Brand new brand

Drum roll…. This is one of three new brand images for Information & Library Services here at Judge. When I first discussed possible options with our designers I knew I wanted images that communicated that our service is principally about the provision of electronic business information and data, after all 82% of our budget goes on databases and we spend the vast majority of our time guiding users to them and/or fulfilling data requests with them. I was also keen that our new images incorporated our new name and some eye-catching colours. So how did the designers do?

Pretty well I think, especially as I think it communicates a bit more than what I initially asked for, elements that could feasibly be described as representing the speed of our response to user enquiries and the rapidly changing nature of the business world. Plus they have impact and feel dynamic.

This is one of three designs which we’re currently frantically adding to PPTs, Word docs, video tutorials, posters and more before term. The alternative designs use different colours but are otherwise very similar. One of the designs has already been affectionally named ‘the sea-monster’ so that one might get used a bit less than the other two!

As well as making us look more professional and consistent across all of our promotional materials,  these designs should save us some positioning time and arduous explanation as to why we’re not a regular library in our hands-on inductions.

Completely in character for me to have sorted style before content but there you go…

So what do you think? Do you like it?

What a difference 24 hours makes…

OK, so I’m a complete convert, after our misfire library induction yesterday I was feeling much less keen on the hands-on and longer session approach, but today its  a completely different story. I guess that the main change today was that  the PCs were already set-up in our portal so there was no way that the students could go wrong to start with. Also, the inclusion of the sentence ‘out of courtesy to presenters please don’t update your Facebook profile or read your email’ completely did the trick and we had an attentive audience, even in the 2pm after lunch sleep-slot! In both of today’s sessions the students listened, interacted, understood and were generally fab human beings. I could have hugged some of them for asking what, if I didn’t know any better, seemed like perfect planted questions! One more session to the fourth and final MBA stream tomorrow and I feel like I’ve finally cracked MBA induction. Only taken me 15 years.

The best thing about it is of course that  those who attended today’s sessions are as equipped as they can be information-wise at this point in the course, and as a result dbase usage, enquiries and footfall should theoretically increase. I’m a happy chappie – can you tell?! I would be happier but I now have a whole day’s worth of emails ahead of me before I go home.

Andy

That same old induction problem (after the fact)

OK, so those of you who read my post earlier today, here’s how the new hands-on and longer session style went down.

Negatives

• There were inevitable technical problems at the start of the session – students not having sourced or brought with them the passwords required to access our portal. Also some browser issues.
• My lovely powerpoint session froze for no good reason right at the start.
• The Lab we were presenting in had just been refurbished and it took us a while to work out where the dimmers were and how to up the mic volume.
• Some of the databases behaved slower than usual - THEY KNEW!
• We didn’t have hands-on for all databases due to group password and simultaneous user ssues .
• A lot of the students inevitably strayed into Facebook, email and other sites during the session.
• The students were obviously tired from having being talked at alot already today.
• Overall, it didn’t feel as professional and seamless as I’d have liked.

Positives

• We took the students straight into our portal – none of that ‘you can go in yourselves after the session’ malarkey.
• We gave them much more info than usual about our main databases.
• They asked a lot of relevant questions.
• They all came back after the coffee break!
• We felt they understood our main messages about the library service focusing on databases, business information and training and teaching rather than traditional aspects.
• The lab was a comfortable location for the audience and if they got bored they could get on with their own thing (!)
• Most of them chose to join the optional tour after the session.
• It was definitely an interactive experience.
• The debrief conversations brought us closer to the IT team!

So all in all, not too bad.  Hands-on is definitely more exhausting for the presenter, but its ticking lots of learning boxes that a straight lecture just doesn’t. I’ve got some clear ideas about how it can be improved for the next 3 streams who have the same sessions with us (most importantly logging on to the portal in advance) and we won’t be beset by new room issues next time around, so the only way is up!

Andy

That same old induction problem…

Its that time of year again and that same old question of how much or how little to say in student inductions. This year here at Judge Business School with our new MBA class we’ve decided to try something completely different to the usual 45 minute lecture theatre presentation come lecture, followed by library tour. Not only are we increasing the length of the session to 2 hours (plus an essential 15-minute break in the middle) so we can demonstrate our key databases but we’re also making as much as we can hands-on.

I remain to be convinced that is the best approach given that its their first week and many of them will be quite understandably distracted by other things, but this does respond directly to comments from last year’s MBAs that they wanted more than just a snapshot of the databases at the top of the year and I’m never going to turn down allocated teaching time.

Another important change is the decision to bill the first session as ‘Business Databases’ rather than ‘Library Induction’ in order to see if the level of enthusiasm and engagement is affected in any way.

Glazed and/or pleading faces will seal the fate of this new initiative!

