| Newsletter 12, June 1996Editorial: Simply the Best? |
 | Don’t worry — I’m not getting unduly big-headed about the quality of LSS’ services! |
The reference is to George Best, whose 50th birthday was celebrated on television recently. Something he said caught my attention: talking about some of the crazy things that happened to him when he first gained fame with Manchester United, he said (and I’m paraphrasing, here) that it didn’t seem unusual to him at the time as he’d never known anything different, and he just assumed that that’s how it was for everybody!
This seemed to me to reflect a trap we in LSS need to be careful not to fall into. Just because it appears to us that our services are matching demand and working well, it doesn’t mean that people using those selfsame services don’t “know something different”. If we don’t listen to our users, we may be tempted to think that our own view of things is “how it is for everybody” and fail to correct problems or make useful improvements.
This is why it is essential that there be mechanisms for providing the necessary feedback. Some have been in existence for some time (e.g. LSS User Group), whilst some are more recent (comments cards) — and several articles in this Newsletter relate to various of them. Library Services Feedback, for instance, is a selection of questions and comments made on comment cards returned to the Library, together with their responses. The LSS User Group report speaks for itself, whilst Supporting Teaching and Learning is a version of a report that was originally presented to the Faculty of Cultural and Educational Studies FAST.
Another important approach is to audit current needs and use this in our forward planning. The article Part-Time Students’ Library Needs, for example is from a Library Services Quality Improvement Team formed to examine those needs. From a different angle, Information Needs of the University is a report from an Executive Board working group looking at the entire University’s future needs in this area.
A new departure in this issue is an interview with Valerie Kaye, the new Dean of the Faculty of Health and Social Care. This too, of course, represents a useful method of feedback — talking to individuals about their perception of our services. We hope that this will be the first of an occasional series.
Of course, this issue also contains the usual spread of news on service developments. First up is the latest progress report on the Beckett Park Learning Centre — and, having dropped in to take a look when I was at Beckett Park recently, I can tell you it’s really beginning to look quite good!
Turning to our most up-to-date resources, there’s a look at some Useful Web Sites accessible from LSS’s Internet Information Service. Related to this is news of new, faster servers for the University’s WWW Service, whilst the update on Network developments offers the prospect of faster, more-reliable services as the improvement programme progresses. Finally, we have commenced a project which should have the effect of Improving the Staff Email System.
There’s the usual helping of Quantitative Methods, and miscellaneous news under Services Update. This ranges from new books added to the library providing Resources on Teaching and Learning, to Online Computing Services Documentation; from the National Artists Register to Putting your PowerPoint Lectures on Video; and quite a few points in between
Well, I suspect I’ve wittered on for long enough now — I’m certainly suffering a degree of brainfade as I try to work out whether there’s anything else to mention, which probably means I should stop whilst I’m ahead!! As usual, I shall conclude with my suggestion that you should browse through the whole of this issue and read all the articles that are relevant to your own needs.
See you next time, and hope you have a good summer holiday in the meantime.
Mike Ford
