University of Reading Library review 2010-2011

Library review 2010–2011

Library


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ContentsInto a new era 2

Collections 4

Improving Library space 6

Helping and teaching Library users 8

Systems and service initiatives 10

Contributing to our communities 12

People 14

Statistics 17

Timeline 18

Into a new eraThe end of any era is the signal for new beginnings. As described in this Review, the 2010–11 session has been one in which the University Library has passed some significant milestones whilst making very substantial progress for the future.

The closure of the site library at the Bulmershe campus (as part of the University’s strategy to cease academic activity there) was undoubtedly one such milestone. The closure of this library (part of the University Library since 1989) on schedule was the culmination of the first phase of our ongoing Collections Project and a testament to all the hard work of Library staff. But now their work on integrating the Bulmershe collections, study space and services at our Whiteknights Library continues.

Strong progress in this session is seen in the new Off-site Store coming on stream, further improvements to study areas, as well as various other new service and system initiatives to benefit our users. The Collections Project, which is reviewing all our printed and electronic collections and the balance between them, is continuing to reorganise, repurpose and improve Library space; and our Project to


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redefine and reshape the crucial contribution to University teaching, learning and research activities made by staff working in the Liaison Teams has already begun to bear fruit. The Library’s Research Projects also had a particularly successful period and have entered an exciting new phase.

Another milestone was the last meeting of the Advisory Board for Library Services (ABLS). ABLS, and its predeces-sor committee, have proved an invaluable source of advice and support on matters of strategic importance to the Library in its service of the University. For the last

several years this has been due in no small part to the experienced chairmanship of Professor Bob Chapman, with whom I have greatly valued working. Next session we look forward to ABLS’ successor, the new Advisory Board on Information Services with both the Library and IT Services in its remit, chaired by Professor Hugo Tucker.

The support of the Director of Academic Services, Dr Richard Messer, has again been much appreciated, in particular for

additional funds for information resources (as financially the year has been another testing one) and also for his strategic support and thinking on developing funding for our collections into the future.

Little of this would have been possible without the firm foundation of past successes on which to build and so we end 2010–11 looking back with pride, and with sincere thanks on my part to every member of the Library staff for all that they have, yet again, delivered; but also looking forward with enthusiasm, vigour and determination to a new era for the University Library in what will undoubtedly be a challenging period ahead for UK higher education.

Julia Munro University Librarian

Able ABLS chair Professor Bob Chapman chaired the Advisory Board for Library Services this last decade.


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CollectionsThe challenge of closing our Bulmershe site Library on 29 July and establishing a Bulmershe Collec-tion at Whiteknights, gave us the opportunity to continue rearranging and reprofiling our collections (both printed and electronic) and the associated study space. With our liaison librarians and other staff continuing their review of all the collections (in consultation with academic staff) we are better able to: accommodate essential printed texts on open shelves; have research and lower-use material easily retrievable, some from the new Off-site Store; make sure that an improved balance between printed and electronic sources of information is maintained; and increase the proportion of space at Whiteknights used for study areas rather than collection areas.

Reviewing all the collections, as part of our Collections Project 2009–2013 is ambitious, and hasn’t been attempted by any other large University Library in recent years. The work is being led by Rupert Wood, Head of Collections, and directed by Victoria Bird, Collections Project Co-ordinator. Supporting Library Assistants were Caroline Instone and, from September, Jake Sharpe. Geoff Gardner ably coordinated stock moves and led the develop-ment of the Off-site Store; and Rose-Ann Movsovic, Collections Manager, oversaw all the processing and cataloguing work associated with the Project.

This session, whilst maintaining other services, almost all Library staff were involved in the various stages of selecting and processing items for relega-tion to closed access, retention on open shelves, withdrawal from stock, or retrieval from storage.

Bye-bye BulmersheBulmershe Library staff continued serving users until the last day of opening, whilst processing collections for transfer or disposal.


