Following on from the feedback we have received since the staff conference in June, as well as previous LCCOS Strategy consultations which occurred during the spring term, the final draft of the LCCOS Strategy is now available to view.

This is a broad document which aims to act as a guide for our strategic direction over the next four years. It will be supported by an action plan, co-created with LCCOS staff. The goals and the actions will be reviewed and updated collaboratively during the lifetime of the strategy

Key points to note:

• We have updated the goals and the explanatory text as a result of your feedback. We have also included Mission and Vision statements and LCCOS values, based on consultation with LCCOS staff.
• The shaping of the strategy will be an iterative exercise. We will update the strategy year by year to capture updates and new opportunities, collaboratively with LCCOS staff.
• Goals which relate to years two to four may be solidified and added throughout the lifecycle of the strategy.
• We are working on an action plan for year one, and will be working with LCCOS teams to flesh this out.

As a next step in this collaboration, between October and December 2023 members of the Strategy Working Group (Martin Moyle, June Hedges, Margaret Stone and Bethan Smith) will be available to attend team meetings to discuss the strategy, and how it relates to team activities, in more detail. Managers can contact the working group to arrange this. Staff can also submit feedback at any time.

Photo by Daniel Tong, Design by Kim Henze.

International Open Access (OA) Week is an opportunity for communities around the world to celebrate achievements in opening up scholarship, to highlight developments and challenges and to promote open practices. This year OA week runs from the 23rd to the 29th of October.

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship has planned a series of blog posts and events throughout the week. This year’s activities include a drop-in session on Creative Commons licences and an awards event showcasing a wide range of open practices by UCL staff and students. Short articles will be published on the open@UCL blog starting from Monday the 23rd of October.

You are very welcome to participate in these activities and to share with your contacts.

Further information on OA week: https://www.openaccessweek.org.

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce the long-anticipated opening of our new library at Marshgate!

The doors quietly opened on September 4th, allowing our staff to settle in and familiarize themselves with the new workspace before the official Marshgate launch on September 18th and the commencement of the new term on September 25th.

The official opening ceremony last week marked the University’s largest expansion in its nearly 200-year history with a bang. Guests were welcomed with canapés and a live band, and speeches and tours were provided throughout the day. Former Olympic, World, and Commonwealth 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu MBE, who is an alumna of UCL and a former UCL Council member, also delivered a speech. Finally, the ceremony culminated with a big orange button being delivered to the stage by a robotic ‘dog,’ piloted by UCL robotics researchers. Christine, along with Peter and Dania, two of UCL East’s first students, pressed the button to officially declare UCL East open.

For a full rundown of the day check out the blog post or the UCL Libraires Instagram.

In comparison to our previous location at One Poole Street, our floor space has increased exponentially, providing a significant and much-needed study area for UCL East students and other visitors. In addition to this, we have expanded our range of services to enhance the library experience, including:

• Availability of 144 laptops for loan
• Convenient lockers for storage
• A dedicated silent study area
• Bookable study pods and a group study room

Our Click and Collect service, which proved immensely popular with students, continues to thrive as evidenced by its expansion to all other library sites, making accessing materials even more convenient. Furthermore, we are on the cusp of offering membership services, which we hope will connect us with the local community in and around Stratford.

Now the term has started we are already welcoming lots of students into our bright and spacious library. The large windows have breathtaking views of the Olympic Stadium and the ArcelorMittal Orbit, as well as further into central London. The view might be so captivating that you forget to study!

Our team, as well as the entire building, is buzzing with excitement now that teaching has started, the place is alive with activity. The cafes, refectory, lab spaces, and teaching rooms are all open, and the meticulously designed spaces are being put to good use by our students and staff.

We extend an open invitation to you to come down and visit. Please make sure to stop by the library and say hello. In the meantime, please enjoy our tour featuring our wonderful Library Manager, Igho.

Elliot

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) licence for photocopying, scanning and digital re-use is a bit of a mouthful.  It is also, currently, the most straightforward way for lecturers to stay within the law when re-using copyright-protected materials in their courses.

A CLA poster is displayed next to MFDs at every UCL library site and in departments. This is expected by the CLA and helps users know what they are allowed to do under the terms of the licence. Below are a few main points about the licence; you may want to highlight them to staff.

