edShare@GCU

Podcast by Dr Gordon Hill and Professor Bridget Johnston relating to  the RCN Research Society and opportunities for nurses to get involved in researc

Hill, Gordon

edShare@GCU (Glasgow Caledonian University)

RCN Research Society Podcast

Library and Archives Annual Report for the 2022 - 2023 academic yea

Cunningham, Susan

	

The Library Annual Report 2022/23
Director’s Report
Academic year 2022/23 saw the library busier than ever and continuing to sit at the heart of learning, teaching and research at GCU.  We carried out a major programme of improvements to study spaces to enhance the student experience.  Students frequently bring multiple electronic devices to the library and the lack of easily accessible power and charging outlets had become an increasing source of frustration for our users.  Over the summer we carried out a programme of work to install hundreds of desktop units across the library giving students access to power and USB charging points.  This has transformed our provision and greatly improved the experience for our users.  We are very grateful to our colleagues in Information Services and Estates without whom this success would not have been possible.
In addition to the new power provision, all of the PCs in the library were replaced so our users now have access to faster and more powerful computers.
A lack of discrete group study space had become a growing issue in the library, this had become even more pressing with the rise of hybrid learning and the need for students to take part in group discussions online in recent years.  To tackle this, we invested in fourteen state of the art study pods for the library.  The pods are sited on levels 1 and 2 of the library and provide a soundproofed space to carry out group work in small or larger groups.  The pods have been very well received by library users with over a thousand bookings in the first month.
Our Relax and Renew space continues to flourish and hosted a wide range of activities and events to support wellbeing.  In the coming year further events are planned including games nights, craft events, research cafes and “Walk and Talk” lunchtime walks for staff and students.  We are also introducing weekly Book Bug sessions for parents and young children.
We were pleased with growing levels of staff engagement with our resource list service leading to the highest ever availability of embedded resource lists in GCULearn, making it easy for students to access the resources they need for their module.  We were also pleased to have good staff engagement at Anti-Racist resource list sessions held across all three schools and have seen greater staff awareness of resource and research services with good attendance at training sessions.
We were disappointed to have some instances of poor behaviour in the library this year and were very grateful for assistance from security staff and the student ambassador team in highlighting expected behaviours and the importance of respect for the library environment and fellow library users.


