Meeting held at the Wellcome Trust. 

NK welcomed Rodney Amis to his first meeting of the Group and thanked him for agreeing to join. Rodney replaces Angus Brown.

NK reminded the Group that Sue Price had resigned. A replacement, preferably someone with experience in the quality field is required. Any members who have suggestions to contact NK no later than 2/12/05.

These were accepted as an accurate record of the meeting.

Templates had been received and NK thanked all contributors.

Agreed that the models as developed should be put up on the website as exemplars for other institutions.

There was some discussion about the value of including the box for ‘benchmarks’. Agreed that it would probably be more useful when a SLD had been actively used for some time and that institutions might use it to note comparator statistics etc. It was agreed that the box should stay in.

NK will draft some introductory text for the templates and incorporate agreed amendments. If there is time, she will organise them into discrete subject groupings (e.g. Collection Management, Customer Services etc.)but priority is to get them up quickly. Action: NK

RA offered to circulate to the group some of KCL’s SLDs but asked that they remain confidential within the group. Action: RA

ES spoke to her chart on ILLs, data for which had been submitted by Group members. She cautioned that it was a tiny sample and, that as such, was unrepresentative.

It was noted that like wasn’t always being compared with like (one of the difficulties with benchmarking). For example, some organisations measure working days and others use calendar days. ES noted that students seem to work on a seven-day basis.

She emphasised, too, that the aim was to benchmark general service standards (the % of requests approved and supplied within a given period) rather than the actual number of requests dealt with.

Agreed that the template should be circulated to the M25 Directors’ list for information and comment linked to the SLD templates. ES to draft a mail and forward it to NK. Action: ES

WF and KB had had an initial meeting to discuss best practise guide and WF outlined their thoughts. WF also sought clarification from the Group as to what they expected as an end product.

It was agreed that what would be most helpful was a checklist of methods, examples and recommendations. WF and KB to produce and circulate a draft in advance of the next meeting. Action: WF/KB

PP spoke to his pre-circulated paper about the exercise carried out at Leeds (between Leeds Met, Leeds University and Leeds Public Library) and noted that there would be an article in the forthcoming CILIP Update.

The exercise was an attempt to get a qualitative assessment of the user’s experience when phoning or visiting in person. The ‘visitors’ comprised staff from other nearby libraries; they too had found it a valuable exercise and were very positive about it.

A commercial consultant was brought in to train the ‘shoppers’ and the same set of questions was used across a range of libraries.

Of the others on the Quality Group, only Westminster had conducted a similar exercise. Noted that Mystery Shopping of websites could take place without actually visiting a library.

It was agreed that the Group should run a half-day Mystery Shopping event. PP and ES volunteered to organise and NK to contact Dave Puplett (CPD25) for a suitable date and venue later in year. Action: PP/ES/NK

DC spoke to his pre-circulated paper. It was agreed that, as an approach, it would be difficult to apply it across the board as most institutions outside the public library sector already have their own methodologies. Nonetheless, DC’s document provided a very helpful summary and NK thanked him for writing it up for the Group.

JP updated the Group on progress with the Focus Group Survey. People had been asked if they were interested in participating in an event and/or if they had existing focus group expertise. Just 14 responses had been received to date. NK would circulate the survey linking it to the Focus Group event scheduled for April 24th 2006. Action: NK

NK to replace Angus Brown’s name with Rodney’s on the Quality Group pages. Action: NK

To be held at London South Bank University at 10.30am on 16/2/05.