ACRL Assessment Discussion Group
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Welcome and Introductions
Discussion #1. Closing the Loop - Implementing Changes Based on Assessment Results –Liz Mengel - Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins has no formal assessment program, but they do have a user experience librarian. They are doing “action oriented research.” Liz compared the process of doing assessment research to Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief:
- Shock
- Denial
- Anger
- Depression
- Acceptance
- Integration
Assessment can lead to small, quick changes that can be made based on assessment results, such as changing service hours based on seat and gate counts, and changing staffing based on an assessment of reference questions using the READ analysis tool.
Participants discussed assessment in their own libraries and reported on small changes they had made based on assessment:
- Students like privacy in public
- Students wanted keyboard free area - books only
- Lounge furniture works best when it is arranged in pod areas (two chairs)
- Patron-driven acquisitions
- Students who wanted 24-hour access to coffee and tea were thrilled with a hot water dispenser (they bring the tea bag and mug)
Consider Rapid Iteration Prototyping, e.g. Small changes in staffing of info desk
Another kind of assessment can lead to large organization changes. Plan on seven years to implement these. Example provided was ClimateQual. This is “hard to do” – “you need to chunk the work into small changes.”
Liz recommends the book, Academic Library Value: The Impact Starter Kit by Megan Oakleaf.
Key question to ask when doing assessment is “What types of decisions do you want to occur as a result of this assessment?”
See PDF of slides and notes at the bottom of this post.
Discussion #2: Conducting Ethnographic Research in Academic Libraries”
Mary Thill - Northeastern Illinois University
Mary was involved with the grant writing and participated in some of the research for ERIAL, a collaborative project involving research at five academic libraries in Illinois (DePaul University, Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU), Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS).). The project site is located at: http://www.erial project.org
The project started in 2008 and cost $300,000. Most of this cost went toward hiring two anthropologists and developing a tool kit for libraries who want to conduct ethnography at their own library.
The research question was, “How are students completing their research questions? What are the mutual expectations of students, instructors and librarians of who did what?”
Thill addressed the question of “Why ethnography?” She suggests that ethnography is a method for discovering “What students are actually doing rather than what they say they are doing.”
The group then discussed the different methods used - cognitive maps, mapping diaries, photographic survey.
We talked about how best to get participation in these activities, some of which were time-intensive. An incentive might be a pizza party, a gift certificate for coffee at the library café. Students don’t necessarily need incentives: “students do it because they want to.” These methods are “Hypotheses generating rather than proving something.”
Mary distributed a very useful table of Selected Ethnographic Research Methods. The source is: Asher, Andrew and Susan Miller. So You Want to Do Anthropology in Your Library? Or A Practical Guide to Ethnographic Research in Academic Libraries. ERIAL http://www.erialproject.org/publications/toolkit
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Nancy Turner and Carolyn Radcliff
February 3, 2014