NEWS
University of Kent Wins the 2016 NAG Award for Excellence
This year’s National Acquisitions Group (NAG) Award for Excellence has been won by the University of Kent for their project University of Kent – digital libraries in Europe. As the UK’s European University, Kent supports a network of European Study Centres in Paris, Rome, Brussels and Athens. This project was focussed on delivering high quality library content and collections to all students studying at any one of their European centres.
Trudy Turner, Assistant Director, Library Collections at University of Kent, explains “Internationalising content provision is challenging. We kick started our digital offer with several targeted student-driven acquisition projects to crowd source our collection building. Where we can’t deliver born-digital content or scanned-content alternatives we initiate specific, carefully scoped digitisation projects and are working increasingly closer with suppliers to achieve value for money. We localised and streamlined document delivery services and built new and strengthened partnerships with academic and specialist libraries close to our European centres. We value these partnerships as ways of enriching our students’ European study experiences but also as a vivid and powerful manifestation of European libraries’ collegiality and trust.”
To underpin the digital library offer and ensure quality, alignment and cost effectiveness, the University of Kent enacted a European Collection Development Policy and also launched a European View for their discovery service. Throughout and beyond the project, they talked to students and academic colleagues to design, review, adjust and enhance the new approach and have received excellent feedback.
Mo Siewcharran, Director of Marketing and Communications at Nielsen Book, commented “Nielsen Book is delighted to sponsor the NAG award for the sixth year. The NAG Award offers a great opportunity to recognise and celebrate success and innovation within library acquisitions. Nielsen Book would like to thank NAG and the judging panel for their work and to warmly congratulate the University of Kent for their achievement. This is an important project and we are delighted to be supporting it and look forward to seeing the results.”