 I'm going to start now by handing over to Christina Camposiori from the RLUK executive team to do a presentation of some work she's been doing about this theme. Thank you Christina. Yeah, thank you Katie and hello everyone. I hope you can hear me well. So my name is Christina Camposiori and I'm the programme officer at the Research Libraries UK. So for those who will find useful and visual descriptions, I have long brown hair and I wear a pink and black shirt today. So today I'm going to talk through the results of a recent survey that was designed by the RLUK decolonisation group and that aim to explore the current practices and needs of RLUK libraries when making collections more with a focus on decolonisation practices and understanding the training needs and skills requirements that staff member institutions may have. So in this presentation, I will begin by giving you some background information with regards to the work of the RLUK decolonisation group. I will then discuss participation at the survey and provide some information about the participants profile before then moving to the findings which will be presented in two parts. So the first will focus on the strategic priorities and approaches around decolonisation across RLUK member institutions. And the second will look at the practice of professionals involved in decolonisation activities, the challenges they face and the needs they have in terms of training and skills development. So the RLUK decolonisation group consisting of members of the RLUK Special Collections and Heritage Network and the Collection Strategy Network began meeting in January 2022 to discuss issues of common interests around the decolonisation of collections in research libraries. The group organised a session of the Discovering Collections Discovering Community Conference in July 2022 to assess the appetite for a series of events exploring issues related to the decolonisation of collections and EDI more generally. So through this session, the group gathered useful data around delegates' interests in decolonisation as well as their thoughts and comments on a number of issues around decolonisation and institutional and professional practices. So it is worth noting that capacity and confidence building through training and skills development was identified as a key need related to decolonisation practice that collection holding institutions have. So based on the intelligence gathered through this first was the RLUK seminar series, Inclusive Collections of Libraries which aims to foster conversation around decolonisation and inclusive practice in collecting, describing, presenting and engaging with content in research library collections. And you can find more about the series on the RLUK website. And actually the next event is this coming Monday. So the second piece of work was the survey, the findings of which I'm about to present. So and before we look at the participants profiles, I should note that the group acknowledges that there is a variety of definitions used by libraries to refer to their work around decolonisation and increasing diversity of collections. However, for the purposes of this work, we employ the broad definition of decolonisation. So this definition encompasses the work that research libraries are currently doing to diversify and then reach their collections in order to make diverse voices heard and uncover hidden histories. It also relates to the shift in current practice through challenging existing biases in our collections and the way we work. So the survey which opened in December 2022 and closed at the beginning of February 2022 received 60 responses, 33 different RLUK institutions. From these two institutions submitted a joint response which was counted as separate responses since the included named comments. Five institutions submitted more than two responses each and one had actually submitted nine responses. And 12 research libraries submitted two responses each and 17 libraries submitted one response each. So also as you can see from the slide participants whose role included decolonisation responsibilities came from across the different areas of the library. For example, some had collections as the primary area of responsibility while others were working closely with academics and students. We also had some responses from the leadership teams of some libraries and generally most of the participants held medium to high seniority roles. So moving now to the findings of the survey. So when asked about whether their library is currently involved in decolonisation activities, the majority said that it does. They're providing further qualitative comments participants reported a variety of activities. Some of them referred to card efforts to embed the decolonisation and other activity, such as diversifying the workforce and institutional strategy, as well as to allocate secure funding for related activities. The majority of institutions mentioned collection related projects and initiatives from reviewing collection policies and language in metadata and developing library guides to organizing exhibitions and tours, while many also were actively engaged in decolonising reading lists and the curriculum in their home institution. So some research libraries were also setting up studentships and intercepts to engage students in decolonisation activity. And several institutions are established or were participating in ETI decolonisation and other relevant groups that helped save activity in the area. And many were also delivering events and seminars. As far as engagement, students and their local communities, as well as communicating about the library's work through blog posts and other channels. Some also provided examples of training delivered for staff and academics. So this chart here shows the extent to which participating libraries play a key role in decolonising the curriculum in their home institution. So as you can see, the majority