University of Reading Library review 2008-2009

Library

Library review 2008–2009

Library

Plans and priorities 3

Collections 5

Improving our Library space 8

Helping and teaching Library users 9

Systems and service initiatives 11

Contributing to our communities 13

People 15

Statistics 17

Time-line 18

Illustration courtesy of www.wordle.net

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Contents

The Library Review was written and designed by Ian Burn, Julia Munro, Rachel Redrup and David Sutton, Rupert Wood and other members of Library staff.

Library review 2008–2009

Plans and priorities 1 August 2008 brought us new opportunities: a new directorate, new leadership and consequently, fresh consideration of the Library plans and priorities we set in tandem with University corporate strategies and objectives. Following the Vice-Chancellor’s review of University administrative and service directorates, the University Library joined a new Academic Services Directorate. Our new Head of Directorate, Dr Richard Messer, visited the various University Library sites in the Autumn term, familiarising himself with our environment and deepening his understanding. As ever, Professor Bob Chapman, Chair of the Advisory Board for Library Services (ABLS), gave wise counsel and well informed input – his experience of leading ABLS and supporting the Library at senior University level for seven years proving invaluable. We welcome opportunities in plenty for future fruitful collaboration with our Directorate’s other units including IT Services, the Centre for Staff Training and Development, the Centre for the Development

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of Teaching and Learning, and Academic Quality Support.

Julia Munro, University Librarian

Alongside these discussions and affirmation of the Library’s strategic priorities, we continued to progress. The Collections Management project, mentioned in last year’s annual review, began in earnest this session. Thanks are due to all academic staff for collaborating with liaison librarians and lending their expertise to the stock review which is the focus of this project. This will ultimately ensure a Library which best serves its University’s needs: open access provision to the most heavily-used printed material on one Library site – Whiteknights – with on-demand access to lower-use and research material from a remote store. Improvements to Main Library opening hours were also achieved – to the delight of the Students’ Union – with the appointment of new Evening Service Teams.

In common with all UK university libraries, the global financial crisis of 2008/2009 did deeply affect Library finances, notably our periodicals subscriptions. However, with extra funding from the University, brokered by Dr Richard Messer, our services were able to survive.

Overall, a year for the Library of change, contemplation and considerable progress, albeit set in a challenging financial environment. The Library staff remain at the heart of all that this review describes and I thank them yet again for their determined hard work and dedicated service to our users.

Julia Munro University Librarian

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Library review 2008–2009

Every journey begins with one ... book As part of our ambitious five-year Collections Project, we are reviewing our entire stock. We began allocating lower-use/research material for the off-campus store we plan to acquire.

Claire Cannings, Cataloguing and Liaison Support Librarian, is pictured with the very first batch. We will retain essential texts on open shelves and discard unwanted items to provide more study space at Main Library Whiteknights.

Collections Our ambitious Collections Project began in earnest this session. Our goal is to serve the entire University from Main Library Whiteknights by 2011 when Bulmershe Court ceases academic operations and we anticipate closing the site library there. We envisage all essential texts on open shelves, adequate study space and loweruse/research material easily retrievable from a new secure store. To make room for our plans, this session we started reviewing our entire 1.2+ million item stock: disposing of unwanted texts and allocating important but less-used material to closed access storage.

The Library Collections Project Team, led by Rupert Wood, Head of Collections, formed before the close of last session. His team pioneered work throughout the session. (A project co-ordinator and an assistant were appointed in July, but could not join us until the 2009-2010 session).

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From September, we worked on ‘de-duplicating’ stock from Bulmershe Library. We identified titles where low loan records suggested we need not keep multiple copies across both Library sites.

Experienced academic staff and liaison librarians from related subject areas then checked to ensure we retained classic and useful texts. Additionally at Bulmershe, we reviewed various ‘Closed Access’ collections, out-of-date non-fiction books from the School Services Collection and withdrew a massive amount of redundant multimedia.

