Service standards

Our values

• Putting students’ needs at the heart of everything we do.
• Committing to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility in all our interactions and practices.
• Treating everyone with respect, kindness and compassion.
• Developing through professional enquiry, critical reflection, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborating to achieve our full potential.

Library Futures 2023 vision

UAL has outstanding library environments providing the largest specialist art and design library in the UK across 8 sites. It offers exceptional services, award winning innovative practices and globally significant collections. The library is a crucial partner in the University’s learning, teaching and research agendas and its student experience. Library Futures is our ambitious plan to undergo a radical process of transformation of services and processes, to be fully connected and aligned to the University’s ten year strategy. At our heart is a commitment to offer an outstanding service to our students, facilitating and supporting student enquiry and discovery throughout the whole student journey.

Commitment to a service centred approach

Our hugely innovative practices have been recognised nationally by the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Library team in 2021 and we maintain our annual Customer Service Excellence accreditation through our commitment to continuous improvement and customer centred services.

Collections

We are opening up our Archives and Special Collections to students, researchers and wider communities, enhancing our engagement with programmes and supporting the development of an expanded creative education curriculum. Libraries, Archives and Collections have an ambitious plan to support and enhance learning and teaching, the research community, open research and the full Research Lifecycle.

Spaces and Places

We are undergoing a large scale programme of works across our learning environments, at our 6 existing sites, and incorporating new provision across our growing estate. We seek to provide the services and a choice of spaces to inspire and showcase innovative learning and research practices. We play a key role in the emerging digital landscape at UAL and the research and development of the digital student experience and the ‘online campus’.

Our people

People form the creative engine of our learning environments, the interface with our students and stakeholders, mediating and facilitating discovery and knowledge acquisition through our collections. We aim to cultivate a culture that allows us to work together with empathy and compassion to fulfil our ambitions.

We aim to shape one of the world’s great creative organisations through the services we deliver and the culture we build together.

Service standards

We will maintain our advertised opening hours for all our libraries 100% of the time.

Our Library Search service will be available 24/7 100% of the time (except for periods of advertised downtime/maintenance).

90% of all returned material will be re-shelved within 24 hours.

We will acknowledge and respond to all forms of written enquiries and feedback within 24 hours.

95% of students attending a Library Services skills session will agree or strongly agree that they have found the session ‘useful’.

80% satisfaction rate in our student survey scores.

We have been accredited with Customer Service Excellence.