Quality, Evaluation and Development at the Tampere University Library

Quality assurance at the University of Tampere stands for the process of systematic development of the University's operations.  

Among other goals, systematic development includes setting function-based objectives, making decisions based on them and conducting regular self-evaluations. These evaluations are the most significant way for the University of Tampere to monitor whether its set objectives have been reached. Depending on the results of the self-evaluation, the University decides which of its operations need to be further developed. Furthermore, these evaluations are also a means for the students and personnel to actively participate in the decision-making process.

More information on quality assurance at the University of Tampere

Tampere University Library is there for its users as a part of an international university dedicated to research. By providing information, content material and publishing services for researchers, teachers and students, the Library supports the University's goals. It also develops its services as a member of the national and international library networks. 

The Tampere University Library, well-known for its customer orientation, is seamlessly integrated into the academic community, within which it is an active force. The Library aims at foreseeing the changing information needs of the University and takes them into consideration when planning its activities.

Methods to Ensure Quality

By taking into account the feedback it has received, the Library systematically ensures and develops the quality of its actions and operations. The Library's strategy  for the years 2010-2015 is planned using the Balanced Scorecard method, the implementation of which will be followed up with the help of scorecards found on the intraweb of the Library. The method also provides a good background against which the next year's new goals can be implemented.

The results from the service quality survey were used to devise the new strategy. Two students and two representatives of the teaching and research staff, appointed by the Library Board, also participated in the planning.

The central methods of quality assurance, grouped by operations, are presented on the “Quality, evaluation and development” pages. Regarding systematic development, the Library deems it important to evolve and ensure quality in the following fields:

Services

The library develops its services together with its users by taking into consideration the feedback received from them. An extensive service quality survey is repeated every three years. Smaller surveys, which focus on individual operations, are carried out between extensive surveys. Previously library customers had to opportunity to give direct feedback on the service they have received, but now the library has systematized the handling of daily customer feedback. Various different channels for feedback have been created on the basis of the proposals made by the Library Customer Feedback-work group in 2007. The conclusions on customer feedback will be discussed annually in the Management Group meetings, a practice which started in June 2008.

Example 1: Service Quality Survey. The results of the 2005 survey have been reported in the issues 3/2005-2/2006 of Bulletiini e-magazine (in Finnish). Among other things, the results of the 2005 service quality survey have been compared with that of 2002.

Example 2: Final Report by the Customer Feedback Work group (in Finnish on the Library's Intraweb). The final report with the resulting proposals for the development of the Library's operations was accepted in the Library Management Group on October 10, 2007.

Example 3: The continuity and compliance of lending in the Library will be ensured with the help of the Supporting Package for Customer Service Representatives on Call at the Circulations Office (in Finnish on the Library's intraweb).

Example 4: As a result of the Learning Centre Project (in Finnish), the library's facilities were developed as modern learning centers.

Example 5: Annual Reports of the Tampere University Library (in Finnish).

Example 6: The Report on the Usability of Library Web Pages (in Finnish) gave a good basis for the improvement of the Library's web pages. 

Collections

The collections offered by the Library are a central part of the infrastructure for research, teaching and studying at the university. The library ensures the accessibility and avalability of information resourses. The library has also started an evaluation process of its collections. Its goal is to identify the strengths and weaknesses; making use of the received information to develop the collections. When choosing materials, attention will primarily be paid to content and its usefulness in research and higher education teaching. The acquisition suggestions made by the teaching and research staff are central, and hence they are encouraged to actively make suggestions. Making acquisition suggestions can easily be done through various channels, and students are able to do them as well. The information received from the service quality surveys, direct customer feedback and user statistics is used when selecting materials. Furthermore, as the Library is part of specialist work groups in the National Electronic Library (FinELib) Consortium, it has influence over its acquisition choices.

Example 1: Acquisition of stock and the development of collections: Development Program of Collections, Grounds for Distributing Acquisition Allocations and Directions for Acquiring Text Books (all in Finnish).