From January we piloted a process to review final copies, devised by Project team members Rose Ann Movsovic and Christopher Cipkin, and liaison librarians from the Cataloguing Team. By summer 2009, nearly all our subject liaison librarians were reviewing stock with several supporting library assistants processing withdrawals.

In February, we allocated our first books to ‘Store’ collections, selecting very low-use, older items, especially sets of complete works and series. These will be moved to the new store, as and when it becomes available.

In July, all Library Managers took part in an ‘awayday’ meeting to discuss plans for how Main Library collections and services will be organised at the end of the Collections Project, anticipated in 2013.

The University’s Map Collection is now based at Main Library Whiteknights as we completed previous sessions’ plans to integrate physically the old Map Library from the Department of Geography.

Over summer 2008, Map Librarian Judith Fox and part of the map and atlas collection successfully transferred to Main Library in time for the new page 6

Library review 2008–2009

Map Library mapped The expertise of Map Librarian Judith Fox and the great wealth of the University’s Map Collection may now be accessed from Main Library Whiteknights following its transfer.

term. The remainder of the maps are in remote storage. Approximately 600 atlases were added to stock and 400 withdrawn.

Last session we were charged with disposing of Library stock from the closed Witan International College. We added around 700 books to our collections; despatched most of the Japaneselanguage material and 1,725 English-language books to John Rylands University of Manchester Library; passed 525 books to Bracknell and Wokingham College Library; sold around 7,500 items in a two-day sale; sold the remaining Englishlanguage material to a dealer; and recycled the remaining Japanese-language material.

Our E-books collection continues to grow, swelled this session by 180 Taylor and Francis titles, 273 arts and humanities Cambridge Companions and around 500 new ACLS Humanities ebooks, taking the total number of ebooks on Unicorn to nearly 3,000.

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Improving our Library space

Safer keeping Library materials and customers are now safer following an upgrade to fire alarm announcements, points and wiring, and removal of flammable materials from the Basement ceiling. We continued to provide a service for readers throughout the works.

At the close of last session, the University had approved a project to acquire a new off-campus library store for less-used research material.

Unfortunately, planning permission for a purposebuilt store on a University farm was rejected in January. The project then moved towards selecting an existing warehouse to rent and fit out. Library senior managers visited possible sites in July.

Although this change of plan delays the earliest practical closure of Bulmershe Library until 2011, happily this now corresponds directly with the leaving date for Bulmershe Court’s three academic departments.

Main Library’s ‘fire upgrade’ project began in June 2009. Contractors Mansell replaced fire alarm points and wiring, and installed a voice message instructing users to evacuate the building in case of fire. Consequently, we can also consign the old, unexplained closing buzzer to history – a voice will announce ‘closing time’ as well. The Basement was virtually inaccessible during work to replace flammable ceiling tiles, yet we continued to collect items for readers from it. During the workmen’s breaks, appointed library staff donned hard hats and high visibility jackets to fetch material from the protective plastic tunnels by head-torchlight.

In March, we created extra study space on Main Library’s 5th Floor from rooms, latterly used for storage, which were vacated when Special Collections transferred to Redlands Road.

Revising students made good use of them, despite

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Library review 2008–2009

Shhhh!

Revising students made good use of new quiet study rooms on Main Library’s 5th Floor.

mismatched furniture. However, in July, we made a successful £10,000 bid to the University’s Annual Fund to refurbish them. Work will continue into next session.

Helping and teaching Library users Library staff supporting EndNote, the reference management software, received a University Team Teaching Award for outstanding contributions to teaching and learning. Pro-Vice Chancellor, Rob Robson presented this at a ceremony during July’s Learning Through Enquiry Alliance (LTEA) 2009 and Reading Teaching and Learning Conference.

The team delivers workshops and supports researchers, academics, some undergraduates, and others including those producing the University list of annual publications. They develop supporting materials and train other liaison librarians to page 9

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deliver teaching and training. Of particular note was their evaluation of the new EndNote Web version in preparation to advise potential users.

