I am going to try summarize how my stay in Bath is developing from a professional view. My intention would be to publish two or three posts about this learning experience. And this is the first one.
But first of all, I want to thank to Steve Alston, Serials & E-Resources Librarian in University of Bath, for its warm reception and its permanent disposal for helping me. Of course, I am also very grateful to all the staff of the University of Bath which have been very friendly with me.
Secondly, I must to thank to the International Relationship Service of the University of Malaga for giving me a grant in order to make possible this professional stay in UK.
When you arrive to a unknown country (this is my first visit to England) you feel yourself a little disoriented. In England, the language is different, of course, but also the money is different, the circulation rules are different and the weather is different too. So my first thought when I got in the Library was: «it will be absolutely different to mine».
In fact, the Bath Library is a unique library whereas the Malaga Library is a distributed-library (13 branch libraries, 1 Central Library and General Services). However, similarities are much more than I guessed.
In the «welcome session», on Monday, Steve offered me an induction to the Library, a Library tour and facilitated my library card and a username for computing services. Then we discussed about general information on the University of Bath, the Library and the Technical Services. One of the point more interesting for me was how the Library intranet works. It works like a wiki-based system, it is very useful and intuitive.
After lunch, we met Gavin Rea, Deputy Librarian. We did a safety tour around the building and discussed about the Strategic Plan of the Library, especially on policies, goals and trends in the future.
At the end of the workday, Hannah South, Head of Academic Services (she looks after Reader Services, Subject librarians and Institutional Repository) explained to me how its Service is organised.
On Tuesday, I discussed with Steve about Periodicals, e-Resources and Document Delivery, and I had the opportunity to talk widely with Felicity Nurding about e-resources management, and with Lizz Jennings about the Interlibrary Loans.
I found many similarities in the case of the IL among Malaga and Bath: the most of documents are e-articles, the lending of books are decreasing, the management is automatized, the budget is distributed by Departments, etc. Felicity explained me how they manage e-resoruces and also how they gather the e-resources usage statistics by using JUSP (Journal Usage Statistical Portal).
On Wednesday I had a very intensive day. We started with a Staff Development Session about «Augmented Reality» held in the Council Chamber. Afterwards I met Peter Bradley for talking about the Library Catalogue and Website. The catalogue is powered by ExLibris Primo and it is very similar to the University of Malaga catalogue, Jabega 2.0.
After lunch, I met Linda Humphreys. She explained to me widely how the Library develops the Information Literacy and the user training. University of Bath is focused in research more than in teaching, it means that user training is integrated in Post-graduate Programming like optional online courses that are available by Moodle. Information Literacy for Under-graduate students is coordinated by Subject Librarians and Faculty in order to offer face-to-face training sessions about general or specific topics.
Finally, I had a very interesting conversation with Anderley Askham, Information Librarian. She talked me about the most frequent queries and how they are responded via email, phone and, mainly in person. I also could to see some special collections and archival collection. I told Anderley about the chat service in University of Malaga Library, and as she was interested in it, we used it for ask a question that was immediately replied.
On Thursday I have met my colleague Elly Cope, she works as acquisition librarian. We have been talking about the peculiarities of the e-books acquisition, the largest e-books packages, the item-by-item purchase, and also about printed books, dissertations and theses, etc. She gave me an useful scheme of the «Library Book Flow» and I gave her a brief list of Spanish suppliers of bibliographical material.
After lunch, I went to meet with Tom Brumfit for talking about the Scanning Service. Tom looks after the whole process of scanning printed papers for teaching purposes. The scanned documents are available on Moodle for students. The University of Bath signed a licence with the CLA (Copyright Licensing Agency) that allows this kind of reproduction. Tom gave me a copy of the User Guidelines of Higher Education Licence and another of the Basic Licence. I am sure that they will be useful in the future.
That is everything for today.
See you soon!!!
Fernando.
Biblioteca 2.0 y más allá... 