Thing 16: Advocacy

This is becoming an increasingly important part of my work, not only promoting to staff and learners at Middlesbrough College but also outside the College to help raise the profile of both the LRC and the College. It is very important that we can evidence what we do and how well we do it, in order to demonstrate the value of the services and the sterling work that the LRC staff do.

I have for a long time been advocating within the College what we do, now increasingly I am sharing this good practice with external partners and more recently with other librarians at the LibTeachMeet I went to. My next formal opportunity to do this is the Mini Umbrella presentation i'm doing.

Much of the advocacy recently has been about strengthening curriculum liaison links, this will continue in the new academic year. This involves 5-6 Learning Resources staff presenting to the College directorates to inform them about the services the Learning Resources department offer and to try to get their feedback about what we offer and how they think we can improve. Although our traditional services are mentioned, we are very keen to advocate the new technologies we use or services that lecturers may not associate with us such as the assignment submission service we offer. 

Last year's were hugely successful, there was an increase in demand for the e-learning equipment, the assignment submissions service nearly doubled and e-book usage continued to increase. These services we knew were fantastic, however we didn't know if everyone was aware of them, so we wanted to give them some publicity. This year we will build on this success and advocate what is new and exciting in the LRC like our fabulous 3D interactive library tour.