L&LR staff blog

I spent Friday at Leicester University at the meeting of UKCORR (UK Council of Research Repositories).  Presentations about Journal ToCs, SHERPA ROMEO, CADAIR among others were all very interesting but it was even more useful to discuss issues with other people in same position as us.  REF, implications of mandate and, especially, eTheses seem to be common concerns to everyone.  Most repositories seem to be heavily dependent on library skills, and the more deposits are mandated, the heavier the burden of review becomes.  A copyright workshop at the end of the day was an excellent forum in which to compare policies and workflows. 

The fabulously hard-working Gareth Johnson twittered and blogged the proceedings as well as forgoing his lunch to give us a guided tour of the David Wilson Library.  It’s wonderful to see what 32 million pounds looks like.  I particularly liked the ‘help zone’, and the information screens which give computer availability throughout the building as well as streaming local news and weather alongside library news!

Thanks to Leicester and Northampton for their joint hospitality, and to the officers of  UKCORR which has no budget so runs on goodwill; luckily there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of this.

As always, if you are curious about the repository, please ask me!

Bev!

The Inter-library loans service is changing!

We are currently in the process of updating our Inter-library loans software which will mean a few changes in appearance and in the way you place requests.

The new service should be in place soon so watch this space for more updates and information. 

 
Most of the Acquisitions Team will be attending training in the new software next week (18th & 19th) so there will be a limited Inter-library loan service on Wednesday 18th November.

I visited Edinburgh University Library, which is half way through a £60 million refit.  So far, the ground, 5th and 6th floors have been completed.  To enter the ground floor, you go past a reception desk staffed by security, to a spacious area that includes an exhibition space, help desk, self service machines (with full RFID), a large core collection, group study pods, banks of fixed computers, lockers and staff areas.

Staff at the helpdesk shown above answer front line enquiries, including general information and IT enquiries, and also issue reservations and the few items that do not go through self services.

There are print and copy pods located at the same place on all floors.

There are lockers on every floor, with coin operated keys, which have proved popular with students, who are allowed to use them on a daily basis (all lockers are supposed to be empty by the time the library closes).

There are 19 group study pods, in slightly different configurations.  The screens can be moved by library staff, on request, to form a different configuration:

Students focus groups were involved in the design of the pods.

Users have access to a cafe, and are allowed to take drinks on to the ground floor only.

The Library is designed to be more quiet on the upper floor, with the 5th and 6th floors designated to support researchers (although they are also popular with undergraduates preparing for exams).

The 6th floor contains the Centre for Research Collections, a research suite, a readers’ lounge with comfortable seating, and The Wolfson Reading Room.  As much of the material is rare and valuable, there are always two members of staff on duty at all times, and extensive CCTV.

The top floors of the Library benefit from views of the Pentland Hills and Arthur’s Seat:

The 5th floor contains extensive archive stores, including rare book collections, (they were a deposit library until the 19th century), a digital imaging unit, a conservation service and staff offices.  There is also an environmentally controlled viewing room, designed for showing material to visitors.

Throughout, they have used refurbished shelves, with new coloured acrylic shelf ends.  They still use the Arne Jacobsen chairs purchased in the 1960s, when the Library was built:

You may have seen a photograph of Christine Keeler posing on a chair like this…

We also looked at the floors that are still to be converted, to get some idea of the extent of the transformation – it will be interesting to return when it has been completed.

The Reader Services team went to see the Boots library at Nottingham Trent’s City campus on the hottest day of the year.   The team met several members of staff in the library, and discussed how their role had adapted and changed with the introduction of self-service and the implementation of roving.   While most agreed that it had taken a little while to adapt to the new way of working, everyone felt it had been an improvement to the service as students were no longer ‘ping-ponged’ between 4 different desks in the library.

The building itself is striking, shaped like a wedge of cheese, with the entrance at the narrow end, and broadening out from there.   There is a large atrium with daylight flooding in from the glass ceiling, but the staff said that it did become very noisy in term-time.

It was a very interesting  and encouraging visit, and it is always good to meet others working in university libraries – it is reassuring to learn that we all work in very similar environments.

I spent a day at Kingston University on Friday with UKCORR (United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories).  There were some very interesting presentations, and it was useful to share experience in the breaks.  Great to know we’re not alone.  These are a few of the themes which came out of the whole day.

Repositories seem to have a much better chance of success if they serve a purpose and are integrated into other University systems; for example Glasgow’s ‘Enlighten’ project really began to take off when the repository was adopted as the principle publications database.  This commitment has to permeate the research establishment, it can’t just be imposed.

The financial and publishing landscape of open-access is not getting easier.  Publishers see open-access publishing as a way to shift the onus for payment from users to authors or institutions.  RoMEO (copyright information service) is seeing no evidence of greater clarity of information from publishers.

The difficulties we have found with authors self-archiving are very common.  Every institution seems to check and edit, at the very least.  Most either train departmental administrators to deposit or have repository or library staff doing the deposits.  These processes are nearly always located within the library, wherever the repository is managed.

Thanks to Kingston for hosting a great meeting and everyone who shared ideas, but especially Morag Greig from Glasgow University and Bill Hubbard from the CRC for their particular help.

