Quality Working Group Meeting Minutes

Minutes of the meeting held on 28 November, 2007 at London Metropolitan University

Present: Julie Howell (LMU, Chair), David Clover (ICS), Wendy Fish (Wellcome), Susan Howard (Imperial), Philip Payne (Birkbeck), Elaine Salter (Westminster)

Apologies for absence:  Gill Briggs (TVU), Janet Percival (UCL)
 

1. Membership
Julie Howell has taken over from Adam Edwards as Chair.
The Group recorded a vote of thanks to Wendy Fish, who is standing down.
Julie will seek advice from the M25 Steering Group on how to go about seeking a replacement.
         Action: Julie

2. Minutes of the meeting held on 4 June 2007
The Minutes were agreed as an accurate record

3. Matters arising

Minute 2: Chartermark. Julie will find out what has happened about the proposed CPD25 event on Chartermark
         Action: Julie

Minute 6: Benchmarking. Although the M25 Steering Group had awarded £3.5K to carry out the Benchmarking Scoping Project, following a change of Steering Group membership, there is now some doubt about how much could be achieved within available funding, and about the benefits of the project to M25. Agreed to reconsider the proposal: Elaine will re-circulate for comment.
         Action: Elaine

Minute 8: Library Surveys. David will have preliminary discussions with CPD25 about organising an event which could look at commercially available survey products and include an exchange of experience on how survey results are used.
         Action: David

4. M25 Action Plan
The Working Group needs to send the Steering Group a progress report on activities in 2007 by 7 December. Julie will draw up a draft and circulate for comment.
         Action: Julie

The Working Group has been asked to update its section of the Action Plan for 2007/08 and 2008/09 by 4 December. Various ideas were discussed, including previous suggestions for benchmarking. It was agreed that the proposed big idea, subject to the approval of the M25 Steering Group, should be a project in support of the SCONUL VAMP project. One area not currently covered by the VAMP portal is space utilisation, and given the high cost of accommodation in south east England, it was felt that this is an area of particular concern for M25 members. It was envisaged that the project would be done in conjunction with colleagues in Estates departments, and that some performance indicators for a benchmarking exercise could be established. Philip agreed to raise this proposal at the meeting of the SCONUL Working Group on Performance Improvement on 29 November.
         Action: Philip

It was agreed that Philip would feed back to Julie SCONUL WGPI’s views, and that Julie would take the broad proposal to the M25 Steering Group on 12 December.
         Action: Julie

Some smaller projects were also suggested, which Julie will add to the Action Plan:
• A directory of expertise in the area of quality, building on the list of quality contacts
• Some work on the application of the Quality Maturity model (after the meeting reference identified as SCONUL Focus (38) 2006).
• An audit of institutional quality processes and how libraries input into them
        Action: Julie

5. Any Other Business
 Elaine will re-circulate the mystery shopping proposal for comment
          Action: Elaine

Philip agreed to report back to future meetings of the Working Group on the activities of SCONUL WGPI.
         Action: Philip

6. Date and Venue of Next Meeting
The next meeting will be held at Birkbeck College in February 2008. The exact date will be circulated later.