in the Library and Collections Division. This means they are separated from staff working in related research and learning support services, including teams and sections dealing with scholarly communication, and collection development and management, and also do not report to the de facto library service head, the Director of Library & University Collections.

3.2 Reporting relationships

In UK universities, the Librarian traditionally reported to the Vice-Chancellor or Principal (as the chief executive officer of the institution), which often differentiated the library from the IT/computing service; but the adoption of more formal management arrangements in higher education institutions over the past two decades and the reconfiguration of administrative support functions into groups of professional services has resulted in different structures. Nearly three-quarters of the library directors in the sample report directly(or indirectly, via another senior officer) to the University’s Registrar/Secretary/Chief Operating Officer. Chief Operating Officer (COO) is becoming the dominant title in use, found in half of the institutions.

Only Oxford and Cambridge seem to have retained their traditional reporting line in its original form, although the head of the converged service at Edinburgh (who holds the formal title of Vice-Principal for Knowledge Management, CIO and University Librarian) reports directly to the Principal. At the time of data collection, the university librarian/library director at Manchester and Imperial reported to the equivalent of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Deputy Rector at Imperial); at Leeds and Nottingham, they reported to a Pro-Vice Chancellor (PVC), in both cases the PVC with responsibility for education/teaching and learning. The grouping of the library with education/student services