said that their library does play a leading role or will play a leading role in the immediate future. So regarding the reasons for decolonising collections and practices, the three most common were to support underrepresented communities and voices, to support teaching in the curriculum and to engage with the student community. However, through this graph, you can also see a variety of other reasons for engaging in decolonisation activities such as contributing to the EDI goals for the library. So in the next slide, so participants were also asked to respond to a question about whether their library or home institution have a working definition, strategy or statement around decolonisation. So the answers were divided here, just above one third of institutions said that they don't have a working definition strategy or statement around decolonisation. Another one third said that they do have, and the remaining approximately one third said that they were not sure they didn't know or chose other. So from those choosing others, some said that they have provided or are planning to provide some context around decolonisation in existing strategies around collections. So this slide here shows who is leading the decolonisation activities within research libraries or their home institutions. In just above half of the libraries participating, the decolonisation EDI groups in the libraries are the ones driving change in collections and practices. However, it was interesting to read in the findings that in several institutions, decolonisation efforts are driven by certain individuals in the library or academic department. It is worth highlighting here that based on what we found out through recent RLUK report on equality diversity and inclusion in the research library, which you can find on the RLUK website. There is often a higher emotional toll involved and it is harder to achieve change when there are only certain individuals responsible for EDI and related activities compared to when a larger group or everyone in the library is involved. So this is something that should be taken into account when prioritising decolonisation in an institution as it can have an impact on the professional's work as well as their confidence. So next we are looking at how decolonisation activities are funded in RLUK members and these were found to be overwhelmingly funded from within research libraries and their home institutions. And there were several participants who said that they were not sure they didn't know how these activities were funded when asked in this question. So the next slide. So thinking about the types of collections that are undergoing or will undergo decolonisation, the majority said that teaching collections and reading lists were the main candidates for decolonisation, followed by special collections and archives and modern collections. And in the next one, you can find more information about how research libraries are currently decolonising institutional collections or how they are planning to do this. So regarding the top five choices in this column. So most are currently diversifying or will diversify their collections. A large number will achieve this by reviewing collection development policies and engaging with the student community by enriching metadata and reviewing the language that is currently used and by collaborating with academics and researchers. But you can also find more about the different approaches they are using in that slide. So before we move to the second part of the presentation, here's a list with the key benefits and challenges of decolonisation as extracted through the qualitative comments that participants submitted. So very briefly, the main benefits related to the opportunities of making collections more diverse and inclusive, as well as developing our knowledge about institutional holdings but also related to the opportunities for collaborative work with library communities. Concerning the challenges, participants mentioned the following lack of time and resource, sensitivities around language and our understanding of the best language to use, difficulties related to engaging ethnic and minority communities in the process, the lack of common understanding around decolonisation, including the complexities and sensitivities related to the topic, lack of training and not knowing where to start and sometimes the management acceptance of the importance of this work. So the second part of the presentation will highlight the practices of professionals involved in decolonisation activities and the challenges they face as well as the needs they have in terms of training and skills development. So we asked our participants to let us know if decolonisation is part of their role or their objectives and while approximately the two thirds said that they do have decolonisation responsibilities, a large percentage said that these are not formally part of their role, it can present a number of challenges such as justifying the time and resource allocated to develop their knowledge and skills in this area, which can in turn affect their confidence levels. Just thinking about the levels of confidence of participants in this area and as you can see from this chart, the majority said that they have moderate confidence. So when asked about whether the institution has provided training for them and other staff, only a small percentage said yes for all staff. 