Alumni Library Forum 2013 King's College London - Library Services for Alumni at King’s College London
1. Library Services for Alumni at King’s
College London
Alumni Library Forum, Cass Business School
Wednesday 11th December 2013
Anna Franca, Subscriptions & Access Manager
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2. King’s College and alumni
• Large multidisciplinary research-led university based
in London founded in 1829
• Hundreds of notable and prominent alumni include
Nobel laureates, politicians, writers, musicians,
academics
• Florence Nightingale, Virginia Woolf, Maurice Wilkins,
Reverend Desmond Tutu
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3. Importance of alumni
• Alumni can be the best ambassadors for King’s
• Can serve as advocates providing advice and
support to current and future students
• Alumni as potential donors and source of fundraising
income
• Completion of course is not the end but beginning of
a lifelong relationship
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4. • Range of services and benefits include an alumni
email address, career support, events, discounted
gym membership, travel & leisure discounts, In Touch
(free alumni magazine)
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5. Library Services for alumni
• Eligible for library membership on completion of
studies
• Free reference membership to all six King’s libraries
• Borrowing privileges for annual charge of £60
• Alumni can borrow up to 3 four week loan books
• Walk-in access to electronic resources via a small
number of PCs
• Continued access to RefWorks
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6. Eresource access for alumni
• King’s attracts large numbers of international
students and many alumni are not based in the UK
• Traditional library service with walk-in access is not
useful and even for UK based alumni may have
limited value
• Pressure for increased alumni access to eresources
from particular Schools
• Supporting alumni in pursuit of lifelong learning
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7. Setting up JSTOR access
• Decision to participate in the Alumni Access Pilot in
June 2012
• Preparatory meetings with colleagues in Alumni
Relations Team to discuss options
• Number of access methods to choose from
• Agreed that “access token” method would work best
for King’s – placed behind password protected
Alumni Online web pages
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8. Promotion and marketing
• Featured as a story on the main King’s College
London web page
• Quarterly Alumni E Newsletter in June
• Unprecedented numbers of new requests for Alumni
Online membership - over 700 in one day!
• Features as a key benefit on King’s alumni web
pages
• Usage statistics from JSTOR – over 14,000 accesses
in the first year
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9. JSTOR Accesses by Discipline
HistoryLanguage & Literature
Political Science & Art History Economics Classical Studies
Art
Law
Archaeology
Education
Business
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10. Next steps and challenges
• Henry Stewart Talks – username and password
• Request for access to wider range of resources,
particularly for the health schools
• Investigative work carried out to identify publishers
that offer alumni access
• Authentication – ezproxy or Shibboleth?
• Support from IT department
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11. Key learning points
• Maintain good relations with the Alumni Relations
Team and understand their needs
• Open dialogue with publishers/suppliers and try to
help them to understand authentication needs
• Many stakeholders involved – Alumni Relations, IT,
Library Services, publishers
• Despite challenges, JSTOR serves as use case of
how eresource access for alumni can work
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