Do you know a colleague or group of colleagues within LCCOS who makes an outstanding contribution to support students’ learning? Why not nominate them for the 2025 UCL Provost Education Awards?

Congratulations to Esther Cable (Deputy Librarian, LaSS Library) who achieved the award of HEA Associate Fellowship, through UCL Arena, this summer.

HEA Associate Fellowship is a recognition awarded by Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) to individuals who demonstrate effective teaching and support for learning in higher education. It is nationally recognised, grants you post-nominals, and can be great evidence for your CV or when applying for jobs. What’s more, the process of applying for fellowship means you reflect on your work in the areas of supporting learning and teaching, and helps you identify areas for development of your skills. In so doing, it enhances your support of students and so contributes to the user experience.

Is HEA fellowship for me?

There are different categories of fellowship depending on your role and experience. Associate Fellow is suitable for anyone in a role that supports learning, whereas colleagues with significant teaching responsibilities and at least 3 years of experience might prefer to apply for Fellowship.

What’s involved if I want to apply?

UCL Arena Fellowship provides an accredited route to all categories of HEA Fellowship and is free for UCL staff. To apply you need to write a reflective report which outlines your areas of activity and includes case studies which illustrate how your work meets relevant criteria outlined in the Professional Standards Framework (PSF). You can submit throughout the year.

What support is available?

In addition to events and support through UCL Arena, there are monthly peer-support hybrid meets for LCCOS colleagues interested in or working towards all categories of fellowship. Esther gained support and encouragement from the meets, as well as motivation to get her application written and submitted.

How can I find out more?

The UCL Arena Fellowship website and Moodle course are great places to get started with finding out more, or attend a UCL Arena Fellowship initial guidance session. To join an LCCOS HEA Fellowship support meet, or be added to the Teams site, please contact Angela Young.

Are you thinking about developing your career? The Career Frameworks provide you with information about a range of roles across UCL, detailing activities and responsibilities for different roles and transferable skills and competencies. They also promote three key ways that you can develop new skills and experiences; learning from experience, learning from others and formal learning.  Colleagues have also very kindly provided Career Case Studies, which provide an insight into their career journeys.

The Career Framework for LCCOS staff is being launched with the area of Customer Service (Library Services), with other job families to follow.  A family is not a section of LCCOS, but a group of jobs that have similar professional characteristics.  Many job roles within LCCOS will combine more than one of the LCCOS families.

If you have any questions or need further information please contact Michelle Wake

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

As part of ISD’s strategy to switch many of UCL’s services to Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity management tool, how you sign into Alma is changing. If you use the short URL we have provided, e.g. via a bookmark, it will change automatically tomorrow morning (Tuesday 16 August 2022). Instead of entering your username and password into the current Shibboleth login screen, you will instead see one similar to when you log into your UCL email account, Explore, and other UCL IT services. If you have recently logged into another service using Azure, you may be logged automatically into Alma.

If you have not bookmarked the short URL, you will need to take action between now and Monday 3 October 2022. Please see the Alma page on LibNet for details.

If you have any questions regarding this change or encounter any problems, please use the Digital Services online form.

Do you know a colleague or team within Library Services that makes an outstanding contribution to the learning experience and success of our students? Then take a moment to nominate them for this year’s UCL Education Awards.

The UCL Education Awards recognise and celebrate the achievements of staff and their contributions to our learning community, with a focus on the work of colleagues that is less visible to students, so work that has enabled excellent practice or facilitated innovation in teaching and learning. Nominations will be judged on evidence of impact and examples demonstrating excellence in various categories, including:

• Academic support, with a focus on personal tutoring and/or research supervision
• Assessment and feedback
• Education success for all
• Eliminating awarding gaps
• Outstanding response to teaching and/or support during a pandemic
• Staff-student partnership

How do nominations work?

Nominations are made within a department and then each UCL department may submit one individual and one team nomination for each category from the nominations they have received.

We are now inviting nominations from across Library Services, from which the Library Skills Steering Group will select the final nominations for Library Services.