30% of participants said that their institutions had provided training only for some staff members while approximately another 30% said that their institutions haven't provided any training with some saying that their institutions plan to do so in the immediate future. So participants also listed the types of trainings they have access to and provided many examples of resources that they use to develop their knowledge and skills in this area. So I'm not going to go through everything here in detail, but as you can see from the list here, participants in the survey relied on institutional but also external resources on events and seminars and engaged with different groups in order to develop their knowledge and confidence in the topic. So I'm also pleased to let you know that we have extracted these resources from the participants answers and we can say those that are openly available online today in the Google document and the link will be served through the chat just about now. So we plan to include these resources as part of the report we're preparing but we thought that they may be helpful to for anyone wanting to learn more about equalization so it would be a great opportunity to share this today. So now we'll look at three, three graphs that actually show that many professionals rely on external resources events and seminars as well as their participation in different groups to develop their knowledge and skills. So this first one confirms that the matter that the majority does use or will use external and and community built resources as part of their knowledge and skills development in the area. The next graph shows that again most professionals participate or will participate in relevant discussion groups and this the last one. As you can see, there are almost 90% of the participants and attend or aim to attend relevant relevant events and seminars as part of the professional development in the colonization of collections and practices. So regarding the challenges around the colonization training in participating institutions, several respondents said that the two main challenges were limited capacity to undertake undertake training and limited training opportunities. However, a substantial percentage chose others in the opportunity to reflect on their institutional circumstances. Some comments refer to the difficulty of giving track of the developments in this area and the fact that it may be hard to move things forward. Others mentioned that the willingness and enthusiasm to develop and support colonization activities is often there, but there may be insufficient time among the people who make the better decisions in practice as well as on the professionals part to dedicate time to keep posting things forward. And some also highlighted the limited capacity to build long term links with student communities and the fact that related activity may be seen as being political and thus risking terms of potentially causing reputation damage. So finally, participants had the opportunity to add their comments with regards to the type of support and training needed to help them to help them in their roles and help them build capacity and confidence around colonization. So again, I'm not going to go through everything here in detail, but I would be happy to share the presentation with anyone interested in looking at this in more detail. I wanted just to highlight that some of the support may be better provided by individual institutions, for example, making colonization a strategic priority and setting up internal groups and providing training for staff. Well, it is more likely for other initiatives such as developing and sharing glossaries or cases of best practice to come from the community. So we'll be really looking forward to hearing your views on this and discussing this as using more detail at the Q&A and the breakout rooms. And just in this slide, you can find my contacted tales in case you would like more information about the survey or the work of the early care colonization group. And thank you very much for listening and I look forward to your questions later. Thank you, Christina. That was really, really interesting overview of the responses to the survey and really interesting to see what people are saying about skills and training and confidence which are some themes we're going to come back to. I'm sure later. What we're going to do is have a couple of quick questions after each presentation, but just keep it very quick and then move to a broader Q&A later because we might see themes across them. So is there anybody who's got any immediate queries just on this presentation before we move along or before I abuse my position as chair to ask something. Let's start us off, Christina. It's always fascinating to me when you do a survey that you sometimes find things out that were quite surprising. So is there something that stuck out to you as surprising in these findings that we might want to think about that wasn't what you expected when you put it together? Well, actually, a couple of things came up that I would like to mention. This is very quickly one was the role of the student activism in driving the colonization and actually through the examples provided by some of the participants. So it became evident that in some institutions, student unions and other student groups were driving chains in this area, even more than academics. So that was quite interesting. And the other was their limited mention of external funders and the role in supporting the colonization activities and even the fact that just making collections more inclusive and opening the map who have the broader impact to society. It was interesting to see that the involvement of external funders was limited. Absolutely. I thought that was interesting. But I suppose I thought it in some ways heartening the institutions are funding this themselves because their commitment is high enough to make it a core activity. So it was surprising, but also heartening in some way. Yeah, it was seen the colonization as mainly an institutional responsibility. So that was very good to see. Any other questions specifically for Christina before we go to the case studies because I'm sure then more thoughts will come through as we get through the session, but we're going to have two short case studies now before opening out into a question and answer. And then we'll have some breakout rooms in the later part of the session. So we're recording this first part, and then we'll