Visit to the Aldham Robarts LRC, Liverpool John Moores University
Ian, Philippa and I visited the Aldham Robarts LRC at LJMU on the 4th Feb. The LRC has recently benefitted from a major refurbishment which was designed around a new University service model, which brings together all standard student-facing services in a newly converged department - Library and Student Support. Students can now visit any of the three campus LRCs to get help, information and advice about any aspect of student life, as well as to access standard library resources.
The ground floor of each LRC contains a student support zone, which is made up of a Welcome Hub and a Transactions Desk.
Staff at the Welcome Hub provide a reception service, answer general circulation and IT enquiries, and book appointments for students needing specialist help (eg. welfare, careers, employabilty, library subject support and specialist computing support). There are a number of small meetings rooms available for students to meet support staff.
Welcome Hub
Transaction Desk
Staff at the Transactions desk provide help with all aspects of student administration, including coursework submission, enrolment, timetables, module registration and student finance.
The refurbished ground floor contains flexible group study areas and printing facilities.
Philippa and Ian in the first floor printing centre
Flexible group study area
The first floor has also been refurbished and contains collections, group and individual study areas, and bookable group rooms. The upper floors will be refurbished at a future date.
All loans of print materials are self service, including reservations, which students collect from the short-loan area.
Self-service reservations
LJMU customer services staff have offered roving support for the past three years. The rovers wear a sash or tee-shirt to identify themselves to users.
A Rover in a tee-shirt!
The basement at the Aldham Robarts LRC houses special collections and archives, which in general are based around the theme of popular culture. The collections include the Ray Coleman Archive, containing taped interviews used by Coleman in his biographies of Brian Epstein and John Lennon; and the John Savage Archive, which is the largest collection of punk-related material in the world.
We are looking forward to returning to LJMU, when the refurbishment of the upper floors has been completed.
