‘At King’s we have jettisoned the concept of the library as a distinct entity,’ says Gary Horrocks, Research & Learning Liaison Manager, and head of a team of 11 information specialists (three senior). ‘Essentially, our role is to represent a converged library and IT service. Our remit has expanded beyond our professional boundaries. As part of the Information Services & Systems (ISS) support team, we provide not only traditional library and information services, but essentially key IT computing infrastructure. We are responsible for legal compliance and have led the way in articulation of information and knowledge strategy in the college. And we have ensured that information literacy underpins the strategy.’
ISS is led by its high-profile Director Maggie Haines, Immediate Past President of CILIP. Divided into four distinct divisions, it provides integrated information services to the staff and students of King’s as well as to staff from a number of local NHS trusts. Gary’s team reports to the Head of Customer Services, but has a broader remit representing all the ISS departments across the college at large.
ISS’s ambitious strategic plan for 2004-07 is underpinned by a strong customer service focus. Its key objectives are to promote and facilitate self-service for users, largely through effective exploitation of new technologies (see box inset). But this is not all. It is also doing innovative work on records management and legal compliance. ‘Our role in supporting governance and compliance in the college is huge – it’s a new remit.’ A lot of this involves branding and marketing of capabilities that were always there, but that have become more important through developments in technology. ‘It’s all about taking stock and rethinking the information landscape and thinking about what we can offer,’ says Gary.
Gary’s team works across the college, liaising with all the schools and related departments on a range of issues, and also with ‘affiliated customers’ like the NHS. Part of their job is to act as ambassadors from ISS to staff and students in the academic subject areas for which they are responsible. It is, says Gary, ‘a huge undertaking in a major multi-disciplinary organisation’ and requires ‘considerable knowledge of operational and strategic activity’ – a far cry from any stereotypical ideas about the role of the academic librarian being narrowly focused on books and journals.
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King’s College London Information Services & Systems
Structure
Information Services & Systems (ISS) has nearly 200 full-time employees.
It comprises four units: Archives & Information Management; Corporate Services; Information Systems; and Customer Services. Customer Services provision is delivered on a distributed basis from information service centres and libraries at the college’s five main campuses. The Customer Services team is responsible for the management of information service centres and libraries, the provision of lending and related services, the delivery of integrated IT and information-related enquiry services and the administration and delivery of an extensive training programme. Two Research & Learning support teams were also established in 2004 after extensive consultation in the college. One leads on college-wide developmental projects, the other on liaison and subject support.
Strategic plan
ISS’s strategic plan for 2004-07 identifies a number of key objectives including:
- promotion of self-service and access strategies for users implementation of a virtual reference service through links with international partners
- exploitation of new technologies to improve retrieval and access to resources
- implementation of the WebCT e-learning platform
- establishment of a research gateway
- re-development of the college web pages, including installation of a content management system
- expansion of wireless networks
- innovative work in records management and legal compliance
- leading on the articulation of a knowledge and information strategy for the college.
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Emphasis on communication
Archives, IT and the library service all come under the ISS directorate. As a result, the role of Gary’s team has expanded beyond its traditional professional boundaries of ‘subject support’ and ‘collection development’. Of course, his team offers training and consults on and evaluates information resources. But the additional, ambassadorial role means that team members need to be aware of and communicate on a whole spectrum of developments in IT and information management too. And the communication process is two-way – they have to provide feedback from the schools about research and developments in the teaching programme, so that appropriate provision can be built into the operational and strategic planning process of ISS.
This job involves the art of diplomacy. ‘Information specialists have to sit on numerous college committees delivering good and sometimes bad news. It’s crucial that they can negotiate and influence, and manage our customers’ expectations.’ They also have to give lectures and seminars, market and raise the visibility of the service generally, promoting its essential role supporting the college’s core business. The result is that, although staff with excellent subject skills are highly appreciated, on their own these subject skills are really ‘not enough, if you are not able to communicate and enthuse’.
But another issue is the scale of the task. There is a ‘hugely complex’ committee structure within the college, and in the different schools. And, as Gary says, speaking to 15 academics around one table does not mean that messages will reach the people on the ground. ‘We are revisiting the role of print and e-media in disseminating information. We’re trying to define an audit trail that traces query referral channels, and maps information in and out of ISS.’