stop the recording for the breakout rooms because we want to really think together about actions we can take. Just. Oh, quickly. She once put a question in the chat, which I can maybe just bring to Christina sorry to back jump a bit, but I'm trying to know if there's any comment and how we can reliably train on decolonization when our staff body is not itself diverse. And how does that not put disproportionate burden on colleagues from the global south or who come from more diverse backgrounds that come up in the survey responses. Not, not directly so we didn't get a comment directly referring to these, but it was mentioned as a challenge that if you're not having a diverse workforce, then the team or the effort and all the responsibilities put to certain individuals and that can can be very difficult for them have an emotional toll and be, and be challenging, but also what we've seen from another report that we published recently around EDI in, in, in library so this is an issue that is, that is greatly linked to the efforts about diversifying the works of and making sure the workforce and making sure that people from different backgrounds work in the library and everyone really hasn't a responsibility around in the eye and colonization so the other responsibilities as our split and just not only certain individuals drive, drive this forward. Okay, thank you and I'm that I'm sure might be a theme we come back to as well. We're going to move now to the case studies that I mentioned two different ones from two different places to give us some sort of insight into how how this work is when you when you're trying to do it. So, first of all, we've got Lucy Wilhous, who's a genetic librarian at the University of Cambridge, and Joe Milton, who's the library manager of the University of Cambridge Medical Library. And they're going to talk to us a bit about some work they've been doing an inclusive collections in stem libraries in Cambridge. So, welcome. Thank you very much Katie. I'm Lucy and the visual description of myself is I'm, I've got brown sort of curly shoulder length hair and glasses and I'm wearing a sort of blue flowery top at the minute. And I'm also joined by my colleague, Joe, who is. Yeah, if you want to introduce yourself Joe. I'm the library manager and collections manager at the Medical Library visual description. I've got shoulder length red brown hair, and I'm wearing a multicoloured top. Okay, right, we will get started. And yeah, I will hand over to Joe to talk about the slides that we've got which, yeah. Thank you. So here's a brief look at some of the kind of work that we've been doing across Cambridge to address issues within EDI and decolonisation. As you can see, there's an awful lot that's been going on. So of course, it doesn't always translate into concrete action. Cambridge is quite unusual. We have many different libraries spread across departments and colleges. So approaches can be different. This is why we're going to briefly tell you about what's going on in two of our libraries today across them. I'm going to hand over to Lucy. Yep. So first, I'm going to give you a very brief insight into how to I try to create inclusive collections in my library, which is at the Department of Genetics. So this picture does illustrate pretty much my whole library. As you can see, it's pretty small and so space is a limiting factor in what I can do. So one of the easiest ways that I've found to try and increase the inclusivity of my collection is to make sure that it is kept up to date. So many newer books that are being released are being written by more diverse scientists and therefore keeping an eye on what's coming out is a great way of making your collection more inclusive with less effort. However, science books specifically about protected characteristics can be quite hard to find. So you do have to think outside of the box when it comes to collection development and do a bit of research into authors. So one of the main ways that we grapple with inclusive collections within genetics is through contextualizing our historical collections. So the history of genetics is linked with several unpleasant topics, including that of eugenics. So one of the main founders of the department, Ronald Fisher was active in the eugenics field. And while we have we have many books both of his and relating to that subject. While it's very tempting to lock these materials away and pretend they never existed at genetics, I've taken the opportunity to actually expand our collections in this area to include newer research that places the older materials in their historical context, and which grapple with the inherent biases and play at the time. And you can see some of the things that I've recently added to our collections on this slide. Of course, if you're struggling to find diverse books for your particular subject, which can be an issue in STEM and we'll touch on that a little bit later. Adding a more general EDI collection can of course give you more freedom and flexibility to address more topics. So I managed to get this sort of instigated within my library fairly recently. And when I'm doing new acquisitions into it, I always include these new additions on my new book stand and alongside the more sciency acquisitions to make sure that they're visible and include at least one a month in my department newsletter. Plus putting this collection together was a great opportunity to liaise with the department to ask what they wanted to see on the shelves. So I can hand over to my colleague Joe, who can give you a taste of what they've been doing in the medical library with a much bigger collection. Thank you Lucy. So just to give you a little bit of context, not only does the medical library serve the population of the University of Cambridge. We also support colleagues working in the NHS of Attenbrooks Hospital and across the east of England. So we've always supported national campaigns such as