The latest version of the Library Services Staff Survey Action Plan is available on LibNet. There has been activity on the areas which you identified as members of staff working in the Library, and the description in this version of the plan shows what progress has happened since last November. Highlights are outlined below, with a call for colleagues who would like to represent your peers in a new Staff Survey Action Group, which will devise the Action Plan for the next Staff Survey (due in late 2017).

Improvements to communication

Library SMT signed off a new internal communication strategy in May 2017, founded on staff feedback including findings from the Staff Survey. New strategy includes provision for more regular SMT Q&As responding to Library staff concerns or queries in monthly staff newsletter.

New computers

In light of staff feedback about IT equipment in Library Services, senior management approved additional expenditure of £110,000 to accelerate the replacement programme for staff desktop PCs. The Digital Libraries Team has ordered 121 new all-in-ones to replace all the staff Desktop@UCL PCs which are the lowest spec. Exact dates for delivery are yet to be confirmed, subject to the suppliers and ISD’s lead-in times, but the aim is to have the new equipment ready for start of session in September 2017.

Staff Survey Action Group

The Library SMT approved the establishment of a Staff Survey Action Group, chaired by myself as Director of Operations, to oversee action on future survey findings in an inclusive and transparent way. Terms of Reference have been agreed, and I will be calling for nominees during the summer to represent all grades of staff across Library Services. If you are interested in taking part, and have any queries, please contact me.

The Library Buildings Team is please to announce the addition of Collette Lawrence, Project Support Officer to the team.

The Buildings Team are from left to right: Collette Lawrence, Ricky Estwick, Phil Watson, Jay Woodhouse

Please continue to use the lib-buildings@ucl.ac.uk for all furniture and buildings requests.

Due to damage to the floor in the History corridor, this area will be closed for repair works between Sunday, 30th October at 1900hrs and Monday, 31st October, 0700hrs.

The repair works will take place along the whole of the History corridor, with no access to the corridor, reading room. In addition the staff entrance will be closed during these times.

This will mean that the reading rooms along the History corridor and the Dutch reading room will be inaccessible for 2 hours from Sunday 1900hrs to Sunday 2100hrs when the library closes.

Following the implementation of Library Services’ new organisational structure, office space and allocation is being reviewed. From April 1^st 2016 many teams have changed size, working relationships or have been otherwise reorganised to deliver the Library Strategy. In order to optimise the effectiveness of the new structure, some staff and teams will need to move offices and/or sites. This has also presented an opportunity to review occupancy levels in staff spaces and ensure that office space provision is both fair and makes efficient use of space.

The office space available in Main, Science and Senate House Hub has been reviewed in terms of accommodating the relevant staff groups as identified in the Final plan for the new organisational structure for UCL Library Services, in consultation with the Assistant Directors. A proposed allocation of office space has been developed and approved by the Library Senior Management Team.

This scheme follows the principles set out in the Library Services Policy on the provision of staff office space. Legal occupancy level have been taken into account, and whilst smaller two-three person office may be at the maximum level, larger offices are planned to have an occupancy of around 80% of the legal maximum.

Details of all proposed staff moves will be sent to the appropriate managers by 27/05/2016. The managers will then inform their staff of the move plan as relating to them. Feedback is welcomed and should passed to your line manager. The managers will collate any feedback and pass it to the Library Facilities Team for consideration in conjunction with the Assistant Directors.  Around 90 staff affected by the move scheme across three sites. All other staff will remain in their existing office locations. In the event of additional staff being moved to an existing office set-up, staff currently occupying the office will also be informed by their manager. A timetable and program of moves is being developed and will be shared with your line manager as soon as it has been agreed.

Any staff that require formal consultation, based on the Policy on the provision of staff office space, will be contacted directly and the consultation process started with them.

The Library Facilities Team will assist with the design and layout of the new space. The scheme provides an opportunity to offer staff the option to improve their working environment by varying the type of furniture fitted and develop along agile working principles. This may involve different size desk or alternative sit/stand workstations. The Facilities Team will provide information about alternative furniture options.

Best Regards

Jay Woodhouse – Facilities and Projects Manager

Since launching, the LibNet blog has been well used with lots of colleagues contributing posts and also commenting on them.
However, like any other computer system, the blog has a finite amount of storage space. Indeed we recently reached 100% usage of our allotted space. One more post and the blog could have been lost forever! Okay that’s a bit extreme; instead we’ve had our storage space increased by ISD. Phew.

Large images

Looking at the blog’s media library (the place where images, PDFs and documents get added to) we can see that all colleagues can help with ensuring that we don’t reach maximum usage again – after all, we can’t just keep endlessly getting the space increased.

