Durrant and ILS Task Force Honored at CLIC Luncheon

CLIC awarded special honors for outstanding service to Ben Durrant and to the ILS Task Force at the CLIC luncheon on December 14, 2012.

Ben Durrant, Webmaster/Developer at the University of St. Thomas, was awarded the CLIC User Service Award for 2011-2012.  This award is presented annually to an individual within CLIC who has done the most to improve service to users during the past year. Ben was cited for his excellent work improving CLICnet's public display and mobile version.  As one nominator stated, "In all, Ben’s work provides great value for the students, faculty, and staff of our member institutions, improving their experience with the catalog and allowing us to show that CLIC is keeping abreast of current developments in library web services."

The CLIC ILS Task Force was awarded the CLIC Group Effectiveness Award for 2011-2012. This award is presented annually to a group within CLIC which has best exemplified group action for the benefit of CLIC and its mission. As one nominator summed up the Task Force's contributions, "For their persistence, patience, flexibility, analytical thinking, cogent writing, and energy and courage in the work they have already completed and the work they will continue in January in order to provide the analysis that the CLIC organization needs to make a good decision about the future of our shared system." The ILS Task Force members include Becky Schleicher, Paddy Satzer, Linda Hulbert, Emily Asch, Earleen Warner, Jon Neilson, Angi Faiks, Jennifer Carlson, and Dixie Ohlander.

For additional photos from the CLIC luncheon, see CLIC's Facebook page and CLIC News blog post.

Leif Enger at 2012 CLIC Luncheon

Award-winning Minnesota author, Leif Enger, was the luncheon speaker at CLIC's annual holiday event.  Leif is the author of Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome, and is currently writing his third novel.

After the luncheon, Leif signed copies of his books.

Special guests honored at the CLIC luncheon included new Minitex Executive Director Valerie Horton, former CLIC Executive Director Tom Nichol, and library directors Julie Rochat and Carol Johnson who are retiring at the end of this year.

There was also a drawing for door prizes and centerpieces, and four lucky winners went home with copies of Leif Enger's books.

For information on the 2012 CLIC Award winners, see the CLIC News blog post.  For additional photos from the CLIC luncheon, see CLIC's Facebook page.

Annual Authority Control Workshop Jan. 10

Time: 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Date: Thursday, January 10, 2013

Location: St. Catherine University Library (Room 110)

CLIC's annual Authority Control Workshop will be on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at St. Catherine’s library, Room 110.   Anyone from a CLIC member library interested in learning more about authority control and participating in hands on authority work is welcome.  In the afternoon there will be time to work independently at a computer station (bring your login information for Millennium and Connexion) on authority headings.  Do not plan to work from your own laptop.  We will periodically break for conversation, to share questions, concerns and/or best practices.

Program:

Mark Ehlert from MINITEX will join us in the morning session to provide us an update and answer our questions regarding RDA and RDA Authority Headings.  In the afternoon, session we will discuss how CLIC institutions will deal with RDA in the ILS.  There is also the opportunity to work on authority headings. 

Parking: A parking permit is required.  Please submit car owner's name, license plate number, and email address to Martha Vest (mrvest@stkate.edu) by Wednesday, January 2, 2013 to receive a parking permit for the event. 

Lunch: Bring your own lunch or purchase one at the cafeteria.

Registration now open for Assessment Immersion!

Andrea and Ginny can't bring Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame to St. Paul, but they can share what they learned at ACRL's 2012 Immersion Assessment Track workshop. Learn by doing as Andrea and Ginny guide you through selected techniques and strategies learned at Immersion. Focusing on course-based assessment, you will "corral your fears" and design measurable learning outcomes you can use this spring. Bring ideas for an instruction scenario along with an open mind.

January 18, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon (refreshments at 8:30 a.m.)

Program: CLIC Assessment Mini-Workshop: Update from the 2012 ACRL Immersion Assessment Track Conference

Presenters: Andrea Koeppe, UST, and Ginny Heinrich, Macalester

Location: Hall of Fame Room, Leonard Center, Macalester College, St. Paul

Cost: CLIC library staff - free. Non-CLIC - $10.00.