Black History Month, LGBTQ Month. So therefore it's quite an easy transition to move across and expand our collections from all medical subjects to the more non-clinical side of things. We've created a dedicated space and you can see some photos on the slide that showcase the space. It's called More Than Medicine and some of the topics include health inequality, LGBTQ, well-being topics such as healthy eating, sleeping well, mental health, neurodiversity and women's health. We've also created some reading lists in Leganto to showcase both the titles but also to include non-print material such as websites and podcasts and they're all very easily available. The reading lists for the clinical students are also in Leganto, so both reading lists complement one another well. They sit alongside one another and they're easily discoverable, which was very important to us. In terms of the clinical reading lists, I've been encouraging teaching leads to consider a greater diversity of titles. I've got the support from the clinical dean in doing so. In terms of communication, there's a message that goes out to encourage each teaching lead to participate in responding to reading this but also to think about the resources that they're providing. Next slide please Lucy. So we've made reasonable progress so far. Dermatology is a good example of that with two items there that you can see on the slide, minor gap and ethnic dermatology that have been incorporated into our collections, but obviously the work doesn't stop. So next steps are to continue expanding the more than medicine collection, think about more topics, continue promoting and find other means of promotion, keeping up to date with developments and utilizing forums such as medical library groups and Twitter, where for example minor gap really came into prominence. Continuing being a member of some of the decolonization groups within Cambridge, and also conversations with stakeholders, looking at how we can collaborate and investigate future opportunities with which to work. So that's the good news. Now let's come on to the challenges. Obviously these challenges are not just related to STEM, but we're looking at it from a STEM perspective. It can be more difficult to know what to include within STEM in terms of decolonization. As librarians we often have an arts and humanities background. It's hard to keep up to date and identify items that are not necessarily inclusive. Also, many of us come from a white privilege position, which is another potential barrier. Inclusive resources is a big problem. STEM seems to have been slower to grasp inclusivity, particularly within teaching materials. It can be hard to find materials and to get hold of them and see how they fit within an inclusive perspective. And if they're not used in teaching, if we can't promote them in teaching, then it's harder to justify purchase of them. Lucy will take the baton forward. As we've maybe obviously made clear through some of the references to digital resources previously, STEM research often focuses more on online resources rather than print collections. So we do have to be innovative as STEM librarians to include these digital items within the collections that we're creating. It also means that we are perhaps more reliant on the subject experts within our departments to work with us to identify resources that otherwise we would never come across in a sort of day to day. There is also the potential for resistance from academics, not necessarily just in STEM, but obviously, you know, there is resistance to potentially making these changes to reading lists that have been, sort of successful in the past and because of the extra workload that might be involved. And also in the Cambridge setup with department libraries, there can be some resistance to diversifying those collections in a more general way. The department libraries are often seen as very subject specific and so adding more general collections in can sometimes be met with resistance. And of course, one argument that's often made about more general kinds of EDI collections is that they can take space away from those core scientific collections. And obviously all libraries to recall the space but we believe it's a worthwhile investment, particularly for STEM libraries, and usually we can talk people around. So we've just got some references on the end of the slides here but that is it and thank you very much for listening. Thank you so much and there was a lot covered in a really short presentation there so when people have the recordings and so on they'll be able to follow up on those links thank you. And what I'll do if this is okay is move on to the next case study now to give us some time for a bit of discussion after that. So, welcome Sarah Whitaker who's the head of academic services at the University of Leicester Lowbury, who's going to talk to us about a project to develop and implement a reading list toolkit. So I'm going to introduce myself do the visual introduction first so my pronouns are she her. I'm wearing a black flurry shirt, I have black glasses and gray hair. And so good afternoon and thanks for having me here today. In this case study I'm going to be reflecting on how work we've been doing to develop and apply our diversifying your reading list toolkit can be considered as a learning and confidence building activity for our staff. So this is very much a piece of work in progress not a finished projects, but I'm hoping that the reflections and observations I make, which are very much my own, either resonate with your own practice and experience or can provide a starting point for the discussions today. So just to begin with some context. Over the last few years, there's been a drive from the center of the university to diversify the curriculum in response to the race awarding gap. So the library at Leicester formed an inclusive collections group to look at how we could begin to diversify our collections, but