Meeting Minutes

Meeting held at LSBU.

NOTE: The following minutes are unapproved and will be formally agreed at the next meeting of the Working Group.

Apologies for absence: David Clover (ICS) Philip Payne (Birkbeck), Janet Percival (UCL), Pete Ryan (Canterbury Christchurch).

1. Minutes of the meeting held on 23 November 2005

2. Matters arising

Minute 1: New members. Gill Briggs, Manager of the Westall House LRC, Thames Valley University, has accepted an invitation to join the group, and will attend the next meeting.

Minute 3: SLD Templates. The SLDs will be loaded onto the new M25 web pages. RA offered to circulate some more examples from KCL, with the proviso that they should remain confidential within the Group. Action: RA
It was noted that SLDs may have a dual function: they inform library users about the level of service they can expect, and they provide library staff with the standards they are expected to achieve.

Minute 6: Mystery Shopping The Group will be running a half-day event on Mystery Shopping in July 2006, organised by PP and ES. The event will be held at Birkbeck, and speakers will be Kate Purcell from Birkbeck, and two speakers from Leeds. The event will also include a practical exercise, which will require participants to have carried out a mystery shopping visit in advance; they will be provided with guidelines and a form to complete. ES has offered some University of Westminster libraries for the exercise, and other possibilities include UCL, KCL and local public libraries.

3. Focus Group survey and event

JP has received 20 responses to the questionnaire. NK will ask her to provide an analysis. Action: NK

The Focus Group event will take place at 2.00pm on 25 April at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. Angela Abell of TFPL will speak about the organisation and use of focus groups, and two case studies will be presented, by Penny Day of Middlesex University, and PG of LSBU.

4. User Feedback Good Practice Guide

The Group discussed the Checklist for Best Practice prepared by WF and KB. Some amendments and additions were made, and it was agreed that an introduction and section on formal committees should be added. WF and KB agreed to revise the document for circulation to the Group by 31 March. Action: WF/KB
NK thanked WF and KB for producing an excellent document.

5. Action Plan

The Action Points on the 2005/2006 Action Plan have all been achieved. The Group had some initial thoughts on the Action Plan for 2006/2007, which included: investigating feasibility of an M25 Consortium-wide approach to Mystery Shopping; placing SLDs and charters from M25 Consortium libraries on the website, as exemplars; customer satisfaction surveys (Nottingham Trent University has used software produced by Enzyme international to gather data from library users and library staff); Benchmarking (using Wellcome experience).
NK asked the Group to bring additional ideas to the next meeting. Action: All

6. Date and venue of next meeting

2.00pm on Monday 24 April 2006 at the University of Westminster.