To nominate a colleague or team, please download and complete the appropriate form (Word document) for an individual or team in Step 1 on the UCL Education Awards webpage and send by email to Angela Young. Please do NOT complete the ‘Step two’ forms on that page as these are for the final nominations from each department. The deadline for submission of nominations to Library Services is Wednesday 31st March to allow time for the Library Skills Steering Group to decide on final nominations and submit by 12th April.

Why nominate a colleague or team?

This is your chance to ensure your colleague or a library team gets the acknowledgement they deserve, so they can be rewarded and celebrate in their achievements whilst highlighting to the wider UCL community the impact that library staff have on the experience and success of our students.

The Library’s Senior Management Team (SMT) has been considering feedback from colleagues concerning the perceived lack of visibility of the team and a desire for a greater understanding of what the SMT does. We are aware that it would be helpful for colleagues to engage directly with by meeting and talking with SMT colleagues in order to raise issues of concern or suggest ideas for improvement.

As a first step we have refreshed the SMT information on LibNet and added more information about individual responsibilities as well as including photos and contact details. Feedback on the revised information on LibNet is welcome.  We have made sure that the last three months of minutes from SMT’s monthly meetings are available and will continue to ensure these are up-to-date.  Notes from earlier meetings are available on request from Noel Caliste, who is Paul’s Executive Assistant (n.caliste@ucl.ac.uk).

SMT have also decided to set up a series of Surgeries, modelled on those offered by MPs to give individuals and small groups the opportunity to meet members of the SMT face-to-face and raise issues of concern.  At least two members of SMT will be present at each surgery. This will be a pilot, and we will be asking for feedback from colleagues throughout the pilot so that we can see if this is something that is useful, or whether there is a better way to improve two-way communication.

Where possible, Surgeries will be held in non-library spaces.  They are going to be held on different days and times of the week to enable as many colleagues as possible to attend.  They will be timed to occur in-between SMT meetings, and issues and feedback raised by staff at the Surgeries will be discussed at the next SMT so that staff can be assured that issues will be followed-up.

While the pilot Surgeries are all located in Bloomsbury, there will be the option to Skype or phone in.  If the pilot is successful, we will ensure that they are offered outside the Bloomsbury campus if there is demand.

The dates and times for the Surgeries will be publicised on LibNet as soon as they are available, along with information for booking.

A few weeks ago, the Library Social Group (LSG) hosted a pub quiz at the College Arms on Store Street, after a slightly extended (ahem, two-year-long) hiatus.

Five teams pitted their wits against each other, having their knowledge of cover versions, pop culture and close-up library objects tested to the limit. Quiz co-hosts Phil Leonard and Gillian Mackenzie guided teams through six rounds, who were competing for the £30+ cash prize, plus for the coveted LSG Quiz trophy!

The winning quiz team, The Three Muskebeers

All of the teams taking part performed respectably (a word used repeatedly on the night), but the ultimate champions were The Three Muskebeers (although, there were four of them in the team).

We got some really positive comments about the evening (not least that the quiz itself was a “well-oiled machine”), which we hope will encourage more quizzers and teams to join us next time:

“The Library Pub Quiz was the perfect opportunity to meet colleagues I don’t already know or hardly ever get to see, and then alternately suffer the embarrassment of my own ignorance or boast over my superior pop culture knowledge. In other words, a really great night!”

Thanks to all who came along, and see you again soon for another round.

The UCL Student Choice Awards are a way for students to thank an amazing member of staff, and let them know that their hard work makes a difference. All UCL students are invited to nominate members of staff who have, in some way, made their experience at UCL a particularly good one. They are judged by students themselves and so are especially meaningful. There are several categories including Amazing Support Staff and it is very gratifying to see that four members of UCL Library Services staff were nominated in this category. Congratulations to Nazlin Bhimani, Peter Field, Vanessa Freedman and Debora Marletta. For more information about the awards see: http://studentsunionucl.org/make-change/make-your-voice-heard/student-choice-awards/student-choice-awards-2019-all-nominees