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We also amalgamated some sequences for ease of use, such as integrating most-borrowed music score sequences into textbook stock in the Bulmershe Collection; and consolidating law collections. Transfer of relegated material to the Off-site Store began in May; and the year ended in the middle of a major move which saw 14,000 shelves of books being relocated with minimal disruption to our users, and Bulmershe Library staff valiantly continuing to provide their usual service into the summer.

Space raceThe race was on to install shelving and transfer lower-use and research stock to the Off-site Store.

Sent packingOver eight weeks, 14,000 shelves of material were relocated with minimal disruption to University Library users.

Improving Library space Delivering what high-achieving students want is crucial to the University’s success. With this in mind, in March the University convened a Feasibility Group on the Main Library building at Whiteknights to plan major strategic improvements for future student needs. However an embargo on capital project expenditure postponed serious decision making. Nonetheless, a sub-group continued to prepare prioritised proposals for improvements in readiness for the full Feasibility Group’s re-emergence. Happily, several separate projects proceeded.

Students regard the University Library as a unique, central hub for study and interaction, besides the place to seek information and help in retrieving it. Especially at revision time, demand for more study space at the Main Library Whiteknights can be intense. New furniture arrived in November to fit out another 5th Floor study room (Room 500). In May, we used existing furniture to repurpose a staff meeting room (Room 508). After exams and by July, it was refurbished with a new floor, painted walls and new furniture. Recently we have reassigned all 144 5th Floor study places as a Silent Study area. In May a bid to the University Annual fund to increase much-in-demand Group Study space was partially successful. Next session we will use the award of £5,000 to develop the now underused Ground Floor Photocopying Area into a ‘technology rich’ study space with support from IT Services in purchasing equipment such as plasma screens. After the re-organisation of the collections this year, Library study space at Whiteknights will have increased by 12%, and by nearly 45% on the 2nd Floor.

Silent study spaceStudent demand for ever-popular Library study space was addressed by refurbishing further 5th Floor silent study areas.


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In June, work commenced to re-site our room for Quiet Study with PCs. This allowed us to start building a suite of offices for the Study Advisers and Maths Support Team on the 1st Floor. The new base sites them conveniently in an area heavily used by students housing the University’s largest PC bank and the IT Help point.

In June, the University began a Rewiring Project to update the Library’s original 1960s electrical provision by installing an up-to-date power distribution system. It involved moving stock to install distribution cupboards and drilling through floors to accommodate new cables. In July, electrical switchgear units were installed in the basement. Over the next few years each floor will be rewired, improving safety. We will also be pressing for an additional increase in plug sockets for laptop users, as requested in recent National Student Surveys.

Tight fit for purposeThe Rewiring Project installed modern power distribution this session – including units only just smaller than our lifts – and will rewire floor by floor.


Helping and teaching Library usersThe Library’s core aim is to support teaching, learning and research. We operate in teams of liaison librarians who build up expertise mirroring schools/departments needs. Consequently, our Faculty of Arts and Humanities liaison librarian structure changed from August to reflect departmental mergers and a closure. To monitor our potential to purchase texts recommended by academics, we again conducted a reading list survey. Encouragingly we received 227 more reading lists this session, 59% compared to 42% in 2009–10.

We add value by teaching about information resources. In addition to 242 subject-based sessions, we ran 48 generic ‘Finding your way’ sessions for new library users and having rewritten training materials to make them more interactive and exploratory, 16 graded workshops for researchers on EndNote, bib-liographic and database searching software. Liaison librarians assisted at a new joint Faculty of Arts and Humanities/Faculty of Social Science catch-up day for research postgraduates. From July, as the Library’s new contact for international students, Charlie

Playing the mild roverLibrary staff give roving help to users, as well as staffing information desks.

‘Finding your way’ workshopsMany students sign up for orientation workshops and advise others to attend too.


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Carpenter organised 20 Library staff to provide 16 introductory sessions (with 32 tours) and 16 electronic resource sessions for a record number of students on the International Study and Language Centre pre-sessional programme.

