Bleak House or Great Expectations? NE CILIP Mini Umbrella – November 23rd 2011

I often complain about living in the North East. Being a fair distance and an expensive train ride away from most of the interesting LIS events it’s easy to feel disconnected and as though you’re somehow missing out on all the important stuff that’s happening in the profession. Mini Umbrella (organised by NE CILIP and the Department of Information Studies at Northumbria University) is a great event – partly because it’s local and free!! – but mainly because it is an opportunity for local library and information services to showcase their initiatives and innovative approaches to service delivery. And actually this event highlighted that really important stuff is happening right here in the North East region too. Who knew?!

There were speakers from across the sector – NHS, public, HE, and FE – who are doing really innovative work to improve and develop their library services, adapting to new ways of working when faced with the challenges of the current economic situation. Two of the key messages that stood out were the need for library services to develop strong working partnerships and to manage expectations.

Partnerships

Rachel Steele from Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust spoke about a pilot project to develop to role of the clinical librarian. A clinical librarian develops strong links with medical practitioners to inform evidence based practice. They assist in keeping practitioners’ knowledge up to date by conducting literature searches and critical appraisal of health research. This role involves accompanying practitioners when they see patients so the librarian can source relevant research to inform the treatment of those patients.

Mark Freeman and Kathryn Armstrong talked about the Tyne2Seine2 project that they have been involved with for South Tyneside Libraries. This was an international reading project to introduce children to modern European languages. It involved forging strong partnerships between South Tyneside council staff, libraries, and schools and developing links with their counterparts in the twin town of Epinay-sur-Seine in France. They also worked with authors from both countries and even with colleagues from North Tyneside! This project has been very successful in developing the language skills of both English and French schoolchildren and of the adults involved. Most importantly it has demonstrated the value of libraries in reading and in education.

Sharon Reeve from Newcastle City Libraries spoke about services for visually impaired users. Development of this service has relied upon strong partnerships with a range of groups, including service users and external bodies. Newcastle City Libraries were part of the NEALIS (North East Accessible Library and Information Services) project, which was nominated for the 2011 Libraries Change Lives award. This project brought together 12 public library authorities from the North East of England to develop library and information services for people with visual impairments, working in partnership with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People). Sharon also described the Reading Buddies scheme for providing one-to-one assistance for visually impaired library users from Duke of Edinburgh Award participants, which is another strong partnership for the library service.

Managing Expectations

Speakers from the education sector – FE and HE – highlighted the importance for academic libraries of measuring student satisfaction with and expectations of library services in order to develop and make improvements to services. Dilys Young and Christine Willoughby from Northumbria University described how the University Library uses National Student Survey (NSS) data and other feedback for targeted service development, for example improving resource provision in subject areas where NSS scores are lower, thus responding to student needs and rising expectations. Middlesbrough College learning resources service also use feedback and survey data to determine student expectations. Claire Donlan, Tracey Totty, and James Wells described how this information has highlighted that their students’ expectations of a technology enabled library service. In the current economic climate it is not always possible to spend on all the latest technology and where they have done so they have invested wisely. They also emphasised the importance of “doing more with less” (a phrase familiar to most of us these days) by making the most of existing resources and investigating the plethora of free online resources available. I will certainly be investigating some of the free online tools they mentioned. Just as soon as I finish CPD23…

In his summing up of the day, Colin Raistrick (Chair of NE CILIP) said that the day had proved that the situation is far from bleak. It’s inspiring hear about a range of innovative developments in library services especially when they’re happening in your area of the country.

Student Expectations

With the recent vote in favour of a rise in tuition fees and the Browne report outlining cuts to be made in HE funding, the issue of student expectations has never been more important for academic libraries. The student experience is always at the heart of what any university department does but when undergraduate students are accumulating a huge debt to get their degree, their expectations of the service they get will only become higher. As the protests against the fee increases prove, it will be a huge decision to for any potential student to go into higher education, and if they make that decision they will expect the highest level of service from the institution they go to, and they won’t hold back in letting us know if they don’t feel they are getting value for money.

Last week I attended the ‘What do they really really want? Student expectations’ event, organised by CILIP UC&R Northern. In light of plans to increase tuition fees and cuts to HE funding this couldn’t have been better timed. We need to start considering these issues now so we can be prepared for the higher fee-paying intake in 2012.

