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News for colleagues within the LCCOS department.
By Alison Fox, on 17 April 2024
We are delighted to present a brand new video celebrating the work of UCL Press to celebrate the Press’ 10 millionth open access download. Join our CEO, Dr Paul Ayris, and a variety of our authors to find out what it’s like to publish with us.
By Alison Fox, on 15 April 2024
UCL Press, the UK’s first fully Open Access University Press, has announced that its open access books and journals have been downloaded more than ten million times around the world.
UCL Press’s pioneering publishing programme spans many of the major academic disciplines, from history to philosophy and the sciences to anthropology. The Press has published 339 books that have been downloaded more than 8.7 million times, whilst its 14 journals have attracted more than 2.6 million downloads.
Its publications – which feature monographs, edited collections, academic journals and textbooks – have reached readers in 242 countries and territories worldwide, providing access to vital academic research to readers in the Global South and beyond.
The ten millionth download was the journal article A short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiations by Mark A. Maslin, John Lang and Fiona Harvey, which appeared in the pioneering open science journal UCL Open: Environment.
The most popular title in the UCL Press list continues to be How the World Changed Social Media by UCL Professor of Anthropology Daniel Miller and a collective of eight other global anthropologists. The first book in the hugely popular 11-book Why We Post series, it has been downloaded an astonishing 828,129 times since it was published by UCL Press in early 2016, and it has been translated into a variety of languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Portuguese and Italian.
Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost at UCL LCCOS (Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science), commented: ‘Started in 2015, UCL Press continues to get better and better. 10,000,000 downloads and consultations underline the transformative effect that Open Access can have, particularly in the OA monograph space. UCL is proud to be developing a sustainable model for institutional OA publishing in Europe.’
Lara Speicher, Head of Publishing at UCL Press, said: ‘It is an immense achievement to have achieved 10 million downloads for UCL Press’s publications and it is thanks to the combined contributions of our incredibly talented and forward-thinking authors who have embraced the OA model, the original vision of senior leaders at UCL to start the Press in the first place and to provide ongoing support and encouragement, and last but not least, the dedication, skill and commitment of the UCL Press team who work hard behind the scenes every day to bring UCL Press’s outputs to the world.’
By Benjamin Meunier, on 23 March 2023
Earlier in Term 2, a number of colleagues from across Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science gathered to explore sustainability in the department. I wanted to share the video from the event, which has been niftily organised into chapters by Meghan Flight in the LCCOS Comms (I hasten to add that the video has been available for some time, but I have been tardy in putting together this short write-up!).
The session opened with a presentation from Max Vidotto (Sustainable UCL Business Partner for LCCOS), followed by talks from Sarah Lawson (Queen Square Library) on sustainable action from a site library point of view, and Collette Lawrence (LCCOS Facilities & Projects) on the LCCOS Sustainability Reference Guide. I thoroughly enjoyed the interesting presentations and the engaged interactive parts of the meeting, which I compered as chair of the Sustainability Committee with support from Meghan and Rowena on the Q&A session. What came across in the event was that there is a significant interest in sustainability and a lot of creative ideas from colleagues on how we can make LCCOS even more environmentally responsible. I hope that this will be the first of a series of events, which might become an annual occurrence.
As I have written about previously (in 2022, 2021, 2020, – you get the idea!), I am very proud of our achievements in the sustainability arena over the years. We are one of the best performing departments in UCL and I would argue one of the most active academic library services in the UK when it comes to sustainability. It has been an absolute privilege coordinating some of the work, and mostly keeping abreast of the committed efforts of Green Champions across the department. Within LCCOS, colleagues in the museums and the Theatre are initiating Green Impact in new areas, and I am sure there will be more good practice developing over the coming months and years.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Michelle Wake for agreeing to take the Chair of the LCCOS Sustainability Committee, with effect from my departure from UCL (tomorrow).
All the best in your endeavours to make LCCOS a beacon for sustainable libraries!