Elizabeth Schlackman, an Education Liaison Librarian, received a Faculty Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning in May. These are awarded annually to teaching and learning support staff making significant, ongoing contributions. Elizabeth was one of a small number whose efforts achieved a special mention. Helen Hathaway (Science Faculty Team Manager/Information Skills Co-ordinator) was awarded a lifetime University Teaching Fellowship in March 2011, an exceptional achievement in a year of strong competition. Very few academic-related staff gain this prestigious award conferred on individuals demonstrating individual excellence and contrib-uting to the University’s teaching and learning development. Designed to support further development in this area, it gives a three-year honorarium and the opportunity to apply for substantial project funding.

Liaison librarians want to be where the University needs us. So people can find us, this session we enhanced our liaison librarians’ web contact pages to show their photographs, and encourage students and staff to make contact. However, we also know that patterns of information use are changing. As part of our Refocusing Liaison Support Project re-examining where and how liaison librarians are best placed to serve, we piloted ‘roving’ help on the 2nd (Science) Floor. Over five autumn weeks, roving librarians on our Ground Floor answered an impressive 2,985 enquiries on Self-Service Points and other subjects.

To help students and academics who may need help at any time of day or night, we provide a suite of online guides. In August, David Brown devised a new web version of our popular printed guide on searching databases, making it easier to dip into what one wants to know. By September, a new web-based guide was also helping students get started with literature searching.


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System and service initiativesWe continue to refine and develop our extensive website’s capability to support the University. As a result of usability testing, our redesigned Library homepage went live in August. It now highlights the most popular information, notably our subject help, and brings together informa-tion on finding journal articles. We discovered just how central the Library website is to University life, when we started using Site Improve and Google Analytics. These tools analyse the site so we know where to make improve-ments. The Library homepage is one of the most visited pages on the University site – up to 2,000 hits per day – behind only the generic University homepage, staff and student portals, and

Reading Live. Our most popular section is E-resources, including the Databases A–Z list. By far the most visited guide is Citing References, although our databases guide is also well-used.

We began using a WordPress blog to power news on our homepage this session. Its simple technology enables a small team to add and remove timely news alerts and Library users can now receive University Library News by RSS feed if they prefer. To cater for still more user tastes, in March we fed our blog into a Library Twitter account. March saw a live mobile version of our website containing information and links users might need on the move like opening hours, the catalogue and personal accounts. There is also now an iPhone app for searching the Library catalogue called BookMyne, available from the iTunes Store.

Elibrary, the new version of our online Library catalogue was running in August with new features for users: an e-resources-only search, login by University username and password, a list of

A hit in the UniversityOur redesigned Library homepage at www.reading.ac.uk/library is the sixth most visited page on the University website


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Exceptional serviceMystery shopping showed students rated 98% of our customer service ‘commendable’ or ‘satisfactory’.

one’s recent loans. Our Enterprise Project to create a single interface for University systems including those of University Museums and Special Collections Services (UMASCS) had a soft launch in July. UMASCS’ new system Adlib is now fully live running alongside the Library system. UMASCS’ old system OLIB was switched off in May.

Our Circulation Services Team worked all year to refine service delivery. Preparing to integrate delivering material from the new Off-site Store, they introduced an online request system for material from closed access via the Unicorn catalogue as early as October. We happily ditched the old green

paper request slips along with the need to decipher handwriting!

Between February and March we decided to test our ‘customer service’ skills with a Mystery Shopping Pilot Project at the Main Library using real Reading students. We were very pleased indeed to receive ‘commendable’ or ‘satisfactory’ assessments on all aspects of all the ‘shops’ except one. Our next move will be to produce a ‘user service’ charter and to introduce it alongside more training, particularly for those in service areas not yet ‘shopped’. We aim to embed more mystery shopping as a regular University volunteering opportunity for students.


