E-Books

A small Task and Finish Group from the M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries and the Museum Librarians and Archivists Group (MLAG) has recently worked with JISC Collections to investigate the viability of establishing an e-books purchasing consortium for members of the M25 Consortium and MLAG. To ascertain whether such a purchasing consortium could be established and to verify the level and type of demand amongst M25 Consortium and MLAG members, it was agreed that a brief survey should be circulated to all member institutions. The deadline for returns is August 26^th and a full analysis of replies will be carried out in September. The London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC) has been kept informed.

SCONUL/JISC Electronic Resource Management Project and M25 Consortium Input

For the latest information and outputs from the JISC-funded SCONUL Shared Services project, see http://sconulerm.jiscinvolve.org/wp/ where you will find a set of linked documents intended to show how ‘above campus’ (consortium or national) electronic resource management might benefit university libraries and what functions it might encompass. This includes use case documentation, presenting cross-referenced Use Cases developed with each of the 16 institutions participating in the requirements capture process. Four M25 Consortium libraries took part in the case studies: University of Westminster, University of East London, University for the Creative Arts and Royal Holloway.

Information Handling

Following preliminary discussions with the Research Information Network (RIN), progress has been made with M25 Consortium involvement in moving towards setting up a network to support researchers with information skills training. Library staff from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College, London School of Economics and the Royal College of Art as well as Stephane Goldstein from RIN met recently and agreed that setting up a `London’ network to share best practice was a good idea. In particular it was agreed that all institutions covered by the London Hub of Vitae or members of the M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries would be eligible and all staff involved in information literacy training and support for researchers. It was also agreed that RIN could sponsor an initial meeting if held before end of 2011. So, watch this space. The meeting would consist of case studies from two institutions illustrating how they overcame barriers to information literacy provision or an innovative solution to an information literacy problem. The meeting would also ratify the draft aims and objectives of the network.

WAM25 and the SCONUL Task & Finish Group on Strategic Issues Associated with Library Access

Further to the bad news received earlier in the year that HEFCE could not fund the WAM25 project, we have now received the good news that JISC has approved the proposal to reallocate the funding they were going to contribute to the WAM25 project to the SCONUL Task and Finish Group’s walk-in access project, called WATER (Walk-in Access To E-Resources).  Mary Nixon (Goldsmiths) is the M25 Consortium representative on the SCONUL T&F Group and will provide progress reports to the M25 Steering Group.

Unjamming the M25:  LIBER Conference Poster

And then there was the speed dating. John Tuck presented a poster at the 2011 meeting of LIBER in Barcelona. Its theme was M25 Consortium virtual communication tools, i.e. Directors’ Room and Staff Room. There was significant interest in the poster and the activities of the M25 Consortium. Each of the 28 poster presenters also had a minute each to deliver the gist of their topic to the whole conference. For the poster, see the M25 Consortium website at: http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/documents/unjamming_the_m25/download_2.html

Task and Finish Groups

Conversion of working groups into Task and Finish Groups is proceeding apace. The InforM25 Task and Finish Group completed the InforM25 Review (see elsewhere in this Bulletin). The remits and membership of other Task and Finish Groups (E-books, Staff Room, Director-level professional development, BL Reading Rooms usage, M25 Marketing and Communications) will soon be accessible on the M25 Consortium website at http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/index.php, under 'Current Activities'.