Special Collections & Archives achieved national accreditation status in 2018 (Doc A). Assessed by The National Archives in recognition of archival curation to the highest standards, it places us alongside the Natural History Museum and National Portrait Gallery as services to recently meet this benchmark.
We publicise our performance against the Library standards on our webpages and comparative information is available for the last 5 academic years.
We benchmark our performance for student satisfaction (from the National Student Survey, NSS) against other comparative universities (Doc B). We also benchmark key Library data against our SCONUL comparators (Doc C).
The research support and Open Access team prepare annual reports on open access compliance and expenditure from the grants we receive from UK Research councils (UKRI) and Charity Open Access Fund (COAF). Since 2013 we have shared expenditure data from these reports with Jisc as have many other UK institutions. That allows us to benchmark our costs against those paid by other institutions. The COAF report submitted by institutions receiving their grants is also collated and analysed by the Wellcome Trust (the lead partner). We have been able to use the raw data for benchmarking.
We are currently finalising some new Library standards. The development of these standards has been informed by comments received at Student Voice Committees; NSS and PTES survey free-text comments; TUWYT analysis as well as staff consultation through the Service Managers Group, the Values and Purposes Group, the Customer Services group and team meetings.
Our website provides key service and policy statements such as the Customer care statement and our Values and operating principles plus information for users on our services across the 4 Libraries, including information for specific user groups, such as academic staff, distance learners, and NHS staff. We are pro-active during student Welcome Week with Library inductions offered to all new students and attendance at events around campus as well as the Welcome stall within the Library. Similarly we engage with all new professional services, research and academic staff as they start at the University to ensure they can make the most of the Library offer.
All students who are registered with Student Wellbeing receive an email from the Library explaining the additional services they are entitled to (Doc A).
Teachers arranging school visits are provided with pre-visit information at the time of booking so they know what to expect from their visit to the Library (Doc B).
Our Working in Partnership documents set out how we will collaborate with academic staff to support education activities in their module/School/Faculty; what academic staff can do to help us offer timely and relevant skills teaching; and what students can do to take responsibility for their learning. We have made our service offer clear by including an outline of the information and digital skills and competencies students can be expected to achieve at each stage of their undergraduate degree. The documents are also linked to the University’s Education Strategy and new Institutional Graduate Framework (Doc C). Sharing the documents has led to productive conversations with academics that have resulted in increased Library involvement in curriculum reviews, teaching away days and engagement with schools that have not always recognised the value of the support we can provide (Doc D).
Liaison staff have been using the Microsoft tool ‘Sway’ to create engaging, high quality, interactive online newsletters and action plans for different audiences. Sway offers much more versatility than our old printed newsletters (for example, incorporating multimedia content, and being easily embeddable on platforms such as LibGuides and Blackboard), and we can assess reception of each newsletter via its built-in analytics. We will also be exploring other potential uses for Sway: for example, in teaching, internal communications, customer consultation etc.
National surveys, including the National Student Survey (Doc A),the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (Doc B) and the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (Doc C) provide us with detailed information on how our customers rate their Library experience.
We collect feedback from our teaching sessions via multiple avenues, demonstrating that we deliver the teaching as promised to staff and students (Doc D).
Following collaboration and sharing best practice with University Library of Sheffield regarding LibAnswers, we set up a UK wide LibApps User Group for other University Libraries within the UK who are using LibApps. We have held three UK LibApps User Group workshops to discuss and share how we are using and developing LibApps: Newcastle University (Feb 18), Sheffield (Nov 18), and Leeds (Nov 19). These have been incredibly useful for benchmarking, to share best practice and gain insight into how we may be able to use and develop our LibApps from Springshare. We set up a UK HE Academic Libraries discussion forum within the Springshare Lounge, and now have 77 members. We can use this forum to ask advice of each other and to share feedback to Springshare.