In practice, he says, it is necessary to revise the strategy continually, as well as keep the team up to date on the myriad issues they are asked to address – anything from queries about IT infrastructure or network resilience, to preparation for the next Research Assessment Exercise.
And there are different cultures within the different schools. So information specialists need to be ‘totally integrated within their designated school, understanding specific teaching, learning and research strategies’ in order to monitor developments and be able to feedback correct information.
Research & Learning Development
Acting on this feedback from Gary’s liaison team is the responsibility of ISS’s Research & Learning Development Team, managed by Mark Cox. There is considerable cross-fertilisation between the two groups. Advance intelligence on the need for enhancements and additions to services means that staff can start work developing innovative prototypes. And, perhaps not surprisingly in a converged IT/information service, a few of the staff have started to acquire programming skills and qualifications to enhance their information and library management skills.
One of the senior information specialists in Gary’s team not only has a traditional library and information science qualification but a Master’s in software engineering. As well as representing the IT and information needs of the Dental Institute at King’s, Lara Dennison has cross-school responsibility for service improvements in teaching and learning. That means she needs to stay at least one step ahead of developments in information literacy. She is, says Gary, ‘an excellent example of a new hybrid information professional, able to turn a hand to collection development and teaching, but also using her IT skills to develop a modular e-learning platform for information literacy.’
CPD crucial
Continuing professional development is a huge issue for King’s ISS personnel. Staff need to be trained and brought up to date continually. All staff in the ISS have their own personal development plans, which are co-ordinated with team training plans and revised and monitored on a regular basis.
Gary’s team has almost completed its definition of the core competencies and skills needed for the liaison work. It is taken as read that as ‘specialists’ in information they need to be able to service the needs of the college’s research community in the humanities, law, social sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and biomedical and health sciences. But they also need public relations expertise, marketing and advocacy experience, teaching and training skills, good IT skills, and an aptitude for information and knowledge management. Quite a daunting list, really.
King’s places great emphasis on staff development, and training and performance support is part of corporate policy. The idea is that staff should have the appropriate skills to respond to existing and future service needs, and be confident in their roles. They are actively encouraged to publicise their skills outside the team in the wider college arena, and to participate in the external professional community.
Information professionals have had (or had the opportunity to acquire) many of these skills for a long time. What has changed is that these skills sets are no longer merely desirable, but essential for success. Where once it would have been unthinkable to employ as a subject specialist someone with only patchy knowledge of the academic discipline in question, managers are now much more sanguine about rusty – or non-existent – subject specialist knowledge.
‘I am very fortunate that my current team has an excellent mix of subject knowledge and communication skills,’ says Gary. ‘However, if a good communicator walked into my office and waxed lyrical about the information industry, I might employ them in the hope that they would pick up the subject knowledge on the job.’ That is not to dumb down subject specialist skills, he says, but to emphasise that ‘first and foremost, we need staff with high-end people skills’.
Apart from the competencies, staff need to keep on top of developments affecting the academic and information worlds. Advances in scholarly communication provide just one example. Members of Gary’s team are expected to be vigorous advocates of open access publishing models, trying to persuade academics ‘to reclaim their intellectual property’.
Open access, digital repositories and custodianship of the college’s intellectual property are areas where there is an obvious role for the ISS team. But another key theme involves ‘interdependencies’ – supporting other teams in doing their jobs better.
It is a constant refrain in ISS staff development activities. Director Maggie Haines sees this as a priority area of vital importance to the college: ‘I feel that ISS has a special opportunity to help the college here, as we support all areas of teaching, research and administration. We can therefore set a good example as well as provide the systems and mechanisms which will help people to collaborate,’ she told Update. A particularly good example is the college’s support for Eiger – the e-learning community of interest at King’s.
Partners and collaborators
That these initiatives are achieving their objectives is evident from the high morale among ISS staff. ‘I’d like to think that we are developing beyond support staff into partners and collaborators,’ says Gary. He cites a recent bibliometric project undertaken to support the launch of an integrated research gateway at King’s. It draws together disparate sources of management information – human resources data, financial data, research outputs and so on.