• The CLA is a not-for-profit company that distributes its revenue to authors, publishers and visual artists via royalty-collecting organisations.
• Like many other Universities, UCL pays an annual subscription to the CLA. The library also takes part in discussions and consultations that inform negotiations with the agency, to ensure that the licence meets the needs of the academic community.
•  Works covered by the licence mainly include books and journal publications published in the UK. Many overseas publications are also included. Not everything is covered: which countries and publications are covered and what is allowed in every case varies, particularly scanning permissions. For a work to be covered, UCL must own a copy or subscribe to the publication.
• There are limits to how much can be copied. Currently these are one chapter from a book, one whole article from a journal issue or 10% of the book or journal issue; whichever is the greatest. The CLA guidance and displayed poster specify limits for other types of materials.
• Any member of staff or student at UCL can copy under the terms of the licence. However, for copies made for students on a particular course, there are additional storing and reporting requirements and it is designated members of staff that do the scanning and ensure the requirements are met. For course readings, lecturers are advised to add the resources they need to their reading lists, specifying which extracts they wish to digitise. The TLS team checks what is permitted and, where possible, digitises the resource under the terms of the licence. More information can be found on the Course Readings webpage.

Beyond the CLA licence

While the CLA is useful for digitising print books, there is a growing number of resources that do not require digitisation.  Staff and students can access a wide range of  electronic resources, including journal articles and e-books – lecturers can provide links to their students. Users can also benefit from exceptions in copyright law, which allow users to copy and share reasonable extracts from materials, without the need for permission, as long as the use is ‘fair dealing‘.

And, of course, there is the ever-growing body of open access resources, including those held in UCL Discovery or published by UCL Press. Generally, if a resource is licensed under a Creative Commons licence it can be used without permission, as long as the terms of the licence are met.

Further advice

• You can refer CLA-related questions to me at copyright@ucl.ac.uk. As the CLA licence coordinator, I can answer questions and liaise with the CLA if necessary.
• For more information on copyright more generally, including the use of exceptions and open licences, you can e-mail me, book an appointment or attend a training session.

Student Centre Closed for Lift Repairs

On Saturday 9^th September 2023, the Student Centre will be Closed from 7.00am and reopening on Sunday 10^th September 2023 at 7.00am, please be aware of this if you are directing colleagues and students to this space, and if you are within the building.

This closure is to enable noisy works to be carried out  and also allow the flood repairs to Lift 3 and the track guide repairs to be completed at the same time, finally reinstating lift 3 back into service.

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

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 recently attended the 15^th LibPMC International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries, which took place from 11^th to 13^th July 2023. With a focus on data analysis and its applications to librarianship, as well as customer service excellence principles, the conference offered an excellent opportunity to examine and learn from the interesting work being undertaken by peer institutions at both a national and international level.

There were many interesting concepts discussed at the conference which were particular highlights, such as:

Data presentation – the introductory session of the conference introduced us to the useful term ‘clubhouse data’ – data which only makes sense to a limited number of players and results in a niche understanding with limited practical applications. This keynote provided a useful reminder to us all to avoid falling down our own data rabbit-holes, or producing data for its own sake, while reinforcing that clear presentation of data is as key as the data itself.

Technology – many sessions throughout the three days highlighted software that can be used to create data visualisations for data-driven decisions, such as Tableau and Power BI. As creating service dashboards has long been an ambition within Service Improvement, it was reassuring to hear institutions (such as Lancaster and Cambridge) reporting on both their successes with using this software, as well as sharing their familiar struggles with combining data from multiple sources in one sharable, accessible place.

Peer Reviewing – Two interesting peer review exercise exemplars were provided by the Open University and Sussex University. The OU provided a case study on how sharing chat enquiry responses in small working groups helped their enquiries team to facilitate peer feedback and share best practice. At Sussex, they obtained funding to invite Bloomsbury Publishing to take part in in a two-way process to evaluate their burgeoning open press, to help transition their outputs from running on ‘pilot energy’ to creating successful ongoing processes. Facilitating peer-reviews can be challenging, but the exercise can encourage a growth mindset and offer unique insights into ways of working.

EDI, Values and Data – many sessions examined the potential of using qualitative and quantitative data gathering techniques as a health-check for EDI principles. The classic adage of the disability movement, ‘nothing about us without us’, was a repeated throughout as a reminder to ensure that data-driven decision-making considers the authentic experience of our diverse user-base. There was also a refreshing examination of impostor syndrome in librarianship from Ramona Naicker, who provided us all with reassuring encouragement to make the most of our positions within the library to contribute to research in the field.

Customer Service Excellence – it was interesting to hear that other institutions in the UK that have obtained the CSE standard had encountered similar challenges to us, in particular bringing together feedback from different channels/sources; finding time to conduct regular service reviews while “fire-fighting” operational issues; and demonstrating to colleagues the benefits of collecting feedback by presenting evidence of service improvements.