When revamping the LibGuides, we looked to other universities for inspirations and ideas e.g. Manchester University. We also benchmarked the creation of our new Business Cases guide by asking on a Business Librarian discussion list for similar examples, which we then used as inspiration of our own guide's design.
This years Library project that’s reviewing our Reference Management software support, we have benchmarked our EndNote support to other Russell Group universities and select non-Russell Group universities (Doc A).
For the Be well@NCL initiative we contacted the National Reading Well scheme and asked if any other universities were using it. They gave us a list of contacts and we asked those institutions about their schemes and what they had done.
The Library’s Research Group are currently benchmarking against other institutions regarding our bibliometrics support and training. We also looked to other universities when redesigning the Research webpages this Summer, which is not complete, but has informed and improved our Research pages.
Special Collections & Archives achieved national accreditation status in 2018. Assessed by The National Archives in recognition of archival curation to the highest standards, it places us amongst the Natural History Museum and National Portrait Gallery as services to recently meet this benchmark (Doc B).
The Northern Collaboration Special Interest Group (SIG) is a forum for University Special Collections in the North of England to share best practice, benchmark, and work collaboratively. Most recently the group undertook a benchmarking analysis of ‘exhibition and engagement’ activities and this data has fed into our 2018/19 exhibition planning, specifically the decision to have longer running exhibitions.
Following a Special Collection benchmarking exercise around the provision of photocopy and digitisation services for rare book material, we have changed our offering (Doc C).
The Library Search working group are constantly benchmarking against other institutions catalogue discovery tools. A recent benchmarking exercise we undertook was to see how others differentiated between everything and everything except articles – we evaluated how other institutions were doing it and contacted a few institutions for more information on how and why they were doing it in a particular way.
Staff collaborate with their peers from other universities on national committees, for example the Heads of Customer Services meeting where joint activities are planned and best practice shared (Doc A).
A member of the Learning Lab Steering Group presented 'Knowledge Sharing and Peer-to-Peer Learning' to a Northern Collaboration workshop in June 2019. The presentation discussed the motivation for creating the Lab, its ethos and the practical challenges of developing the resource (Doc B).
April 2018 marked the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The Library’s powerful exhibition, featuring extracts from our archive relating to Dr King’s 1967 visit to Newcastle University, played a central role in the city’s commemoration events. Geraldine Hunwick disseminated her reflections on this exhibition at DCDC18, a national conference which brings together colleagues from across the archive, library, museum and academic sectors.
Members of the Education Outreach team and Special Collections attended an event this November to share best practice and feed into the development of a UK-wide teaching resource that will explain the archives sector, describe the range of material available in archives, and outline how archive material can and should be used in the classroom (Doc C).
Colleagues have presented at conferences around the country on our experiences of implementing reading lists, and advised on what to look out for future implementations (Doc D).
We have worked with all frontline staff to develop a best practice document for everybody working on a service desk. This document has been publicised to existing staff and will be used for induction training with new staff (Doc E).
We reflect on projects and objective work undertaken in the Library and disseminate this to all staff via cross sectionals and training sessions. For example, we have embedded a project management framework in the last 18 months for which we have held workshops for all Library staff involved in managing and being part of projects.
On the 11/11/2019 a customer alerted us that four of our archival catalogues 'disappeared' due to an Archives Hub System re-build. The customer was provided with alternative assistance and her issue was resolved by the 12/11/2019. Following liaison with Archives Hub the catalogues were restored 13/11/2019 (Doc A).
Digital Library Services occasionally have customers contact us because they are unable to access an online resource through Library Search, this problem is reported to the appropriate team to investigate, however in the meantime we will find another method for the customer to access the resource and send them normally a direct link (Doc B).
After the implementation of the new RFID system, we had reports from Customer Services staff of what seemed like excessive triggering of the new security barriers, resulting in delays to customers leaving the building and general disturbance because of the alarm going off. The Digital Library Services team responded to this with a three-pronged approach and contacted:
The Head of Collections Management and Digital Library Services, made the initial contact for preliminary diagnosis of the problem. Following this, a member of DLS was assigned to liaise with all of the providers and perform a lengthy analysis of the log files, and to observe users of the service to identify the problem that was triggering the barrier. We also consulted with other universities that use the system.