The main things that emerged from the day were:

• The importance of managing student expectations, especially in light of impending fee increases
• The importance of considering the needs of different user groups – postgraduate students can feel overlooked due to a  perceived focus on undergraduate students – and they have very different needs and expectations
• Communication and feedback mechanisms – to find out what students want and what they expect, and to increase their awareness of what we can deliver
• The use of the NSS to proactively manage student expectations through liaison with academic departments

Presentation 1 – Stevie Wise (NUS National Executive Council) – Student Expectations:

Stevie spoke about student expectations in general, and in light of the recent decision to increase tuition fees. The main points raised were:

Student as customers:

• If students start to see themselves as customers of the University rather than as partners in their own learning, they could become more demanding and expectations will be higher
• As tuition fees increase it is inevitable that students will expect more – especially as Government is pushing this back onto universities by saying “student’s should now be prepared to ask for more”. This makes it difficult for institutions as the money they receive will be the same or less than now and therefore we will need to ‘do more with less’

Managing expectations:

• As students become more demanding they may be expecting more than can reasonably be delivered
• To counteract this we must be proactive and undertake upfront expectations management by ensuring students and potential students are aware of the service they should expect

Feedback:

• There is a danger of a feedback procedure turning into a complaints procedure
• Need to engage with students in order to encourage feedback and offer a variety of methods through which feedback can be provided
• Need to be proactive rather than simply responding to complaints when received

Presentation 2 – Jon Purcell (University Librarian, Durham University) – “The forgotten army”: responding to postgraduate student expectations:

Jon Purcell discussed postgraduate student expectations of academic libraries and described the experiences of Durham University library in meeting postgraduate students’ needs.

Key points were:

• Postgraduate students often feel invisible to the library and like second class citizens next to undergraduate students. It is important to differentiate between UG & PG provision and articulate and promote the library’s specific offering to PG students
• When supporting PG students it is important not to assume prior knowledge as every student is different
• The needs of taught postgraduates and researchers also need to be considered separately as their use of the library is different
• Postgraduates students, and in particular researchers, expectations are often higher than the reality of what the university can provide – there is “infinite demand but only finite resources”

Durham University library have tried to engage with PG students through a variety of means to find out what they want. He stressed the importance of using every means of communication possible, both formal and informal, to get feedback and input from students.

His final thought was: “the only way to predict the future is to invent it” – a sentiment which could so easily apply to many sectors of the library and information profession at this time. In academic libraries this will inevitably mean managing the impact of the changes in HE funding and having to ‘do more with less’ so that there is no negative impact on the student experience.

Presentation 3 – Dilys Young (Assistant Director, Academic Library Services, Northumbria University) – Student Expectations and the NSS: School action plans at Northumbria University

Dilys’ presentation focussed on the use of the feedback obtained from the National Student Survey to create school-specific action plans for managing student expectations at Northumbria. Her main points were:

• There is a mismatch between student expectations and provision – increased fees do not mean increased funding
• Student perceptions of the library vary between subject areas, depending on required use of the library
• Need to accept the limitations of the NSS:

         Response rates dropping – a wider sample would lead to more useful data

         Can’t address issues raised in the time that those responding are still students

         Perceptions of the library are affected by perceptions of the institution as a whole

         Questions are a bit vague and ambiguous

• To respond to NSS at a school level it is important to get the buy-in of academics
• Need to manage expectations – explain what we can do and what we can’t do

Workshops – Nicola Conway & Helen Wright (Durham University) – ‘What are the best ways to find out what students want?’ and ‘Once we’ve received feedback from students, what do we do next?’

In the first workshop we looked at different methods of obtaining feedback from students and in the second we discussed how to deal with feedback received. The mains points discussed were:

• It is important to use a variety of methods for getting feedback to get a balanced picture of students’ views of the service – accommodates personal preferences of students
• Direct feedback received from individual students can be used to inform questions asked in user satisfaction surveys as need to reach a wider audience to identify trends
• Useful to gather feedback outside of the library environment – in academic departments or online
• Social media is a useful way to engage with students as many are using Twitter or Facebook – important to get a dialogue going by responding to comments rather than simply using as a marketing tool to push out information
• Feedback could show where we need to raise awareness of existing services as well as where improvements could be made
• Importance of managing expectations – ensure students are aware of what we can offer and where limitations lie
• Can’t always rely on the strength of the student voice – could be making changes in response to a minority who shout the loudest

Overall it was a really interesting day. Even without rising fees academic libraries need to consciously manage student expectations to keep the student experience at the heart of what we do. Communication with students is so important to ensure we are both meeting and managing the expectations of a diverse student population.