Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increasingly been making headlines in the press since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, and the emergence of numerous other online tools utilising generative AI. Inevitably this is having an impact on education and research processes, and UCL is working to develop policy, guidance and support, whilst considering the related opportunities AI offers now and into the future.

UCL’s ‘AI in Education’ group includes AI experts, academics and representatives from across UCL’s support services and is addressing issues through various workstreams. I am involved in the Academic Skills AI workstream and, together with colleagues from the UCL Academic Communication Centre, UCL Digital Skills and academic staff, we are developing guidance on utilising AI, to complement policy, expand and refine existing guidance, and integrate with guidance on academic integrity and in the remit of individual support services.

One area with implications for LCCOS is AI literacy, which dovetails with several strands of information literacy. Key areas of the LibrarySkills@UCL skills framework which relate to AI include:

• AI tools as a source of information for academic work.
• The importance of critically evaluating information obtained from AI and consideration as to whether and to what extent it should be used to inform academic work.
• The extent to which the use of AI should be acknowledged in a piece of academic work and how to reference it as a source where appropriate.

The academic skills workstream is currently considering approaches to acknowledging and referencing AI, to develop consensus on a UCL recommended approach.

How can I get involved or find out more?

• Express your interest in joining a new LCCOS AI group. This group will identify opportunities and concerns relating to AI in the context of our services and support and help inform relevant LCCOS guidance on AI, including incorporating AI guidance into our existing skills offerings. Through my involvement in the AI Academic Skills workstream, this group can help to inform UCL’s guidance and support. To express an interest in joining the LCCOS AI group, please contact me: Angela Young.
• Sign up to attend our LCCOS Staff Summer School session on ‘AI at UCL: Library support for AI literacy’ on Monday 10 July, 14.00-14.50 on MS Teams.
• Consider the impact of AI on the support you and your team provide and the activities you carry out.

The UCL LCCOS Staff Summer School (formerly UCL Library Services Staff Summer School) is a series of training and development sessions, events and online activities aimed at staff from across UCL 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.

For full details of the programme and to book your place(s), see the UCL LCCOS Staff Summer School calendar. Presentations, accompanying links and materials and recordings (where applicable) will be made available on the UCL LCCOS Staff Summer School Moodle Course. If you do not already have access, please get the enrolment key. Sessions are open to all UCL Library Services staff, with approval from your line manager.

The current Slade BA / BFA Fine Art degree shows include a work by graduating student Adam Lazarus in the form of a multi-location installation, sited across the Slade studios and various UCL Libraries.

The first part of the work is a library shelf mark screen printed on a studio wall in the Slade building*, indicating the precise location of a permanent installation in the Main Library in the form of an artists’ book which has been catalogued and processed as an ordinary addition to the collections. The publication itself indexes the titles and shelf marks of 84 books in various collections into which Adam has placed small ink drawings – place markers that evoke his interaction with the books during his time at UCL. For the duration of the degree show, visitors can access the Main Library and engage with the artwork within the space; they can choose to follow the trail to any number of the small drawings placed in the indexed titles. Library members will be able to interact with the work on an ongoing basis.

Adam says of Index: ‘The work pays homage to the library as a generative site, a sort of second studio for me, and thus bridges our histories before I depart from UCL. It encourages the nourishing searching and browsing which occurs in library spaces, a process which is becoming increasingly obsolete. The chosen volumes were compiled organically after I came across a list kept by the Library database of nearly every physical book which I checked out during my time here (omitting Covid,) a log of physical and metaphysical travels through the library.’

More by Adam Lazarus:

Adam Lazarus, degree showcase

Purgatories and Potentials: Mike Nelson’s An Invocation: 530 Books from Southend Central Library (dissertation)

* A duplicate screen print of the text “- -Index / Adam Lazarus, UCL Main Library Art Quartos MU 19 LAZ” can be found in the Main Library between ART KF 19 / KI 19 and ART KI 19 / KN 15.

On behalf of the LCCOS Staff Wellbeing Committee I am pleased to share with you the LCCOS Staff Wellbeing Training Opportunities website.

This site details a range of training opportunities for use by individuals or in group sessions, e.g.it includes readings or activities that could be used as an item of discussion in team meetings.

