about this guidance which was published in March 2015 to help UK HE providers understand their responsibilities under consumer protection law, and applies to the relationship between HE providers and prospective and current undergraduate students. Although it is not law she stressed that information provision, terms & conditions and complaint handling should be totally fair and transparent. The 2017 undergraduate prospectus has just been published with this in mind, and costs, fees, funding, and extra costs for certain subjects have been left out in case they change.However, this is where departments come in as they can include this information on their websites and update as necessary. The last thing that she asked all to be mindful of is not including anything in videos which may date. More information can be found here and Dr Edel Mahony in The Registrar’s Office can advise further.
Digital Communications
Two members of the Digital Transformation Governance Group chaired by Rex Knight discussed what is happening in their respective areas, Communications and Marketing (CAM) and Information Services Division (ISD). Silva, the system we use to manage our websites, is being replaced by something called Drupal, and more on the project can be found at the Content Management System website. The new system is thought to be more usable, shareable, and sociable, compared to the old clunky system. UCL’s Digital Presence team (formerly Web & Mobile Services) within ISD advises on websites and manages blogs, wikis and UCL GO which is being heavily invested in. They have undergone an extensive requirements- gathering exercise and a business analysis was prepared in Summer 2015. Then in Autumn 2015 a Content Management System questionnaire was send to members of the Comms Forum, IT managers and all Silvs editors. They are keen to hear user stories which are then prioritised and added to the product backlog for building the new system and hope to have many more sites using Drupal by July 2016.

UCL Festival of Culture

The UCL Festival of the Arts has run for several years, but this year it has been renamed UCL Festival of Culture after a review carried out by Catherine Thomson who joined UCL in 2015 as Joint Faculty Communications Manager for Arts &Humanities (AH) UCL Social &Historical Sciences (SHS) & UCL School of Slavonic &East European Studies (SSEES). Catherine said that traditionally a call went out to academics asking if they wanted to share their research but this time around they are looking at aligning it more closely with the UCL 2034 strategy.  Morning events will be led by PhD students and aimed at school groups, and there will be a series of short sessions, or “Culture Nuts”. The Festival will run 23-27 May and a programme will be available in print and online in April.

 

We are delighted to announce that four members of UCL Library Services staff were nominated and featured in a special booklet celebrating and recognising women at UCL who inspire those they work with. Of these, Angela Young, Information Skills Trainer at the Royal Free Hospital Medical Library, was selected to be featured in the exhibition Women at UCL: Presence and Absence, to mark International Women’s Day 2016.

As some of you may know, this exhibition was opened by the Provost on 9^th March and is currently on show in the North Cloisters. The exhibition features 24 inspiring UCL women who were selected from around 200 nominations. It also features material from the UCL Archives exploring women’s presence and absence from UCL. Nominations were invited from UCL staff and students for women at UCL who have inspired or encouraged them, or made them think differently about their work and study.

Angela Young , Information Skills Trainer (Royal Free Hospital Medical Library), was one of the 24 inspirational women from across UCL selected to feature in the main exhibition. Angela was nominated by colleagues who have been inspired by her innovative approach to designing and delivering information skills training, including leading innovation sharing events across UCL Library Services, by the passion she has for her work, the support and mentoring she provides to staff members and by her demonstration that it is possible to have both a successful career and a family life by working flexibly to achieve her goals.

 

Three additional colleagues were nominated for how they have inspired their colleagues and are also profiled in the booklet:

Nazlin Bhimani, Research Support and Special Collections Librarian (Institute of Education Library) was nominated for her innovation and her infectious passion for using emerging technologies to promote historical collections and placing them in the research arena.

Rachel Nelligan, Head of Issue Desk (Main Library) was nominated for her managerial skills, exhibiting care, encouragement and support towards colleagues.

Breege Whiten, Acting Head of Issue Desk Services, was nominated for her role as a supportive and inspirational manager and for being a role model, always striving to improve services and encouraging staff to develop their skills and career.

