Date of next meeting

Good news is that jessica wykes from City university is able to host our next meeting.

Time and location are:

Thursday 10^th March 2:30 – 5pm, The room is AG01 in our College Building – access on St John Street: http://www.city.ac.uk/visit#9541=1

Further details soon.

 

 

Start 2016 with some recommended reading from our new monthly bibliography service

To start of 2016 we are launching a new monthly current  alert newsletter  which will highlight useful articles and reports relating to Disability Higher Education, Teaching and Learning.
You should be able to view and download this from slideshare.

Articles cover student funding, social identity, library design and assessibility

First meeting report and presentations

Aims of the Group
The first meeting of the new forum took place on 26^th November 2015, 2pm at the LSE Library. It was chaired by Joanne Taplin-Green who explained the aims of the group.The full minutes can be downloaded


LSE Buddying Scheme

Jo Taplin-Green then gave a presentation on the LSE Library Buddying scheme-  a volunteer based partnership between lse library staff and individual students which offers 1-2-1 support in all aspects of library use from accessing reading lists to fetching, searching and borrowing books. View the slides:


The Role of JISC

Margaret Mckay a subject specialists within the Jisc customer services team who provides support in embedding access and inclusion into strategic and operational practice. Provided an overview of the work of JISC in terms of guidance, advocacy and case studies.
One great example from RSC Scotland was a case study of Jenifer Murray a languages student using RoboBraille http://www.robobraille.org/ to create information in alternative formats at the University of the West of Scotland. She would like group members to become more involved in giving feedback on the guides produced by Jisc and in developing case studies.
For further information on this see the associated document


Areas for Development
As a result of the meeting
Heather will be developing a blog to exchange minutes, slides from meetings and any good practice notes. 
She is also going to set up a JISCMail distribution list for discussion amongst members.
Also to be established is a scoop.it page to share current news stories and reports.
http://www.scoop.it/t/disability-issues-for-uk-libraries-and-librarians

Library Champions for Disability Access - a new forum

Library Champions for Disability Access

Is a new grassroots community of practice form for all information professionals which is
going to be launched later in 2015 in affiliation with ALISS
We aim to offer librarians, information professionals from all sectors an informal place to
contact, meet and exchange and exchange ideas. Disability is defined broadly to include
neurodiversity conditions, mental health issues, physical or intellectual impairment. We
believe that library users should not be ‘disabled’ by technical, environmental or social
conditions in libraries and urge all those who support this to join us to improve access for
all.

Our proposal

• We aim to offer face to face meetings in the London and South East area. It is
aimed to hold these 3 times per year and to circulate hosting of events wherever
possible amongst members.

• Meetings will have a focused topic with a brief presentation or demo followed
by discussion by participants and an opportunity to share ideas and experience.
Topics of interest include: physical access, assistive technology, library support
mechanisms for disabled users, staff training and legal and copyright issue relating
to the special needs of our users.

• While physical meetings will be limited to this area (to avoid overlap with other
organisations) we are not restricting membership and aim to offer a broader
mailing list and website of information available to all interested parties.

• The organisation will be under the auspices of ALISS