Tag Archives: academic libraries

ARLGS library visits: the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the National Piping Centre

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The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Late last month, Academic and Research Libraries Group Scotland (ARLGS) held an afternoon of visits to the libraries of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and the National Piping Centre (NPC) in Glasgow. Both venues hold fascinating collections, and the visits were a great chance for library and information professionals from across Scotland to see the collections and meet the librarians behind them.

The RCS and the Whittaker Library

Co-ordinated by ARLGS’ event planner, Isabelle Bridoux, the afternoon began at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where librarian Dr. Karen McAulay gave a talk on the history of the performing arts school and its Whittaker Library. Founded in 1847 as the Glasgow Athanaeum, the school quickly became one of the largest and busiest performing arts schools in the country. It has been based at its current site on Glasgow’s Renfrew Street since 1988, and is now considered one of the world’s best performing arts schools.

Dr. McAulay’s stories about the foundation of its Whittaker Library were particularly interesting – it was set up by the school’s janitors and began as a small, closed access collection, which has adapted over the years into the expansive, comprehensive collection of music, drama, dance, production and film which serves the RCS’s students and staff today.

The Whittaker Library’s LP collection

Dr. McAulay spoke about the challenges the library team have faced over the years, including some difficult decisions they have had to make in limiting their collection of physical resources to cope with demands on space. It was apparent how much work has gone into adapting the collection to keep up with the rapidly growing student base and the new courses the school launched in recent years, and Dr. McAulay emphasised that the increasing availability of electronic resources had helped to facilitate this. However, the unique value of their print and physical resources was also evident, and it seemed that striking a balance was important. The library has retained an impressive collection of CDs, LPs and DVDs, and Dr. McAulay emphasised the continuing value of these formats – there are many unique recordings which do not end up available online.

The New Athenaeum Theatre at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

The visit to the RCS ended with a tour of the rest of the school (including the New Athenaeum Theatre, the opera school, and an impressive wall of fame).

The National Piping Centre

On arrival at the National Piping Centre, a presentation (and bagpipe performance!) was given by librarian James Beaton. The piping centre operates as an educational charity, promoting the study and the history of piping in Scotland.

The centre has a small internal lending library for students and staff, which holds a large collection of material for studying piping, including printed books, manuscripts, sounds holdings, and teaching tapes. The collections held in the library are truly unique. James Beaton’s talk covered the oral tradition of piping – there was no literature on piping at all until the 18th Century, and older resources relating to piping are rare, making the collection of older material presented during the visits particularly special.

Examples of the collection at the National Piping Centre

The talk covered a varied and interesting range of topics, touching on the complexities of indexing such specialist and valuable material, and the process of and issues around digitising such resources for the library’s online catalogue.

 

Final thoughts

This event showcased the value of libraries in creative and academic institutions, as well as the challenges faced by the librarians who run them. A particular theme which ran through the afternoon’s discussion was the importance of the creative arts in education. Concerns were cited about the decline in subjects like music and drama in schools and the potential impact on the arts industry, and it stood out that libraries like these are playing a vital role in facilitating the continued study of the creative arts.

Why UK-sourced evidence matters … and why it is so often ignored

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By Morwen Johnson

If you follow our blog, you’ll know that we care passionately about promoting the uptake of evidence and research by policymakers and practitioners. It’s easy to be complacent and assume that when public money is at stake, decisions are made on the basis of evaluations and reviews. Unfortunately, this is still not always the case.

The current evidence-based policy agenda in the UK encompasses initiatives such as the What Works network, the Local Government Knowledge Navigators and independent organisations such as the Alliance for Useful Evidence. They are working on fostering demand for evidence, as well as linking up academics with those in the public sector to ensure that the research community is responsive to the needs of those making decisions and designing/delivering services.

A recent article in Health Information and Libraries Journal highlights another challenge in evidence-based policy however. A mapping exercise has found that literature reviews often ignore specialist databases, in favour of the large, well-known databases produced by major commercial publishers. Within the health and social care field (the focus of the article), literature reviews tend to use databases such as Medline, Embase and Cinahl – and overlook independent UK-produced databases, even when they are more relevant to the research question.

Why does it matter?

Research has shown that how (and why) databases are chosen for literature searching can “dramatically influence the research upon which reviews, and, in particular, systematic review, rely upon to create their evidence base”.

To generate useful evidence for the UK context (relating to UK policy issues or populations), researchers need to understand the most appropriate database to search – but unfortunately our own experience of looking at the detail of methodologies in evidence reviews, suggests that in many cases the only databases searched are those produced by American or international publishers.

Grey literature is a valuable source in evidence reviews – and again this is often overlooked in the major databases which tend to focus only on peer-reviewed journal content. A recent Australian report ‘Where is the evidence?‘ argued that grey literature is a key part of the evidence base and is valuable for public policy, because it addresses the perspectives of different stakeholder groups, tracks changes in policy and implementation, and supports knowledge exchange between sectors (academic, government and third sector).

Another benefit of UK-produced databases is that they will make use of UK terminology in abstracts and keywords.

Social Policy and Practice – a unique resource

At this point I should declare a vested interest – The Knowledge Exchange is a member of a UK consortium which produces the Social Policy and Practice (SPP) database. The SPP database was created in 2005 after five UK organisations, each with a library focused on sharing knowledge in community health and social care, agreed to merge their individual content in order to make it available to the widest possible audience.

The current members of the SPP consortium – the National Children’s Bureau, the Idox Knowledge Exchange, the Centre for Policy on Ageing and the Social Care Institute for Excellence – have just been joined by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Inclusion of the NSPCC’s bibliographic data greatly enhances the coverage of child protection research in the database. SPP has been identified by NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, as a key resource for those involved in research into health and social care.

We want the UK research community to understand what SPP offers, and to use it when undertaking literature reviews or evidence searches. This process of awareness raising should start with students – librarians in universities and the UK doctoral training centres have a key role in this as it ties in with the development of information literacy and critical appraisal skills. Ignoring specialist sources such as SPP risks introducing bias – at a time when initiatives are attempting to embed research and analytics in local government and the wider public sector.

Information on the coverage of Social Policy and Practice is available here and the distributor Ovid is offering a free 30-day trial.