The Director’s View: New reporting line for UCL Library Services
By Paul Ayris, on 15 November 2016
The role of UCL Library Services in UCL 2034
The Library Strategy lays down that our Mission is to ‘Provide an information infrastructure to enable UCL’s research and education to be world class’. Through its professionalism and concentration on the ‘User Experience’, the Library does just this.
Nonetheless, UCL continues to improve its service offering and to introduce changes to support that development. On Monday, 14 November 2016, UCL introduced a change to the reporting line of the Library better to reflect the Library’s Mission as an academic support Division.
With immediate effect, the Library has been moved from UCL Professional Services to report to the Vice-Provost (Research). As Director of Library Services, I have been honoured with the additional role of Pro Vice-Provost , with a remit to:
- develop UCL’s scholarly communications offering, building on the current successes of the Library’s Open Access activity, UCL Press and our research data management offering;
- continue the Library’s activity in collection management and collection building, in both paper and digital formats; and to look for collaborations with other collections, both in UCL and further afield in London;
- The Director of Library Services will continue to be an ex officio member of the UCL Senior Management Team
These changes reflect the success of the Library Strategy and the great visibility that our facilities and services have across the whole of UCL. They underline the strong, historic links between the Library and UCL’s activity in teaching, learning and research.
We will continue to enjoy collegial links with UCL Professional Services. I have been asked, for example, to carry on as co-chair of the Organising Committee for the UCL Professional Services Conference in February 2017.
These developments are not related to the TOPS programme as such, which nonetheless continues to be discussed across UCL. UCL planning will continue throughout the whole of 2016/17, and it is too early to be clear what shape TOPS will take institutionally.
I will continue to post news about this week’s change as the role develops. The Library is well placed to deliver on the agenda which has been offered to us. I look forward to working with colleagues to make all this a reality.
Paul Ayris
Pro Vice-Provost and Director of UCL Library Services