Registration: Pre-registration is required for CLIC and non-CLIC attendees.  To register, please email Maureen Fitzgerald at maureen.fitzgerald@clic.edu .

Questions? Contact Maureen or Ruth at the CLIC Office, 651-644-3878

Assessment at Macalester

The following post is submitted by guest blogger Ginny Moran Heinrich, Assessment Coordinator & Instruction Librarian at DeWitt Wallace Library, Macalester College, and summarizes her presentation at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.


At the DeWitt Wallace Library at Macalester College, formal and informal assessment has been going on for a long time, and this year’s CLIC focus on assessment is giving us a good opportunity to reflect on all that we have been doing over time. One of the strengths of the library has been that assessment is not something for which only one person has responsibility. The library has a group of staff involved in assessment planning, bringing expertise and varied perspectives to our approach to assessment. This has broken down many barriers that other institutions may experience, in that there is a spirit contribution from all staff, using a variety of strategies. The following are some examples of the various ways we have captured information to assess our activities and inform ourselves and our communities.

In 2009, the library started publishing our “dashboard,” which acts a little like an annual report’s executive summary. Our particular implementation is based on a model created by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and we use it to highlight different things each year, across the library’s operations and instruction programs. While initially this was developed primarily as a promotional vehicle for the library itself, we have found that it is used by other campus audiences in ways not specifically anticipated by the library. In particular, the campus Development Office has found it to be useful:

The library's dashboard offers a wonderful visual perspective on key areas of use. The statistics allow us to communicate specifically about the library's stable and strong relevance in a time of constant change for how information is collected and absorbed. With the dashboard snapshot, our reports become much more than a list of titles and authors; it's clear that students and faculty rely on the library as a vital and integral resource for advancing their scholarship.

In addition, the dashboard is used by the Admissions Office for tour information and by people applying for jobs and practicum positions in the library. 

While the dashboard provides a certain snapshot of library activities, it, of course, has limitations. Lack of context for the information is one of them. While it’s interesting to know the average number of people coming into the library in a week, for example, we don’t know how many of them are unique visitors or repeat visitors, and we don’t know what they’re doing once they’re here. Also, by it’s nature, it doesn’t include qualitative analysis; for that we look to other tools such as the MISO (Measuring Information Service Outcomes) survey for general satisfaction and individual usage patterns (to be implemented in spring 2013), and the RPS (Research Practices Survey) for student research competency (administered in Fall 2012). Nonetheless, this tool helps us share our activities with the broader community and provides a touchpoint for us.

Looking at instruction, in Fall 2012 we started taking attendance at instruction sessions and research consultations by collecting student ID numbers and course number and section information when possible. For instruction sessions, we use a Google form open on an iPad and pass the iPad around so students may enter their information or we obtain a class list from the faculty member and enter the student information for the class from that. To track consultations, we simply ask students for the information. Ultimately, we want to see how the number of information fluency instruction sessions or consultations a student attends impacts their performance in various areas. Specifically, to start, we want to look at:

• Overall grades
• Grades/performance in capstone and honors projects
• Critical thinking skills

Eventually we would like to examine any correlations between the number of information fluency instruction sessions or consultations a student attends to other indicators such as academic department information fluency-related outcomes. Collecting this will also tell us exactly how many students participate in information fluency instruction as part of a class or as individuals, as we can create an unduplicated count with the ID information. Starting to collect attendance information now lets us begin with the first class asked critical thinking questions tied to Macalester’s Statement of Student Learning as part of a survey given to all first year students. Collecting ID information also lets us collect additional data about student performance without resurveying students, helping us minimize student survey fatigue. That’s a “win” for everyone.

A less formal feedback mechanism we use is our Ask & Tell comment board. While we provide an online comment “box,” the regular pen-and-paper box is used the most. Through this tool, we receive a mix of collection purchase suggestions, comments about space use, and other random questions or comments. We usually receive about one comment per week; our goal is to respond within 24 hours. Responses are posted on the comment board along with the original question. Informal information collection strategies such as this one have helped us choose furnishings and evaluate iPad check-out services. Not every assessment tool has to be a “formal” one to be effective; it just needs the right attention and mindful reaction.

