Annual Report 2018–2019
Library Staff share stories of success through working in partnership with staff and students across the University.
The Annual Report for 2018–2019 reflects on our achievements over the year and celebrates our focus on customer service and academic collaboration to deliver an excellent library service.
Our NSS score shows 93% of students agreeing that the Library has “supported their learning well”. That makes us the top-scoring Russell Group University Library for the third year running, and sector-leading in how we provide support that meets the needs of a diverse academic body.
Our Collections Network is now a strategic focus of collaboration between Special Collections and Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, setting priorities for acquisitions and digital innovation, and supporting grant applications. Academic members of the network advocated for specific collections, which created exciting new opportunities for research and teaching.
We are improving our understanding of the impact of our research. Our newly appointed bibliometrician worked alongside Deputy Vice Chancellor: International, Hai-Sui Yu, to analyse citations received by the University’s research outputs and how they contribute to Leeds’ current position of =93rd in the QS World University Rankings.
Students benefitted from a fruitful partnership with the Language Centre to provide a more integrated approach to academic language support. A new set of workshops is now delivered through the Skills@Library programme and academic language learning points are more appropriately and consistently included throughout the programme. Over 1,100 students attended the new language workshops in 2018–19..
Our “Critical Thinking at University: an introduction” MOOC proved very popular in its first year. Created in partnership with the Digital Education Service, the online course was ranked within the “top 100 free online courses and MOOCs of all time” by Class Central users and was nominated for the Digital Award for Information Literacy 2019.
Students starting at the University received tailored and improved induction sessions to help them feel confident using the Library and our resources. We worked with the International Office and the Lifelong Learning Centre to deliver appropriate support at the right time.
Partnerships aren’t always outward-facing –close working between Library teams led to the successful launch of our new Library management system. The project was a year in the making and resulted in a new simplified loans system, a new Library Search and enriched data to improve resource discovery.
