The Director’s View: UCL Library Services Strategy

On Friday 9 September, the Library received 3 international visitors – from University Libraries in Auckland (New Zealand) and Melbourne (Australia). They visited because the work of the Library in UCL is increasingly well known there, and they wanted to see how things are done.

In one of the sessions, I gave an overview of progress in implementing the Library Strategy and that presentation can be seen in UCL Discovery here. In the presentation, I looked at the 6 Key Performance Areas (KPAs) and illustrated how the Library was delivering on that agenda to support our users and UCL 2034.

One of the key performance areas is, of course, the User Experience. Here, I looked at all the scores which the Library has gained in external surveys, notably the NSS. The 2016 NSS scores were very good for the Library, with a satisfaction rate of 88%, the second highest score in the NSS for UCL in the 23 questions asked. In the Staff, Equality and Diversity KPA, I showed the Highly Commended citation for the Leadership Team in the 2016 THELMA Awards. For Finance, Management Information and Value for Money, we looked at SCONUL benchmark statistics to see how UCL fares compared to other Russell Group universities. For KPA4, Systems and Processes, we looked at our estates work and how we are linking our new learning spaces to increases in UCL student numbers. KPA5, on Sustainable Estate, looked at our plans for UCL Special Collections. The final KPA, Communications, Open Access and Outreach, noted the success of UCL Press and celebrated the Library’s new work in communications activity.

At the end of the presentation, I evaluated the Library’s progress to date as we are now halfway through the Library’s strategy period. The Implementation Plans, which underpin the Strategy, contain 90 Action Lines which are regularly reviewed by the Leadership Team. At our last meeting, we recorded that 8 of the Actions had been completed, 65 were healthy and ongoing (and so marked Green), 8 were awaiting development (Amber) and none had failed (Red); there are also 8 new Actions which have recently been added to the Plans. These figures are good, but in the remaining 18-24 months of the Strategy period the emphasis must be on turning Green Actions into Completed Actions. That is the sign of success.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services