Tips on providing free public access to your university library

Hello, I’m Andrew Barker. I’m library director at Lancaster University library.

Today I’m going to talk to you about Lancaster University library’s community card. I’m going to tell you about what it is and how we did it and some top tips so you can do the same.

So Lancaster University’s community card: it gives free access to members of the public to our library building and to our print collections. People can come in, register to borrow and it’s free, no fees, open to everybody. So why did we do it? We did it because we’re very keen on open access.

And if we ask publishers to be open access, we should be making our own collections open access. We’re also very keen to be a gateway, a doorway into the university.

I’m going to give you some top tips now, so if you want to do the same you can.

My first tip is work with your library colleagues in the creation of a library vision. Don’t introduce something like this cold; connect it to something more broad. We have connected it to our library vision, which states we will connect, will innovate, will include. All of which ties really nicely to the idea of giving free access to the public to the library collections.

My second tip is work with senior colleagues within the university. You might be concerned that people think with external fees you’re bringing in more income, the loss of that might have an impact. You might worry that people will think you’re a university library, shouldn’t you be open just to university students, researchers and staff?

My view is, front and centre, that a university has a responsibility to its local community, that actually the income is not that significant. And if you work and explain and help senior colleagues to understand the reason behind a community card, they’ll fall in line, they’ll really get it. Certainly in my institution, they’re very excited about the potential of what a community card could do.

My next tip is to make sure you tell people about it. And telling people about things doesn’t mean simply putting it on a website. We’ve worked really closely with external stakeholders team at the university. We’ve also worked with the press office to make sure that internal and external networks are used.

I did a recorded interview for Radio Lancashire, it’s been in some of the local newspapers. So making sure there’s real visibility to it and tying it always back to what the university is trying to do.

My next tip is that, I think, always work with local community groups as well and give value to what you’re trying to do by curating and creating content that might be valuable to a local community group. So we worked closely with Lancaster Black History Group on a project, and we created a small collection that they could make use of for a project, for themselves.

So, there’s a few tips. From my experience, and from our experience, it’s been really popular. Staff love it. It’s great to be able to offer up to the public this opportunity to engage with the library. It’s certainly shown the university, more broadly, colleagues across the university, the value of the library as a doorway into the university. It has maximised value of our print collections and usage of our print collections, and I think it’s a great way to bring town and gown together.

So why not try it yourself and create a community card to give access to your library to your community?

Andrew Barker is director of library services and learning development at Lancaster University.

His team has been shortlisted for Outstanding Library Team of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards 2022. A full list of shortlisted candidates can be found here.

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