 I'll start by considering the background and aims of our evaluation project. I'll then go on to discuss our methodology, the framework we developed, and how this is changing the way that we approach our collections. But I'll begin at the beginning, which is back in 2015, with the launch of a new library strategy which plays collections at the heart of its mission and identity. The strategy committed us to undertaking a comprehensive assessment of the intellectual value and relative significance of all parts of the library's collection. But why was this felt to be so important? Our collection has long been recognised for its range and quality. We're one of just five university libraries with national research library status. And we've also been designated by the Arts Council as a collection of outstanding significance. But despite this, or perhaps because of it, we felt uncertain about how best to manage our holdings. RLUK's 2014 report outlined how unique and distinctive collections can support institutional goals around research teaching and public engagement and encouraged its members to invest in them to maximise their potential. But what did this mean for us? Surely our national research library and designation statuses meant that our collection was unique and distinctive in its entirety. So where should we focus our attention? We wanted to open up our collections to new audiences and new uses through digitisation, but we weren't sure what to digitise. And what should we be adding to the collection faced with an ever-growing range of material to choose from and the inevitable budgetary constraints? At the same time, we were pressing questions about space and stock management. Shelving in the library building was nearly full, and we needed to create more and better spaces for students to study. So the purpose of the evaluation was to identify those sections of the collection with the greatest potential to support research teaching and public engagement and to provide a framework for the future management and development of the collection as a whole. The evaluation would focus on our analogue collection rather than digital content, but the framework that we developed would be applicable to all formats. We began work on the evaluation in late 2015 when a project team made up of colleagues from across the library first met to discuss how to approach it. We wanted to view the collection with fresh eyes, disregarding traditional distinctions between archives and print, books, pamphlets and periodicals, open and closed storage areas, and circulating and non-circulating material. But the prospect was daunting. Over 50 kilometres of stock, a wide variety of formats arranged in a large number of different sequences with a range of classification schemes. The RLUK report provided one of our points of departure, in particular its definition of a unique and distinctive collection and its recommendation of using significance assessments as a way of identifying them. Another key starting point was the collection classification scheme developed by Leeds University, which categorised collections as heritage, legacy, self-renewing or finite. We decided at an early stage that we needed to employ both qualitative and quantitative analyses and to map the collection against the schools' research and teaching interests to see how well they matched. But the details of our methodology were largely developed as we went along rather than worked out in advance and their development was a highly iterative process, refined through discussions within the project team and also with colleagues from other libraries through forums such as the University of London Collections Advisory Group and the National Acquisitions Group. Conversations with our counterparts at King's and UCL proved especially useful, as they were working on similar assessment exercises at around the same time. So we began our work with a light-touch significance assessment of our archive collections as the part of the overall collection with the greatest uniqueness and depth. This assessment drawn criteria developed by the UK UNESCO Memory of the World Register and the Arts Council's designation scheme and enabled us to identify those collections which dealt with subjects that might be considered of national interest. So events, people, organisations, movements and ideas which have had a recognised and lasting impact on society. We also looked at usage of these collections over the last ten years to see which had been most consistently in demand in this period. This initial assessment enabled us to identify our most significant archive collections and also to draw out a number of common themes. And we then went on to consider how these themes carried out into the rest of the collection. So looking beyond our archive collections to consider related, printed primary and secondary source material including rare books, pamphlets, monographs and periodicals. The second part of the evaluation, a quantitative assessment involved collecting a range of information from our library management system and producing profiles of our print collection by subject, by publication date, by language and by place of publication. We compared each profile against circulation data to see which parts of the collection were in most active use. And we also compared each of the profiles against data from the co-pack collection management tool to see which parts of the collection were duplicated elsewhere in the co-pack network and which weren't. And the third part of the evaluation was the collection mapping exercise to compare the subjects covered in the collection with the school's research and teaching interests. We compiled a list of research interests based on the online profiles of individual academics and mapped these onto Library of Congress classifications. Along with data on research outputs in our institutional repository, already classified with Library of Congress classmarks, this gave us a picture of the school's research interests. We used data from our reading list system to build a similar picture of the school's teaching interests. We were then able to map these onto the subject breakdown of the collection that we'd compiled as part of the quantitative evaluation to see how well they matched. These three assessments all had their limitations, so we regarded the results as indicative rather than definitive. But this was good enough for our purposes, as what we wanted was a broad strategic framework for the collection as a whole, rather than to assess every individual item. So after all this work, what did we conclude? The final report on the project ran to over 20 pages, so I can only summarise here, but essentially we classified the different parts of our collection in four broad categories. In some ways similar to those devised by Leeds University, but with significant variations. So our first category is our flagship collections. These are collections of national importance. They focus on subjects of significant interest. They are leading collections in their field, extensive in their coverage, and with a high proportion of primary sources and a substantial quantity of unique or rare material. They support or have the potential to support a wide range of uses and users over a long period of time. They are at the heart of our status as a national research library and an arts council designated collection. And they also cover themes in which the school has a continuing interest. So our first flagship collection focuses on British political and economic history and what distinguishes it from collections elsewhere on the same broad subject is its particular focus on the work of national pressure groups, campaigners, reformers and think tanks and their efforts to influence public debate and policy. It covers a wide range of different subjects, but it has six areas of particular strength and three of these are illustrated on the slide. So women's equality and rights represented by a banner design for the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies, peace and internationalism represented by a campaign for nuclear disarmament badge and LGBT equality and rights represented by one of the gay liberation front's diaries of events. The other three areas are poverty and welfare, Britain's relationship with Europe and left-wing thought. And our second flagship collection covers the development of the social sciences in the UK and here the main focus is on the history of LSE and the work of its members. Our flagship collections will be