I answered the call for volunteers to help with the registration desk and in return I got a free day at the Conference… definitely a good deal, I had a really good day! As others have covered the keynotes I will give my reflections on the workshops I attended.
Janette Watson from Manchester discussed their use of Microsoft Dynamics 365 to track all interactions with academic staff: a huge project! They log everything and can then use this data for reporting and to develop engagement. It gives them an overview of how academic staff are engaging with the Library and has helped them to identify their ‘Library Champions’. They can ‘profile’ academic staff and see what their previous interactions have been. A major benefit has been to make things appear to be seamless; information about all previous conversations can be recalled before replying or initiating anything so it looks very slick. The project hasn’t been without challenges but is mandatory for Library staff to comply and as the benefits become clear there has been less resistance.
Rachel Bury from Edge Hill spoke about their Action Planning: many similarities to ours but I really liked their use of one page of ‘headline data’ which was a very snappy infographic with everything together (rather than our use of graphs etc throughout). Their appointments with staff are made in November so they are reviewing the previous academic year and planning for the current one which seemed to be good timing.
The final session of the day was ‘Scaling Up Relationships’ with Catherine Batson and Catherine Stephen from the University of Surrey. This was a really interesting session about the idea of moving relationships to the ‘next level’, acknowledging that what is required to do this will be unique to all relationships and personalities rather than the whole team taking the same approach. Although they didn’t really have any advice on how to do the scaling up, there were some nice graphics to show the process (see attached, apologies for poor quality) and I found it an interesting way to consider my own relationships with staff in the Faculty and think of ways to make continuous improvements.
There was also some discussion of what they have named ‘Bump Theory’ – this is how one interaction leads to another and so on. I really liked this, it is something that I hadn’t considered in this way before but a chance conversation or a comment made by someone can lead to many opportunities for teaching or interactions with students. They track their ‘bumps’ and there is some friendly competition in the office! Our activity was to pick one relationship and consider how we could scale it up; what actions would be required and what were we hoping to achieve? I found this useful and will definitely come back to it.
University of Sunderland Library and Study Skills Professional Sharing 