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Contributing to our communitiesLibrary staff are keen to play a part within the University, academic, local, international and library communities. At this year’s University open days, we hosted Institute of Education staff whose new facilities at the London Road site were not yet ready. We also hosted an evening drinks reception for the opening day of the Early Modern Studies Conference in July. In November, David Brown gave a presentation on academic sources of information for history, one of the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) Lunchtime Network seminars on current issues concerning arts, heritage and information services. Christopher Cipkin, Jonathan Jones and Catherine Smith made a contribution on librarian-ship to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities careers seminar. The Main Library Whiteknights hosted an exhibition preview celebrating the 60th anniversary of both MERL and the BBC radio serial The Archers. Many local schools visited to research the Library’s extensive collections during University vacations. Schools Liaison Representative Elizabeth Simpson organised an information session for local teachers in June.

The Library’s Research projects (the Location Register, WATCH and FOB) had a very successful year in 2010–11 and considerably extended their international range and reputation. WATCH (Writers Artists & Their Copyright Holders – www.watch-file.com) and FOB (Firms Out of Business – www.fob-file.com) are already well-

Willesden Junction goes to BarcelonaWillesden Junction – Early morning was loaned to an exhibition of British post-war art.


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Open Day with strings attachedLibrary visitors to Open Day were entertained by Institute of Education music students.

known worldwide, being joint web-projects of the Universities of Reading and Texas providing unique copyright-holder information.

The Location Register of Modern Literary Manuscripts and Letters (www.locationregister.com) is an updated version of a project first established in Reading in 1982. The Register recently received new grants from the British Academy, the Arts Council, the Strachey Trust, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Pilgrim Trust and others, which enabled a new twenty-first-century research project to begin on 1 January 2011, with a new full-time research officer. The project has recently located and listed a good number of exciting new collections of literary manuscripts which have arrived in British establishments since 2001.

The international reputation of the Location Register project has led to its Director, Dr David Sutton, being appointed in 2010 first as Chair of GLAM-UK (the Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts) and then as Chair of the Section for Literary Archives of the International Council on Archives, where he has initiated several international research projects. He has also become the convenor of a new International Network on Diasporic Literary Archives, which will be funded by the Leverhulme Trust for the period 2012–2014 and will bring together partners in France, Italy, Namibia, Trinidad and the USA, coordinated from Reading.

In November, the Leon Kossoff painting Willesden Junction – Early morning travelled from the 4th Floor reading room to a Barcelona art exhibition on British post-war artists.

PeopleThe Library accords staff training and development high importance in order to provide high-level support to the University. We hold Investor in People (IiP) status, run our own outstanding Staff Development Hour programme and support national framework qualifications for CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. We mentor several trainee liaison librarians for CILIP chartership in well-structured, three-year posts designed to give new profession-als a range of liaison, functional and supervisory experiences. We welcomed Jonathan Jones in

September. David Brown attained chartership in May. David and Elizabeth Simpson won the CILIP University, College and Research Group’s Sheila Corrall Publication Award for their paper on ‘pack-aged information’.Experienced professional Christopher Cipkin revalidated his chartership. We also provide one-year library assistant posts for pre-library school graduates. This year, these went to Ellie Hunt, Claire Knight and Catherine Smith.

Retirements included Anna Beasley, Modern Languages Liaison Librarian/Arts and Humanities Team Leader in

Copy, right?!

Ian Sainsbury (left) was replaced

as Law/Politics Librarian by Ross

Connell (right).

Another traineeship launched

Jonathan Jones took up a liaison

librarian traineeship in September.


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August. With her commitment to customer service and detailed knowledge of collections she helped countless students, particularly international students over the last 16 years. Ian Sainsbury, Law and Politics Liaison Librarian/Social Sciences Team Leader retired in September. His professional legacy includes the law library he was appointed in 1974 to establish. He was our first ‘subject librarian’, basing himself beside his resources to help users. He was also the University’s respected Copyright Co-ordinator. Also retiring were Senior Library

Assistant (Acquisitions) Val Davies, Receptionist Julia Reynolds, Bulmershe Library Assistant Diane Chessell, Weekend Team Supervisor Valerie Gray and Document Supply Co-ordinator Maggie Leach.