Example 2: The library charts and evaluates its collections with the help of a Collection Map (in Finnish). The finished maps can be found in the Library Intraweb. 

Example 3: The use of electronic resourses and the Nelli-portal (in Finnish).

Example 4: An account of the use of electronic resourses: The results of Tampere University in the FinELib user survey, the report by the analysis work group (in Finnish on the Library Intraweb), which was accepted in the Library Management Group meeting 7.11.2007, and for comparison, the results concerning all the universities (in Finnish).

Example 5: Processing and following up on the use of electronic resourses (in Finnish on the Library intraweb). 

Education in Information Literacy

Education in information literacy has been established as a part of the studies in every school of the university, in most of which, it is also a compulsory part of the curriculum. As the teaching has become more extensive and as the number of students to be taught has become stable, the attention has been shifted to developing teaching materials as well as to the pedagogical training of the information literacy teachers. In practice, the pedagogical training has come to fruition for instance, when the library information specialists have participated in the academic pedagogical training. Furthermore, the shared recommendations of university libraries for information literacy have been taken into consideration in developing the traning. Feedback about the teaching is collected, to be utilized for developing the contents and methods. The development targets of teaching have been listed in the recently updated quality assurance system, the implementation of which is followed up by a work group assigned to this task.

Example 1: Description of the quality system of the library (in Finnish) 

Example 2: The annual clock diagram of teaching (in Finnish on the library intraweb)

Example 3: Information retreival web guides of different fields (in Finnish)

Example 4: Developing information literacy know-how tests through the OPTIA-project (in Finnish) 

Publishing Activities

The Tampere University Press (TUP) operates as a part of the library and it publishes approximately 100 books per year. All manuscripts to be published, except dissertations, will go through a peer review procedure before publishing is approved. The peer review procedure is under constant development. The focus of the development in web publishing is in reshaping the structure and functioning of the publishing databases. Due to feedback received from customers, features which better serve the users are being built into the publishing databases. The potential is being created to better extract information from the databases and from the publishing archives of international open access publishing.

Example 1: Tampere University Press (TUP) 

Example 2: Publishing a doctoral dissertation

Example 3: Tampere University's online publications 

Example 4: Open access publishing

Example 5: Publishing a thesis on the web

Human Resources and the Developing of Know-How

The personnel plan of the library is aimed at supporting the betterment and well-being of the staff through concrete measures, the implementation of which is annually followed up at the Library Management Group meetings. Examples of measures, which have materialized, are a familiarization guide for supervisors and a guide for employees. The surveying of the staff’s know-how in both personal and departmental level was implemented with the help of the “know-how requirement plan” in almost every department in 2007. The know-how requirement plan is utilized to support the annual staff development discussions. The aim is to increase the know-how by recognizing areas still needing development. At the same time, the measures for development are also agreed upon, the implementation of which will be checked annually during staff development discussions. In addition, career plans will also be discussed.

Example 1: Personnel plan (in Finnish on the library intraweb) 

Example 2: Know-how requirement plan (in Finnish on the library intraweb)

Example 3: Newcomer's guide for employees and familiarisation guide for supervisors (both in Finnish on the library intraweb) 

Example 4: Library employees' guide (in Finnish on the library intraweb)

Example 5: Evaluation of results in the library's internal web magazine (in Finnish on the library intraweb)

Management and Organization Development

The library has a clear organizational structure and management system. The strategy is drawn up for a five-year period and a plan of action is formed annually. Their materialization will be monitored regularly in the Library Management group and by the Library Board, as well as at the performance negotiations held annually with University management. Furthemore, the implementation of the agreements concerning the generation of the university hospital library services between the University and the Pirkanmaa Hospital District is monitored at the annual meetings with the Pirkanmaa Hospital District. Communications are seen as a central part of the management and development of the organization. A central goal in the communications of the library is to support the implementation of the strategies of the university and library. Thus, attention is paid to education and training at the management level. Moreover, the descriptions of central operational processes are being utilized in developing the organization. The compiling of the descriptions of the course of action was started in the library in the spring of 2007, but all the essential processes have not yet been outlined.

