What would you find valuable from WHELF? by

Informal conversation opportunities

judithmdray — 2025-06-10 09:48:26 UTC

Informal and safe opportunities to connect, chat, ask questions etc. I don't know how this would work but would be nice to have some sort of online drop-in spaces.

Library assistant network

judithmdray — 2025-06-10 09:51:46 UTC

Network for library assistants to connect across institutions - opportunity for career development and sharing experiences. Could be an online forum?

Mentorship / coaching

2025-06-10 12:29:26 UTC

Brokering connections between institutions to establish mentoring or coaching relationships - to facilitate professional learning, skills and career development.

Sharing of resources

2025-06-11 11:45:13 UTC

Widening of borrowing schemes

Access to shared databases?

Communities of Practice

2025-06-11 11:46:55 UTC

Swansea set up a fantastic Community of Practice to discuss LibGuides across WHELF, meeting once a month to share knowledge & concerns, and to support each other. It would be lovely to see more of these spring up to support HE and FE across Wales.

Shared training

2025-06-11 11:52:31 UTC

Universities are finding it hard to fund training at the moment. Putting on shared training might help.

Community

2025-06-11 11:54:34 UTC

It gives a sense of community in Wales libraries.

Open Access Press

2025-06-11 11:59:37 UTC

Building a shared, collaborative OA Press, enabling smaller institutions to publish with equal access, and sharing the workload.

Shared Collections Policy

2025-06-11 12:16:11 UTC

With the fantastic take-up of WHELF+, and the increasing use of RapidILL and Rapido, it'd be useful to have a shared collection policy to increase access to materials across the country, and to avoid multiple purchases across institutions, where a single physical copy, or a single database subscription, could support the whole of the network.

Capturing, Collating and Sharing

dovec — 2025-06-11 12:17:38 UTC

We generate so much good work on an institution and WHELF level, but it's not easy to find or draw from. Can we do more with the WHELF website to make this practice discoverable, preferably thematically?

Understand that an online conference has many advantages i.e. cost, accessibility, time etc but I think more value does lie in a face to face experience - those invaluable human interactions, conversations, networking etc.

2025-06-11 12:21:58 UTC

Shared guidance and teaching resources

dovec — 2025-06-11 12:25:43 UTC

Along the lines of shared staff training and library resources, as well as the positive impact of topical CoPs, there are a number of shared challenges right now. One of the posts has mentioned OA, and I agree 100%. It would be good to gather these topics (like AI) that we're facing and share our policies, procedures, teaching materials and more so that we're not all reinventing the wheel.

Replacement for Yammer

2025-06-11 12:31:15 UTC

Whatever ends up replacing Yammer, we need to make sure that staff, at every institution, and across all grades, need to know it's a shared space where we can talk to each other and share our experiences - WHELF Yammer is incredibly useful, but possibly not used as much as it could be.

Qualifications for new professionals

2025-06-11 13:08:22 UTC

Is there a way to advise on the curriculum for current MLIS programmes (for example, the one at Aberystwyth)?

Also, being included in discussion for new entry routes: apprenticeships, FE library qualifications, etc.