 

Congratulations to Angela, Nazlin, Rachel and Breege for their outstanding contribution to the work of UCL Library Services, as sources of inspiration for colleagues and students. We encourage you to read the booklet, where you can see the full text nominations for each of the entries, and to visit the exhibition which is open until 31^st March.

 

Betsy Anagnostelis, Librarian, Royal Free Hospital Medical Library & Joint Academic Support Manager: Biomedicine

Ben Meunier, Assistant Director, Public Services

Colleagues,

The Digital Libraries Team will be undertaking a large AUP headings project which unfortunately cannot be completed without an Aleph outage this has been scheduled for 11^th-13^th April.

The reason for this piece of work is as follows:

The names and subjects in UCL’s catalogue are kept consistent and unambiguous by using forms of names maintained by the Library of Congress and National Library of Medicine, e.g.:

• All Shakespeare’s works are findable under “Shakespeare, William,1564-1616.”
• Books about the honey bee or Apis mellifera can be found under “Honeybee.”

Most academic libraries in the UK and US – including RLUK and OCLC members- use the same standards of authority control. We receive data for new names and subjects from a supplier, but we need to upgrade this to cope when names and subject terminology change. This is important for Explore searching, sharing our records with partners, and re-using our data in the future.

In practice, this will mean that there will be no Aleph at all between 11^th – 13^th April including self-service workstations, issue desk clients however book loans and returns will be possible via offline circulation

 More details on using offline circulation are available on LibNet

 The ‘AUP’ project is complex, also involving our ISD, the Digital Libraries team and various other members of Public and Support Services staff. This has meant a lot of negotiation in terms of people’s time and availability.

We hope the confirmed dates don’t cause too much inconvenience either for colleagues or of course for our users. We’ll ensure that the outage is publicised widely between now and the start of the April transition window.

Here’s a summary of how the Aleph outage will affect our services:

• Circulation services e.g. book loans and returns only possible via offline circulation
• Self-service: not available
• No items will be due between 11^th – 13^th April
• Membership: No registration of new members or renewals of accounts for existing members will be possible
• Explore: No My Account sign-in, no renewals or reservation requests, no live item availability information (locations will be available in the Details tab otherwise Copac has holdings and locations information as per the most recent record upload)
• Primo Central: some resources that are included in Primo Central require authentication for searching off-site these will inaccessible
• Interlibrary loans: not available
• Room bookings: not available
• Change PIN: not available
• All non-Aleph aspects of the Explore service such as e-resource and Digital Collections record searching and retrieval should not be affected but should be considered at risk

We hope to restore a full service by Thursday 14^th April. However, systems should be considered at risk for part of the day.

Student Barometer/International Student Barometer Autumn 2015

International and Domestic Students combined

The Autumn 2015 results from the Student Barometer/International Student Barometer have arrived.

These results are one of the most important sources of information that UCL has about the level of satisfaction from our students with their experience in UCL. In the SB/ISB there are two questions which relate particularly to the Library: Online library and Physical library.

Learning satisfaction: Autumn 2015	UCL	UK	Russell Group	UK ranking /19	RG ranking /6
Online library	94%	93%	93%	2	2
Physical library	86%	91%	91%	18	6

The Autumn 2015 scores reveal another good performance by Library Services. The Online library, supported by additional funding from UCL, attracts satisfaction scores of 94%, placing it in second place in the UK ranking. This is another fantastic result. For the digital library, UCL’s scores in 2014 were – 94.5% (Summer) and 93.2% (Autumn). The Summer 2015 score was 94%.

But the scores for the Physical library also show a marked improvement, a testament to the determination in the Library continuously to improve the number and quality of learning spaces we provide. The Autumn 2015 satisfaction rating was 86% and this is a marked improvement on recent scores. The 2014 ISB/SB showed satisfaction rates with the Physical library of 80.3% (Summer) and 83.5% (Autumn). The UCL Summer 2015 score was 80%. Of course, the autumn 2015 score needs to be higher – at least 91% (like the Russell Group average). But the trajectory is in the right direction.

