Current initiatives

Collaboration and partnership

WHELF Shared Services initiative
Under the organisational banner of WHELF, HE libraries in Wales have a long history of successful collaboration. Our vision is a holistic approach to HE library services in Wales. All university students and staff in Wales will have access to the shared resources and services of a virtual academic library for Wales. This will be based on:

The first step will be a feasibility study prior to a full bid to HEFCW.

Leading the Welsh Information Literacy Project
The Welsh Information Literacy Project aims to promote the understanding and development of information literacy in education, the workplace, and the wider community in Wales. The project is based at Cardiff University and is funded by CyMAL. The steering group represents all sectors in Wales.

Phase one was funded by CyMAL and ran from 8th September 2010 - 31 March 2011.
Objectives were all met: a statement on information literacy in Wales; a report on information literacy provision in each library sector in Wales, identifying case studies of good practice and gaps requiring further enhancement; and a draft framework for information literacy in Wales that will provide notional levels of information literacy skills and competences for all levels of learners.

Phase two is funded by CyMAL and runs from 1st April 2011 - 31 March 2012.
Objectives:
Obtaining external approval for the information literacy framework for Wales (working with DCELLS and accrediting bodies)
Creating and getting approval for accredited units of learning in information literacy
Supporting advocacy for strategic engagement with information literacy in schools
Conducting a benefits analysis of information literacy in the workplace
Developing information literacy through the digital inclusion agenda

Find out more at: http://www.library.wales.org/informationliteracy/

WHEEL: Wales Higher Education Electronic Library
Working with JISC Collections, WHELF has negotiated a groundbreaking deal with OUP - all WHELF libraries will have access to OUP journals online. This deal is a further development of the Wales Higher Education Electronic Library - which already includes access to a shared e-books collection.

Building on collaboration: the WHELF e-book deal
WHELF coordinates a shared e-books collection which provides access to over 700 e-book titles from NetLibrary in a broad range of subjects including health science, law, politics, art, business, economics and history. All higher education libraries in Wales participate in the consortium by purchasing a limited number of titles, and in exchange, gain access to a collection with a value of approximately 100,000 dollars. This collaboration has extended provision and ensured a greater number of e-books are available for use in teaching, learning and research. Work is currently underway to review our existing provision of e-books, seeking new models and platforms for collaboration. An article by Jeremy Atkinson and Paul Riley in SCONUL Focus gives the background to the project and its development to date: Building on collaboration: the WHELF e-book deal A recent E-books Exchange of Experience Day took place at UWIC. You will find more information and presentations on the WHELF blog.

Widening access for students in Wales
CROESO is a scheme which permits any of the students on a higher education course in Wales (including those in franchised course in further education colleges) to use any other higher education library for reference purposes. Many libraries are also open to the public for consultation, and there are a number of regional partnerships in place which allow reciprocal borrowing between various libraries.

The WALIA co-operative scheme was developed by WHELF to offer researchers in HE institutions in Wales the chance to use and borrow from the library collections of other Wales HE institutions. It has now been supersed by the SCONUL Access scheme. SCONUL Access is a co-operative venture between most of the higher education libraries of the UK and Ireland. It enables staff, research students, full time postgraduates and part-time, distance learning and placement students to borrow material from other libraries.

Students in Wales, in common with all other citizens, are already eligible to have free access electronically to the National Library of Wales, and the National Library is working hard to turn this eligibility into real use, with the aid of agreements with local libraries to create automatic membership.

The next challenge is to widen access electronically. The HAERVI (HE Access to e-Resources in Visited Institutions) project looked at ways of improving the service offered by higher education institutions to visiting students who wish to access licensed e-resources. WHELF is currently undertaking a survey to examine walk-in access to computers, digital collections and e-resources, making the library a better place for all learners.

Sharing our expertise
WHELF is supporting a number of initiatives to ensure that specialist expertise is shared between the various higher education libraries in Wales:

The HELP (Higher Education in Libraries Partnership) project in 2004 confirmed the need for WHELF to take a leadership role in driving forward the collaboration agenda. Links to the detailed reports and summary can be found here.