Testing waters from the Pool Academic staff can test their students with library/information skills questions taken from our Question Pool within Blackboard, the University’s virtual learning environment.

Dedicated liaison librarians support each University school/department. This session we addressed ourselves to surveying gaps in acquiring reading lists so that we can ensure we buy the right texts.

Gordon Connell became Faculty Team Manager of two Faculties on 1 August when Henley Management College merged with the University: the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Henley Business School at Reading.

In August 2008 we made available a pool of 160 library/information skills questions on Blackboard, the University’s virtual learning environment, for academic staff to use or adapt in their own courses. The Blackboard Question Pool project was supported by a grant from the University of Reading’s Teaching and Learning Development Fund. Library staff gave presentations on the subject at two national events this session: an information skills exchange day organised by Oxford University Library Services in September and the British Business Schools’ Librarians’ Group meeting in July.

Fair Exchange Our Freshers’ Library Fair took place in the Knowledge Exchange for the first time this year.

During Freshers’ Week, Main Library’s Freshers’ Library Fair took place in the Ground Floor Knowledge Exchange for the first time. We offered new students a friendly welcome, information resource-related freebies and a chance to book ‘finding your way’ workshops during the first few weeks on finding Library resources.

Also, rather than expect shy new customers to visit Information Points, we went out amongst them on Main Library’s Ground Floor. Many staff took part in the roaming/roving help rota throughout October,

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Library review 2008–2009

solving 1,586 queries. These were mainly general in nature during Freshers week, but by the final week, the majority were about using Self-Issue Points.

Queries peaked at 423 in Week 2 of term.

Virtually independent tours You may now watch a tour of each Main Library floor online or download an audio tour to your iPod and walk around listening to it. See: www.reading.ac.uk/ library/tours

Self-Service Points meant prizes Two prize draws encouraged customers to borrow and return loans at the Self-Service Points. Olivia Lewis received a winning voucher from Nick Hollis, Circulation Services Manager, in March.

New users arriving at any time can now watch online, or download to their MP3 players, virtual podcast tours of Main Library from our website or CyberLibrary Blackboard. A Library team created audio tours for the 1st and Ground Floor, plus images for the Ground Floor tour in January. Over the summer, they recorded audio tours for each of the three subject Floors.

Systems and service initiatives We always try to deliver what our customers tell us they need, including additional Main Library opening. Existing staff volunteers piloted longer weekend opening until 21:00 during April/May exams in response to requests from the Students’ Union executive. Following Spring 2008’s successful pilot project using volunteers, additional University funding enabled newly appointed teams to extend Monday–Thursday opening to midnight from 22:15 on a permanent basis after Easter 2009.

Self-Service Point issues and returns became ever more popular. They had already reached 70% of all transactions by October (self-issues 75%, self-returns 71%). Prize draws for self-service use in November and March encouraged further use.

We contributed to the British Library’s secure e-thesis initiative, EThOS, by becoming an open

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access member institution. Over 470 Reading PhD theses were digitised and made available directly to the desktops of the world-wide academic community in this way, obviating the need to visit or request them on inter-library loan.

Something special Special Collections Services own website went live this September at: www. reading.ac.uk/special-collections

Our pilot scanning project gives students access through Blackboard (the University’s virtual learning environment) to texts scanned under our Copyright Licensing Agency licence. An Annual Fund award of £10,000 allowed us to extend the project this session. We worked with Schools to identify suitable high demand items, especially photocopied articles and book chapters from Course Collection books. We produced additional readings for Film, Theatre & Television; Psychology and Clinical Languages Sciences; and Philosophy, and hope to extend this to other departments in future.

Web developments included Special Collections web information being transferred from the Library’s public website to its own dedicated website in September. Internally, the Library adopted ‘wiki’ technology to manage sharing and updating procedural and developmental information on our intranet. The project team and others updated and revised all material before transferring it from the previous version.

Wicked!

We brought in wiki technology to share information on a new Library staff intranet.