As we are developing our assessment plan for the next couple of years, and are looking across our various activities, it’s exciting to see all the things we’re doing and what we’re learning. Assessment is about asking questions in order to learn and then acting on what we learn; in many ways, isn’t that the heart of a liberal arts education?

CLIC Circ Committee Tackles Loan Rules

Although the future of our ILS is undecided, the Circulation Committee endeavors to streamline the Loan Rules table (the system rules that control all the circulation of materials).  Since many changes have taken place in the past 10 years, we are determined to make the current list of over 150 rules more manageable and more coordinated instead of super-customized.  

Becky showed a spreadsheet of the rules at this morning’s meeting and talked about different elements of the rules that each school could work on, making minor adjustments to accommodate an existing rule rather than making new ones.  The group will continue to work on this over the next year or so.

Assessment at St. Catherine University

The following post is submitted by guest blogger Sue Gray of St. Catherine University Library, Minneapolis Campus, and summarizes her presentation at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.

For the past two years, St. Catherine University has been preparing for accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission (site visit will happen in February 2013). Carol Johnson, our library director, is on the team charged with preparations for the site visit, and the self-study report that is being created in advance of the visit.

As a part of this process, St. Kate’s has developed a university-wide model of systematic program evaluation called Outcomes Based Assessment Plan (OBAP).  This model is the recommended format for each academic department to describe their assessment process, and is a method to align existing assessment activities with the University’s mission, goals, and strategic plans.  Each department OBAP has a mission statement, student learning and program effectiveness goals, measurable outcomes, and a delivery plan.  

Each unit of the St. Kate’s libraries, including archives and media services, created a departmental OBAP.  Goals ranged from preserving collections for future scholarship, to collaboration with academic departments to create a rigorous research agenda, to preparing classrooms for digital/lecture capture.  As an example of the OBAP’s goal, delivery, outcome process, one of our goals has been to develop a robust online library presence.  Our web librarian utilized User Experience (UX) design principles and practices to initiate a redesign of the library website.  User interviews were performed in May 2011, and repeated in May 2012, to assess the library’s homepage.  Comprehensive personas were developed to address the core needs of users.  Based on user interviews and the development of user personas, target users and their needs were identified, and the homepage was redesigned to address those needs.

Many of our ongoing assessment activities have to do with addressing gaps in our collection.  One librarian used Journal Citation Reports as disciplinary benchmarks to analyze our holdings in Nursing, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Public Health to determine if we have adequate access to high impact journals in these disciplines.  This analysis created the foundation for a journal purchase priority list for titles not held that are a high priority for St. Kate’s faculty and students.

Circulation staff pulled 25 current master and doctoral theses from each department, and culled titles from the reference lists to see what we owned and what items needed to be requested through ILLiad.  (The other not-so-surprising finding was that graduate students need more citation support.  In response, two librarians will be offering an intensive APA workshop at the beginning of winter semester).  Evaluating copyright costs and VDX requests has resulted in identifying frequently requested journals that we should purchase.

As for next steps in our work, one of our priorities is to develop goals and learning outcomes for “The Reflective Woman,” a core course for first-year students.  Five librarians, on both campuses, teach a library instruction component for each class.  And while individual librarians have implemented their own assessment strategies (pen-paper/online feedback surveys, and, pre/post testing of students’ confidence in their research skills), we do not have a standardized method to assess student learning across all sections.  We hope to have an assessment workshop, conducted by Office of Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment staff, to assist us in moving forward on this goal.

LibQUAL+® at Northwestern

The following post is submitted by guest blogger Jessica Nelson Moore from Northwestern College.

In order to assess library service quality, the Berntsen Library at Northwestern College administered the LibQUAL+® survey to NWC’s students and faculty in 2008 and 2012. 

The LibQUAL+® survey assesses library patron’s perceptions of 22 aspects of library service quality, grouped into three major dimensions: Affect of Service, Information Control, and Library as place. 

·         Affect of Service refers to users’ perceptions of the service given by library staff.  Questions include “Employees who understand the needs of their users” and “Giving users individual attention”.
·         Information Control refers to users’ perceptions of access to information.  Questions include “Making electronic resources accessible from my home or office” and “Print and/or electronic journal collections I require for my work”.
·         Library as place refers to users’ perceptions of the library’s environment.  Questions include “Library space that inspires study and learning” and “A comfortable and inviting location”. 

