WGPI Meeting Minutes - 3rd May 2007
SOCIETY OF COLLEGE NATIONAL & UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Working Group on Performance Improvement
Minutes of the meeting held on Thursday 3 May 2007
Present: Stephen Town (Chair), Toby Bainton, Angela Conyers, Susan Copeland,
Claire Creaser, Charlotte Jarvis, Philip Payne, Tracey Stanley, Rupert Wood (Secretary)
1. Welcome to new members
Charlotte Jarvis, Birmingham University , and Tracey Stanley, York University , were welcomed to the Working Group.
Congratulations were extended to Claire Creaser who had become Director of LISU since the last meeting, and had kindly agreed to continue as a member of the Working Group.
2. Apologies had been received from Jean Yeoh.
3. Minutes of the last meeting
The minutes of the meeting held on 18 January 2007 were accepted as a correct record.
4. Matters arising from the Minutes
4.1. The revised reminder letter for the SCONUL statistical return had proved effective and sending it would be added to the regular processes.
4.2. The new non-WGPI member of the Statistics sub-group is Pat Barclay, Westminster University .
4.3. The Working Group's Action Plan 2007 was now on the website.
4.4. How to interest VCs in the outcomes of VAMP (Value and Impact Measurement Project) would be discussed at the next meeting. WGPI members were asked to think about this issue in the meantime.
Action: ALL
4.5. No financial implications for the Working Group were expected from the proposed second phase of the Publisher Deals Project as it would be self-financing.
4.6. A letter had been sent expressing support for the proposed project on evidence in strategic management (Department of Information Science, Loughborough University , and LISU). Because a parallel project proposal was being developed by the University of Central England, HEFCE had suggested that the two might usefully combine. A more extensive project proposal would therefore now be developed - still with support from SCONUL. Susan had volunteered to be a WGPI representative on the project's Advisory Group when this was set up. Angela said that she would circulate to the Working Group the link to the results of the Evidence Base survey on this topic mentioned at the last meeting.
Action: AC
4.7. Susan reported that there had been no further developments as regards the AHRC funded project to examine CRM methodology in UK HE libraries.
5. The Working Group's Action Plan 2007
The Plan was reviewed. It was noted that:
- the SCONUL Executive Board had granted the extra financial support requested for VAMP
- the Executive Board had strongly endorsed the Community of Practice (CoP) outcomes of VAMP
- the annual ILRT costs have been baselined
- A member of the Working Group would be needed to support SCONUL user survey development
The possibility of acting to train and raise awareness of member libraries' staff in areas of the WGPI's work was mentioned, as there seems to be a gap in this area. It was agreed that when training needs were identified, the Working Group's role might be to disseminate information about best practice and give advice on training possibilities. The idea of sharing and disseminating knowledge and experience fitted well with the development of VAMP's CoP outcomes. Members of the Working Group were invited to think further about this issue and send their ideas to Rupert.
Action : ALL
A draft action plan for 2008 would be considered at the next meeting.
Action : RW
6. The Statistics sub-group
Philip reported that the sub-group would meet on 3 May. Claire mentioned a request from the ABDU, France , to access data from the SCONUL statistics – it was agreed that pre-publication data could be made available on a sale or reciprocal exchange basis.
7. The VAMP sub-group
Stephen reported on the project and said that the sub group would now disband as its work was complete. The website had been developed, was ready for Beta testing and would be launched at the SCONUL Summer Conference. An article would appear in the next SCONUL Focus.
Some issues had been raised with the SCONUL Executive Board:
- Because of the CoP principles behind the portal, its purpose would be to promote social networking and facilitate interactive information exchange as well as to impart information. This new approach might have implications for the future development of the whole SCONUL website
- If a CoP does develop around the ideas generated by the project this is likely to be international in scope
- There are sustainability issues in maintaining the portal after its development.
Because additional content to the site needs to be moderated, members of the Working Group might be asked to act as ‘commissioning editors' in order to develop the content.
8. LIBQUAL+
Stephen reported that of the twenty-two institutions in the SCONUL Consortium 2007 survey cohort five already had results. The project is now well established and is expanding internationally, for example in France .
9. The Publisher Deals Project
Angela reported on the outcomes of the Project's first phase, and had recently circulated an article intended for SCONUL Focus . While the original intention had been to develop a toolkit, it had subsequently been decided that it would be beneficial for the project (which was self financing) to run annually instead. Philip commented that the Project's outcomes clearly had great potential in demonstrating the value of the publisher deals to university senior managements and auditing committees.
10. Collaboration with the WGQA on the National Student Survey
Charlotte reported that the SCONUL Working Group on Quality Assurance had been concerned that an opportunity for HE libraries to influence the relevant question in the National Student Survey appeared to have been missed, through no fault of theirs. This matter was of interest to the WGPI as well. A suggestion from SCONUL on the wording of the relevant question would be useful. It was agreed that the next step would be a message to the SCONUL email list to guage reaction to this proposal. Stephen will liaise with the Chair of the WGQA about the wording of the message.
Action : ST
11. Any other business
11.1. It was reported that the SCONUL Transparency Event would take place on 4 May 2007.
11.2. Stephen will circulate information about some interesting PhD work underway on ‘quality maturity' in libraries and the long term effects of benchmarking.
Action : ST
11.3. Stephen will circulate the report of the SCONUL Task and Finish Group on Learning and Teaching. He was representing the WGPI on this Group, which was aiming to create a position statement for SCONUL on learning and teaching.
Action : ST
12. Dates of future meetings
6 September 2007, 12noon for 12.30 at SCONUL Headquarters
17 January 2008, 12noon for 12.30 at SCONUL Headquarters