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Library users benefitted from several system enhancements this session. At the beginning of the session, our Systems Team upgraded our SirsiDynix library management system from Unicorn to Symphony 3.21. Automatic billing for long-overdue loans was introduced to encourage users to return or pay for material more promptly. A ‘New titles at Main Library’ list now displays the month’s new books for virtual browsing via the Library catalogue

Library review 2008–2009

and is updated weekly. In January, the Team enhanced Library users’ online accounts to show them new due dates for recalled loans. Also this session, as part of the system replacement project in University Museums and Special Collections Services (the other constituent of the University Library and Collections Services), they loaded catalogue records for 40,000 Museum of English Rural Life Library books and journals onto Unicorn, thus reintegrating our catalogues.

Open house We open library sites on University Open Days and tell potential students how we can support their studies.

The Systems Team revised the methods of authentication used to control access to online databases. The decision was taken to remain with Eduserv and to subscribe, in August, to the OpenAthens service in order to continue using local ID credentials via Distributed Authentication.

By December the majority of the remaining nonAthens compliant resources were setup to work, onand off-campus, through EZProxy.

Contributing to our communities As usual, we participated in various University events this session. We opened Library sites and gave talks at undergraduate University Open Days in September and June, and staffed a stand for the postgraduate equivalent in March. We jointly organised the annual Finzi Poetry Reading in November by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin with the Department of English and American Literature.

Her reading and reception closed a day marking the 90th anniversary of World War I with a lunchtime concert of music by Finzi, Farrar and Gurney, and

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a library exhibition and seminar on contemporary books and publishing.

We contributed a well-received paper to July’s joint LTEA 2009 and Reading Teaching and Learning Conference. The LTEA (Learning Through Enquiry Alliance) is a partnership of Enquiry-Based Learning Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs). This year their fourth national conference combined with the University’s own annual teaching and learning event. A paper by Sally Smith and Helen Hathaway outlined how liaison librarians help students familiarise themselves with the information landscape and find reputable sources of information at transition from school to higher education and throughout their academic careers.

In the interests of mutual learning, staff from one of our journals agents, Swets, visited our Acquisitions Team in the Autumn. This was much appreciated: ‘The visit was really useful. We were made to feel really welcome and the staff were happy to sit with us! ... They showed us anything they could to help us learn more about what was involved with the Acquisitions Section. We had a tour of the Library and got to see a lot of the titles we work with every day! Very worthwhile knowing how the other side works.’

As a service to the local community (besides promoting librarianship as a career), we again offered several school pupils work placements.

Several school groups visited the Library through a scheme to improve Library skills and ease the transition to university.

In June, serenaded by a string quartet, local alumna Pam Gulliver presented her book, Mendelssohn: the caged spirit, to the Library. Written under the page 14

Library review 2008–2009

Strings to her book Psychotherapist Pam Gulliver presented us with her book, Mendelssohn: the caged spirit, accompanied by a string quartet. She is pictured with (right) husband Bill and (left) Christopher Cipkin, Faculty Team Manager for Arts and Humanities.

pen-name Mary Allerton-North, this is the first book on Mendelssohn by a female psychotherapist.

Fittingly, the presentation took place 200 years since the birth of both Felix Mendelssohn and Louis Braille, Pam’s extensive research having been conducted in Braille.

People The Library places high importance on staff training. In addition to our outstanding internal weekly ‘Staff Development Hour’ programme, we 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 professionals a range of liaison, functional and supervisory experiences. Sarah Puzey and Elizabeth Schlackman joined us as Trainee Liaison Librarians based at Bulmershe Library in September. This page 15

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Chartering their future (left to right) Trainee Liaison Librarians Sarah Puzey and Elizabeth Schlackman joined our three-year chartership programme for library professionals this session.

session existing trainees David Stacey and Victoria Bird became chartered members of CILIP. David also achieved Associate membership of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) with distinction. In addition, we provide one-year library assistant posts with mentorship for pre-library school graduates, including this session Rob Kirtley.

