News
EDI Toolkit Launched
The SCURL EDI Network launched a toolkit on 27 October to support member libraries in embedding good practice consistently across services.
Subgroups of the Network were formed to cover six areas considered most relevant to staff working in academic and research libraries. These six key areas have become the components of the Toolkit: collections and discovery, demographics, glossary, resource lists, recruitment and student experience.
The Toolkit has been designed as a whole staff resource, covering topics that are relevant across different roles within libraries. Signposting is used throughout to point colleagues to useful resources that have been developed elsewhere.
The Toolkit will be reviewed regularly to keep pace with developments across the sector and a series of case studies is planned to highlight work taking place to implement the Toolkit across SCURL member libraries.
The EDI Network was formed in November 2021 to create a community of practice around equality, diversity and inclusion in libraries, supporting knowledge exchange across member libraries. The work of the Network also informs the strategic direction of the SCURL Business Committee.
SCURL RELEASES RIGHTS RETENTION STATEMENT
The Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) released a Rights Retention statement on 23 October, at the beginning of International Open Access Week 2023.
In alignment with SCURL’s aims to collaborate towards the creation of a co-operative library infrastructure in Scotland, and to provide mutual support for members, the statement supports the adoption of Rights Retention Strategies by SCURL HE Institutions.
It is anticipated that SCURL HEIs will develop strategy, underpinned by the position set out in the statement, to facilitate the widest possible access to research.
Acknowledging that each institution will have different policies and processes in place, the intention is to provide a set of principles which can be adopted by HEIs to enable authors to retain their intellectual property rights and to not, by default, transfer those rights to publishers.
Rights retention can be defined as the practice of authors retaining sufficient intellectual property rights to make their author-accepted manuscripts (AAMs) available without embargo and under an open licence, preferably a Creative Common Attribution (CC BY) licence, through an institutional repository.
Open research contributes to a healthy research culture, enabling collaboration, transparency and societal benefit. Open access publishing is an essential component of this, and SCURL believes authors should strive towards the widest possible dissemination of their research outputs.
Several SCURL member institutions already have Rights Retention strategies in place, including the University of Edinburgh which is recognised as the first UK institution to adopt a progressive Rights Retention policy.
SCURL is also working to support open access publishing across Scottish institutions through the development of Scottish Universities Press (SUP), a not-for-profit publishing platform managed in collaboration with participating institutions.
New Leadership Programme Scoping Study Launched
Evidence shows that there is a lack of diversity within the library workforce and this is particularly pronounced in management and leadership positions. This poses a great challenge across all sectors of the library profession.
In response to this, SCURL is pleased to be participating in a research project commissioned to support the creation of a cross-sector Emerging Leaders programme for members of ethnically diverse communities within libraries.
The scoping study has been funded by Arts Council England with contributions from the commissioning partners: Research Libraries UK (RLUK; Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP); Libraries Connected; Society of College, National, and University Libraries (SCONUL); Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL); and Wales Higher Education Library Forum (WHELF).
The scoping study will be conducted by a research team led by Pete Dalton, Director of Evidence Base Research Evaluation and Consultancy Services based within Library and Learning Resources at Birmingham City University (BCU). The other research team members are Professor Christopher Pietroni, Director of the Birmingham Leadership Institute at the University of Birmingham; Sukhvinder Kaur at Evidence Base and consultants Dr Sarah McNicol and Jo Walley.
The scoping study will report in September 2023. The research team will seek to gather the views of members of the library workforce via a national survey that will be conducted in April and May 2023.