Please provide your institutional context and discuss why you decided to develop Virtual Reading Room (VRR) or Virtual Teaching Space (VTS) services.
Heritage Collections at University of Edinburgh preserve, provide access to, and interpret the University’s diverse and unique collections, which include rare books, archives, artworks, historic musical instruments, sound collections, and more. We serve the staff and student community at the University, as well as visiting researchers and members of the public. We have a number of access services across four sites (three libraries and a public museum), which include: Reading Rooms, Teaching with Collections, Media Request & Licensing, and Research Enquiries.
Conversations about developing VRR and VTS services began in 2019 and a staff member visited the services at John Rylands and UCL to benchmark. Development began in earnest in mid-2020, due to the sudden need to provide access to collections whilst in-person visits weren’t possible, and was led by our front-facing user services team. The impact of the pandemic definitely made the need for this service much more visible and procurement of funding for equipment and staff much quicker and easier.
Please tell us a few things about your VRR or VTS service (e.g. when it was launched, what is mostly used for, the types of collections shown etc.)
We trialled the service during the second UK lockdown in early 2021, with a staff member working on site ad hoc to deliver appointments by request. Full launch was for the new academic year in September 2021.
The VRR service is offered on a Monday, between 10:00-16:00. Appointments are 1-hour long, although users are welcome to make repeat appointments in successive weeks. We ask for one weeks’ advance notice for new appointments, to allow time to collect the material. We can offer up to 2 appointments at a time, so 12 maximum a day, although the demand is much lower than this and averages 2-3 a day.
We have 2 ceiling-mounted Wolfvision visualisers, one in a small meeting room and the second in a larger teaching space. These spaces have a Bose videobar to provide audio and video during the appointment. We also have 2 portable desktop Ipevo visualisers, which can be plugged straight into laptops, suitable for smaller items. We default to using Microsoft Teams to deliver appointments, although we have institutional Zoom accounts so can also use that if easier for the user. The VRR service depends on the user having their own IT equipment and the digital skills to use video-conferencing platforms.
Types of collections shown vary, but tend to be text-based. Archive collections which are covered by data protection legislation cannot be shown in the VRR service, due to the possibility that the user might screenshot the material. This material can be viewed in the in-person Reading Room, with the proviso of no photography, therefore there is some material which can be viewed in-person and not via VRR.
Who is using the service(s) currently? Has the audience changed since the time of the launch?
The service is generally used by researchers who do not have the resources to travel to Edinburgh in-person, whether that is due to funding or time. It can also be used by people who can’t travel due to disability. Of the 46 VRR appointments delivered between July 2024 and end of June 2025, 17 users were based in the UK and the rest were international. When the service was launched, travel was still disrupted, so slightly more domestic researchers were using the service, who might now choose to come in-person.
Have the types of use expanded or changed since the time of the launch (e.g. more supplementary)? If use has changed, why do you think this happened and what does this mean for the service?
Reasons for access vary hugely, from personal to professional. At time of launch, dependence on the VRR service was higher as in-person services were closed. Now, it is more likely to be used in combination with other access services.
Appointments are often used as a supplement to our in-person Reading Room and digitisation services. For example, a user might have a VRR appointment to scope large amounts of material which has only a basic listing in the catalogue and see if it’s relevant to their research before committing funding to travel to Edinburgh. Or, they might use the appointment to narrow down which pages/sections of the material are most relevant before requesting professional digitisation (which has a cost). Users can take screenshots during their appointment, or we will take up to 20 basic-quality photos for them for free following it.
The use of the VTS service has also changed since launch. At the start, academic staff were using it to deliver hybrid sessions to allow students who were at home to attend classes. Now, students are expected to attend in-person and academic staff use the visualisers to show details of large-format items during class, so it is used less often.
How has the institution benefitted from offering a VRR or VTS service?