Using an iterative process, along with the help of the providers, we eliminated 2CQR’s equipment and the University network as a primary cause of the problem. This analysis also pointed to the Ex Libris LMS as the likely issue. After further detailed log comparisons with Ex Libris, the problem was confirmed as a SIP 2.0 protocol issue between the LMS and RFID. Ex Libris suggested a configuration change and this has dramatically improved the situation, and the barriers are no longer triggered unnecessarily.
The result of this intensive analysis over a number of weeks has not only led to the problem being resolved here at Newcastle, but the configuration details will be passed on to other Alma/RFID institutions and should provide a wider, sectoral benefit as well.
Customer Services responded to the problem by prioritising staffing around the self-service kiosks to help customers issue their books so that the alarm would be de-activated. Additional hours were provided for student employees to ensure sufficient staffing resource at this critical time. Library management kept staff up-to-date on progress in resolving the problem and to acknowledge the hard work and resilience of Customer Services staff (Doc C). We used a variety of access channels to alert customers to the issues (Docs D and E).
Tell Us What You Think provides a consistent response across all Library services and offers print and online access points and a detailed commitment regarding response times. Our Noise Alert service gives users an anonymous and easy method of informing staff that they are being disturbed, resulting in a speedy resolution.
All new staff attend Welcome Host customer care training (Doc A) as well as a range of additional training opportunities. Welcome Host, Welcome All (Disability Awareness training) and REACT training (Doc B) will again be delivered this year. REACT offers staff an opportunity to practice their skills by interacting with actors, role playing various challenging library scenarios. In addition the University's Organisational Development unit has launched their new Open Learning Programme which includes a face to face workshop called Service Excellence and a number of customer service related online modules. Staff were encouraged to engage with this online learning via a First Friday Challenge (Doc C).
We conduct a survey with users of our complaints service to assess the effectiveness of our training. Staff are mentored by colleagues to support them in feeling confident when responding to specific complaints.
Refurbishment of the ventilation and lifts in MRLR was brought forward given the negative feedback we received from staff and students about the impact of unreliable lifts and overly hot study rooms on what was otherwise a good experience.
The Library moved from a 15 minute to a 30 minute log off time for customer computers left unattended. We worked with NUSU and NUIT to undertake the Study Well campaign. This came about following TUWYT feedback, feedback from SSCs, a NUSU council motion, and discussions at the Union and universities operational group. Doc A demonstrates how the initial University position was changed in the light of student opinion.
The annual review briefing document links to the analysis and actions for our Tell Us What You Think service for the last academic year.
The Tell Us What You Think service is analysed to identify areas of concern and managers are regularly updated. This analysis feeds into service improvements. The Head of Customer Services receives a monthly report on customer complaints submitted via Library Help to ensure we pick up on any recurrent issues. We can demonstrate that we listen to customer feedback and use it to inform service developments. An important example of this is regarding charges which are contentious for all HE Libraries. Before introducing our new loan policy, which had major implications for our overdue charges, we undertook extensive student consultation to ensure changes were in line with student expectations and improved the service for the majority of our users (Doc B).
In April 2019 the Customer Service Group audited and mapped feedback routes (Doc A). The mapping showed that there are some feedback streams that go to specific library teams. Whilst this is effective in getting action on feedback it would be beneficial if all streams could all be brought together to identify themes and priorities and more effectively monitor our response. Service Managers already receive a monthly summary of feedback for review and this should give a more complete picture.
We also systematically survey customers who use Tell Us What You Think (TUWYT) and use these comments to continuously improve the procedure.
We survey customers who use the Tell Us What You Think service and any responses from customers stating that they are dissatisfied are sent to the Head of Customer Services for follow-up (Doc A).