User Engagement Policy

The Library welcomes and actively seeks feedback from our users. We employ a variety of formal and informal mechanisms for maintaining dialogue, eliciting feedback and ensuring that our services are responsive to user demand and changing user needs.

How to contact us / give feedback

Response to feedback

Responses to our user surveys, focus groups and other activities are made available on our feedback webpages. Additional Library feedback is received via the annual National Student Survey and other University-wide feedback mechanisms. This data is used along with other feedback mechanisms to regularly review and develop our services.

User engagement

We run an annual Suggestions Harvest for 1 week in March giving students and staff the opportunity to comment generally on our services via a brief online comments survey. 

Student Focus Groups are held to get more in-depth feedback from our customers on our services, facilities, or potential changes.

Staff Student Consultative Committees and Research Student Consultative Committees: The purpose of the SSCCs and RSCC is to establish a formal means of discussion and communication between departments and students on matters relating to academic issues affecting their studies. Library staff attend SSCCs and RSCC and report back on any issues involving the Library and report back to the departments on actions taken where appropriate.

Sample weeks are held 3 times a year during November, March and May. The aims of sample weeks are to:

    • Record categorised enquiries – review categories in advance
    • Plan and carry out activities to gather feedback on selected IS activities and services

The themes will vary from one sample week to the next depending on which services or user groups we wish to investigate or prioritise. However every year we will collect general qualitative feedback from users on our services to get an overview of how our services are doing.

Engagement with Undeb Aber

Library staff hold regular meetings with the Undeb Aber Academic Affairs Officer. This is an opportunity for the Academic Affairs Officer to raise any issues that have been reported, and also an opportunity for the Library to report on any changes or improvements to the service.

The Library also conducts more informal user engagement exercises, including holding regular meetings with Support Service colleagues and other partners in the university to discuss issues and agree any actions required to improve access to Library facilities and services for students and staff.

Complaints Procedure

We are committed to providing you with excellent service, and we invite your feedback to help us to improve what we do. We recognise, however, that sometimes we may not provide the level of service that you expect. If you would like to take up any matter you think is unsatisfactory about the service you have received from us, please refer to our Complaints Procedure. We promise that we will deal with your complaint as quickly as possible, in confidence, keep you updated, and look at the pattern of complaints to identify areas where we need to improve.

This Policy is maintained by the University Library Services, was last reviewed in May 2025 and is due for review in May 2026.