Sadly, Dermot O’Rourke died in January. Retiring in 1983 as Head of Cataloguing after at least 25 years at the Library, he subsequently returned to work on special collections as honorary Curator of the Cole Collection. Users of the digitised card catalogue can still encounter his distinctive handwriting.

Maggie’s not for returning

Maggie Leach retired this year.

Legal bond Law Librarian Ian Sainsbury (centre

front) on his retirement, with colleagues

past and present.


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Statistics

2008 – 2009 2009 – 2010 2010 – 2011

Number of registered Library users

Total 22,179 22,087 25,087

Students 17,097 16,976 20,097

Staff 4,435 4,583 4,324

External users 647 528 666

Use of the libraries

Number of user visits 1,091,250 885,723 958,001

Number of items borrowed 629,848 651,535 589,776

Items borrowed from other libraries 4,943 4,657 3,566

Items supplied to other libraries 230 505 277

Number of enquiries in a sample term-time week 2,727 2,266 1,758

Number of Library staff hours spent teaching 533 600 788

Library staff

Full-time equivalent 84.92 83.60 81.20

Information resources

Catalogued books 1,199,024 1,209,988 1,136,986

Books added in the year 14,265 10,964 7,120

Current periodical subscriptions 16,642 23,502 26,274

Electronic periodicals 15,738 21,123 24,213

E-books No data 291,109 281,651

Library buildings

Total area occupied (sq m) 13,803 13,803 13,803

Study places 1,316 1,467 1,542

Study places with PCs 254 234 228

Study places with network connection (laptops) 32 24 32

Annual Library expenditure

Information resources £1,395,033 £1,435,694 £1,551,600

Timeline

August

Revised Library homepage satisfies student needs

Online catalogue upgrade brings new features

Liaison Librarian Research Support audit begins

September

Retirements of Faculty Team Leaders Ian Sainsbury and Anna Beasley

Arrivals of Faculty Team Leader/Liaison Librarian Ross Connell, Trainee Liaison Librarian Jonathan Jones and three graduate trainee Library assistants: Ellie Hunt, Claire Knight, Catherine Smith

October

We help Freshers whilst ‘roving,’ at the Library Fair and ‘Finding your way’ training

Online requests for closed access items begin

November

Anne Chesher appointed as Cataloguer and Liaison Support Librarian (part-time)

Leon Kossof painting loaned to Barcelona

Annual Finzi Poetry Reading by Bill Manhire

December

Winter snows cause no change to Library service

January

Charlie Carpenter promoted to Faculty Team Leader / Support Co-ordinator (International Students)

20,000 Store collection items temporarily moved to Bulmershe Library

Julia Hallam begins as Location Register Research Officer

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February

Mystery shopping exercise

Community of Practice meeting for Library Reps and Liaison Librarians

Collections Project is two years old

March

Helen Hathaway awarded University Teaching Fellowship

Library Twitter account launched

Off-site Store journal processing begins with Quality and quantity

Adlib goes online

April

Mobile-friendly Library website trialled

May

Off-site Store becomes operational

David Brown achieves Chartership

Elizabeth Schlackman gets Faculty Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning

June

Major stock removals begin

Rewiring project and refurbishments begin at the Main Library

Bulmershe Library Course Collection books arrive at the Main Library

July

Bulmershe Collections move to Whiteknights, Bulmershe Library closes

Hazel Grainger, Liaison Librarian arrives to job-share with Karen Drury

Maggie Leach, Document Supply Co-ordinator retires


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For more information, please contact:

Julia Munro, University Librarian

University of Reading Library Whiteknights Reading RG6 6AE

[email protected] Tel (0118) 378 8770 Fax (0118) 378 6636www.reading.ac.uk/library

B04718 02.11

University of Reading Library review 2010-2011

Documents

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library space

site library

whiteknights library

library services abls

teaching library users

new service

hard work of library