Outstanding Library Team award winner

White Rose Libraries of Leeds, Sheffield and York win Times Higher Education Leadership & Management Award

White Rose Libraries – a partnership between the libraries at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York – have won a Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award (THELMA) in the Outstanding Library Team category.

Our partnership has a history of leading innovation and development across the information sector. Working together, the libraries develop joint services and respond creatively to challenges for researchers and research collections.

Stella Butler, University of Leeds Librarian, said:

The White Rose Libraries partnership is a fantastic example of collaboration across three of the UK’s leading universities that has enhanced the services that we all offer, as well as improving efficiency. We are very proud to be a part of the collaboration and honoured to have been recognised in this way.

In 2016, White Rose Libraries launched the only collaborative open access University Press in the UK, which brings high-quality scholarship to a global audience without paywall barriers. White Rose University Press launched two new journals in the 2016-17 academic year. The press’ model for monographs, combining open access with author-retained copyright, makes its own contribution to debates around the future of academic publishing.

The libraries have been equally active in addressing the major challenges of managing print holdings. White Rose Libraries analysed the three institutions’ library collections and again took a sector-leading approach that resulted in its findings and recommendations contributing to national discussion, particularly around the quality of UK library data informing the implementation of the JISC-led National Bibliographic Knowledgebase.

The judges were impressed by the

...commitment to a joint repository and White Rose University Press as an exemplar of effective teamworking across the partner institutions. The joint management of print holdings is of national importance. This work contributes towards better understanding of and new solutions for the management of the national research collections.

The THELMAs are the only national awards honouring the full range of professional services and administrational talent working in UK universities.