SWRLS Open Doors Project Martin Burton Community Cultural Services Manager, South Gloucestershire Council Jackie Chelin Deputy Librarian, University of the West of England

Introduction How partnerships between sectors can deliver improved services Issues and benefits of partnerships working Using libraries to promote learning and community engagement

Project Objectives To investigate the ability of the community to access public and academic libraries in a simple and cost effective manner. To identify issues connected with open usage of academic libraries. To cross promote usage of academic libraries by the public, especially year old students, and for HE students to make use of local public libraries. To support the South Gloucestershire universal membership scheme for young people. To promote usage of HE libraries by students considering applying for university to encourage progression to UWE.

Survey of SWRLS libraries All HEIs and half of FEIs offer some kind of external borrower scheme Most HEIs charge but fewer FEIs Low numbers of external borrowers (<50) –Except a couple (one >1,000) Low perceived impact Little monitoring or evaluation

What we did Experience for Active Project of merging and sharing data demonstrated that it is very complicated The common element is the barcode Card was accepted in both libraries and members data added to the system Some minor changes needed to be made to RFID terminals

Targeted Promotion Initially to groups most likely to benefit: 6 th form students – visits, newsletters UWE Bristol international students Members of business and health communities Library users in LibrariesWest

What people did 279 LibrariesWest members registered at UWE (across all 3 Bristol sites) to end October 2014 Fewer UWE members people registered at LibrariesWest (double figures)

What people said “Your staff are lovely, the atmosphere is welcoming. You even have the same RFID like us in public libraries. The books I discovered were useful and your opening hours convenient. Just heard that I’ve secured a place as a student come September…Many thanks for your smiley assistance; it definitely helped me to move my life on…”

What impact it had (UWE) Books were borrowed from a whole range of (Dewey) subject areas No negative effect on students’ access to materials No significant extra workload on staff

What we learned Staff communication is critical at all stages and ongoing Need to allay staff concerns – loss of stock, children using academic libraries Make sure all the technical areas are covered Requires a project manager to do the work Ensure partners have a common aim and achieving their organisations objectives Opportunity to promote virtual services, e.g. driving test in public libraries Potential to support universal offers Individual ‘regulations’ can still be maintained – on book loans, access times (in academic library) Ongoing publicity needed to keep up the momentum

What next? More analysis of impact– why are people using the scheme, what are they accessing and how does this help them in their learning? Develop more reciprocal visits between library staff at public/academic libraries to improve mutual understanding Recommendations to scale up/out to the wider regional library community For more information go to: we/jointhelibrary/uwepubliclibspartnership.aspx