News News Archive Middlesex University
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Some recent developments at Middlesex University Staff restructure During summer and autumn 2011 all services and Schools across the University restructured to achieve a 10% reduction in staff costs. Most staff who left went under the University’s voluntary redundancy scheme including several long-serving members of the Learning Resources service. The restructure enabled us to reduce the number of management layers within the service and was linked to a new service delivery model based on a single triage help desk. We managed to preserve library opening hours and academic liaison, although we were sorry to lose our archivist and some of the opportunities we would have had had we (as originally planned) been able to restructure within the same budget. New Assistant Director (IT support) In September Mike Hallas joined us as the new Assistant Director (IT support), managing library systems, student IT support and (most recently) the student portal (see below). Mike previously worked in the LSE Library. Planning for another campus closure In October the University announced that it would be withdrawing all teaching from the Trent Park campus with effect from summer 2012. The library collections (over 2000 shelves), services, staff and IT will be accommodated within the Sheppard Library which, some readers may remember, integrated collections from our Cat Hill campus last summer. To maintain the student experience, the university is exploring the idea of learning resources spaces across the campus and we will expand the numbers of laptops available for loan to students. Launching and supporting the Student Portal At the start of the academic year a student portal, based on SunGardHE's Luminis platform, was launched providing a single point of access for all student business systems (registry, finance, VLE, library e-resources etc). This is supported by a single virtual help-desk which takes all calls and emails and escalates second level support enquiries to the appropriate department in the university. From the start of 2012 responsibility for ongoing management of the portal has passed to Learning Resources and we have appointed a Student Portal Manager, Zeljana Grabovac, reporting to Mike Hallas. Middlesex app LR, working with Marketing, has launched a smartphone app for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. In addition to contact details etc it enables students to reserve books and check PC availability in the Library. Check it out in the iTunes store and elsewhere. Nick Bevan, Director of Learning Resources |
