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Supporting research through a new Library Services strategy

Gavin BeattieAssociate Director, Research & Learning LiaisonLibrary Services, King’s College London

RLUK Redefining the Research Library Model Workshop – 1 July 2013

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• About King’s• About Library Services• Existing support for research• Areas for growth• Challenges• Developing a new strategy• Emerging themes

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King’s College London• Founded in 1829, one of top 30 universities in the world• Fourth oldest University in England• Multi-disciplinary• Member of the Russell Group – heavily research-intensive• Top seven in the UK for research funding• Over 25,000 students from 140 countries• Part of King’s Health Partners AHSC, partner in the

Francis Crick Institute• Five campuses in London – the most central University in

London

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Library Services at King’s

• King’s was founded in 1829, but Library Services has only been in existence since 2011

• Library Leadership Team is mostly relatively new• Six libraries, plus Special Collections and Archives

reading rooms• 2 million printed volumes, access to over 50,000

journal titles• 1.5 million visits annually• Almost 2 million books borrowed annually

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Library Services in the King’s structure

• Formerly Library and IT functions were heavily integrated as Information Services & Systems

• De-converged from IT and ‘super-converged’ into Students and Education Directorate (SED)

• SED covers the whole student lifecycle from Application to Graduation

• Obviously Library Services provides significant support for research

• Separate from, but work closely with the Research Management Directorate

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Support for Research

• Research intensive university, so support for research is heavily integrated across the Library

• Until recently one post specifically dedicated to research support – Library Liaison Manager (Research)

• Two additional temporary posts– Research Data Management– Administering OA funds

• Support our CRIS – which contains our repository

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Support for Research

• Collections• Training• Digitisation and collection description• One-to-one support by request• Recent support for research data management

– Developing policy– Ensuring compliance– Help with data management plans– Training

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Areas that need to grow

• RDM• OA - policy, advocacy, funding• Support for our CRIS and repository• More training and support for researchers• Build on existing relationships with the Graduate

School and Research Management Directorate• Collaborative Collection Management• Etheses / eresearch / escience• Engaging across the research life-cycle

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Challenges

• Meeting new demands within existing resources• Maintaining support for research in an environment

concerned with student satisfaction• Engaging with “impact”, less on bibliometrics (?)• Inter-disciplinarity• Finding and engaging with researchers• Prioritising uncatalogued legacy gift collections• Compensating for historic under-investment

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Challenges

• Balancing print and electronic collections• Managing our space (in central London)• Turning projects into business-as-usual• Licensing • Massive developments in health – Francis Crick

Institute, KHP• Increasing student numbers• New and developing disciplines

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Developing a new strategy

• Our new strategy is still in development, so nothing is final!

• Five strands– Community– Collections– Expertise– Quality & Efficiency– People

• Research is embedded throughout rather than a separate strand

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Emerging themes from our strategy

• Customer engagement and support• Better use of feedback and usage data in collection

development• Representation at research committees• Define and promote our expertise• Improved communication across the service• Defining roles & responsibilities• Commit to cataloguing relevant gift collections• Ensuring researchers meet funders' requirements• CPD