By Tom Beauchamp, on 4 January 2023
ISD has advised that the Shibboleth authentication route to log into Alma will no longer be available from Thursday 5 January 2023, as it has been replaced by Microsoft Azure AD, as used when logging into Explore or accessing your UCL email account (see blog post Change to Logging Into Alma, 15 August 2022). This means that you will need to update any old Alma bookmarks to the new short URL.
By Paul Ayris, on 27 September 2022
For the start of the academic year, the UCL Office for Open Science has prepared two outputs which can be used for training. These will be of interest to those starting on their Open Science/Scholarship journey and for early career researchers.
The first is a video, produced with funding from Research England, which introduces the concept of Open Science/Scholarship to those new to the idea. It lasts for some 40 minutes and describes the 8 pillars of Open Science, by which the concept of Openness is defined in Europe. The video can be seen on our Open Science web pages. Each section is introduced by a member of UCL staff. At the end of the video is a short Quiz, which we invite all viewers to take, to test their knowledge and understanding of Open Science/Scholarship. The Quiz returns a score for you at the end of the session, which is confidential to the individual viewer. I encourage you to watch the video and then to take the Quiz as part of your in-house training. The whole session would take just 40 minutes.
The second resource which the UCL Office for Open Science is providing is a Guide to Open Science/Scholarship for early career researchers. It has been produced with input and a scholarly Preface from the UCL Doctoral School. The Guide is closely based on a French original, which has been adapted with permission to suit the UK Higher Education sector. It is a remarkably clear introduction, easy to grasp by research students and early career researchers, librarians and Professional Services staff, at whom it is aimed.
Finally, today (27 September) was the day I helped deliver chapter 38 of the series Focus on Open Science webinars, once again with funding from the Cities Programme from UCL Global Engagement.
Today’s webinar was conducted in partnership with the University of Nanterre in Paris. I spoke for 20 minutes about the UCL Office for Open Science and how we co-ordinate activity in UCL across all 8 pillars of Open Science. The extended Q&A session at the end of the day offered many questions on the undoubted success of UCL Press, which I gave as an exemplar of change at a European level. The University of Lorraine is converting its traditional Press into an OA Press. I look forward to exchanges with them on Best Practice in OA publishing as their work progresses.
I wish all my colleagues in LCCOS (Library, Culture, Collections, and Open Science) the best at the start of the new academic session. I am proud and privileged to be here and working with you all.
Paul Ayris
Pro-Vice-Provost LCCOS
By Joanna C Baines, on 22 August 2022
Over the next few weeks we will be posting updates about our steps to prepare for the opening of our service at One Pool Street on the new UCL East Campus. Today we’re taking a look at Special Collections’ presence and projects they’ve been working on.
Photograph of UCL East under construction, Spring 2022. Pool Street is visible on the left of the river with Marshgate on the right.
Initially Special Collections will have two full-time members of staff based at UCL East: myself (Academic Liaison Librarian / Archivist) and Anna Fineman (Outreach Programme Manager). I am leading all academic teaching and related projects at East; Anna is expanding and developing our brilliant Outreach programme, working with communities in the four neighbouring boroughs to campus (Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest). We’re currently recruiting for an additional Conservator and a Teaching and Collections Assistant who will also be based at Stratford.
Special Collections is heavily involved in the new Public History MA which begins at Pool Street this autumn; we’re leading sessions, developing group projects for students to work on and supporting all areas of delivery of this course. It’s a really exciting degree, exploring history in non-academic contexts and we’re ready to learn as much from the students and activities as we can.
A big part of our presence at UCL East will be engaging with our collections in lots of innovative ways, and getting to know the material we hold is crucial. We’re currently identifying items that will likely be used in teaching and outreach and working with our brilliant conservation and digitisation teams to get everything as ready as we can. We’re also meeting staff working in the new spaces at Pool Street (the Urban Room and Memory Workshop) and Marshgate (Culture Lab) to figure out logistics and opening projects.