The institution has benefitted in that it is more strongly fulfilling its mission to provide world-class teaching and research facilities. The Heritage Collections department has likewise benefitted by providing a more inclusive and accessible service for its users, which is part of its strategic plan and commitment to continuous improvement. Collections can now be accessed by a much wider audience. The department holds a Customer Service Excellence Award, as well as Archives Accreditation, and evidence of the VRR and VTS services have been used in both applications. We have engaged in many conversations with peers across the sector about our VRR and VTS services, providing feedback on its development and demos of the equipment, and have benefitted from this knowledge-sharing.
How does your VRR or VTS service relate to other services or policies in your institution (e.g. linked to digitisation or collection development strategy)?
Our VRR service relates to our Collections Management Policy, specifically the Collections Access & Loans policy, which includes the aim of maximising access to collections – “University Collections aims to offer improved physical, social and intellectual access to Collections by alternative means where possible, including through lectures, events, digital, community outreach and social media and publications.”
The VRR service also relates to two of Heritage Collections’ strategic goals – to maintain our commitment to accessible services; and to work closely with Digital Library to provide the most equitable access to our digitised and digital collections and resources.
What are the current challenges you face in terms of sustaining the service(s)? If there are challenges, are there any plans for overcoming these?
Challenges for sustaining the service are generally based on staffing and the competing demands of other access services. Our in-person Reading Room is closed on Mondays to allow for the VRR service, however, the relatively small number of VRR appointments compared to in-person Reading Room appointments occasionally makes this difficult to justify. Robust reports on the positive impact of the service for our users, interpreted in various different ways, are regularly prepared by service managers to safeguard the service.
Institution and sector-wide challenges also have an impact. Recruitment restrictions instigated as a result of sector-wide financial cuts stretch the capacities of existing staff to deliver all access services, including VRR and VTS. Business continuity plans have been prepared to mitigate the impact of reduced staffing on our services and users, but offerings may have to be reduced in future.
Who is responsible for leading or delivering VRR and VTS sessions in your institution?
The Research Services team (led by myself). This is the front-facing, user-focused team who deliver all of our access services. VRR sessions are delivered by the Archive & Library Assistants; paraprofessional staff with a range of backgrounds and specialisms. A fixed-term 0.5FTE Virtual Access Assistant was included as part of the original funding bid for the service and this has since been transferred to an open-ended contract on core-funding. This staff member provides technical support and maintenance for all the AV equipment used for the VRR and VTS services. She also trains academic staff to use the visualisers in teaching as requested.
What are the lessons learned from planning, developing, and offering VRR or VTS services in your institution? Are there any specific lessons with regards to the sustainability of the services?
Usage of the service has remained steady, but low in comparison to our in-person services. This can sometimes make the staff resource required more difficult to justify, despite the excellent qualitative feedback we receive from service users. We recently gathered and analysed some stats on the carbon-savings from our remote services. Between July 2024 and end of June 2025 we delivered 46 VRR appointments. Total user travelled saved (calculated as the crow flies; return trips) was 219,255km and total carbon saved was 41,389 CO2e. This aligns directly with departmental and institutional strategies to increase the sustainability of our services and is therefore an excellent way to represent and prove the value of these services to stakeholders, ensuring their continuation.
Please provide any additional information you think may be useful or any relevant links.
Concurrent to our VRR and VTS services, we also developed and launched a Remote Streamer service to provide offsite access to our large collection of sound recordings (33,000+) in the School of Scottish Studies Archives. This provides 1-day access to an online streaming platform for users to access from their own laptops wherever they are. Users of this service on the whole tend to be more UK domestic than VRR users (mostly due to the content of the collections), but we’ve still had users as far away as Taiwan. We also have far more repeat users for this service. In the same period above, we delivered 202 streamer appointments, saving 52,113km in user travel and 10,125 CO2e.
Author:
Daisy Stafford, Archive & Library Access Manager (CRC/NCL), University of Edinburgh
Relevant links:
Virtual / Remote Access – Library – The University of Edinburgh