As a consequence of that work the college went on to publish guidelines for research staff at King’s, to ensure that they expressed their affiliation to the college in the academic papers they published (it emerged that previously observance had been lax). This is ‘a great example of team working to improve core business’.
Similarly, information literacy programmes and guidelines for citation format play a crucial function in the college’s anti-plagiarism policy.
But the ISS liaison team’s most significant – and expanding – role is in the delivery of training. The training programme is extensive, offering a portfolio of packages for the college – bibliographic management software, research skills, basic and advanced information retrieval and resource discovery, and basic and advanced IT programmes. ISS is very much a partner in this respect, collaborating with other college departments including the Staff Development & Training Unit. Enhanced collaboration with the King’s Institution for Learning & Teaching is anticipated as the more complex issues of formal teaching qualifications and pedagogic support for the team are explored.
The strategic plan and wider horizons
ISS’s strategic plan of course recognises the importance of the traditional roles of custodianship and stewardship and the importance of ‘sustained excellence in materials and collections’ as a ‘rich resource base for teaching and research’. But this is only one part of a set of functions that gives the service the distinct aspect of a strategy consultancy, not just a service provider. According to Gary, the ISS staff have had a significant role in articulating a knowledge and information strategy. The vision is of ‘a knowledge-enabled university, where staff and students are actively helped to create, exploit and manage information and knowledge’, and Maggie Haines has placed her staff at the centre of the process. The work is supported by information and IT ‘champions’ within the college.
But the strategy is not restricted to the college – it’s more ambitious than that. ‘In the ISS strategic plan, we recognise that there is much more that we can do as information professionals to contribute to the wider community,’ Maggie says, ‘for example, through developing systems to share knowledge.’ She thinks that their information literacy programmes should be accessible to a diverse user group and be compatible with those in partner institutions. She also wants to expand access to the college’s collections, and other relevant collections, through collaboration with other libraries, museums and archives. ‘We have the responsibility for stewardship of the rich cultural and information resources at King’s College London. We also have strong professional values of freedom of access to information and preservation of cultural heritage. Therefore, we see an increasing role for ISS in helping to raise the profile of King’s as a resource-rich research and teaching environment and a major community player.’
Relations with the student body
It may seem elementary (but it is sometimes forgotten) but one requirement for success must be dialogue with users. ISS has significantly improved communications with the student body. Students have the opportunity to meet with their information specialists for one-to-one and group meetings on a regular basis. Campus user groups have proved popular as a channel for articulating needs and suggesting service improvements. Director of Customer Services Mary Davies makes a point of meeting student union representatives every month. ‘I’ve been very keen from day one to develop a closer partnership with staff and students. This requires an ongoing and detailed dialogue. It is part of the wider strategy to manage their expectations.’
The exchanges are apparently extra-ordinarily frank. ‘We don’t soft-soap them,’ says Gary. ‘We provide the essential facts, a reality check of sorts. “You want 24/7 access, but this is how much funding we have to play with.” Very often they are sympathetic and have rallied to support us.’ The outcome of these deliberations is crucial in defining ISS’s agenda.
Permanent learning curve
There is no possibility at King’s that the library and information service will lose touch with the rapidly changing demands and expectations of its diverse communities of users. Nor, conceivably, would any administration in its right mind want to cut back this service. To do so would be like blocking off a coronary artery.
At the core of ISS is a library service (and an impressive one at that) but the scope, ambition and scale of the departmental remit give it a strategic importance that the academic librarian of yesteryear would barely recognise. ISS is playing a fundamental role in the life of the college. The challenge is not to prevent roles being taken over by technology – far from it. Technology presents new opportunities. In fact, the difficulties arise from the need to keep up with all that technological innovation.
‘In order to be successful, you almost have to read and study as regularly as you did at library school,’ says Gary. ‘Everyone is on a permanent learning curve in this profession. It is how we manage to deal with the pressures of this continual need for updates in so many rapidly developing areas that is going to be the problem.’
The aim at Kings is to ensure that information specialists are ‘true to their job titles, are partners in the research and learning process, proactive, informative and that they keep one step ahead of the game’.
Elspeth Hyams is Editor, Library + Information Update. Gary Horrocks is Research & Learning Liaison Manager, King’s College London.