Nick Woolley from Northumbria University speaks at Talis Insight 2015

1. Being connected: how digital reading lists and
content meet the strategic challenge for academic
libraries in the 21st Century
Talis Insight
Thursday 16th April 2015
Nick Woolley
Head of Library Services

2. Outline
 The HE landscape in the 21st Century
 Strategic responses and ‘Digital’
 The strategic challenge for academic libraries
 Digital reading lists and content at Northumbria
 Questions and discussion

3. The HE landscape in the 21st Century
 Marketisation and globalisation
– 2010 Browne Review and 2011 ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ - reform and changes to finance and
regulation to improve student choice, e.g. fees, Quality Code, student numbers, private providers
– HE as a business – income v. costs – 2015 UUK ‘Efficiency, effectiveness and VFM’
 Research impact
– REF 2014 and beyond
– 2013 Witty Review ‘Encouraging a British Invention Revolution’
 Student experience
– ‘Customers’ as well as ‘Learners’, hot issues e.g. hidden fees
– Growing appreciation of lifecycle and journey
 Data-driven
– Metrics, benchmarking, league tables and performance indicators
– Surveys, key information, choice-tools

4. Strategic responses?
 Strategy is about shaping the future
– Corporate strategy
– New business models, disruption and innovation
 Learning and Teaching
– Curricula, assessment, staff development
– Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), distance learning, MOOCs
 Research
– Impact-focused, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
– Research led / informed / rich learning
 Internationalisation
– UK as a destination, recruitment, pathways partnerships, distance learning, global graduates
 Organisational design, infrastructure and operations
 Digital

5. Changing the Learning Landscape 2012 - 14
 Partnership programme - Association for Learning
Technology, NUS, HEA, JISC, Leadership
Foundation
 TEL – lecture capture, flipping the classroom,
electronic submission and feedback, tools to
support collaborative learning, learning analytics
 Digital literacy

6. The strategic challenge for academic libraries
 Aligned with corporate mission, vision, strategy and plan?
 Holistic – supporting research and learning from the centre?
 Partnership-based?
 Adding (unique) value with demonstrable impact?
 Maximised potential of shared services and automation?
 Professional and customer-focused?
 Digital?

7. Digital in the UK
 UK Government strategy
– 2013 - digital by default – aggressive channel shift to digital only across 650 transactional services
– 82% of population online but slow adoption of online government services
– Revolution not evolution
– Digital inclusion and skills
– ‘Access to Research’ 2014 – 16 (Publishers Association and Society of Chief Librarians)
– Big data - National Information Infrastructure (NII) – data.gov.uk
– Innovate UK Digital Catapult
 Changes to UK copyright law
– 2011 Hargreaves ‘Digital opportunity: a review of intellectual property and growth’
– Reforms to copyright law in force from 1st June 2014
– Text and data mining, library preservation, illustration for education, walk-in etc..
– Orphan works licensing
 British Library
– Electronic deposit (140,000+)
– Archiving .uk online (4.8 million websites)
– Open linked metadata (the BNB – 2.8 million records)
– EThOS (350,000 records), BLDSC – digital delivery
– Alan Turing Institute and King’s Cross Knowledge Quarter

8. Digital in the UK
 HE focus?
– MOOCs
– Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL)
– OA and research data
– RCUK big data and energy efficiency computing
– UCL and Elsevier ‘big data institute’
– ‘Digital’ appearing in NSS Q16 from 2017
– Technology enabling strategy and operations
 JISC, e.g.
– ‘Digital student’
– Shared services built on data e.g. KB+
– Learning analytics, e.g. ‘LAMP’ with Mimas and Huddersfield
– With the AHRC – OAPEN-UK
– National Monograph Strategy Roadmap 2014
 United Kingdom Research Reserve (UKRR)
– Collaborative distributed national research collection
– Key in transition to e

9. Digital reading lists and content
 Naturally aligned with corporate strategy response to HE landscape
– Focus on customer and student experience
– Core or complementary to TEL
– Supports research rich learning
– 24/7 online delivery supporting DL and international
– Deliver operational efficiencies, ROI and VFM
– Epitomy of ‘Digital’
 A strategic sweet-spot for academic libraries?
– The library supporting pedagogy, scholarly reading, student progress and attainment via digital
– ..as well as ‘access to content’
– Articulating library value and impact ‘beyond Q16’
 Digital reading lists and content help meet the strategic challenge
– ..but how to realise?

