Library users satisfied but the library will work even harder

Over 4,300 University Library users – including 3,400 students – took part in a satisfaction survey at the beginning of last academic year. The survey wasconducted through the Association of Research Libraries’ LibQUAL+ program, which is used each year by  libraries all over the world to help them to assess and improve their services. The participants were asked questions concerning three main issues: the university library as a place for study, the quality of information provision and  and quality of the service provision includingthe client-friendliness of the staff. From the results, it appears that K.U.Leuven’s University Library is generally quite successful in all areas. There were no questions for which we received a lower score than the expected minimum, but on the other hand, there were no questions for which we received a higher score than the desired target. The survey also indicated that library users – especially in the humanities and social sciences – would like more ‘learning centres’: places where students can have a variety of learning environments: places for group work, individual work spaces and quiet study areas. The University Library is already planning several of these facilities in the Leuven City Centre, in Heverlee, in Gasthuisberg and in Kortrijk. . Many people would also like the libraries to have longer opening hours and would like better access to electronic sources. Specific actions will be undertaken during the next strategic planning period to address the concerns of users.

K.U.Leuven is the first institution in Belgium to have made use of LibQUAL for benchmarking its services and looks forward to co-operating with universities in Wallonia who have decided also to take part.The benchmarking exercise will be repeated in three years’ time in order to measure the improvements in service quality that we hope to achieve.

Planned interruption: Wiley InterScience

Due to site maintenance, access to the Wiley InterScience platform may be intermittently disrupted on Saturday, March 28th, from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Users may experience minor disruptions where items such as the search or customer service interfaces will be unavailable for short periods of time.

Project Muse temporarily unavailable

UPDATE: access has been reinstated.

 

The journals of the Project Muse collection for which we have a license, are currently unavailable. We are trying to make them accessible again as soon as possible.

Planned interruption: Wiley InterScience

Due to essential site maintenance, access to the Wiley InterScience platform will be temporarily unavailable on Monday, February 16th, between 10 and 11 a.m.

Planned interruption: Web of Knowledge & EndNote Web

Thomson Reuters will be performing maintenance on the ISI Web of Knowledge and EndNote Web products. The maintenance for EndNote Web will start on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 3.00 a.m. The maintenance for the ISI Web of Knowledge will commence on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 3.00 p.m. There will be disruptions to access on services including personalization during these maintenance periods.

This notification applies to Web of Science (with Conference Proceedings), Inspec, Journal Citation Reports and EndNote Web, among other things.

Planned interruption: Brill online

Brill publishing has scheduled necessary server maintenance on January 17th, 18 and probably also 19th. During this time their electronic publications will not be available.

Planned interruption: The Statesman’s Yearbook

On Saturday, January 17th, The Statesman’s Yearbook will be temporarily unavailable between 10.30 am and 3.30 pm to allow scheduled maintenance to take place on the Palgrave Macmillan Online Reference Resources platform.

Clusters & facets temporarily unavailable in LibriSourcePlus

Update: the problems  have been solved and clusters & facets are available again.

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Due to problems experienced by the Ex Libris company, there are no clusters & facets being shown with search results for the Quicksearch and Advanced Search options in LibriSourcePlus today (and until further notice). We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sage Humanities and Social Sciences Backfiles

Since January 1st 2009 K.U.Leuven has access to the Sage Humanities and Social Sciences Backfiles. This gives access to all first volumes up until 1998 for 284 journals from the Sage Humanities and Social Sciences portfolio.

Overview of all Sage journals accessible to K.U.Leuven.

Planned interruption: LIBISng catalogue

Due to necessary maintenance works the LIBISng catalogue will be temporarily unavailable on Monday December 22nd from 8 AM.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.