Meeting Minutes

Minutes of the Meeting held on Thursday 16 December 2004 at Senate House Library

Present: Mary Davies (Chair), Penny Dade, Adam Edwards, Brian Murphy, Fiona O'Brien, Ann Sainsbury, David Ward, Christine Wise (Secretary).

By invitation: Sarah Sherman, HE Advisor, JISC Support Centre, London.

1. Apologies for Absence

Apologies for absence were received from Christine Muller.

2. Minutes of the meeting held 9 November 2004

These were accepted as a true record.

3. Matters arising

There were no matters arising not otherwise itemised on the agenda.

4. Presentation: Sarah Sherman, HE Advisor, JISC Support Centre, London

[Secretary’s note: the following is reproduced from the handout circulated by Sarah Sherman at the meeting, as a full record of the main points covered].

JISC RSC FOR LONDON

JISC

JISC Advisory Services

JISC Regional Support Centres

• Established in 2000 to support the FE sector
• 13 RSCs across the UK
• Expanded role in 2003 to support FE specialist colleges and Adult and Community Learning (ACL)
• Support for curriculum, learning resources, technical, strategy and management

Each RSC has an HE Advisor

• East Midlands
• Eastern
• London
• North West
• Northern
• South East
• South West
• West Midlands
• Yorkshire & Humberside
• Northern Ireland
• Scotland North & East
• Scotland South & West
• Wales

The RSC offer

How do we deliver support?

• Site visits
• Fora
• Workshops
• Conferences
• JISCMAIL list
• e-bulletins and newsletters
• website

Contact details: Sarah Sherman, HE Advisor This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Telephone 020 7692 1638

5. Action Plan - reports from members

ALM London
CW reported on behalf of MD that MD had invited Graham Fisher, Chief Executive of ALM London, to give a presentation at the next meeting of the Working Group.

CW reported on behalf of MD that ALM London had commissioned an impact evaluation of archives, libraries and museums in London. It was agreed that MD would represent the M25 in respect to this work.

BM reported that the Board of ALM London had held a series of field visits on a domain visit day, Friday 26 November 2004. He had given a presentation on issues facing HE libraries.

The British Library
DW was maintaining a watching brief on collaboration with the British Library. He reported that the British Library Staff Development Officer and Jean Yeoh of CPD 25 had been put in touch to discuss issues of mutual interest. He further reported that there had been a recent change in arrangements for student access to the British Library (Secretary’s note: full details of the British Library’s access arrangements are available from http://www.bl.uk/services/reading/admissions.html).

Committee of Departmental Librarians
CW reported on MD’s behalf that MD had recently been in touch with Peter Griffiths. A decision had been taken in principle by the CDL to develop a union catalogue with the assistance of the M25 Systems Team and matters were being discussed internally with the CDL regarding resources.

HE / FE liaison
PD and FOB drew attention to the forthcoming conference, Making it easy: facilitating seamless access to resources http://www.llda.org.uk/cms/contentpage/conferences), to be held on 25 January 2005 at the British Library Conference Centre. It was hoped that this would attract considerable HE and FE interest.

LLDA
FOB reported that the new Director of LLDA would be Michael Clark, currently Head of Information at the Arts Council. He was expected to take up his post in April 2005.

The LLDA would be investigating business information provision on behalf of ALM London, and it was agreed that CW would represent the M25 in respect to this work.

A funding application had recently been prepared in support of the Welcome to your library project, aimed at asylum-seekers and refugees. The outcome of this bid was expected to be known in February 2005.

FOB reported on current LLDA initiatives, including the Chinese Reading Promotion and Read around the World.

FOB reported that work would be undertaken during 2005 to improve the London Libraries website (http://www.londonlibraries.org/servlets/home).

Full details on all LLDA initiatives were available from the website at http://www.llda.org.uk/cms/contentpage/home.

London Higher
CW reported that MD and CW would be meeting with Michael Reynier on 17 January 2005 to discuss strategic issues of mutual interest.

Regional library consortia
AE reported that he had made progress with mapping the content of the business plans of library consortia onto the M25 Consortium Development Plan. Organisations whose business plans and documents he had recently examined included the West Midlands Higher Education Association Libraries Group (http://www.wish-uk.org/linkfiles/wmidland.pdf) and NOWAL, the North West Academic Libraries group (www.nowal.ac.uk). AE would circulate further details and relevant URLs. Action AE

AE and DW reported that Royal Holloway had recently hosted a meeting of SEUL, the South East University Librarians group http://seul.open.ac.uk/).

AE reported that a meeting to take forward regional and sub-regional issues for Inspire (http://www.inspire.gov.uk/>) would take place early in 2005. FOB reported that she had been appointed to the Inspire London Steering Group. One key area of interest was how all sectors could benefit from Inspire, and see early benefits, while eliminating unnecessary paperwork which public libraries in particular would not welcome. She drew attention to a report which had been published in 1999, which recognised active work and reciprocity between the academic s ector and public libraries.

Research Libraries Network
The appointment of Dr Michael Jubb to the post of Director of the Research Libraries Network was noted.

6. Any other business

Membership of the M25 Consortium

BM reported that the recent expression of interest from the Institution of Electrical Engineers in becoming a member of the M25 Consortium was under consideration by the M25 Steering Group.

M25 Resource Discovery Working Group

BM reported that the M25 Resource Discovery Working Group was reviewing the future development of Inform25 including its regional dimension.

7. Date of next meeting

The date of the next meeting was confirmed as Friday 25 February 2005 at 10h00, at Senate House Library, University of London.