one of the areas this of work identified was reading lists. So why reading lists. So items on reading list make up the majority of the resources we require, we acquire and budget we spend in support of teaching. So developing inclusive reading list has the potential to make a significant impact on our collections. So our included inclusive collections group identified some reading list toolkits that have been produced by other academic libraries in the sector to start to look at how we can make use of them. So at this point, I'd like to pause and say that I was aware that staff confidence was an issue for some staff. So based on things people said to me at the time two things stood out. One was that we're doing something we knew to we don't know very much about we have our kind of familiar tools of the trade, but we start going beyond this where do we start. And another concerned express at that time was that this is an academic matter and we're not the experts. So to me, this seemed to imply we would just kind of reactively wait for order requests to come in and not do much ourselves other than kind of provide a service to them. And certainly there's something here we have to unpick about how we view our roles competence as an expertise. So putting these ideas together, the inclusive collections group beside to create its own toolkit. The idea being this would act as a framework to work to so that we could develop our competence and also change how we think of ourselves, moving more towards a kind of role as a facilitator. So we started out with our library student champion volunteers. They took three toolkits that already existed in the sector and tested them on reading lists from their programs of study. So the students have some very interesting feedback on their reactions to these toolkits. So they said straight away the existing toolkits focused on author characteristics, and they felt back that they felt this could be problematic. They felt it took time for them to find out this information, and they questioned whether we can be certain we're making the right assumptions about an author's identity. The students also thought that it's important to consider the contextual issues around the selections of readings, and that providing a range of formats is important. So the results of this, co written by one of the students on student library champions and members of the inclusive collections group, we developed our own new toolkits. And this is a series of prompts it's not a checklist, and they invite the reading list author to think around the subject they're working with, as well as the authors identity. So retain the authors identity of course but other elements into it. So here we are right now. Currently we have a paid student curriculum consultant, applying the toolkit to two reading lists in psychology. So this is a university not library, not library initiative. So a student works with an academic supervisor on an aspect of the module to improve its inclusivity. So our curriculum consultant is being supervised by one of our academic librarians Heena Caravatra. And this work is about to be presented to the whole group of academics by the students at the end of March so only next week in fact. So for our next steps we're going to work with an educational develop developers very keen to work with us on this. And some academics to apply the toolkit to a small selection of reading lists from contrasting disciplines. So then we've got real and specific exam class to show to others. So one of my thoughts around staff confidence, kind of leading on from the last point is related to some of the well known barriers to partnership working, which we often experience in academic libraries. So this is things factors such as academic work load and bandwidth, and a culture gap between central services and academics, where such central services can be seen as part of the admin burden, which tracks from their work. So this plays a part in affecting our staff confidence. So in taking a proactive approach to working with our colleagues in this way, I hope we can begin to address this. So just in summary, here are some ideas based on reflecting on this project so far about how we can help build our staff confidence. The toolkit we've created gives us a structure to work to been able to test it with some different audiences. So we have a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. However, this is reframing our role. So this is in our own eyes as well as our colleagues in the university. So we're working as partners, not just service providers. And in this way, we're more closely aligned with educational development. Building partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders from students to academics and continually testing these ideas helps to give us the experience from which comes the staff confidence. So starting small scale, seeing progress, building on this progress. And then last but not least, supporting each other is how I hope we can build our staff confidence up. So just to do some acknowledgments, a lot of this work has been done by the people mentioned on this slide. So especially librarians, Heena and Keith, and then the students, Khadija and Megan. So thank you very much for listening. Thank you. And really great to hear some themes across both coming through there, which I'm sure people are picking up already in the chat. What I'll do is go through the questions people are putting in the chat. If you have a question, do also put your hand up. I can just about monitor both at the same time on my tiny laptop screen. I'll start though with a question from Caroline Gale, which was in response to the Cambridge case study, but I think relates to both in interesting ways. So we might come to both, which is about highlighting online resources. So as alongside the print resources, how have you been approaching that in Cambridge? And then maybe how has that been part