Hello. As Collection Assessment Librarian for The University of North Texas Libraries in Denton, Texas, I'm preparing a DEI collection audit initiative. I want this to be long-term and continuous, examining different aspects for different parts of the collection. The first project will probably examine diversity of identities of content-creators of our more recent acquisitions. We are presuming that the bulk of our collections are not diverse, but we are wanting to see how well we've doing in the last 10 years or so.
Karen R. Harker, MLS, MPH
Preferred Pronouns: she, her, hers
Collection Assessment Librarian
University of North Texas Libraries
1155 Union Blvd.
#305190
Denton, TX 76203-5017
940-565-2688
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Original Message:
Sent: 7/19/2022 3:45:00 PM
From: Susanna Cowan
Subject: Hello from your new co-conveners Susanna and Paul!
To the ACRL Assessment Discussion Group community,
Hello from your new co-conveners!
The library assessment community is both broad and diverse, as are the forms of assessment we practice and our individual roles in relation to library assessment at our institutions. Some of us are administrators, some of us sit in assessment-dedicated roles, and others in our community practice assessment as a part of our work in information literacy, research support, outreach, collections, access services, and everything else.
What brings us together here is an interest in library assessment in its many forms. With assessment, we tell stories about ourselves and our work in order to better our organizations and document our reach and impact.
How we do that, day to day, varies greatly depending on the scope of the questions we're asking.
We hope to plan some formal events this year, but also to bring the discussion to life here.
Let's introduce ourselves! Beyond your name and role, we invite you to briefly (2-3 sentences) share assessment projects you're working on right now, no matter the size. Our hope is to shine some light on the tremendous range of our work - and to give us all the chance to say: I'm out here doing this!
To start us off, here's what we're up to this July:
- Susanna: I'm just winding up an internal study of how our staff perceived the pandemic's effect on their work and their ability to provide service to and collaborate with stakeholders. I'm also in the "configuration" stage of LibQUAL and am working with a group to choose our optional (custom) questions… (the dilemma of sky's the limit!)
- Paul: We're looking at data and comments from a user satisfaction survey that we administered during the spring semester that indicated a hospitality gap between our minoritized and white students as well as a number of space issues. We are also working out ways to correlate exposure to library spaces and services with learning outcomes similar to work at UNC-Charlotte as reported in a 2020 paper from Becky Croxton and Anne Moore.
We look forward to getting to know the community better over the course of the year.
Be well,
Susanna Cowan
Coordinator for Library Research & Assessment
University of Connecticut
Paul Orkiszewski
Dean of the Libraries
Radford University
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Susanna Cowan
Coordinator for Library Research & Assessment
University of Connecticut
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