How did one government library cope with major change, including an external review and merging different services? Kevin Jackson reports from Defra, where take-up of services is now increasing.
The library service at what is now Defra (Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) has faced a number of changes in the period since 2001, including the creation of Defra itself, an external review on the need for a library service and the merger of the two existing libraries and the subsequent relocation to a new information resource centre. Its response to these changes has determined its current direction and its range of services.
Defra was formed as a new government department in June 2001, following the general election. Defra took on board the responsibilities of Maff (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food), environment protection, wildlife and conservation activity from the former DETR (Department of Environment, Transport & the Regions) and the animal welfare responsibilities of the Home Office. Almost overnight, the former Maff library service was faced with understanding and meeting the information needs of a new set of customers – with no increase in resources to respond rapidly to these changes. Although agreement was reached with the ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) library service over transferring the environment bookstock to Defra, the actual transfer was not completed until the summer of 2003.
External reviews
In February 2002, faced with a need to save money, Defra senior management commissioned an external review. The brief given to TFPL was to examine Defra’s need for a library and information service and, if proven, determine the best way of delivering the service. TFPL interviewed library staff, senior management and customers, benchmarked against other government department library services and undertook a customer awareness/satisfaction survey.
TFPL’s report of September 2002 contained a number of criticisms:
- a lack of customer awareness of the range of services available. The service was perceived to be lacking relevance and of low value;
- library staff had limited involvement with their users. The service was seen as having little integration or alignment with Defra’s business needs and lacking a clear view of its users;
- a number of services were clerical-based and/or process-driven and were thought of little value;
- users were unaware of the broader information management skills possessed by library staff, despite their involvement in a number of important information management activities;
- there were few professional staff compared to other government departments, resulting in staff being spread very thinly over a range of activities.
Despite these criticisms, TFPL found that the library service was fulfilling its basic roles adequately. The review concluded that there was still a need for a library service within Defra, and an in-house unit was the best option. TFPL recommended:
- a move away from paper-based information and delivery to electronic sources, delivered directly to the desktop;
- cutting the staff time and effort spent on the lower-value services;
- reducing the number of clerical staff and making better use of professional library and information skills;
- appointing a dedicated marketing librarian to raise the service’s profile, improving contact with users and promoting library and information skills across the department;
- considering merging the two existing libraries, with savings in staff, books and journals.
These recommendations were accepted by senior management in January 2003, and the library service began to put them into practice from April 2003.
Merger of two collections
The final change was the merger of the existing Whitehall Place and Nobel House libraries and relocation to a new information resource centre. Although one of TFPL’s recommendations, this change was first mooted in 2000, when the then new Permanent Secretary questioned the need for two libraries in London. Although there were separate groups of users, with different information needs, in the two buildings, pressure from senior management pointed towards rationalisation.
A further driver was the complete refurbishment of Whitehall Place and the subsequent need to vacate the building by the end of 2002. There were benefits in merging the two library teams into a single cohesive unit and consequently the decision to merge was made.
However, this did not come without difficulties. Although the two libraries both shared the same Unicorn catalogue, they used different classification schemes. Over an eight-month period stock had to be reviewed and merged, duplicate and/or surplus copies weeded out and disposed of, and it had to be reclassified and the catalogue details amended accordingly.
The Whitehall Place library included a number of basements housing little-used but important historical material. It was decided that the library service should support a modern government department and, consequently, 80 per cent of this older historical material was disposed of, much of it going to the Rural History Centre at Reading University.
Staff restructuring
Staff roles were reappraised, changed and restructured as a result of the merger. The newly merged library was initially based in Nobel House, but subsequently moved to a purpose-built information resource centre in the adjacent Ergon House building in November 2003.
The present centre forms part of a complex of facilities, including an open learning centre offering IT and other training courses, conference rooms and a business centre, all bringing traffic into the area.
Day-to-day management of the development of the library service is an important aspect of the restructuring plan. The appointment of a new Library Manager has maintained the impetus towards a more streamlined service.
Since joining Defra from the Home Office in January this year, Mark Maidment has been involved in reorganising the layout of the stock in the library to improve access for customers. He has also been working closely with the Enquiry, Collection Development and Marketing teams to raise awareness of the wide range of electronic resources (20,000 journals and more than a dozen databases) and of the kind of information we can deliver to the desktop. The goal is to ensure that Defra’s core staff, wherever they are based, can access as many information sources as possible.
Investigation and evaluation of new sources will continue, as well as running comparisons with existing products to ensure that Defra receives the best information possible, and value for money. Print sources will not be neglected, and by using iLink (the library catalogue) all Defra staff can ask for items to be delivered to their desk.
The Defra archive will continue to develop, recognising its importance as Defra’s corporate memory. Archive items are catalogued and can be accessed via iLink.
The move to electronic
Another new appointee is Nickie Roome, Collection Development Team Leader.
Nickie joined in September 2004 in the middle of the annual review of periodical subscriptions. In 2004, most of our journals were sent out on circulation and, inevitably, some were never seen again. The aim now is to provide desktop access to e-journals and reference sources in as many cases as possible, giving people current information instead of making them come to the library or wait weeks or months until their turn on the circulation list.
User feedback in the summer indicated some resistance to losing hard copy. Many users said they preferred to read their journals on the train; some felt they would lose out by missing the kind of material that might catch their eye on a printed page, but wouldn’t be found by searching or noticed on a contents alert.
In January, however, when the circulation of many titles was stopped there were few complaints. In fact, those who were offered electronic sources have been very enthusiastic, with the vast majority appreciating the ease of use and currency of the information. Take-up of the titles offered has been steady.