of what you've been thinking at Leicester? So Lucy, Joe, over to you first. In terms of our themed reading lists, it's really just the case of you can your ear to the ground being aware of what's going on using forums such as Twitter, your own networks, for example. So if we've heard something interesting on the radio, we thought, oh, you can probably get that as a podcast and put that in. It's very much driven by library staff, but we have had some input from the wellbeing group within the clinical school as well to suggest resources. So those are the things that we've done. Lucy, what about you? So I know that obviously lots of libraries are sort of now that QR codes are back in fashion post pandemic. I know that that's being used quite a lot across Cambridge to point people towards the digital resources. But yeah, we have got a library's accessibility service that's based within the University Library and they've got a very good sort of wellbeing reading list. I know a lot of libraries advertise in that way. So, yeah. So from Leicester, we have a kind of digital first policy anyway, so we haven't really approached this from a format perspective. We're thinking what's the resource and then we get it digitally first if we can and then print generally, I guess our leisure reading collection might be a bit more flexible in that but in terms of the work we're talking about here, it's digital first if it's available. Thank you. And there's another question from Heather, which is sort of a little bit related to this and it might be a little earlier Leicester. I don't know. We'll see about whether you've assessed the circulating or usage stats of the things that have been displayed or highlighted. So have you got any evidence at Cambridge and Leicester as well of this working yet? I mean I can only talk about genetics. I know that the books that I talk about in the newsletter particularly do get borrowed. So yeah, that is a good method for me but obviously that very much depends on your sort of cohort that you're addressing. We have different displays within the library space. So quite often if a book's in a display it will come out more frequently but what we have found particularly around women's health and our fiction collection as well which is very broad based. And some of our wellbeing collections. Now that we've sort of updated the space with some loving new bookshelves who've changed the labelling. We've put a different classification scheme in that makes it all sort of, it always goes in one place and people know where it is and the staff have been well informed about it all. The books that we would really sometimes want to think, could that be a really good one to tweet about and to use in the display or not on the shelves because they're out and about, which is really really good news and positive affirmation. I can tell you I've got three of the books on my account at the moment and the cookbooks that we've got in terms of managing on the budget etc they've been doing really well as well. So the books are definitely going out and they're being promoted in school newsletters and things like that and that if people aren't necessarily boring them we've seen them sitting in the bean bags in the collection space area with the books etc. So it does seem to be working effectively. So just to say as a separate project apart, just separately to what I was talking about we do have a letter reading collection which has a sort of theme around it's called represent and it's titled by the representative groups and that certainly had good usage. And we do have sort of online reading lists as well that are kind of done by theme that are similarly in line with you know disability awareness week and different kind of themes, EDI type themes and certainly those are well circulated and pushed out on social media. And I think as well we're talking about working with students and students and SU and seem very keen to engage in this generally so I think there's a lot of potential to work with those groups to, you know, get more diverse with resources in usage. Great thank you and Sarah there's Laura in the chat is asking if it'd be possible to share the toolkit because there's the idea of going beyond author characteristics is resonating so. Yes, I'm just trying to think the best way because at the moment it's not I can't just plonk a URL in it's internally available so I'm just wondering the best mechanism do you want to. Have a think and let us know just just a lot of interest in the approach. I thought what I do just to have another five or 10 minutes of this conversation before we move towards breakout groups is take some of the questions in the chat and form sort of thematic things from them rather than going through them one by one. Because there's a really interesting group of questions about academic staff and library staff working collaboratively together. So the motivation for doing this work is often to do with teaching and student experience and and so on. So, can each of our speakers maybe reflect a bit on success stories how's that worked well we all hear about the gap but how have we bridged it have we bridged it. And what can we do to make this a really positive collaborative thing and and or is that is that one of the challenges we have to work out how to approach. So in any order you like just sort of. I can leap in. I feel like we're not quite there yet but we're just identifying people so I think there are some. Certainly the university kind of centrally and the kind of PVC for education are very keen, almost working with them. We do know individuals who are we're just about that's what the next phase of the project so in terms of actually putting it into practice and making changes to their career so this is the curriculum reading lists in effects and that's about to come next. We did take our tool kit to one of the groups of sort of senior teaching academics and that was really interesting