Meet the Shortlist – Christine Love-Rodgers

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian at the University of Edinburgh

Our award judges noted the strength of Christine’s nomination across every aspect of the award criteria, praising in particular her commitment to advocacy and sharing best practice both within Scotland and internationally. 

Christine aims to be active in sharing best practice within the HE Library sector. Earlier in 2022, she presented two papers at the LILAC conference, the leading sector conference for library & information literacy in Higher Education Libraries, and she will also be presenting at the CILIPS Annual Conference in Dundee. She has already been approached by several international colleagues who attended LILAC to share further discussion about her service’s LibSmart online information literacy course with their institutions. In 2019, she undertook an ERASMUS programme staff training week at the University of Gottingen Library, and she has encouraged her team to take up opportunities for international networking. Christine has regularly attended and contributed to the conferences and meetings of the Relationship Management in Higher Education Libraries Group, which she has found helpful for networking to share experiences and gain a view of best practice within the HE Library sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed strategic challenges for both Christine’s library and the wider library academic support community, and understanding the data picture about library services and resources has been key to her implementation of effective adaptations. She undertook a team review process which helped her to focus on data driven decision making for developing quality library academic support. These include team wide mechanisms for feedback gathering on teaching, and procedures for regularly reviewing that feedback to inform and develop service improvement. Learning from best practice in other institutions and gathering data on their own practice has also helped Christine to support staff within her team to manage competing priorities. She surveyed practice at other HEIs to inform their review of 1:2:1 appointments with students, investigating how others balanced a visible and equitable service with demands on staff time. She successfully applied for a University Student Experience grant to employ two student interns to support their Library Dissertation Festival, the first student interns employed in her team, and this has now become an established part of their staffing resource. Christine worked with them to enable the creation of diverse voices and stories about how the Library can help students, which the interns promote via peer to peer social media. Christine also led on the LibSmart online information literacy course from first concept to completion, engaging with funders and stakeholders in the Library and in the College of CAHSS and coordinating the multiple teams involved in development and delivery.

Since she gained her postgraduate qualification in Information and Library Studies, Christine has continued to actively develop her qualifications and professional skills. Having gained her Chartership in 1999 and revalidated several times, she was successful in gaining Fellowship of the CILIP in 2019 (and has since revalidated). Since January 2018, she has been a Trustee of CILIPS, where as part of the Finance and Staffing Committee she has regularly contributed to decision making on the award of CILIPS Professional Development funding to members. Christine has been a Mentor for CILIP Professional Registration since 2017, and successfully supported candidates through their submissions. Most recently, she has been appointed as a Professional Registration Support Officer for Scotland, working as part of a UK wide group supporting and delivering training to candidates. Christine believes there is a key link between the reflective processes staff develop by undertaking CILIP Professional Registration and professional practice for teaching and learning in libraries. To support this, she ran an informal professional registration group for University of Edinburgh staff, which has led to an increase in the number of professional registration candidates. This is now running via Teams, providing a pathway for candidates to provide peer to peer support as well as to get support from colleagues who have achieved professional registration.