Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

October 2005 Volume 3 (5)

ICT: Aiming Higher

Gates and laptops

Jill Evans begins our focus on ICT with a look at initiatives in Scotland’s Libraries.

Recent publications from the Scottish Executive feature Scotland’s libraries prominently, with specific reference to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). In The National Cultural Strategy the Scottish Executive noted that a key priority was to “encourage new partnerships in both public and private sectors and further collaboration within the library service to include the exploitation of ICT and the development of policies for national collections in relation to Scottish material.” (Key Priority 2.2) The Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) oversaw the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Scottish Executive Public Libraries Excellence Fund Projects which provided public libraries with the opportunity to enhance ICT provision and learning opportunities in areas of significant social deprivation. The initiative provided £600,000 and local authorities with area based Social Inclusion Partnerships were invited to bid for up to £50,000.

To date there have been some innovative and exciting results. North Lanarkshire’s initiative purchased 12 laptops which were available for lending to local residents enabling the user to learn in their own home at their own pace. In South Ayrshire the ‘Girvan Gateway’ was coordinated by the library, which worked with local voluntary organisations delivering ICT equipment into residents’ homes. It was reported that 75% of the individuals were digitally excluded for reasons of visual impairment or mobility restrictions. In South Ayrshire several participants progressed to attend the Further Education College after gaining IT skills through the Excellence Fund projects.
South Lanarkshire reported that lending laptops enabled the entire family to learn ICT skills as a family unit. The initiative helped overcome the difficulty of attending learning sessions in libraries because of a lack of childcare.
In West Dunbartonshire the Alexandria Library provided ‘Laptops For Loan’ to local residents and this gave the learners the confidence to use the equipment before ‘progressing’ to use ICT equipment in the library. Such initiatives support the Scottish Executive’s aims for the population to make full use of ICT for the social benefit of learning, information, and contribute to social inclusion.
Fourteen public library services benefited from this fund and many aspects of the initial projects have been mainstreamed and are now integral to the delivery of ICT and learning in libraries. The lessons learned during the project and the recommendations in the report produced by SLIC, Making a Difference – Libraries, ICT and Social Inclusion, influence service planning and partnership working.

Member institutions of SCURL also lend laptops to matriculated students although this appears to be a more recent initiative than in the public libraries. Aberdeen University offers seven laptops in the Taylor Library and seven in the Queen Mother Library for use within the library. This initiative has been well received by the undergraduate and postgraduate students with the statistics revealing 4000 loans over the previous year. Edinburgh University Library has a total of 20 laptops for loan and offers a three-day loan, which enables students to have a flexible study pattern. Strathclyde University also provides a laptop loan service. Lending laptops has ICT training implications for library staff. To protect the security of the previous borrower the hard drive may be reformatted, the operating systems, and the utilities and software packages may be re-installed.

Another initiative of a SCURL member library demonstrating ICT partnership is Napier University Library’s contractual arrangement with the Clinical Library of the St Columba’s Hospice. Funded by the Hospice, Napier University has provided a professional librarian on a part-time basis since 1992, assisted by a number of willing and able volunteers, and working closely with the Hospice Palliative Care Education Team. Over this time, the Librarian has managed the collection, provided user education, encouraged access to the NHS e-library and produced ‘Lookout’ the bi-monthly in-house index to palliative care journals. The Library is used by both the Hospice teaching and nursing staff, and students from Edinburgh University and Queen Margaret University College study palliative care at the Hospice.

The latest SCONUL Statistics (2003-2004) reveal a “...trend to manage a merged academic computing service and a library”. The SCURL member institutions, which were eligible to submit data, indicated a fairly even distribution; nine reported a merged or jointly managed service structure and eight reported a separate structure. The Higher Education Information Technology Statistics Return in the Universities & Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) report of 2004-2005, of which many SCURL institutions are members, listed the top concerns relating to IT.

They were:
>>network security
>>a strategic approach to infrastructure
>>systems resilience
>>anytime/anywhere computing
>>learning support.

The anytime/anywhere computing matches the laptop learning initiatives and it is expected that this issue will become more significant in the next 12 months. Specific aspects of concern were network connectivity, network authentication, and accounting. The Learning Support aspect focused on the VLE development with the integration and linking to corporate information. It was reported that the average lifetime of workstations was generally considered to be three to five years.

In conclusion, the SCONUL Annual Statistical return for 2003-2004 revealed that while academic libraries appear to have become busier with more students using the libraries there was fewer library staff available to assist users. The statistics also demonstrated a fall in the number of enquiries which may reflect either fewer staffed enquiry desks in libraries or that the users were more confident of their IT skills using the electronic resources in which the libraries have invested resources and staff.

Jill Evans is Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) Service Development Manager.

Information Scotland Vol. 3 (5) October 2005

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.

Last updated: 09-Dec-2005