the response. We have some quite sort of interesting so again very senior people very positive in principle but I felt slight kind of defensiveness in some cases but I think you've got to be careful that people don't think you're almost telling them how to do their job or you know who are you to tell us what we should do. So I think it's the kind of how you frame it and how you go out to people. It's important. Thank you. Lucy or Joe do you want to come in on this next. I mean I'd agree with a lot of what Sarah said. I think I'm doing this on a bit of a smaller scale because there's not as much teaching that goes on in my department, because it's mostly focused on sort of post grad and research. So yeah I haven't had too much involvement in a temporary I've just about gotten to put all their reading lists online. We're moving in baby steps at the minute, but yeah the work I did with the more sort of general stuff. Yeah there was there was a bit of persuasion that needed to happen and a bit of worry about how representative a collection that was so small could be. For example but yeah obviously that's less less on the academic and I think Joe will be able to talk a bit more to that in her circumstance. Thank you. So we are very fortunate in that the school is very much behind what we're doing the clinical dean is very supportive of the work that we're doing and encouraging responses to reading list questions for example, we encourage all of the teaching leads that were in contact with all reading lists to think about other formats so it's not just print material and to think where they can about broadening the titles that are on a reading list. But clearly as it's been said in the chat and alluded to in our presentation part of the problem is actually knowing what's out there and a lot of stuff isn't out there it's yet to be written. So, perhaps we've got some budding authors in our group today that can readdress that. We also work quite closely with the wellbeing group so I think a lot of it is really hard to talk to what Sarah was saying it's about going out there and talking to people. And if at first you don't succeed then you keep try, try, try again. And there are small gains we've all talked about gains in our area so we have got some success stories which we can build on. We're also doing a piece of work at the moment identifying a couple of subjects and looking at the loans that have gone out over the course of the year, looking at what's available in terms of formats, and then contrasting that with what's actually on a reading list. And I've got a couple of groups that I'm working with, and conversations will start probably after Easter about next steps and maybe that will also result in some changes around reading this, but I don't say that lightly because I know it's a lot of extra work for academics. And that point about extra work for academics comes back to Diane's question about how is this recognised and awarded and celebrated when it's going well. In any of our institutions is there any sort of formal or informal recognition of this for either library staff or academic staff? I'm not sure that I would really necessarily know of something in terms of the academics, other than going back to the point that the clinical dean is very supportive. New leads have been set up in terms of the curriculum for things like sustainability and ethnicity. So there is definitely a move towards it, but in terms of recognition, I wouldn't be able to comment on the academic point of view. Okay, Joe, Sarah, and then I'll maybe bring Christina in in case she's about to tell us about this from the survey maybe. So I suppose internally we could, there was a sort of conference they did for the first time internally when I say they, I mean the Education Service which is a sort of central services and they invited lots of academics along so you can kind of start talking to the kind of external community but I think that's what they're trying to grow of academics that are promoting it and obviously they are key initial partners in this but in terms of, so I guess the reward would be being involved with it, having a platform, but in terms of recognition, I'm not aware of that. Okay, thanks. Christina, did you want to comment on this or? I just wanted to add a comment about that that actually from the survey one of the, and this finding models on how you can understand the impacts of the work you're doing in this area and get the recognition. So finding models for that so has been recognized as one of the areas where we need to provide further support. But I think just related to the building of relationships with academics so if colleagues manage to find champions in their areas to academic champions we can support the says I think it will be easier to start building getting this this feedback from them and maybe the Assessing then the fastest in the light of the work and recognition but yes this is something that is missing at the moment as colleagues say as well. And what we've heard really clearly in all these different presentations is that this is an institutional responsibility and an institutional set of actions. So working together will in the end be the best, perhaps only way to really move things in the way we need to and want to. Yeah, I just encourage everybody who hasn't had a look to have a read of it there's some really great examples being brought in of particular case studies work people are doing. Really interesting piece in times higher by one of Caroline Gaels colleagues example from leads special collections and some working with academics on particularly themed projects and collection areas. And also for Aberdeen and their work. So lots of really really good practice to share. I'm just scrolling down Peter's talking about polar libraries and thinking about indigenous communities and decolonizing metadata work at Durham on links to slavery and colonialism. So lots of really good stuff.