St John’s College Library Newsletter L
MICHAELMAS 2020
VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1
The Working Library is awarded accreditation In June 2020, the College Library was granted the Technology Excellence in Libraries Award (TEiLA) by Book Industry Communication (BIC), a dedicated book industry supply chain organisation in the UK. The purpose of the accreditation is “to assure the quality of the institution or program and to assist in the improvement of the institution or program”. The TEiLA accreditation scheme focuses on evaluation of the technologies in contemporary libraries. It offers an opportunity for library staff to demonstrate their expertise in implementing beneficial technologies to improve library services, as well as assessing their cost efficiency and effectiveness. It would not be correct to claim that until now, no evaluation of the Working Library’s efficiency and effectiveness has taken place. Many Fellows and students will have participated in the quadrennial user survey that aims to give Fellows and students a voice as to how well the Working Library meets their needs. However, while the quadrennial user survey
constitutes an internal (College) evaluation, the TEiLA accreditation scheme sets external professional standards, and is awarded by a body representing the professional book industry. Importantly, however, these two forms of evaluation – the internal College quadrennial user survey, and the external technologybased accreditation – measure different facets of library provision and are thus considered by Library staff to be of equal importance. To achieve this award, we were required to demonstrate how our Library uses technologies to streamline the workflow to provide a more efficient library service. The main criteria to be met included the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for self-issue/self-return of library items; security and stock checking; the employment of the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) function in the library management system to facilitate an efficient communication with book suppliers for library orders and invoices; demonstration of how the Library supports the adoption of new technologies in its work; and how it obtains accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive bibliographic information for use by library staff and users. It is apparent from these criteria just how dependent are contemporary library practices on various technologies. As far as I am aware, we are the first Cambridge college working library to have received such accreditation, the characteristics of which are based on data-driven external evaluation that measures performance against criteria representing the highest professional standards. It thus enjoys robustness and credibility, especially