UCL East is a big melting pot of academic ideas and departments – especially for Special Collections who will be based in spaces led by the new School for Creative and Cultural Industries (SCCI). I am spending a lot of time meeting academics to talk about how Special Collections can support the many new courses starting at East over the next few years – it’s really exciting starting from the ground up, even if it does involve a big spreadsheet to track it all! Anna is also collaborating with our East Bank partners, building on the incredible work the Outreach team has already been doing at East for a while.
If there’s anything you’d like to know about or would like to collaborate with Special Collections with, please do get in touch! We’re always happy to hear from you.
Photograph of One Pool Street under construction
By simon.bralee.15, on 30 May 2022
Updates about comms from across Library Services.
We are continuing to deliver the ”locally-delivered, centrally-coordinated communications model” through our annual communications calendar and sub groups as outlined in the Library comms strategy.
Please check the Library comms calendar and get in touch if there is anything coming up in your sections over summer.
We will make a call for Term 1 2022-23 in late August.
Library Services have been promoting resources to help students completing exams and final projects. We’ve highlighted the following resources on social media:
A big thank you to everyone across Library Services who was involved in this work.
During the assessments period Library Services and Student Support and Wellbeing Team have been trialling a weekly social media campaign highlighting services and resources to help students study successfully while they are at UCL. We are reviewing whether to continue into Term 1 next year.
The Campaigns Group are organising a campaign to run across all NHS site libraries and libraries who support NHS users.
UCL Psychology student Kevin Halil reviewed three Library sites: the Student Centre, the Main Library and IOE Library. (Thanks to UCL’s social media team for organising this).
Three sub-groups help coordinate comms activities across Library Services.
(Based on responses from 15 accounts)
Sadly the invasion of Ukraine was on everyone’s mind last term. The SSEES Library quickly created a guide of resources to help people discover and access reliable information about the ongoing crisis. This shows the importance of Libraries for members of the UCL community and beyond.
Want to learn more about the tensions between Russia & Ukraine? We have one of the best specialist academic collections on Russia, Central & Eastern Europe, providing a unique resource for students and researchers. We recommend starting with these key texts by @UCLSSEES academics pic.twitter.com/tJI9Z51ovz
— UCL SSEES Library (@UCLSSEESLibrary) February 22, 2022
If you have any questions about comms, please get in touch with Simon Bralee.
By Benjamin Meunier, on 19 May 2022
In early Spring, Prof David Price facilitated a series of virtual “Meet the Team” events to help colleagues in different parts of Research, Innovation and Global Engagement (RIGE). One of these events, held on 10 March via MS Teams, focused on our work in Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science (LCCOS), to familiarise colleagues in other parts of RIGE with the role of LCCOS.
In order to provide all staff in LCCOS with an overview of our department, this blog post provides a short summary of the session. The slides are available at LCCOS Meet the Team.
Martin Moyle, Director of Services, opened the event, explaining that the LCCOS presentation would comprise a very brief overview of LCCOS and Library Services, followed by five short presentations highlighting specific areas of LCCOS likely to be of particular interest to RIGE colleagues.
He then gave a short introduction to LCCOS, which since December 2021 has brought together Library Services, UCL Culture, Research Integrity, Research Culture and Open Science. He highlighted the size of the new department – with 440 staff, by far the largest constituent part of the RIGE portfolio.
Martin went on to introduce Library Services, highlighting the fact that with 4.8 million annual visits to our libraries, UCL is the busiest university library service in the UK. He also emphasised UCL’s internationally important collections, the innovative services which Library staff provide (for instance ‘Click and Collect’ introduced during the pandemic) and the sheer scale of both physical and digital resources. We hold over 2 million print items and provide access to over 1.1 million e-books, plus 86,000 e-journals and 800+ databases! On Special Collections, Martin presented the team’s role in managing, conserving and making accessible 10,000 linear metres of rare books, archives and records. He emphasised that we hold one of the foremost collections of such material in the UK, and emphasised that they are not simply kept under lock and key, but are well used for teaching, research and outreach.