UX work – a key theme of the conference was the importance of providing greater context to data. One presenter commented that historically there has been too much focus on quantitative data that demonstrates what we have, such as the number of study spaces or size of collections, and not enough focus on how our customer’s expectations compare to their perception of our services and facilities. As they put it, past data has been “a mile wide and an inch deep.” To improve the depth of our data we will need to engage our customers using UX methods. For example, when evaluating our learning spaces our occupancy data might indicate areas of high usage, but without engaging our customers we won’t know why they prefer these study areas, if they are aware of alternatives, and if they are why they choose not to use those study areas instead. UX work is an exciting area which we are hoping to use more and more in the coming years, and it was great to hear examples of how these methods can help to contextualise the data we already collect.

We found the conference to be a very interesting experience, and across the three days it was encouraging to hear about the successes and challenges from international peer institutions. We certainly felt that we learned a lot and hope to take inspiration from these highlights in our own work going forward.

By Bethan Smith & Jonathan Fowles

Cruciform Building Electrical System Testing

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 electrical 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.

There are plans to carry out essential works on the Cruciform Buildings electrical systems on Saturday 2^nd September 2023. This is to allow us to undertake these works, the building will be closed to isolate power to areas of the Cruciform.

 Please be aware that the Cruciform Building will be closed for the duration of the full building shut down on Saturday 2^nd September 2023, and reopening, as usual, on Sunday 3^rd September 2023.

We apologies for any inconvenience caused by these works and we appreciate your continued support and patience. If you have any issues or queries regarding this, please contact the Library Facilities & Projects Team.

Dear colleagues,

The countdown begins until we launch our wonderful new library in the Marshgate building. Ahead of our opening, there is key information we would like to share with you.

We will stop running our library services from the Learning Hub in One Pool Street at 5pm on Friday 25^th August. This is to enable us to get our new Library at Marshgate ready for opening on Monday 4^th September, 9am.

The last day for new Click and Collect requests is Friday 18^th August. Between Monday 21^st to Friday 25^th August, students will be able to collect and return items, as well as having the usual access and support in the Learning Hub.

From Saturday 26^th August to Sunday 3^rd September, the Learning Hub will be closed while we relocate. There will be a book bin available outside the Learning Hub, so if students want to return books during that period, they will still be able to do so and we will be checking that regularly. Arrangements for interim study space and IT provision for students are currently being clarified and further details will be communicated.

From Monday 4^th September our usual services will resume. Our opening hours will be Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, until the start of the new term.

Following on from this message, comms are scheduled to be sent out via the several channels available to us, including the UCL East Community Teams site, Student Union newsletter, UCLE Library webpage, and social media. Regular comms updates are also planned during the run up to opening at Marshgate. There will be further updates throughout the first term as more aspects of our provision become available.

And finally, I would like to end this message as a request to you for a donation to us. If you have any plants you are willing to let go, we can arrange to get them sent to us. It will very much be appreciated and will help enhance our new spaces. I can assure you that they will be very well maintained and happy here with us!

The recently launched Copyright Anxiety Study is a collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, City, University of London and the University of Alberta. 

The study seeks to gauge copyright anxiety levels among higher education professionals in the UK and Canada, with a view to recommend solutions to alleviate this anxiety.

This is an important study, with the potential to help professionals in various higher education roles (library, teaching and research) deal with copyright more confidently.

Copyright anxiety is not without important consequences. Because many people are unsure what is and what isn’t legal online under copyright, they self-censor, and choose not to post or create things for fear it might land them in serious legal trouble. Ironically, increasingly strong copyright is casting a “chill” that discourages, rather than encourages, creativity. Given the billions of people who are now online, the scale of that creative loss is likely to be massive.   Glyn Moody, Walled Culture website 

The survey is open until 18 August 2023. Please complete and share further with colleagues if possible. 

 For more information on the project, see  the copyrightliteracy.org website. Please contact chris.morrison@bodleian.ox.ac.uk  if you have any questions about the research.

Following on from our stall at the LCCOS Conference on Thursday 29th June, we would like to remind colleagues of the existence of the LCCOS Strategy feedback form.  

At the stall, we valued the opportunity to share the strategy’s newly updated themes and goals, and hear thoughts from colleagues on the progress of the LCCOS Strategy so far. It was also a useful opportunity to find out more about which values staff feel should underpin the strategy as a whole. 

We would like to inform colleagues that the online feedback form is still live, and that we would be grateful for any feedback you would like to provide on our updated themes and goals. We would also be interested to hear any thoughts you may have on potential activities and projects we could undertake in each area to deliver on these goals.  

Colleagues can find out more about the strategy themes and goals on the LCCOS Strategy SharePoint, where they can also find the strategy feedback form.  

If you have any questions about the LCCOS Strategy, please do email Bethan Smith.