Example 1: Library Organization and supervision of operations (in Finnish) and annual management plan  (in Finnish on the library intraweb) 

Example 2: Following-up of the library strategy with the help of scorecards (in Finnish on the library intraweb) 

Example 3: The performance negotiation process in the library (in Finnish on the library intraweb)  

Example 4: The annual negotiations between the library and the Pirkanmaa Hospital District (in Finnish on the library intraweb)

Example 5: The implementation, participants and responsibilities of communications, as well as the agreement on the follow-up, have been described in the communications strategy of the library. The follow-up group will annually ensure the implementation of the communications strategy (in Finnish on the library intraweb).  

Example 6: The training of supervisors as a “Kaiku -development project” endorsed by the State Treasury. The final report on the project can be read in the library intraweb (in Finnish).

Social Interaction and Influence

The library has an important social role in presenting scientific information. The library collections and services are available to all interested customers, however, the electronic resourses licensed by the library are only accessible to outside customers on the library's premises. The library's EU and UN-collections serve all in need of information about the EU and the UN. The library has a significant social service role, for the Department of Health Sciences library is also responsible for providing library services for the Tampere University Hospital. The customer feedback received from user surveys and collected in other ways is taken into account in developing the library services for the University Hospital. Open access to research information and publications produced by the university has been increased in the past few years by services supporting publishing on the web and in open access publication archives. Through the open access web publishing of dissertations and theses, the library places the quality of academic education under continuous scrutiny. The library develops its services as a part of the national and international library network. University libraries will pay particular attention to establishing indicators representative of their operations. The library will also participate in producing the statistical database of the Finnish Research Libraries, as well as exploiting the statistics by comparing its own operations with that of other university libraries.

Example 1: Operating as a part of the library network: The Council of Finnish University Libraries, FinELib Consortium and Linnea Consortium. 

Example 2: EU-collection

Example 3: UN Collection 

Example 4: Providing library services to the Tampere University Hospital.

Example 5: In addition to publishing, the Publication Centre also takes care of the selling of publications and the virtual book store Granum. 

Example 6: Finnish Research Library Statistical Database and the production of statistics (in Finnish on the library intraweb).

Developing Operations

Developing methods is a continuous process in the library. The challenges brought by the changes in the operational environment and in data systems highlight the need for new development in the services and operations. The new operational environment also requires the reviewing of job descriptions of the library staff, the continuous improvement of know-how and, when necessary, also the reallocation of positions. When needed, the systematic collection of customer feedback, the direct feedback received from customers as well as the suggestions received from departments and faculties will bring about new developments and breakthroughs. The key development projects of the library are:

Strategy

The strategy update of Tampere University Library for 2010-2015. The updating of the strategy began in the autumn of 2008. A service quality survey preceded the renewal of the strategy.

Collections

Collections Map (in Finnish). The project began in 2006. 

Publishing Activities

Self-archiving processes and the open repository (in Finnish)

Open repository of the University Alliance (in Finnish)

On 17 November 2008 the Rector set up a work group to prepare for the parallel depositing of research publications, the aim being to improve the open access to research publications at the University of Tampere. On April 16 2009, the Rector announced a decision on the University’s self-archiving policy, stating that the University of Tampere will begin to request the self-archiving of research publications. From January 1 2011 onwards, the researchers will be requested to self-archive copies of their research articles in the open institutional repository of the University.

Piloting the national Publication Channel project (in Finnish)

Processes and Job Descriptions

Process descriptions (in Finnish on the library intraweb). This project began in 2007.

Reviewing of job descriptions. The descriptions of the different tasks in the library have been thoroughly examined when the library switched to the new university payroll system in 2006. The reviewing of department-specific job descriptions and substitute arrangements has been started in 2007. Procedures, with which the library will rise to the challenge, are defined in the chapter “Henkilöstövoimavarat suhteessa asetettuihin tavoitteisiin” in the unit's self-evaluation report of 2010 (in Finnish on the library intraweb).