10. Northumbria University
 1894 (Rutherford College of Technology)
 32,000 students from over 130 countries
 3,000 staff
 Four faculties across two campuses
 Tripled research power in REF2014
 560 employer-sponsored courses
 60 programmes accredited by professional bodies
 In Britain’s best university city – Newcastle upon Tyne

11. University Library
 Part of superconverged Academic Services directorate
 Three sites across two campuses
 24/7 and Customer Service Excellence (CSE)
 2nd highest scoring in the UK - THES Student Experience survey
 Reorganised into five library departments 2013:
– Business Support
– Customer Support
– Learning Support
– Content Services
– Research Support
 Single Academic Services frontline – ‘Ask4Help’

12. Northumbria’s digital library
 Digital rich infrastructure and service catalogue:
– 2,000 study spaces, 900 workstations and 250 self-service laptops
– Online skills and literacy – ‘Skills Plus’
– RFID self-service and NFC ebooks
– Summon for unified discovery (since 2009)
– Digital reading lists and content
– Institutional repository, OA, publishing platform
– Research intelligence
 Online Library Collection:
– Approx. 500,000 ebooks (550,000 print)
– Growing ‘on demand’ services, DDA ebooks embedded in ILL
– 38,000 ejournals (1,000 print – members of UKRR)
 JISC projects - OA Pathfinder and ORCID pilot
 Digital First

13. Print and e book usage at Northumbria

14. Digital First at Northumbria

15. Northumbria’s approach to reading lists
 From ‘Design to Delivery’
– Focus on student experience, Corporate Strategy and University KPIs, CSE
– In our Library User Satisfaction Survey 13/14, students rated ‘Course books and essential texts’ as the most
important University Library service, but were only 81% satisfied
– Co-design with students - product reaction cards and customer journey maps
 Integrated and comprehensive, pedagogy not technology
– Digital First, one channel in multi-channel content delivery
– Standard, automated, LEAN, self-service
– Reflected in organisational design (2013 refocus)
 Senior buy-in and support across institution
 Pilots Semester Two 13/14
– Early adopters
– NSS action planning (38 programmes)
– Strategic transformation projects – TEL, Distance Learning, London
 Launched as a service University-wide 14/15

16. Customer-focused service design

17. Content Services
 Led by Annette Coates (Content Services Manager)
 Four customer-facing teams
– Copyright
– Inter-Library Loans
– Reading List
– Resource Discovery and Access
 Multi-skilled Reading List team
– Two roles – coordinator and assistant
– Empowered to support academic staff
– Acquisition of print and e books according to business rules
– Management of Talis Aspire and Digitised Content
– Scanning and routine clearance for digitisation
 Wider context – moved from subject liaison to functional model

18. Enabling partnership

19. Business rules

20. Digitisation pilot and service #1
 Pilot 2010/11
– 188 digitisations for History, uploaded to VLE
– Ltd to CLA
– 1 item took 1 hour
 Service #1 2011 - 2013
– One member of staff – single point of contact for Faculty staff
– All clearance and scanning, one scanner
– Clearance costs recharged to Faculty
– No join-up with collection development, e.g. ebook acquisition
 No potential to scale and deliver on Corporate KPIs
 No integration to increase ROI and deliver seamless student
experience
 Strategic but not meeting the strategic challenge?

21. Digitisation 14-15
 Integral component of Reading List service
– A scanner on every desk
– Maximising use of TADC
– Join-up with collection development
– Clearance costs met by Library
 Clearance routes
– Routine CLA via TADC (76%)
– BL copyright fee paid via ILL Team (12%)
– Exceptions referred to Copyright Service (12%)

22. Reading list service – 14/15 some numbers
 Partnership with academics?
– 110 meetings
– 442 academics registered
 Scale and usage (proxy for reading and learning)
– 1,493 lists (421 published)
– 383,727 page views
– 67,672 sessions
– 36,924 users
– Over 1,600 digitisations for 487 modules (quadrupled content)
– Over 22,000 views so far
– 5,473 downloads and 2,684 prints
 Fulfilling previously unmet demand?
– Level of a major subscription platform

23. Student feedback
..very helpful for
seminar prep
and coursework..
..easily accessible and
time saving..
..it meant not having to buy
or have to wait for books..
It helps me track my learning
progress.
.. it's important for me to be
able to read ahead which I
really appreciate knowing
sooner rather than later..
Much better than
a module guide.
..saves
looking for
books that
aren’t there.

24. Continuous improvement – next up..
 Expanding service coverage and penetration for 15/16
 Enhancing seamlessness and integration
– Academic staff and student workflows
 Formally embedding into programme framework
 Making the data work - analytics, value and impact
– Joining up with print circulation data

25. Some final thoughts
 Academic libraries need to be strategic more than ever before
– Understanding HE landscape and aligning with corporate strategy to help shape the future
– Supporting research and learning through a focus on the customer and digital
 Digital reading lists and content occupy a strategic sweet-spot
 Focus and change are required to meet this strategic challenge

26. Thanks for listening…