If you’re interested in learning any more about the repository please contact Jill and I in the library.

Bev!

I’ve finally got a year’s worth of e-book usage data from both the ebrary and MyiLibrary platforms.

I’ve been commenting on the growth in usage throughout the year (since Michelle formally launched ebrary Academic Complete back in January), so here (without comment) are all the stats from August 2008 and July 2009.

Graph: e-book usage as a % of total usage (print+e).

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…alright, so I can’t resist commenting.

It looks as if we are definitely levelling out at the 25% mark – i.e., one e-book session for every three paper loans. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in September – will this 3:1 level of preference carry on into the new academic year?

My assertion that this translates to “one electronic loan for every three print” has been rightly challenged – after all, a new e-book session will be recorded every time a user ‘opens’ an e-book, whereas the same can’t be said for print loans, where the ‘loan’ is only registered once, irrespective of whether the reader opens the book thirty times, once, or not at all. Really, we need a formula along the lines of:

S = rL

Where S = a single user session, L = a print loan, and r = the number of times on average a student reads a library book they’ve borrowed. Anyone care to give me a figure for r?

What’s particularly interesting to me is that this growth has happened with – in the grand scheme of things – little in the way of overt publicity. I know that we’ve all pointed readers to e-books where they’ve been available, and I’m sure the Academic Subject Librarians have made sure their respective subjects were aware, but I’ve a hunch that the real driver has been the existence of e-book MARC records on Horizon, allowing readers to discover the e-books serendipitously. What would happen if we did the same for our 44,000 e-journals?

Edit (8th July) – slideshare.net does not seem to like displaying these slides on-screen, so here they are to download in MS PowerPoint format.

Here are the slides (on slideshare.net) of the 5-minute lightning talk I just gave at Mashed Library 2009, on using ticTOCs data to display e-journal ToC feeds, and on creating a new-titles feed with Yahoo Pipes, etc.

There is a problem with online renewals at the moment. The counter is changing when users try to renew but the date is staying the same.

The lack of this function is basically caused by a bug in HIP which causes problems when a My Account sub-tab is edited. The Sirsi-Dynix team are working on this and will contact me when a solution is found.

The following details outline the organisation of an event in June.  If anyone else is interested in helping with organisation or on the day please let Oonagh Monaghan know at omonaghan@lincoln.ac.uk

Steering group:

Helen Farrall (CERD), Pat Hughes, Oonagh Monaghan, Lesley Thompson

Publisher/supplier communications:

Di Walker, Vicki Winchester-Fraser

Helpers on the day:

Alice Frear, Marie Nicholson, Daren Mansfield, Cheryl Cliffe

Event: Supporting the learning experience: a joint event by Library and Learning Resources and CERD

Location: EMMTEC building (foyer and lecture theatre)

Date: 23^rd June 12noon-2pm (starting with buffet lunch)

Format:  Exhibition style in foyer and 10 minute presentation programme in the lecture theatre

Participants:

Exhibitors to include: publishers, suppliers, CERD,  Library and LR (ASLs – Paul, Alison, Acquisitions), Computing Services, Student Services, LiSN group)

Presentations to include: CERD (Helen for LD@L and possible others), ASLs with topics to include e-resources (Paul?), RefWorks (Alison?), Student Services?, CS?, publishers/suppliers

Funding:

Joint funding for refreshments from LLR and CERD budgets

Potential sponsorship funding from publishers/suppliers for event publicity

Timescale:

Publisher/supplier contact emails (emailed by Di and Vicki and recorded on spreadsheet)

1^st Week beginning 30^th March

2^nd Week beginning 20^th April

3^rd Week beginning  4^th May

Week beginning 18^th May – start publicity campaign and organise refreshments and logistics

The following email is/has been sent to suppliers/publishers:

The Library and Learning Resources department (http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/lr/index.htm)  and the Learning Development Co-ordinator from the Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD) (http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/cerd/) at the University of Lincoln are hosting an internal event for academic staff from the University with the aim of promoting various resources, services and projects.  We would like to invite database suppliers and publishers who would be able to set up stands in an exhibition style format and/or demonstrate their databases etc.  We also have the facilities in a lecture room for a programme of 10 minute presentations.

The event is scheduled for the 23^rd June starting at 12 noon for lunch and ending at 2pm.  It will be held in the EMMTEC building on the main campus at the University in Lincoln.  Details of the space are at http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/businessservices/index.htm

Participants will be able to arrive before 12 noon to set up displays in the foyer area.

The event would offer you the opportunity to promote your services and materials to academic and library staff here at the University of Lincoln.

We would also like to ask participants if they are interested in sponsoring the event in return for promotion in all the marketing materials we produce running up to the day.

At the last meeting of the Staff Development Group it was decided that each session offered would be allocated a facilitator.

The session ‘Advanced Horizon Skills’ is on the list and can be faciltated by Pam Young and Niki Rogers, however, to be able for us to write out a session guide we need to know what people want in respect of ‘Advanced Horizon Skills’.

If staff could please email Pam and myself (PYoung@lincoln.ac.uk / Nrogers@lincoln.ac.uk) with any inclusions / ideas that you may have.

Regards