Charting the Library’s performance, Martin presented key metrics (National Student Survey, Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, Postgraduate Research Experience Survey) which showed how UCL has outperformed other UK libraries in supporting users during Covid, although our NSS scores dropped to 79.9% from 88.5% pre-Covid. Surveys shows consistent high satisfaction with the online library and lower scores for the physical library, which we know is due to historic under-investment in physical spaces and ongoing challenges in providing enough study spaces for our ever-growing student cohorts. He also highlighted the latest UCL faculty compliance with REF OA Policy at 88-96% as a measure not only of the OA Team’s success, but as a mark of successful partnerships across RIGE.
June Hedges, Head of Liaison and Support Services, amplified Martin’s introduction with a more in-depth overview of Liaison and Support Services, which includes Open Science, Research Data Support, Bibliometrics Support and Research Integrity as well as Academic Engagement, Library Skills, Teaching and Learning Support and Open Access Services. In essence, Liaison and Support Services are all about enabling the learning and research of the UCL community, whether that is introducing new undergraduate students to UCL’s libraries and our services during the induction period, or providing support for seasoned researchers when they come to publish their outputs. Teams within Liaison and Support Services. The teams within the group vary greatly in size, from a “team” of one supporting bibliometrics, to the many in the Open Access Team, but all of them actively collaborate and work with colleagues across RIGE and the whole of UCL. June briefly introduced each team and pointed to more information about their work (via web links).
Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost (Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science) then presented on Open Science, setting the international context and outlining UCL’s strategy and the role of UCL’s Office for Open Science. Paul set out the 8 pillars of Open Science, and described how LCCOS was able to support all of these through leadership, advocacy and engagement. Detailed information on the Office for Open Science and Scholarship is available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/open-science-research-support/ucl-office-open-science-and-scholarship. Paul also illustrated UCL’s position as a leader in Open Access since 2000, based on a chart showing research output and the percentage of OA publications within each institution in the Russell Group. UCL has consistently topped this chart over two decades, with Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial jostling for the remaining top 3 places. Finally, Paul presented UCL Press as an example of the impact of Open Science: with over 5m downloads from 246 countries, the research published through the UK’s first fully Open Access university press is reaching a truly global audience. The success story of UCL Press contributes to UCL’s leadership role in Open Science and LCCOS will continue to develop this agenda over the coming years.
Frank Penter, Director of Operations (UCL Culture) gave a sweeping overview of Museums, Collections, Public Programme, Theatre and UCL Engagement. The team manages 8 cultural venues, including 3 accredited museums and the Bloomsbury Theatre as well as collections which encompass over 160,000 objects ranging from Ancient Egyptian dresses to Jeremy Bentham’s head! Frank presented how UCL collections are embedded in teaching, with over 5,000 student uses of collections per year (and 3,100 specimens used in the Grant Museum in term 1 only!), and in research. For instance, the Petrie received 32 researchers from 5 different countries in Term 1 of this academic year. Pre-Covid around 1,300 research visits were handled annually. In addition to these ‘standard’ research support activities, the team also work on a number of funded projects with external and internal partners. Frank also explained that the Bloomsbury Theatre is actively used for student co-curricular activity, UCL academic and research activity as well as its range of commercial productions. Frank explained the work of the Programmes and Exhibitions team and their role in working with academics to develop activity and exhibitions in our museums and the Octagon/Cloisters. Frank presented UCL Engagement, who are here to spark connections between people and ideas. Frank illustrated what the team can help with, including advice and support, training (such as an Online Public Engagement course, or Public Engagement Skills and Practice for researchers and PhD students) and funding (such as Beacon Bursaries, Train and Engage, or Listen and Learn funds). Finally, Frank presented the ground-breaking work of the Co-production Collective.
