Editor's note
Welcome to the library review - a collection of articles about the work and service developments in the Library in support of teaching and research at the University. We aim to change them regularly, so please come back and look again. Click on the links below for current articles.
Roving, I believe, has proved to be a great success in providing additional support to our users this academic year.
Initially piloted to run for the first four weeks of the start of the first term of the 2008/9 year, and then extended to continue for the first month of the second term, Roving was implemented to improve the student experience and to ensure we are offering a standard of service comparable to similar institutions.
Especially with the first flurry of new students in October, the service has proved to be invaluable to new users struggling to come to grips with shelfmarks, collection types and the enormity of the building. It is easy to forget how easily newcomers can become overwhelmed before they become acclimatised to their new surrounding.
Read more....
Sorting books, pushing
trolleys, putting books in order
To some, re-shelving books may appear a very dull subject and it won't come as a surprise that not much has been written about it.
This has now changed. During the last academic year, this library, together with six other 1994 Group members, participated in a benchmarking initiative to compare how long it takes to re-shelve Main Collection books. On set days and times throughout the year (including weekends and evenings) books were tracked and timed.
We compared well against the other institutions and results show
that we re-shelved 85% of our Main Collection books within 72 hours.
We are interested in how we perform compared to other libraries
but we are also keen to make sure we are providing the best service
for our users.
Read more....
Supporting the diverse needs of doctoral level researchers
The Research Liaison team in the Library provides support in all subject areas to researchers throughout the university, both staff and research students. As well as working to ensure the Library resources are fit for research needs, we began offering one-to-one or small group training and support sessions to researchers in Autumn 2007. This was in response to feedback suggesting that small sessions were the most effective way in which to support researchers. Doctoral researchers have different levels of experience and specialist interests which means that it's much more productive to offer individual sessions which can be flexible and tailored to each person's needs.