This is very much an ongoing project and the LCCOS Wellbeing Committee is keen to have your input.  Please do get in touch and feedback on the resources and/or how you have incorporated them into your training sessions, via the website’s comments boxes or by emailing me at m.wake@ucl.ac.uk.  Additionally, please feel very free to make suggestions of any other resources or subjects which you recommend being added to this skeleton list.

Michelle Wake

Site Libraries Manager and Senior Librarian, UCL School of Pharmacy,

UCL Library Services

LCCOS-Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science

m.wake@ucl.ac.uk

Student Centre Fixed Wire testing in June 2023

Some of you may already be aware, as this has taken place on some of our LCCOS sites already, we are currently working with Estates colleagues to carry out essential fixed wire testing across the UCL community. These tests are to ensure that all distribution boards, data facilities, electric circuits, power, and lighting are working correctly and meet legal requirements.

As part of the ongoing Estates fixed wire testing, the program has now reached the Student Centre.

From Thursday 1^st – Friday 9^th June 2023, the Student Centre will be having testing taking place, for health and safety reasons, and to try and minimise disruption to staff and students, due to sporadic loss of power and lighting please be aware of this if you are working in the areas of testing on the specific days.

In an attempt to try and minimise disruption for staff and students the F&P team have been working hard to plan these essential works with Estates and the contractors, HMC Compliance Limited. And have split the testing into floors and sections, as best we could.

We apologies for any inconvenience caused by these works and we appreciate your continued support and patience.

Contact us

If you have any issues or queries regarding this, please contact the LCCOS Facilities & Projects Team. Our team information can be found at the following link Facilities & Project Team.

We are pleased to launch the new LCCOS Strategy website.  This SharePoint site is a space to collect and store all relevant documents and news related to the strategy development process. It is a live site which will be regularly updated with key information as the process of shaping the LCCOS Strategy continues.

At present, the site contains useful sections to provide more context to the LCCOS Strategy, including an outline of the strategy roadmap, a page of useful links to other UCL strategies, and a consultation section which will outline future opportunities to contribute to the process, as well as reflecting on consultation periods completed so far.

On the LCCOS Strategy site, the latest news item highlights the summary of feedback from the recent LCCOS staff consultation period, in March and April of this year.

If you have any questions about the SharePoint, or the LCCOS Strategy in general, please email the LCCOS Strategy Working Group.

The LibNet Facilities & Project page have been updated with new quick links for the RemedyForce forms. These links should make it easier to access the service required and find the correct form.

We understand RemedyForce is not always the easiest to navigate and are looking to improve ease of access. If you have any suggestions for improvement or wish to highlight issues, please e-mail Jay Woodhouse directly.

The Summer School takes place during June and July, with a mixture of live online events that will be recorded, and face to face events.

Recordings and materials from previous years of the Summer School are available on the UCL LCCOS Staff Summer School Moodle course.

Please help shape this year’s Summer School by completing our suggestion form by 17 May 2023. You can also use the suggestion form to request the enrolment key for the Moodle course, if you don’t already have access.

• LCCOS Staff Summer School: suggestion form

Bookings are now open for the 2023 LCCOS eXperience eXchange, which will take place online on MS Teams on Thursday 25 May 10.00 – 12.00.

After a rather wet start to the day, the skies brightened up over the Olympic Park last Friday afternoon, just in time for the handover ceremony where building contractors Mace handed over the keys to UCL East’s latest addition – Marshgate.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the occasion, which was described officially in the UCL News, where the significance of the milestone is described. I am taking this opportunity to share my reflections on the building and amateurish photos of the library and learning spaces…

Firstly, it is monumental – as described in the press release – “the biggest structure on any of UCL’s campuses, measuring six times the size of the UCL Student Centre”. It is very much a statement, right next to the London Stadium, placing UCL at the heart of East Bank – the cultural district that is intended as the 2012 Olympics’ legacy.

But size isn’t everything, of course. I was wowed by the grandeur of the atrium space, which even unfurnished and empty of students and staff, had a warmth and sense of conviviality you would not expect from an exposed concrete building. The main foyer will host public art exhibitions, to welcome and provoke visitors to the campus.

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