Welsh Repository Network

Led by WHELF, the Welsh Repository Network (WRN) is a collaborative venture between the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Wales to establish, develop and populate a network of interoperable institutional repositories. The establishment of the network was underpinned by the JISC funded WRN Start-Up Project which provided both fiscal and practical support to each WRN partner to aid in the implementation of an effective institutional repository in every Welsh HEI. The JISC funded WRN Enhancement Project built on the previous project's work and investigated the potential of a collaborative, centrally managed model for accelerating the development and uptake of repository services in Welsh HEIs.

The project ended on 31 March 2011, but the WRN will continue beyond the life of the WRN-EP in the form of a WHELF sub-group, with partners meeting on a biannual basis to exchange repository news and ideas.

JISC repository project activity is also continuing within the WRN with the AEIOU Wales Project running until 31 July 2011.

Welsh electronic thesis harvesting service
In liaison with the National Library of Wales (NLW) and EThOS the WRN is aiming to establish an electronic thesis harvesting system. This will take e-theses from the WRN partner repositories and ingest them into the NLW's repository and provide access via a central, public facing catalogue as well as the EThOS website. There is clear evidence that online availability increases the visibility and usage of theses, and would give Wales a large research advantage and strengthen the Welsh Assembly Government's efforts to improve the impact of research conducted in Wales.

Digitisation

WHELF Digitisation Strategy
WHELF's strategy is to collaborate, together or through particular alliances, in:

The scope for digitisation is endless and libraries are ideally placed to lead the way towards a learning environment without borders. Digital content can encourage and enthuse people to engage with the digital world for a reason - for example, family history.

Welsh Newspapers and Magazines Online
This is a three-year project to digitise a high proportion of all out-of-copyright Welsh newspapers and publish the resulting text online for all to search, browse and re-use for free. WHELF supported the National Library's successful bid to SCIF (the Strategic Capital Investment Fund), and is currently supporting an EU convergence bid for Year 3 funding.

Welsh Journals Online
Working in partnership with members of WHELF, the National Library of Wales is currently completing a project funded by JISC, the Library, and the Welsh Assembly Government, to digitise a substantial part of its holdings of 20th-century journals relating to Wales. The material ranges from academic and scholarly journals to current affairs and popular magazines, reflecting all aspects of Welsh life.

Historic Welsh ballads online for a new global audience
Historic news once sung on street corners is now being captured online in a virtual resource. 4,000 ballads from 18th and 19th century Wales are launching on a website run by Cardiff University and the National Library of Wales. The songs document the important issues of their day, such as workers' rights and crime, as well as local festivals and village gossip. Funded through a £66,000 grant from JISC, the project has completed a network of digital resources giving access to these precious documents.

The Welsh Ballads project puts in place the final piece of a national jigsaw of digitised ballads. Adding to the ballad collections of England and Scotland this new archive will help make this a unique and indispensable resource for researchers, students and interested members of the public. This project is part of JISC's continued work to enhance collections of significance, and ensure that resources are not left in isolation, but brought together for the benefit of research, teaching and learning for everyone. Digitisation of the ballads collections was carried out in Cardiff University's Information Services Directorate and the National Library of Wales.

Continuing Professional Development

Gregynog Colloquium 2011
Every year WHELF and HEWIT organise a residential colloquium at Gregynog Hall, the University of Wales conference centre, for library and IT staff to discuss recent developments and to exchange experiences. This year's event was organised by the University of Glamorgan and took place from 13 - 17 June 2011. The general themes are as follows:
Managing in hard times
Shared services/joint use libraries
New Professionals
Marketing our services
Green Libraries
Information literacy including chat reference, e-learning module, mobile applications, library use and student achievement.

Presentations can be found on the Colloquium website at: http://gregynog.glam.ac.uk/

Welsh Collaboration in Action 2011: A Joint Event for Librarians Supporting HE in FE
Libraries have an important role to play in supporting higher education in further education, so each year WHELF organises an event for staff to enable participants to share experiences, get up to date on recent developments and develop individual and shared programmes of action for the future. This year's event was held at the ATRiuM Campus of the University of Glamorgan on Tuesday 28th June 2011.

Journal articles from WHELF

Links to journal articles from WHELF