The biggest usage of the blog’s storage comes from images that are huge both in size and file size (one was over 10MB, tut tut). So with that in mind, here are some tips to consider when adding media content to your blog post.

• For images, please only upload jpeg, png or gifs. Avoid bitmaps and tiffs especially.
• Check the size of the image and shrink it if needed. Remember that the image is being used on a web page so it doesn’t really need to be bigger than 1200 pixels square.
• Normally reducing the size is enough to reduce the file size at the same time. But if the image is very high resolution you can also compress it.
• Check that the image you’re about to use doesn’t already exist in the media library. Images can be shared across blog posts. Examples would be UCL buildings, of which there are many.
• Word documents and PDFs can often have their file size reduced by ensuring all of the above tips are applied to any images inside your document. E.g. don’t paste a tiff into Word.
• When creating a PDF from a Word document tick “Minimum size (publishing online)” for the “Optimize for” setting.

Lastly, if you’re unsure of any of the above or would like help resizing images you can contact us at lib-websupport@ucl.ac.uk.

Happy blogging!

UCL Library Services staff were centre-stage this week at the UCL Professional Services conference. And rightly so.

On Tuesday 2nd February 2016, UCL President and Provost, Professor Michael Arthur, presented the 2016 UCL Professional Services Values Awards. Rex Knight, as Vice-Provost (Operations) read out the nominations for each award. The categories mirror Professional Services’ values:

• Mutual respect
• Excellent service
• Collaboration
• Empowered
• Innovation

One value which resonates particularly strongly with the mission of Library Services is:

Excellent service…putting UCL’s goals and customer needs first by working in partnership

This award category was highly competitive with around 20 entries from across UCL contending. I was delighted that the winners were the Main and Science daytime and Evening/Saturday teams, led by Breege Whiten. A number of award-winning colleagues received the award in person from the Provost.

The 2016 Professional Services “Excellent Service” Award winners, with UCL President and Provost Professor Michael Arthur (far left)

It was my privilege to highlight some of the team’s achievements in this area. Since the introduction of self-service in the UCL Main and Science Libraries, the front-line teams have transformed their services to deliver a wider range of support, placing customer satisfaction at the heart of what they do. The quality of service has remained consistently excellent through a period of tremendous organisational change. This award is highly-deserved recognition for Breege and the entire team’s dedication to providing service with a smile.

We will be working through 2016 towards gaining Customer Service Excellence accreditation for UCL Library Services, as part of our work towards delivering the User Experience goals set in the Library Strategy and UCL 2034. It is immensely encouraging to start the year with such an accolade from the Provost. I would like to end with a quote from a student, which I read out in the citation for the award:

“The staff ‘have been incredibly friendly and gone far beyond their required services to help me. I don’t think my studies would be half as successful without their support and enthusiasm.’”

Well done to the winners of the 2016 UCL Professional Services “Excellent service” Award!

Dear Colleagues,

We still have some spaces on the “Bite Size” events arranged by the UCL Library Services Staff Training Committee, so please do take a look at the training opportunities below:

1. CPD Roadshow
Date: Tuesday 12th January 2016
Time: 3pm to 4pm
Facilitator: Michelle Wake (Chair UCL Library Services Training Committee and Chair of cpd25)

Description: Come along for an overview of the training opportunities within UCL and externally for all UCL Library staff, there’s sure to be opportunities to suit everyone.
Audience: All (especially for those unable to attend the session at the 2015 UCL Library Services Staff Conference)

Location: Science Library, Room 417
Maximum Number of Attendees: 30

2. Introduction to Copyright
Date: Monday 18th January 2016
Time: 10.30am to 11.30am
Facilitator: Chris Holland (UCL Library Services Copyright Support Officer)

Description: Everything you wanted to know about copyright but were afraid to ask. Chris Holland will take you through the basics of copyright with some interesting examples and the opportunity to ask questions.
Audience: All

Location: Science Library, Room 417
Maximum Number of Attendees: 30

3. UCL Press
Date: Thursday 21st January 2016
Time: 1pm to 2pm
Facilitator: Lara Speicher (Publishing Manager, UCL Press)

Description: UCL Press is the first fully Open Access University Press in the UK. Re-launched in 2015, UCL Press publishes scholarly monographs, edited collections, scholarly editions, textbooks and journals, all in Open Access form, freely available to download from the UCL Press website, UCL Discovery and other open access platforms. UCL Press welcomes new proposals from UCL academics in all subject areas, and is actively seeking new proposals. Lara will talk about the establishment of UCL Press, how the Press runs, its future developments and will highlight the benefits to UCL academic staff for choosing to publish with UCL Press.
Audience: All Library staff and UCL School of Pharmacy academics.