Andy

Drop the pilot: why business librarians should not give in to Harvard Business School Publishing’s new scheme

As Chair of BBSLG (the British Business Schools’ Librarians’ Group) which comprises some 200 academic business librarians and over 100 libraries across the UK and Ireland, I have recently spent a considerable amount of my time complaining about an outrageous and precedent-setting pilot scheme dreamt up by Harvard Business School Publishing. For a few years now HBSP have been requesting payments of as much as £15k pa from several UK academic business libraries simply for the privilege of making persistent links to HBR articles on reading lists and VLEs.

The links in question are being made to EBSCO’s Business Source products (which provide HBR in full-text), however, it is Harvard rather than EBSCO who have approached librarians directly for additional payment.  Thus far these demands for extra monies, which are being requested on top of the EBSCO subscription, are, as mentioned above, merely part of a ‘pilot scheme’, however, HBSP plan to roll it out to all EBSCO subscribers in due course. 

Thus far, all UK librarians who have been offered the ‘opportunity’ to pay this additional sum have unsurprisingly turned it down, and as a result have recently had the ability to make persistent links to HBR turned off by EBSCO. This move has been greeted with a mixture of fury and disbelief  for a number of very good reasons:

1) The majority of UK business librarians make persistent links to HBR, and yet  only a handful of Universities have been selected to pay more now. Why should only a handful of libraries pay for a practice still in operation at other institutions?
2)  The ability to persistent-link has always been part and parcel of an EBSCO subscription. How can an additional fee be justifiably levied for what is considered to be a basic web experience rather than an added extra?
3) How can EBSCO justify turning off the ability to make persistent links to HBR at targeted institutions, when the links are still turned on and being used by EBSCO subscribers at other institutions that have not been targeted?
4) Why are EBSCO not protecting its customers from Harvard approaching them directly? As subscribers we have a relationship with EBSCO not Harvard. If Harvard are after after extra monies for access to their material then surely they should demand it of the aggregator not us? It seems a particularly odd strategy on EBSCO’s part when one considers that before now they have maintained uniformly excellent relations with their customers.
5) If HBSP get away with this practice, what’s to stop other journal publishers following suit? And what then is the purpose of paying a subscription to a journal aggregator if you’re having to pay additional fees to individual publishers on top?

However, in my opinion, the most important argument against HBSP’s scheme is that the primary reason which they cite for this cost recovery process is a clause in EBSCO subscribers contracts which states that access to articles within the product is for ‘individual, private study’ rather than for teaching purposes. Is accessing and reading an article cited on a course not individual study? Where does teaching begin and study end? Where do you draw the line? Harvard are of course drawing it at a point which conveniently supports their argument, but their definition is highly debatable.

Given the level of bad feeling around this issue, EBSCO’s Gareth Smith has agreed to speak on behalf of EBSCO in an open forum session at the 2009 BBLSG conference in Dublin in a few weeks time and subsequently feed back our views both to his company and to Harvard. The correspondence received thus far from HBSP suggests that they will stand firm and I consider it imperative that we do the same.

Andy

N.B. Visit Paul Stainthorp’s UoL blog to read a post on the same issue.

Activity based costing – a worthwhile activity?

I met the news that I was going to have to carry out an activity-based costing (abc) exercise on my library service with considerable trepidation. My main concern was that I simply couldn’t see how I could generate the data, my other was the time it would take.

In essence, I was required to assign library costs across the business school’s staff and students, with students divided by programme. My main budget lines are staffing and databases with printed journals a distant third, so it was suggested that I concentrate solely on these two lines. However – and it’s a big however - although we record heaps of statistics about enquiries and database usage we don’t, and in the latter case can’t, record either by user group. I was assured that this was understood and that instead the intention was to create a guestimate picture, and that I should not spend too much of my time on it.  A good thing too as I had a million and one other things clamouring for my attention! After receiving this welcome reassurance I set about constructing the guestimate by assigning the % of time that my library team spend with different user groups, the time spent on databases by respective user groups, and according to which specific user groups the databases are effectively purchased. For e.g. advanced finanical datasets chiefly used by faculty and PhDs. 

In order to reassure myself that my guestimate wasn’t wildly out I decided to ask my Deputy to concurrently calculate the same figures in order that the final totals could be derived from from the middle ground between the two.

What was immediately fascinating about the results was that the %s we both independently assigned were almost identical. Perhaps this exercise was going to be worthwhile after all?

The next stage, which was not actually required for the abc exercise was for us to compare these figures against registered library users to see if there was any parity. On this occasion I was not at all surprised to observe a complete contrast. Almost half of our users (48%) are not actually business school members and yet in terms of staffing and databases they only account for 14% of our resources. Whereas conversely our MBA and Masters of Finance courses together represent only 17% of our registered users and yet they actually account for around  a third (35%) of resource spend and activity.

In short, the process quantified our service in a way that hadn’t been previously been attempted or indeed presented, giving us much food for thought going forward. Yes it’s broad brush but nevertheless its a worthwhile representation. So if you have an hour to spare in the next week (yes I know – a spare hour, what’s that?!) then why not give it a whirl for your service. I’d wager there’s a good chance that it’ll help you see your resources and activities in a brand new light…

Andy