Lean Library in 2024: Growing Our Community

Academic libraries are in a transformative period, with the rise of Artificial Intelligence and Open Access driving dramatic changes in user behaviour, discovery workflows and publishing models. Lean Library was originally created by librarians, for librarians, to support them in this transformation by embedding library content and resources in user online workflows via an app on their browser – whether are on Google, PubMed, ChatGPT or beyond.

With librarians at the heart of Technology from Sage’s strategy and values, fostering and growing the community of libraries that use Lean Library is as important as the product innovations and developments we make (psst read about those developments here). As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the growing Lean Library community, and how libraries are utilizing Lean Library to support student success and mental health, provide more equitable access to off-campus students, and more.

In this blog, we delve into Lean Library’s community highlights of 2024, including feedback from the student and researcher users that Lean Library ultimately benefits.

New Library Partners In 2024

This year, we were delighted to welcome many new institutions on board with Lean Library from around the world to support their different library strategies. Auburn University Libraries implemented Lean Library to enhance library discovery and support their commitment to provide exceptional student-centered experiences and impactful research by faculty. Similarly, Oral Roberts University adopted Lean Library to help combat student stress, which can be brought on by the overwhelm of new academic tools and skills they need to learn.

Lean Library also welcomed the University of Leeds as a new partner in the UK. Like Auburn University and Oral Roberts University, the University of Leeds is taking all the power of their library into online workflows with Lean Library’s premium ‘Futures’ features.

Here are just some of the new library partners we welcomed this year:

Lean Library in Action: Inspiring Success Stories from Institutions

In 2024, universities continued to improve student success and boost research output with Lean Library. Below we share some inspiring success stories of what institutions achieved with Lean Library this year:

Samford University brought special collections to students with Lean Library

Samford began promoting Lean Library to its campus in August 2024 to enhance resource discoverability, inspired by positive testimonials from other libraries. Lean Library connects Samford students to the university’s extensive digital collections through content integration and personalized notifications. Lean Library allows Samford to set up keywords that link directly from popular web pages like Wikipedia and Google Scholar to their special collections, boosting discovery and usage. Since launching in August, Samford saw a nearly 200% increase in engaged users and saved students nearly 450 hours by streamlining access to resources. Read more about Samford University’s story here.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam embedded Lean Library into its library strategy to increase the use of Open Educational Resources

Vrije Universiteit combines Lean Library and Talis to complement each other, creating a more efficient system. By implementing Lean Library, VU streamlined access to enhance the use of open educational resources and library holdings, resulting in cost savings and improved user satisfaction. This approach has influenced how lecturers design their courses. The recommended workflow involves lecturers having Lean Library installed in their browsers, so when searching for content online, it directs them to materials already available through the library’s WMS/OCLC system, providing a clear overview of accessible resources to add to their reading lists. Read more here.

University of Hertfordshire promoted their library to students with Lean Library

The University of Hertfordshire saw outstanding success after introducing Lean Library, achieving an over 2,000% increase in engaged users within just three months. Through a range of targeted promotional strategies, the university drove the adoption of Lean Library and achieved impressive outcomes, including streamlining access to library resources nearly 80k times and a nearly 50% increase in interlibrary loans, with 17% directly attributed to Lean Library.

Testimonials from other libraries on what they achieved with Lean Library this year

Making Learning and Research Easier: Feedback from Users in 2024

While Lean Library is a library solution, it ultimately benefits the students, researchers and other patrons who the library serves. Students and researchers are strapped for time and overwhelmed by the number of academic tools they need to learn. Lean Library helps reduce this overwhelm as an easy-to-use tool that streamlines the research journey, offering the best user experience. Below we share snippets from what our users say about Lean Library.

Building Stronger Connections: Community Building in 2024

2024 has been an exciting year for Lean Library, filled with webinars, conferences, and events that brought librarians together from all over the world – from the United States to Europe to Australia.

Lean Library’s user community joined the Technology from Sage APAC Insight 2024 in Australia

This year, we were thrilled to host the Technology from Sage APAC Insight event at the University of Queensland in Australia. Over two days, thirty members of the academic community gathered to dive into important librarian topics, with a special focus on AI, including a workshop and lively discussions.

If this sounds interesting to you for 2025, be sure to register here!

Webinars that got librarians talking

Our 2024 webinar series brought in some amazing guest speakers and sparked great conversations. Here are the top 5 webinars of the year that really stood out:

Lean Library’s World Tour

In 2024, Technology from Sage sponsored conferences around the world to connect with academic libraries, hear about their challenges and opportunities – and always give away our Lean Library Llama mascot prize to winning librarians.

Below are the conferences we attended:

Larry the Lean Library Llama is always a big hit amongst librarians and students:

That’s a Wrap on Lean Library in 2024

As we wrap up 2024, the Lean Library team would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our university partners for a fantastic year. We’re excited to continue connecting libraries with their users in 2025 and beyond.

If your library would like to increase usage of library resources, boost the visibility of your library or want to embrace a more patron-centric approach, request a demo today.