Library
Service Standards Report 2021-2022
The following report identifies how we have performed against our Service Standards in the last 12 months.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, we had to make significant changes to services and spaces in order to maintain student and staff safety while maintaining an excellent customer experience.
Some of the changes we made included:
- Reconfiguring furniture to provide physically distanced study space
- Mandating study space booking in both Holgate and Fountains
- Click and collect service for physical books so that items could be safely quarantined on return
- Widening our postal loans scheme so that you could have books sent to you if you were isolating
- Introducing a free-post return service for items for when you couldn’t make it to campus
- Eliminating the touching of screens where necessary, including on the check-out machines and photocopiers
- Providing cleaning and sanitising products and free face coverings
- Increasing the number of e-resources available
- Online support tutorials with our Academic Services team
- Suspending all fines
We made sure we communicated via email, social media and our web pages regularly during this time to keep everyone up-to-date with what was happening, and why.
When restrictions eased in July 2021, we were able to:
- Reconfigure the furniture to allow group working and social spaces, as well as reopening the student kitchen
- Return the space to close to its pre-pandemic configuration (especially for IT access), so that we can provide a variety of study spaces
- Remove mandatory space booking
- Reopen the shelves for browsing
We have maintained some services brought in during the pandemic following positive feedback, including postal loan books if you need to isolate, free book return using Collect Plus for anyone who can’t get to campus and the ability to book study space in both Fountains and Holgate so that you can guarantee yourself a space during busy periods.
We have run campaigns to highlight library services this year, including:
- Highlighting the support and resources offered to each School
- Acting on feedback, promoting services such as the fact that we’re open 24-hours a day
- Library Services Supporting Your Learning, focussing on library skills, study skills and digital skills
We are currently reviewing how we monitor usage statistics and user feedback. This will feed into our evidence based decision making processes ensuring that we continuously improve the services we offer.
We have worked hard to improve our social media offering this year across both Twitter and Instagram, streamlining our content so that it provides the necessary information but in an entertaining and accessible format. We have also planned events such as University Mental Health Day, wellbeing activities and events and displays for International Women’s Day.
Throughout these changes we have worked hard to maintain and develop customer service standards to ensure a good experience for all using our services.
| Advertised Service Standard | Altered due to COVID-19? | 2021-2022 Result |
|---|---|---|
| We will open for 99% of our advertised Service Desk hours and offer support across 7 days a week. |
|
We were closed for 3 days in July in order to return the library to its new layout following the relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions. We have offered support across 7 days. |
| We will provide an initial response to all queries within 24 hours. |
|
Between 1 March 2021 and 1 March 2022, our breach rate was 1.5%. |
| We will respond to all HUSH texts reporting disturbances on the silent floor within 10 minutes. | HUSH service was suspended until September 2022. | 60% |
| We will re-shelve all items within 24 hours of their return. |
We offered a 72-hour turnaround until mid-June 2021 to allow for quarantining of materials. Now that restrictions have eased, we have returned to our pre-pandemic service standard. |
69% of items have been shelved within 24-hours of their return from June to March. |
| We will acknowledge all feedback and complaints within 1 working day and provide an initial response within 3 working days (where contact details are provided). |
Feedback and complaints coming in through Sunrise have all been responded to quickly, with a breach rate on responses of 1.5%. |
|
| Satisfaction levels, as defined by our Viewpoint customer satisfaction kiosks, will be at or above 90% averaged over an academic year, or we will publicise changes and improvements where this is not met. | This service was reintroduced in the last week of June 2021. | 98% averaged since the service was reintroduced. |
| We will process all book reservations within 24 hours of their return. |
|
97% |
| Print Services will complete all student requests (including dissertations) within 1 working day from receipt of the request. All standard requests from staff for printing, photocopying and stationery will be completed within 3 working days from receipt of the request. Requests which are non-standard will have extended timescales which will be agreed with the member of staff placing the order. | 100% | |
| We will process 95% of all inter-library loan requests within 3 working days and respond to 90% of inter-library loan queries within 3 working days. | Figure from June 2021 to March 2022. |
76% |
| Our library catalogue will be available 99.5% of the time, excluding planned maintenance. |
We have figures on this from September 2021. Uptime for the catalogue has exceeded 99.5% every month from September with the lowest figure being 99.53% in March 2022. Staff have been informed when outages have occurred so this could be passed on to you.
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| We will aim to achieve at least 90% satisfaction for question 19 each year on the National Student Survey. |
The UK average score for question 19 National Student Survey dropped significantly in 2021. Although our score also dropped, we maintained our position above the national average. We achieved this by increasing the number of online resources available, continuing to provide access to books through our click and collect system and widening postal loans. We know how much the University community values the space in our library and this was confirmed by feedback in the NSS. The space has now been reconfigured to make sure that it is a place students want to use and be in. |
2021: 76% |