The Year in Statistics (in comparison to 2021/22)
NSS score: 91% (up 5%)
eBooks available: 508,105 (80% increase)
Number of reading list views: 316,778 (7% increase)
Resources available in edShare: 7,505 (7% increase)
Resource list coverage for modules: 61% (11% increase)
Total open access outputs in ResearchOnline: 4,887 (36% increase)
Number of full text theses in EThOS: 866 (2% increase)
Interlibrary loans provided: 1,965 (12% increase)
Achievements 2022/23
Library website: Over the year, we conducted an accessibility audit of the library website, including documents and multimedia content.  A number of required updates were identified and completed.  The goal of the accessibility audit was to ensure all library web content meets, at minimum, the WCAG “AA” standard.
edShare migration: Our open educational resource repository, edShare was migrated from an on-site server to a cloud hosted solution in January 2023.  This provides improved system performance, greater scalability and streamlined upgrades.
Author Events and Read & Relax book group: In winter 2022 we held a series of author events with visits from Metaphrog (graphic novelists Sandra Marrs and John Chalmers), and Rossie Stone, the creator and founder of Dekko Comics.  We also established a Read and Relax book group to support our international students, promote reading for pleasure, and engage and foster a sense of community.
Recording Studio: Since launching in April 2023 the Recording Studio has had an incredible start and is quickly becoming an invaluable resource in Glasgow.  Allowing members of the local community to access professional standard equipment for free has been a boon for many who would not have been able to access it before.  We were also pleased to welcome some of the world's top cyclists during the UCI World Cycling Championships as guests on one of the podcasts recorded in the space.  With new users being inducted into the space every week, we cannot wait to see how the space grows and enjoy some of the fascinating projects created there.
Archives and Special Collections
We launched our new exhibition wall with original campaigning posters from the Anti-Apartheid Movement Scottish Committee records as part of Black History Month and are delighted with the engagement opportunities afforded by our extended visual space.
We presented on 11 years of the Social Enterprise Collection Scotland at the final John Pearce lecture on 11 October 2022 and are happy to report that regular new accessions continue to ensure its growth and research potential.
We showcased our newly acquired Workers’ Education Association Scotland records at the end of October 2022.  This large collection is a comprehensive bringing together of WEA material from across Scotland.
Maternal and Infant Health: 20 items from the 20th Century was a collaborative project with Dr Janet Greenlees launched in March 2023.  Funded by the Wellcome Trust, through the Glasgow Medical Humanities Network, both a physical and digital exhibition uncovered hidden items related to women's and infants' health and healthcare from within our collections.
Our collaborative NHLF project ‘Common Good Comics’ ended on 30 March at an event where both comics were celebrated; Social Enterprise Stories and Community Action.
The past year has seen greater collaboration across all of our Schools resulting in primary source material integration and hands-on experience in learning and teaching, and this area of work continues to go from strength to strength.
Across our collections, 15,997 items were consulted throughout the year.
The Common Good
Research Cafés: Research Cafés are an informal opportunity for staff, students and visitors to come together and talk about research at the University.  At each café, one of our academics gave a short talk and led a discussion about their area of research.  There were 8 cafes over the year and the feedback was very positive.
Open Access Agreements: Corresponding authors who are staff or students at GCU can benefit from the library’s current agreements with a range of major academic publishers.  These agreements allow open access publishing of original research articles and review articles at no cost to authors or with a discount.  By publishing open access using these agreements, articles are immediately available with no access barriers.  We now have some 10,000 journals covered by these agreements, including titles from the publishers American Chemical Society, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Brill, Bristol University Press, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, JMIR Publications, Karger, Oxford University Press, PLOS, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley (including Hindawi).
Scottish Universities Open Access Press (SUP): As a member of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL), the Sir Alex Ferguson Library supported the establishment of the Scottish Universities Press (SUP) in 2022.  The SUP aims to provide a clear and cost-effective route for researchers to make their work freely available to a global audience, meeting the requirements of funders and realising the ambition to extend the impact of research across society.  The SUP is a fully open access and not-for-profit publishing press that is owned and managed by the participating institutions.
Support and Teaching
Academic engagement
The Academic Librarian team is made up of a Senior Librarian, five Academic Liaison Librarians and a Senior Library Administrator.  We offer help via drop-in sessions, appointments, email and phone.
In the academic year we helped 1,942 students, staff and visitors.  Our busiest month was November 2022 with 280 enquiries, our busiest day was 30 November 2022 when we helped 30 people.
People asked for help getting started in the library and using our Discover search (33%), referencing and RefWorks (18.6%), doing a literature search (16%), doing their dissertation research (13.5%) and how to use our eresources (11%).
Of our total enquiries, 60% came from the School of Health and Life Sciences, 17% from Glasgow School for Business and Society and 16% from the School for Computing, Engineering and Built Environment.
We have two new interactive learning objects created for students.  The first is around preparing for a first assignment and what you need to know.  The second is a new section on the Library Subject Guides called Know Your Sources this introduces an interactive element and is aimed at new students to build their confidence in using library resources.
Teaching
We taught 280 classes and workshops over this academic year to 5,851 students.  These classes were at all levels from undergraduate to PhD.
Liaison
We answered 252 enquiries from academic staff to support their own research.  In addition to this, our most common engagement with academic staff is discussing and creating resource lists for modules.  We also worked closely with module leaders developing tailored classes from induction for all levels of students right through to subject specific support for dissertation and honours project students.
We developed an Anti-Racist Resource List to support staff with their personal development and training needs.  We presented on this in all Schools and developed a series of workshops to enable academic staff to add to their resource lists items that reflect our diverse student population.
Library Information Support Team
The Library Information Support Team has continued to support students, staff and members of the wider community with navigating their way around the myriad of library services we have on offer.
Relax and Renew: The library's wellbeing space has continued to flourish and we have been particularly excited to see a number of regular groups using the space for community activities.  From crafting, to writing, and creating a space for people to develop their English through sharing a love of reading, there are so many opportunities for members of the Library community to support their wellbeing in a relaxed and friendly setting.  We have also created a new board games collection which will be available for members to borrow and helps support our monthly Relax and Game On board games nights.
User Experience: Our members are at the heart of everything we do so some members of the team took part in User Experience (UX) in Libraries training run by Andy Priestner.  This was a fantastic practical session where, in just one day, new services were developed including an audio tour for those new to the library, making the Relax and Renew space more accessible and offering a welcoming environment for our international students.  This was based on feedback and ideas from our members collected that day.  UX can have a profound impact on a service and the team will continue to embark on UX initiatives in order to develop the service even further.
Library Collections
New resources: Highlights of the new resources the library purchased or subscribed to this year include:
The CIPD Advanced ebook collection, giving access to 21 core textbooks and further reading for all CIPD qualifications and HR courses, covering human resource management, learning and development, employment law, reward management and more.
The Business of Fashion database, combining independent, agenda-setting journalism with practical business advice, online learning, career-building tools and immersive events and experiences, powering positive change in fashion and the wider world.
Business Source Premier, the industry’s most used business research database, provides full text access for more than 2,300 journals, including for more than 1,100 peer-reviewed titles.  This database also provides access to 8,225 business case studies, over 14,000 company profiles, 7,353 industry reports, over 75,000 videos and 5,298 SWOT analyses.
SPORTDiscus with Full Text, an EBSCO database which provides bibliographic and full-text content for 660 sports and sports medicine journals.
ProQuest one academic, an expansion of resources and content available from ProQuest, with four core multi-disciplinary products – ProQuest Central, Academic Complete, Academic Video Online and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
Bulk Purchase: We conducted another Bulk Purchase exercise this year, working with one of our vendors to identify titles on Resource Lists where a new edition has been published or an ebook is available for items we only hold in print; 123 suitable ebook titles were identified and purchased.
SciVal: The library now has a subscription to SciVal, a web-based analytics tool which provides access to data related to the research performance of over 20,000 institutions worldwide and their associated researchers.  The tool allows users to visualise and benchmark research performance, identify emerging research trends and identify new partnership opportunities.
Sir Alex Ferguson Library contact details
Glasgow Caledonian University
Cowcaddens Road
GLASGOW
G4 0BA

Telephone: 0141 273 1000
Email: Library@gcu.ac.uk
Web: gcu.ac.uk/currentstudents/essentials/library


Library Annual Report 2022_2023

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