Charter, Policies & Customer Service
The library aims to provide resources, services and expertise which will support all of our customers in pursuit of their learning, research and teaching. To this end we have prepared a number of documents which demonstrate our commitment to delivering high quality and excellent services to our customers.
Customer Charter
The Customer Charter is a brief document which details our responsibility to our customers and what you can expect from us and our services. It also establishes what we ask from our customers in return to help us to achieve these aims.
Missions and Values Statement
Our goal is to provide high quality library services and resources in support of the education and research activities of the students and staff of the University and of our other customer groups. The Mission Vision and Values Statement documents this goal and lists the values with which we hope to achieve it.
Reaching the Wider Community
As a key University resource, the Library Outreach Programme seeks to engage the wider community through a variety of different membership possibilities and other activities. These engagements are detailed in the Reaching the Wider Community document.
Standards of Service
Our Standards of Service details our commitment to ensuring a consistent and excellent delivery of service across the Library.
As part of the Library's continued drive to offer transparency regarding all aspects of our service to customers, the following policies and regulations are available for consultation. Currently, not all policies are not available online so links to these documents in PDF format are provided. Hard copies can be made available on request.
Communications Policy
Effective communication is essential in order to provide good customer service and to fulfil the standards of service set by the Library. The Communications Policy aims to outline our commitment to effective communication by documenting the ways in which we communicate with our customers, our communication objectives and our ongoing endeavour to listen to and respond to our customers through consultation and feedback.
Comments, compliments, complaints: Customer Feedback Policy
The Library makes every effort to provide a high standard of service to all of our customers. However, in the event that you wish to comment on any aspect of the service, the Customer Feedback Policy will outline the process you can follow.
Defaulters Policy
The HSC Defaulters Policy has been created in order to set down the responsiblities of The Healthcare Library Service and its customers in terms of loans, fines and charges. The policy has been produced to establish clear guidelines for all library service points, which is essential if customers are to be treated fairly and consistently throughout the Library. By detailing the variety of methods that customers can avail of to manage their loans and their library account, Library Services aims to encourage good library practice by customers.
Donations Policy
The Library is grateful to those who have made donations and who offer unsolicited material to the Library. Many of the items are accepted, ranging from individual works presented by the author to substantial collections, would not otherwise by obtained by the Library and these make an important contribution to teaching, learning and research activites at Queen's. The Donations Policy offers guidelines to help potential donors.
Healthcare Library Borrowers' Policy
The Healthcare Library Borrowers' Policy has been created in order to set down the responsibilities of the Healthcare Library and its customers in terms of loans, fines and charges. This document has been produced to establish clear guidelines for all library service points, which is essential if customers are to be treated fairly and consistently throughout the Library. By detailing the variety of methods that customers can avail of to manage their loans and their library account, we aim to encourage good library practice by customers.
Library Regulations
The purpose of the Library Regulations is to enable users to make the fullest use of the University's library resources, buildings and services. The Regulations cover library access, conduct in the Queen's library sites, borrowing and other services and resources. Full Library regulations are also included in the Regulations for students (other regulations) pages available from the University General Regulations webpage. Please note that local HSC Trust policies may apply in some Healthcare Libraries.
Resource Development and Management Policy
The Resource Development and Management Policy outlines the Library policy in relation to its resources. It includes general guidelines on their selection, management and rationalisation in support of teaching and research.
Customer Service Excellence
The Library continues to maintain Customer Service Excellence Accreditation and is using this standard as a driver for continuous improvement throughout our services and to validate what we already do.
What is Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Accreditation?
CSE is an independent accreditation of the quality and standard of our customer care. The standard is championed by the UK Government. CSE covers all aspects of our engagement with our customers: front-line and face-to-face support, liaison and communication and how we engage with customers in developing our services and strategy.
What we are doing
As part of the CSE process we are committed to seeking feedback and opinions from our customer base. To this end we actively seek and use customer experience and feedback through a number of channels to develop and improve the service we provide.
Statement on potentially harmful language in Library Search
This statement covers harmful language that you may encounter when using Library collections and resources.
The Library at Queen’s University provides access to a large variety of teaching and research material. Our collections are diverse and have been gathered over a long period of time, with some material reflecting the language and values of their period. We acknowledge the content and existing descriptions of our collections reflect the personal and societal biases of both their creators and the times in which they were produced. As such it is not uncommon to encounter material containing offensive language or imagery.
Describing and interpreting the collections
Following standard professional practice our collections are described using controlled vocabularies and thesauri, mainly the Library of Congress Subject Headings. While the official bodies are reviewing and updating the terminology used, outdated and harmful vocabulary might still be present in our catalogues. This includes language that is racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic or demeans the humanity of the people we describe.
We recognise we have a responsibility to describe materials in a culturally responsive and respectful manner, and to repair our description when it contains inappropriate language. We also have a responsibility to describe, interpret, and present our collections in ways that make them useful to a wide variety of people. We are committed teto reparative description work and are undertaking a project to review and update offensive controlled language in our catalogue records.
In some instances, the standards require us to use language transcribed from the source itself and in such cases potentially harmful words are not censored because they provide historical context for understanding the time and place and the position of their creators and publishers. Also, many of our resources are hosted by external institutions and commercial vendors, which create and provide accompanying descriptive records that we are unable to amend. The Library at Queen’s University adheres to the Cataloguing Code of Ethics. We are committed to creating an inclusive culture and support the University’s commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. We understand that terminology constantly evolves over time and that efforts to create respectful and inclusive descriptions is an ongoing process. We aim to keep abreast of new changes and apply these to our metadata.
If you discover language which you perceive to be harmful or discriminatory in our descriptive content, please use this online form to tell us.
Drafted
September 2025
This statement was developed by the Library’s EDI Group with the Inclusive Cataloguing project group. It was adapted from a number of statements generously shared or obtained online and we gratefully acknowledge the work already done in this area. In particular, we have used the Statements from Cardiff University, University of York, Aberystwyth University, Glasgow School of Art, National Library of Scotland, John Hopkins University and Brandeis University.
We will update this statement as required to reflect our evolving understanding of the issues involved.