Emma Todd, Head of Research Culture, then presented work she has been leading on a wide-ranging transformation project. Research culture describes the environment in which research and innovation happens. It is made up of the expectations, values, attitudes and behaviours of our research communities and it shapes how research is created, how it’s stored, shared and the outputs that are delivered. Emma explained that there is an increasing focus on Research Culture within the sector – from Government and funders and also across peer institutions. Culture really does eat strategy for breakfast, as the famous quote goes from management consultant and writer Peter Drucker. If the culture isn’t right, we can’t fully deliver on UCL’s ambition. It is widely accepted in the sector that current research culture is not effective in helping sustain research excellence or the wellbeing of the people who deliver the research. Emma noted that there are also financial and reputational reasons why it’s important – funder requirements (including for quality-related research (QR) funding through REF) and our ability to attract the best researchers depends on UCL doing more to enhance its research culture. Wholesale change will require research organisations, funders, publishers and government to coordinate and consistently apply practical actions across the research community. But in the meantime, this complexity should not stop UCL from making progress on an institutional basis. Emma described what we’re doing at UCL, broken down into 3 parts. The first part between April – Aug 2021 was consultation with the research community. Part 2 is ongoing short term action in the form of a 6-month £1m+ Enhancing Research Culture Programme – ERCP (Feb-Jul 2022). Finally, Part 3 will be to develop a roadmap for cultural change (Apr – Sep 2022). Emma explained that she and her small temporary team (currently funded until 31st July) will deliver this project by working across UCL, with Faculties, colleagues in RIGE and in central Professional Services, and by integrating existing activity – of which there is a lot. A Research Culture Operations Group will oversee the ERCP and roadmap development and report into RIGE Committee, which will have strategic oversight.
Finally, as Director of Operations, LCCOS, I spoke briefly about space strategy, focusing on library spaces. Whilst further work would be needed to establish a space strategy after UCL’s institutional strategy was more clearly defined, I indicated that libraries and learning spaces would aim to provide a range of interrelated learning environments, offering spaces with a clear identity, fostering sense of belonging for students (for postgraduate students, for instance), but also encouraging cross-disciplinary working. I added that space would also be develop to help extend the shared services model based on hubs, the Student Centre and UCL East approach, creating a local hub for students, e.g. within each Faculty. I also noted that, as noted in previous Strategic Operating Plans, LCCOS would explore the feasibility of concentrating print stock in fewer sites to allow world-class user experience (24-hour opening, faculty identity, access to specialist services and resources including unique print collections) and improve financial and environmental sustainability. This could be complemented by Library-managed learning spaces. This piece of work would follow from the UCL strategy and Estates masterplan, when those institutional plans are developed. I highlighted the ongoing work to establish a UCL Special Collections facility to exploit the exceptional institutional assets, particularly for cross-disciplinary research work. This could be linked to a wider Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences hub, potentially in partnership with other academic institutions in London. Finally, I outlined potential for developing libraries further as portals between UCL and local communities, which presents a great opportunity to work with colleagues in museums, collections, public engagement and Open Science.
By Alison Fox, on 16 May 2022
We are delighted to announce that UCL Press books have been downloaded more than 6 million times, just 8 months after celebrating the milestone of 5 million downloads.
Since launching in 2015, we’ve published more than 240 academic books – including monographs, edited collections and textbooks. Downloads have taken place in 246 countries and territories across the world, reaching readers in countries as far afield as Afghanistan and North Korea! You can see the full details of exactly what has been downloaded where here.
Selected highlights
By Benjamin Meunier, on 22 April 2022
I found out today about self-guided tours which UCL Communications have produced for prospective students, available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/campus-tours/self-guided-campus-tours.
The tour consists of a digital map of campus, with videos of some of the university’s landmarks. It focuses on the central Bloomsbury campus, featuring the Front Quad and the Portico, and has a marker for the School of Pharmacy. Whilst it doesn’t showcase many of our libraries, it does feature the Main Library (with a video of the Flaxman Gallery), the Cruciform Hub, the Student Centre, the Institute of Education Library and UCL Special Collections as well as views of SSEES Library. It also includes links to the Bloomsbury Theatre, the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL Art Museum and the Petrie Museum.
According to the website, the tour should take between 45 to 50 minutes. This might be a useful resource for first-time visitors to UCL, and I thought it would be useful to share since I don’t think these virtual tours have been promoted much internally.