managed as long-term assets which support the school's institutional mission and which have an essential role to play in the public understanding of their subjects. We will invest in projects and initiatives that optimise their potential for use. We'll develop them so that they remain preeminent collections in their subjects and we will care for them in a way that will ensure that they remain available for generations to come. Our second category is our heritage collections. These are collections of printed primary sources which lack the depth, breadth and uniqueness which distinguish our flagship collections. However, a large proportion may not be easily available elsewhere in the UK and while they attract a smaller number of users than our flagship collections and the range of uses they support is less broad, the information that these sources contain is highly valued by LSE members as well as the wider academic community. Our heritage collections also support our national research library role by providing the academic community with access to information that they may not easily be able to find elsewhere. However, they're less likely than our flagship collections to be truly unique. So overall, permanent preservation in their original form is not as high a priority and they support a smaller and narrower range of users than our flagship collections. So overall, they're a lower priority for digitisation although there will be exceptions to this general rule, for example to support specific research or teaching initiatives. Our main heritage collection is our collection of official publications, over 200,000 titles in total including parliamentary papers, reports, legislation and statistics published by UK and overseas governments and publications issued by intergovernmental organisations such as the EU and the UN. Our third category is our current research and teaching collections. Academic monographs and scholarly journals form the core of these collections built up over many years to support the school's research and teaching activities. These collections are the most actively used sections of the library and the titles they contain are more likely to be held in other co-pack libraries. The collection mapping exercise demonstrated a good match between the subject strengths of these collections and the school's research and teaching interests. It also emphasised the interdisciplinary nature of the collections showing that research and teaching activities draw on titles from a much wider range of subject classifications than might be expected. These collections also contribute to our role as a national research library. As some titles, especially older and foreign language titles may not be easily available elsewhere in the UK. Titles in these collections are less likely to be truly unique so overall permanent preservation in their original form is a lower priority. And they do not receive consistent levels of use over a long period of time rather evidence suggests that their use declines significantly over time. So digitisation of these collections for long term use is not a high priority although we will of course continue to digitise selected materials to provide students with electronic versions of important course readings. And our fourth and final category is low priority material. This is material which is not in regular use and which is easily available elsewhere or which is out of date. For example, superseded editions of textbooks or reference works or VHS copies of documentaries previously used in teaching. Low priority material will not be digitised or preserved. It may be transferred to another library which has a more active interest in it or it may be disposed of. So that's a brief overview of the framework that we've put in place as a result of the evaluation. And I'd like to conclude by considering how this framework has changed the way that we approach our collections. And what I'd like to focus on here is what the evaluation has meant for our flagship collections. So firstly it's helping us to promote the use of these collections. The framework has enabled us to articulate collection strengths more clearly and focus our resources more effectively. We've created three new roles which we've termed curators to focus on facilitating and expanding access to our flagship collections. And here are on the slide, here are our three curators photographed during Orientation Week showing off oyster card holders based on images from our flagship collections. The curators have developed a rolling programme of exhibitions based on our flagship themes to raise awareness and understanding of our collections and the stories that they tell and to encourage discussion and reflection on the themes that they cover. They're collaborating with the school's teaching and learning centre to encourage course tutors to use our collections in innovative ways. The school is working to embed inquiry-based learning at all levels in the curriculum and create more opportunities for students to work as critical investigators so we expect this to be an area of growth in the coming years. And they're actively seeking opportunities to use our collections to support the school's research agenda. One of our professors, a historian specialising in the First World War, co-curated our current exhibition Giving Peace a Chance and will use it as a case study in the forthcoming REF assessment. We've also appointed an education officer another new role and she has developed a programme of public events themed around our flagship collections as part of the school's wider public engagement programme. She's also developed an offer for schools teaching a range of learning activities based on our flagship themes and linked to the national curriculum. Supporting research, teaching and public engagement are not new activities for us they've always been part of our work but the new curator and education officer roles have increased our capacity to undertake these activities and crucially the new framework combined with the new roles have enabled us to develop our support for these areas more strategically. The framework is enabling us to build our collections more effectively. We've begun a programme of digitisation based around our flagship themes beginning with the launch last year of a suite of materials from our women's suffrage collections. We've developed a more focused approach to donation offers prioritising those which fit best with our flagship subjects rather than the broader approach taken to collecting in the past. At the same time we're working towards a more systematic acquisition strategy. In the EU referendum we collected campaign literature and pamphlets capturing all sizes of the debate and in the coming years we would like to make active collecting part of our day-to-day work to ensure that our collections remain leading resources in their fields. Developing the capacity to collect, preserve and make accessible born digital content will be crucial and as a first step towards this we've purchased a digital assets management system and created a new digital assets manager role. Thirdly the framework is helping us to rethink the way we approach the description and discovery of our collections. Here again it has enabled us to prioritise more effectively by focusing on improving access to our flagship collections so by cataloging un-catalog material over 30% of our flagship archive collections have no online catalogue and 14% have no catalogue at all. And also by enhancing existing finding aids and discovery mechanisms we're considering for example how we can make our catalogs easier to navigate for those who are new to research how we might expose more content from our flagship collections on COPAC and other union catalogs and how we might use link data to make connections between our flagship collections and related information held elsewhere. We always regarded our collection evaluation as a foundational piece of work and we expect the framework we developed to inform the management of our collections for the foreseeable future so it's only in the long term that we'll be able to assess its true success. The evaluation project required us to find different ways of looking at our collection and the new roles and approaches that have followed in its wake have also brought challenges as we've had to learn new skills, work out new ways of doing things and work with new people. This hasn't always been a comfortable process but it has enabled us to answer or at least to begin to answer in 2015.