Earlier this year Martin Moyle, Director of Services, posted about the potential for innovation and service delivery at UCL Library Services. We are excited to now formally announce the launch of the Enabling Innovation Working Group – and to call for volunteers to join it.

We know from experience that Library Services staff have fantastic ideas on new ways to improve our services; what is less clear is how best to collect those ideas and process them, how to enable funding for them and how to ensure that we are able to fully implement them.

The Enabling Innovation Working Group will work together to look at ways of facilitating new ideas and projects, while trying to remove any blockers that prevent them from happening. We will think of ways to help enable small-scale innovation projects in line with KPA4 as part of the Library Strategy 2019-22.

The group will be more focused on the ‘how’ than the ‘what’ – on examining the ways that we can create an exciting, forward-thinking working environment where we are able to test new ideas and fund them. The main output of our meetings will eventually take the form of a report to the SMT, containing recommendations on how best to proceed.

We are keen to gather a representative cross-section of Library Services staff across grades, departments and libraries to make sure that we gain a wide range of ideas and perspectives on how best to enable innovation. We are looking for 6-10 working group members and are in need of volunteers!

How to Join

If you are interested in joining, please consult with your line manager in the first instance and then email bethan.smith@ucl.ac.uk. In terms of commitment, this group will involve two or three in-person meetings. There may also be small amounts of homework and research involved, so please do consider this before applying. Please do not hesitate to email if you have any questions before volunteering.

The first group meeting is currently scheduled for 3pm on Wednesday 11th December in Room 106 of the Science Library and will be chaired by Martin Moyle.

Please respond by Friday 29th November if you wish to join the group and we will get in touch shortly.

Bethan Smith
Service Improvement Coordinator

As part of the new Library Strategy I and senior colleagues have been reviewing the list of policies and supporting strategies which the Library has developed to support its Mission. All policies and strategies, of course, should be driven by the needs of the Library Strategy and this has been the theme of the review, which I led over the Summer.

As a result of this work, the updated listed of public policies can be found on the Library website here; supporting strategies and documents which are on the LibNet site can be found here.

All strategies and policies develop over time and this is a sign of success, since it indicates growth and responses to new challenges. Accompanying this review is a parallel review of committees and working groups in the Library. This work is ongoing and I intend to share the results with colleagues when it is completed later in the autumn.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services