Rosie Jones, Director of Library Services at the Open university.
of staff will have an enormous impact on our student experience. The library will be acting as a conduit for digital capabil- ities; there are numerous teams across the OU who provide staff development in this area but we will bring this together to ensure coverage and quality of provision.”
Blurred boundary
Rosie says that the OU’s library staff are comfortable with roles that are fluid, saying: “There is a blurred boundary between library and teaching skills and we have excellent librarians who have the relevant skills.” She adds that from a student perspective, “they don’t mind who is teaching them these skills – as long as they are taught them”. Digital capability is about making sure people have the skills, ability and tools to work in an increasingly digital landscape. For the OU, the reliance on a digital frame- work to deliver its core services makes it imperative that staff and students are comfortable and confident with their own digital skills.
Seamless role
The role in delivering the digital capabilities strand of the OU’s trans- formation work is an endorsement of the value the library and its staff bring to the university. Rosie says that the library already works closely with faculty, and reaches out to students – some- times “too seamlessly”, in that students access library resources and services from within their module materials, meaning the library is well used but can be “invisible”. However, this connected ness, the partnerships built up over time with academic colleagues and the value placed on the library service will allow it to implement the digital capabilities work effectively. “We have a great digital and informa- tion literacy (DIL) framework and we aim to embed our DIL in all our mod- ules. We are part of the creation of those
December-January 2017/18
modules and DIL elements are included in them from the start, as early as the learn- ing design and approval stage.” She adds: “We have won many awards for our DIL work – some of the people working here, at the OU, are world-re- nowned in terms of digital literacy pro vision.”
Leading in digital skills
“Our digital capabilities work is about moving away from the assumption that all our students will be really capable online. There are pockets of really good practice, but there is more we can do to support them with their online journey. “What I’d like to do is make sure that OU students are absolutely guaranteed to be ahead of the field in digital skills, so that an employer will look at them and say ‘wow, I absolutely want to employ them ahead of the competition because they are intrinsically digital’.
“We already have OU graduates who have shown that they can thrive, studying successfully remotely – that is a massive employability benefit. If we look at the di- rection workforces are taking – how many people are actually going to be physically sitting in an office? We have OU graduates who manage to engage and study remote- ly, and that is a massive tick for them.”
Student engagement
Inductions to the library take place online and the OU has developed its own methods of engaging with students. The library team regularly contributes to online, interactive video events. Rosie says this type of engagement is where the OU is looking to discover its unique selling point (USP) over competitors that are moving into the distance-learning sphere. For Rosie, there is strong desire to build a new online library model to help the OU keep its place at the forefront of innovation. She said: “There has been a shift to round the clock access to libraries. We have to identify our new set of USPs. We still have them – things like our live sessions, which we deliver like no one else. Facebook Live-type events, Student Hub live events – all of our staff are very confident on camera.
“But, it’s starting to feel like there is a catch-up happening, for example, everyone else is starting to provide online 24-hour provision.”
Sense of community
Rosie believes that the library’s traditional strength – 24-hour, remote access – has hindered its development in some areas and she is keen to address those deficien- cies. She says: “We have been set up as a
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Interview OU Rosie Jones
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