Library Gains Prestigious 5th Charter Mark Award
The University Library has been awarded the government's Charter Mark for the excellence of its customer services for the fifth time in a row. The assessor's report revealed that the Library fully complied with all the criteria for the Charter Mark, and had been marked out for best practice in two areas: the scale of electronic information access provided by the Library, and the range of ways in which technology is being used to improve services.
University Librarian, Dr Tom Graham, said:
'At the end of the assessor's visit, he mentioned that Newcastle was one of two university libraries he quotes as good exemplars to other institutions who are considering applying for the Charter Mark. It was interesting to know that we were seen in this light'.
The Charter Mark is the Government's national award for recognising customer service excellence in public services. It involves providing evidence across six main criteria, each with a range of sub-criteria, 63 in all. These are reviewed by the assessor, who then visits the Library and conducts interviews with a range of stakeholders (staff, students and external partners) and library staff, some arranged and some simply based on opportunistic talking to users within the Library.
Dr Graham continued:
'What is critical is that the service has to show evidence of continuous improvement: it is not enough to be as good as the last time. For the first time, we had the same assessor as on the previous occasion, which has got its good and less good aspects, but it was interesting to see how he responded to the evidence for enhancement'.
'We were very pleased to achieve this accreditation with such good results. We can now claim to be "the only university library in the UK to be awarded the Charter Mark five times", said Dr Graham.
See also...
Cabinet Office Charter Mark website