Staff retiring this session included library assistants Sandra Penfold and Brenda Evans; Support Services Team Leader, Clive Stanley; our first Cataloguing and Liaison Support Librarian, Linda Clargo; and Angie Empson, Bulmershe Administrative Assistant who retired due to ill-health.

We were pleased to collaborate with newly appointed professionals in the University this year: Guy Baxter who joined University Museums and Special Collections Services as University Archivist; Emily Goodhand, University Copyright and Compliance Officer; and Alison Sutton, appointed to manage CentAUR, the University’s institutional publications repository.

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Library review 2008–2009

Statistics

2006–2007

2007–2008

2008-2009

Total

19,842

17,994

22,179

Students

15,382

*14,132

17,097

Staff

3,155

3,319

4,435

External users

1,305

*543

647

Number of user visits

678,853

951,431

1,091,250

Number of items borrowed

632,481

520,969

629,848

5,814

4,983

4,943

399

196

230

Number of enquiries in a sample term-time week 2,098

1,578

2,727

602

453

533

87.98

88.98

84.92

1,204,110

1,208,424

1,199,024

Books added in the year

10,205

15,233

14,265

Current periodical subscriptions

12,860

15,585

16,642

Electronic periodicals

12,011

14,584

15,738

13,803

13,965

13,803

1,252

1,256

1,316

321

249

254

£1,278,405

£1,315,217

£1,395,033

Number of registered Library users

Use of the Libraries

Items borrowed from other libraries Items supplied to other libraries Number of Library staff hours spent teaching Library staff, full-time equivalent Library materials Catalogued books

Library buildings Total area occupied (sq m) Reader places Reader places with PCs Annual Library expenditure Library materials * revised figures

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Time-line August 2008

September 2008

Map Collections and Map Librarian move to Main Library

Sarah Puzey and Elizabeth Schlackman, Trainee Liaison Librarians, start work

‘Blackboard Question Pool’ launched on Blackboard

Library Fair first held in Main Library Knowledge Exchange Special Collections website goes live Unicorn library management system upgraded to Symphony

December 2008

January 2009

Richard Messer, Director of Academic Services, visits Library

Total e-books on Unicorn catalogue nearly 3,000

First staff training for Collections Project work

Victoria Bird achieves chartered membership of CILIP

Guy Baxter appointed at UMASCS as University Archivist

Anne Taylor becomes Acquisitions Team Leader

April 2009 New teams open Main Library to midnight Monday–Thursday in term on a permanent basis. Volunteers pilot Friday–Sunday opening to 21:00 during exam period David Hart of Dundee University Library visits to compare services and staffing

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May 2009 Pilot Friday–Sunday opening to 21:00 during exam period continues Emily Goodhand, University Copyright and Compliance Officer arrives and begins to work closely with Library

Library review 2008–2009

October 2008 David Stacey achieves chartered membership of CILIP

November 2008

Self-Service use high: 70% of all returns and loans

Finzi Poetry Day marks 90 years since the Armistice with period musical and literary events, and poetry reading by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Giant booksale at Witan Library raises £5,300

Witan Library keys returned

We transfer staff information to a wiki intranet

Course reading scanning project extended

February 2009

March 2009

First books allocated to future off-campus store

Extra study space created on Main Library’s 5th Floor

One evening, Main Library closes early due to record arctic conditions!

University awards Liaison Librarians access to departmental Blackboard portals

June 2009

July 2009

Department of History of Art & Architecture Periodic Review

EndNote Support Team receive University Team Teaching award

Fire safety upgrade work begins at Main Library

Library Managers ‘away day’ on post-2011 Library strategies and organisation

Information Skills Group ‘away day’

Reading list survey begins 40,000 Museum of English Rural Life Library records loaded onto Unicorn catalogue

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Library review

For more information, please contact: Julia Munro University Librarian University of Reading Library Whiteknights Reading RG6 6AE United Kingdom library@reading.ac.uk Tel (0118) 378 8770 Fax (0118) 378 6636

www.reading.ac.uk/library