One of the benefits of LibQUAL+® is that it shows not only the perceived level of service for each dimension, but also the desired level of service.  The results show not only how patrons felt about each aspect of the library, but whether or not it was important to them.  For example, in the 2012 survey undergraduates ranked their top five desired (the most important) aspects of library service quality as “Employees who are consistently courteous”, “Employees who deal with users in a caring fashion”, “A library web site enabling me to locate information on my own”,  “Willingness to help users”, and  “Making information easily accessible for independent use”.  Of these top five desired qualities, three were considered by undergraduates to be in the top five areas of highest perceived service quality.  To put it another way, of the top five things that undergraduates think the library is doing well, three of them were in the top five things they most cared about.

Survey results are plotted graphically on a circular chart, referred to as an “Antarctica chart” because of its resemblance to the polar continent.  The yellow band on the chart represents areas where the perceived level of service for that aspect of service was less than the desired level of service.  (A wider yellow space indicates that there is a wider “gap” between the desired level of service and the perceived level of service for those attributes.)  The blue band on the chart represents areas where the perceived level of service was greater than the minimum level of service, i.e., adequate service.  The green on the chart represents areas where the perceived level of service was greater than the desired level of service, i.e., superior service.  Any areas of red on the chart would indicate that the perceived level of service for that area was below the minimum accepted level of service.  

A huge benefit of LibQUAL+® is the comments that survey respondents offer with their response.  About 1/3 of survey respondents left a comment with their survey.  Many of the comments reveal suggestions for specific areas of improvement for the library, such as noise level.  Example: “Once in awhile it is too noisy, but mostly it works great!”  Other comments reveal the aspects that patrons most appreciate about the library, such as reference service.  Example: “The reference librarians at NWC are amazing. Not only are they incredibly helpful, they are also very friendly.”

After the 2008 survey, results were communicated to library staff and other stakeholders such as the campus Assessment Steering Committee.  Changes were made based upon survey feedback, including updating library computers with new software and enhanced printing capabilities, and enhancing study spaces with lighting and electric outlets.  A follow-up focus group was conducted to further understand what students wanted from their library.  The staff of the Berntsen Library is looking forward to analyzing the results of the 2012 survey, especially in comparison to the initial, benchmark survey in 2008.  

Assessment at Concordia

The following post is submitted by guest blogger Greg Argo of Concordia University Library, St. Paul, and summarizes his presentation at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.

The CLIC Year of Assessment has been a good motivator for the Concordia Library to prioritize assessment activities. After working intensely from 2005-2008 on information literacy assessment initiatives for a university-wide grant project, the intervening years have seen various independent assessments like Website screenshot markups, Faculty Retreat “captive audience surveys” and Google Analytics. Now it is time for us to get back in the assessment mindset, and we will be applying assessment activities toward both 1) our users and 2) our student workers.

The overarching goal of our next phase of assessment with users is something more systematic, repeatable and sustainable than what we’ve done in the past. More than measuring how much users like us, how good we are, and so on, we’d like to measure how the library is being used, the level of familiarity with specific services, and how we might better meet our users’ expectations. To that end, we’ve created survey tools for both students and faculty.

Our student survey is short and varied and was modeled on existing library assessment programs (the University of Washington Triennial Survey, for instance) and design suggestions from student workers. One off-the-wall suggestion we will try in hopes of getting a greater completion rate is a less stilted tone, replacing Likert scale values like “very important” and “somewhat satisfied” with scales (still labeled with the familiar numerical continuum) bearing less formal values like “not too shabby” and "speed of light." We are hoping to get a clearer picture of where students are starting their research and which services of ours they are aware of.  Students also gave us good suggestions about how to increase our response rate. We will be following up with each user we touch via the various library processes – chat, email, interlibrary loan, account problems, and hold shelf notifications, as well as trying a trickle-down effect through student groups.

Our faculty survey is focused on our partnerships with them, with a mix of open-ended questions and questions with answer options which may suggest to them new ways of doing things that we haven’t previously been able to suggest. We’re hoping to find out their preferred strategies for communications and outreach, any and all ways they may be interested in integrating the library into their teaching, and fail points in their use of the library. We are also looking at assessment as an opportunity for outreach, so each faculty member will be contacted individually by their subject liaison librarian to both request they take the survey and either start or rekindle a working relationship.