Congratulations to everyone concerned who has contributed to these Autumn 2015 SB/ISB scores. They underline the Library’s commitment to continuous improvement, supported by the Library Strategy.

 

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

On 8 February, my SSEES Library colleague Vladimir Smith Mesa and I attended the launch of RaceMatters@UCL, a new forum to encourage networking, peer support, sharing ideas, organising events, and positively influencing policy and practice on race equality at UCL.  The event was organised by the HR Equalities and Diversity Team.

Impetus for the establishment of the network was also provided by UCL being one of only eight higher education institution to receive the Race Equality Charter Bronze Award, out of 21 applicants, in August 2015.  The Race Equality Charter is a national scheme “aimed at improving the representation, progression and success of ethnic minority staff and students in higher education”.  It is run by the Equality Challenge Unit, the advisory body which also oversees the Athena Swan Charter for the advancement of gender equality of which UCL has been an award holder since 2006.

Participation in the scheme requires each institution to analyse its key areas of activity and then develop and put into place a comprehensive 3-year action plan, with input from both staff and students. The renewal of the award depends on successful implementation of the action plan.

The Award was introduced by Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu of the UCL School of Pharmacy, who gave a summary of possible actions which can be implemented and recounted her personal experience of the obstacles and misconceptions in higher education she faced as a Black & Minority Ethnic (BME) student and later academic.

Possible areas and actions include:

1. Staff

• Mainstream equality and diversity issues into the appraisal process at all levels, not only senior
• Sponsorship programme
• More transparency in senior appointments
• Recruitment panels to be more diverse
• Improve chances of promotion for professional services staff and establish ‘job families’

2. Students

• Foundation courses offered to BME students to counteract the trend of not receiving university offers with same A-level grades as white students (same courses are also offered to white students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds)
• Relevance of curriculum (this point was raised in the panel discussion ‘Why isn’t my professor black?’ hosted by UCL in March 2014, and by Dr Nathaniel Coleman)
• Anonymous marking to avoid discrimination
• Scholarships to encourage BME doctoral students

The lecture of the guest speaker Dr Nicola Rollock, from Birmingham University, was entitled “Beyond Racial Gesture Politics: moving toward race equity in higher education”.

An important point made by Dr Rollock is that this is not only a matter for BME students and staff but concerns all sections of the higher education community, including white students and staff.  It requires us all to participate, contribute and examine our identities.

Dr Rollock ended her lecture with an appeal to “fight for race equity, not only equality” which takes into account the different requirements to succeed and recognise possible barriers.

In the subsequent Q&A session, Vladimir suggested the introduction of cultural awareness training for all UCL staff, given the global nature of the institution.

Since attending the RaceMatters@UCL launch, Vladimir has joined the UCL Race Equality Steering Group.

The issue of making the curriculum more inclusive to reflect representation and  viewpoints of traditionally marginalised groups is starting to be addressed by the initiative ‘Liberating the Curriculum’ as described in Lesley Pitman’s post Liberating the Curriculum.

 

Useful links:

UCL Equalities and Diversity

Equality Challenge Unit

From March 18^th the new staff entrance for the Science Library, which will be located on Darwin Walk, just around the corner from the current entrance, will be ready to use. Please note that the current staff entrance will cease to be operational from March 18th.

The new Darwin Walk staff entrance will allow refurbishment works to start in the area of the Help Point/old staff entrance, creating a new Records Office and Stores Office space.

Also worth noting is that there will be a new location for the Science Library staff flexi clock; on the pillar near the pods in the Learning Lab.

Best wishes,

Sarah

Background

The three main Surveys from which Library Services can extract Library information are the Student Barometer, the National Student Survey and the Sconul Return.

Headline results for the recent collection period are as follows:

The Student Barometer (autumn 2014 – Oct-Dec. All Students)

On-line Library – This has seen a consistently high return of approximately 93% satisfaction for the last 4 years with a similar trend for the study group categories (Post Graduate Research/Taught and Undergraduates) which average 94% and nearly all faculties greater than 90%. The only exception is Laws (88%).