There have, of course, been problems. Certain titles and publishers have been very difficult, if not impossible, to strike deals with. But electronic access is now offered to 21 journal titles, with 30 left on circulation. The library service also has access to table of contents (TOC) information and alerts, via SwetsWise, for more than 16,000 titles. Once teething problems are overcome, it is expected that this service will be a great success.
Another problem was that the Government Secure Intranet (GSI) prevents access to many web-based services. This has been solved, in some measure, by subscribing to the Athens authentication service.
As well as journals, the library also offers reference sources via the desktop. New services include X-Refer Plus, Legislation Direct, the Civil Service Yearbook and the Barbour Environment files.
It is fair to say that the library has so many new services that it faces a steep learning curve itself, let alone in educating their users. However, most users don’t have to learn about all the information sources, just the ones they find useful – and they have the necessary motivation. Younger entrants to Defra come in with experience of having used e-sources in higher education and are familiar with the Athens interface.
Information and enquiry services
Maintaining continuity with the ‘old’ library service is Cliff Van Dort, Enquiry Service Team Leader.
The Enquiry team consists of four core personnel, supported by the Marketing Librarian and by Assistant Librarians working in the Collection Development team. Its remit is to provide information services to all Defra staff, other government departments and the public. Since moving to the IRC the role of the enquiry service has expanded dramatically to take on the responsibility of dealing with all written information requests – a role previously performed by the Defra Helpline.
The enquiry service also acts as the first point of contact for all Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations requests coming into Defra.
Essentially, although the primary role of the enquiry service has not changed since its move to the IRC, it has become a more important link in the chain of information provision for both Defra and the public.
To fulfil this expanded role, the enquiry service is developing an information portal using the Sirsi Rooms application. After a well-received pilot, the plan is to create 30 subject rooms, providing information direct to end-users’ desktops. This project (only the second of its kind in the UK) is developing in parallel to the IRC’s electronic library, providing desktop access to more than 20,000 journal titles, TOCs and online databases. Eventually ‘Rooms’ will become the library’s customer-facing presence online.
Marketing the Library & Translation Service
Following the TFPL review recommendations, Kevin Bell was appointed as Marketing Librarian in February 2004. Kevin's background is an unusual one – industrial sales and a recently acquired MA in Information Service Management (ISM). It was expected that practical marketing skills and focused ISM thinking would combine to raise the profile of the Library & Translation Service (LTS).
The first task was to identify the current customer base, not difficult in broad terms as this consisted of all Defra’s staff. But trying to identify those who were using the library and, more importantly, those who weren’t was not so easy. The library management system (Unicorn) should have made the task achievable, but patchy data input and the difficulties inherent in merging two classification systems reduced the effectiveness of the reports. Even so, it became obvious that most customers were from one department and that the majority of Defra staff did not use the library at all.
This seemed to be confirmed by an online ‘click and tell’ survey. The survey consisted of a question posted on Defra’s intranet homepage, with radio voting buttons to make response easier.
The question was ‘Have you made use of the Information Resource Centre’s facilities/services for: a) Developing/contributing to evidence-based policy; b) General information research; c) Haven’t considered using the IRC’. Of the more than 1,300 respondents, 92 per cent ticked the last option.
We think this figure would be dramatically different if the question was re-phrased to read ‘library’ instead of ‘information research centre’, and we are going to test this theory in the coming year. The doubt over these results arises because of the large number of electronic alerts, inter-library loans and users on journal circulation lists provided by the library.
Renaming the library was one of the recommendations of the external review but, even with promotional activities, the ‘information resource centre’ is not readily identifiable to the client base. Many times the response to the standard telephone answer, ‘Hello, Information Resource Centre, X speaking’ is a protracted silence, followed by ‘Is that Defra Library?’
There is now a move towards regarding the physical area occupied by the library as the IRC – a place that contains Defra Library.
A key task was the development of a marketing plan for the LTS. This involved the use of several tools not usually associated with library services, such as: the identification of the LTS ‘product’ using a features/benefits analysis; a market review looking at competitors and target audience; Swot and Pest analyses; and consideration of the marketing mix – the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion).
I drew heavily on my pre-librarian skills at this stage. Completing the marketing plan made concrete the underlying perceptions of the library management: that the library was able to provide a useful service to Defra staff, but that it would be competing with the internet to supply information; that a virtual presence on users’ desktops would need to be developed; and that the best way of raising the profile of the library was through personal contact.
The most appropriate means of making personal contact was identified as being a PowerPoint presentation at branch meetings, branches being one of the smallest discrete units in Defra. On the downside, presenting to branches produced a major logistical problem in terms of the number of branches and their geographical spread.
Presentation to branches
Over the course of 2004, 14 presentations were given to various branches, mostly in London. They covered the range of library services available and were well received. The out-of-London branches, in particular, appreciated someone coming to talk to them, and the effort in doing so was well repaid. These visits have had a noticeable effect on library registrations, as the graph on the previous page shows.
Another purpose of making personal contact is to seek feedback on existing services and suggestions for improvements or new products. It is no use having a ‘set menu’ and expecting users to take what is offered. To survive in the current information climate, a library has to be responsive to its customers’ wants and needs.
An indication of the success of the new services is that the take-up of alerting services has risen from nine per cent at the beginning of 2004 to 27 per cent at the end of March 2005, exceeding the target of 25 per cent due to be achieved in March 2006. Document delivery has also doubled over the same period, reflecting the take-up of alerting services.
The future
There are many new products and services in the pipeline, which will be rolled out during 2005. Each of these new offerings will be the ‘hook’ for one or more advertising messages using the Defra intranet and in-house magazine. Presentations will continue to be offered to the branches and it is fully expected that the take-up of Defra library services will continue to increase.
One thing is certain – it will continue to be ‘all change’ at Defra Library.
Kevin Jackson is Head of the Library & Translation Service and Chief Librarian, Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
Updated: 20 July 2005