Location: UCL School of Pharmacy, Room M1
Maximum Number of Attendees: 30

4. UCL Arena Open
Date: Tuesday 26th January 2016
Time: 3pm to 4pm (with the option of attending to 4.30pm for those who have additional questions)
Facilitator: Dr Rosalind Duhs (Principal Teaching Fellow and Associate Director CALT and Director of UCL Arena)

Description: In a session specifically designed for UCL Library staff Rosalind will provide an introduction to this continuing professional development scheme, which is for those who teach, train or support students’ learning (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/arena/open). Accredited by the Higher Education Academy Arena Open gives you a chance to gain both a UCL Arena Fellowship and the corresponding HEA Fellowship, which is a nationally recognised award.
Audience: Staff who teach, train or support learning (e.g. facilitate learning about finding library resources, encouraging students, offering support).

Location: Science Library, Room 417
Maximum Number of Attendees: 30

5. Why Health and Safety should not be difficult
Date: Thursday 11th February 2016
Time: 9.30am to 10.30am
Facilitator: Jay Woodhouse (UCL Library Services Departmental Safety Officer and Security Manager)

Description: This session will review the basic concepts of risk assessment, what are risks and hazards and how do they relate to your day to day work. How to use a common sense approach to health and safety in the workplace, gearing it to the level of danger in your workplace and the work you do. Why are we writing war and peace to cover our health and safety and is there an easier way for use to do this. Review the HSE attitude towards the implementation of Health and Safety in England and their Myth Busters programme.
Audience: All

Location: Science Library, Room 417
Maximum Number of Attendees: 30

Please book by completing the Training Request Form at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/libnet/training.

More events to follow throughout the year!

Best wishes,

Michelle

As you may be aware, UCL’s fifth staff engagement survey will be launched next week. From Monday 9 to Friday 27 November, you will be able to provide feedback on what matters to you as a UCL employee.

What will happen?
On Monday 9 November, you will receive a personal email from ORC International via this address (if employed as of 1 October) : UCLEmployeeSurvey2015@orcinternational.co.uk.
OCL International is an independent survey provider and are managing the survey process. The email will include an embedded link to complete the survey. It will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete and you are given time to complete it whilst at work.

What if I don’t receive the email?
If you do not receive your survey email on Monday, please check your spam folder. If you inadvertently delete the email, you can contact the ORC helpline UCLEmployeeSurvey2015@orcinternational.com (this will be live during the survey period) for a further link to be sent. As each link is unique to you so please do not forward your link to others to access the survey. You will also be sent weekly reminders to complete the survey by 27 November.

Is my feedback confidential?
The survey is managed by our partners ORC International and is entirely anonymous. No one from UCL will be able to access any raw data from respondents. Visit the survey FAQs for more information on confidentiality.

What is the purpose of the survey?
UCL need your input to measure staff engagement with UCL strategy and vision; measure leadership and management and benchmark against the previous 2013 survey. It’s your opportunity to share your views that will develop into new projects and initiatives making UCL a great place to work. It is important that as many staff members complete the survey to ensure a representative picture is given.

When you complete the survey…
It feeds into league tables along with the incentive of £5 per completed survey to the student hardship fund. There is also a chance for you to enter a prize draw to win a tablet or reader of your choice up to the value of £500.

When will I hear the outcomes of the survey?
The target to distribute survey local results to staff is by 28 February 2016. Please visit the latest timetable.

Need more information? Have a look at the staff survey website.

Your participation in the staff engagement survey is greatly encouraged and appreciated.

The number of library colleagues that are responsible for maintaining a web page or pages on our library website continues to grow.

Training is given to all web authors to begin, but did you know there is also further help on our LibNet page to assist you?

We’ve just updated the help section with new guides and a list of FAQs. The guides include a number of topics from general good practice, adding tabs and accordions, working with tables and editing the revamped opening hours.

We hope you find the guides useful and if you need any further assistance please contact the web team (lib-websupport@ucl.ac.uk).

Happy editing everyone!

The Service Assistants and the Service Managers have moved office in the Main Library and are now both based in the newly refurbished room 115. Their phone numbers will remain the same:

Library Service Assistants – 020 7679 (3) 7832

Service Managers (Duty Officer)  – 020 7679 (3) 2545

The e-mail address for reporting problems in the Main Library has not changed:

lib-services@ucl.ac.uk

Regards

Jay Woodhouse