Physical Library – UCL 84% satisfaction; The Russell Group average 89%.

However in terms of the study groups PGR’S (Post Graduate Research) 88% Satisfied, UG’s (Undergraduates) 85% with PGT’s (Post graduate Taught) 80%.

Most faculties are also satisfied with rates over 80%, with only Laws and Social & Historical Sciences less than 80%.

Learning Spaces – have a similar result for study groups: PGR’s 81%, UG’s 79% and PGT’s 66%.

The Science faculties are evidently the most satisfied with scores of 80% and over.  

The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment are the most dissatisfied (62%).

SB Comments

The most positive comments referred to staff (42%). Not surprisingly, space issues and IT equipment were the biggest student concerns.

The National Students Survey (January 2015 – April 2015: Final Year Students)

The main interest for the Library is Question 16:

The library resources are good enough for my needs.

UCL Library Services 88% satisfied, just under the Russell group average of 90%. Oxford (97%), Cambridge (97%) and Imperial (96%) are the top three.

The overall satisfaction rating for UCL is 83%, a fall of 3% from the previous year and for the sector, this is 86%.

The majority of the faculties are satisfied with the Library, with satisfaction ratings above 80% and the Built Environment and Social & Historical Sciences returned a satisfaction rate of 79%.

For the categories (age; ethnicity ; domicile);  levels of satisfaction are generally at 88% with a notable improvement in the BME’s (Black & Minority Ethnic) satisfaction rating, which has gone from 83% to 88% as compared to the previous year.

However, within the disability categories, specific learning difficulty fell by 6% from 88%.

NSS Comments

From the sample, 50% of students returned negative comments regarding Space issues (essentially the lack of space available). PC/Printer issues (18%) followed this. Positive comments were again attributable to the quality of the service offered by Library staff.

 

Sconul 14/15 – Strategic Data Set

The most significant statistic from this return was the growth in student numbers to 30,419 (FTE), which is well above most of our competitors with only Manchester higher at 35,370 FTE.

The 19% UCL student increase does include the IOE merger and we are now well above the Russell group average of 19,718 (FTE) students.

The full data set is expected from Sconul in July (2016).

 

Other interesting statistics:

The number of separate libraries and learning facilities managed by the Library is 21.

The total annual visits for 14/15 is 2.3m (the Russell group average is 1.7m).

Library Public Engagement undertook 134 public events in 2014/15.

Results of the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2015:

There is adequate provision of Library Services?               88%   (UCL)  86% (Sector)

Overall satisfaction                                                                    81%   (UCL)  82% (Sector)

 

CONCLUSIONS

Although austerity measures and the effects of a growing student population do present a challenge, the Library continues to add value and is responsive towards mitigating problems which might lie ahead.

UCL Library Services has seen a large rise in article and e-book requests that correlates to the generous Library expenditure on material resources, which rival Oxford and Cambridge. This expenditure is still a substantial proportion of the Library budget (35%) so there is little surprise at the impressive online satisfaction results for the online library.

The funds received from central UCL for the Library are less than 2% of the total institutional expenditure (£1.1 billion) and clearly demonstrate value for money when measured against Library outputs.

Lack of space also becomes a factor as evidenced in the Surveys above, but the Library has been instrumental in addressing the problem.

The Sustainable Estate KPA in the Library Strategy describes how we are working to improve our learning space provision across Library Services, and Library Services is actively involved in the following major projects:

UCL Senate House Hub: 150 study spaces, opened in March 2015

Research Grid: over 70 study seats for graduate students now open in the UCL Science Library

New Student Centre: 1,000 additional study spaces

UCL East: 800 learning spaces

Students express satisfaction with staffed services, which is a testament to the Library staff who are performing well under difficult circumstances. Thank you for your help and please do continue to enhance the reputation of the UCL family of libraries that is paying dividends. Let us see if we can get the NSS satisfaction rate back up to at least 90%!

 

Andy POW

Head of Finance, KPA Leader Finance & Management Information

Library Services