Starting this year, we’ve hired more student workers as student supervisors in the hopes of increasing productivity and accuracy in student work. These supervisors are playing an important role in new student worker assessment initiatives. They are tracking and correcting shelving mistakes of new student workers, and leaving details about the mistakes. They are also submitting “student supervisor end of shift forms” which track who was working, what tasks were accomplished during the shift by both students, if homework was done, and so on. Also, mandatory student worker quizzes on various pertinent topics are being assigned every few weeks. All of this info will help Zach, the student worker supervisor, keep track of who has learned what as well as inform his evaluations.

All of our assessment activities are being executed with the help of Google Forms. The functionality has gotten our creative juices flowing, and we like how they simplify Web authoring, data collection and management, workflow tracking, collaboration, and data presentation. Concordia has implemented Google Apps at the enterprise level for email and calendar, and the benefits of an integrated platform make Google Forms and Apps great tools for our assessment activities.

UST Assessment Studies

The following post is submitted by guest blogger Marianne Hageman, University of St. Thomas (UST) Libraries, and summarizes one of UST's presentations at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.

Have you ever wondered about the information literacy skill levels of your incoming freshmen?  At UST, we’ve asked that question several times over the years. 

We began the process to find an answer when my colleague, Donna Nix, came back very excited from ALA in 2008. She’d attended a session by Kate Zoellner and Charlie Potter from the University of Montana, reporting on their study of high school media specialists’ perceptions of high school student preparedness for university-level research, looking particularly at information literacy skills.  They’d based their research on the methodology of Islam and Murno. [Islam, R.L. and Murno, L.A. (2006). From perceptions to connections: Informing information literacy program planning in academic libraries through examination of high school library media center curricula. College and Research Libraries, 67, 496-514.  http://crl.acrl.org/content/67/6/491.full.pdf+html ]

Donna wanted to replicate this research. It sounded cool to me, so I said, “Can I play, too?” That led to our first research project, in 2009-2010, where we interviewed Catholic high school media specialists at 15 schools in the Midwest (ask us sometime about the January ice storm in Iowa.)  The next year, we surveyed St. Thomas faculty who teach introductory research classes in their discipline, to get their take on the IL skills of their students.

Here are some things we learned:

• Few of our faculty think our students do even “fairly well” on any of the skills.
• By comparison, the Catholic high school librarians that we surveyed think students are doing pretty well on IL skills.
• Three of the skills that our faculty think are the MOST important for students to have before taking their introductory research class, they expect them to have already, before they hit that first research class. These skills are plagiarism/citation style, developing a thesis statement, and brainstorming questions.
• Two of the skills our faculty think are most important to have, they expect them to develop in that first research class. These skills are determining authority, accuracy, timeliness, and bias of sources, and selecting appropriate resources.

CLIC Assessment Workshop Topics Survey

CLIC is hosting a series of mini workshops on assessment in early 2013. The Assessment Program Planning Task Force is in the process of selecting topics for three mini workshops. Your answers on the survey will assist us in developing the workshop agendas. Please respond by Thursday, November 15, 2012.

Go to this link to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8SHZ2SF

For a list of the upcoming workshop dates, please see the Assessment Program Planning Task Force's web page on CLIC Direct at:
http://clic.edu/newclic/dir/asmtplan/asmtplan.asp

If you missed our first program on October 26, A View from the Field: Overview of Recent Assessment Activities in CLIC Libraries, Kick-Off Program for CLIC's Year of Assessment, we are posting summaries of the presentations on CLIC News over the next two weeks.  See http://clic.edu/newclic/dir/asmtplan/asmtplan20121026.asp for links to presentations, summaries, handouts, and resources.

Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success – ACRL IMLS Grant Funded Program

The following post is submitted by guest blogger, Terri Fishel, CLIC Board member and Director of the DeWitt Wallace Library at Macalester College, and summarizes her presentation at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.

On Friday, October 26^th, I spoke to those attending the CLIC Kickoff on Assessment about an upcoming grant opportunity.  I currently serve as vice-chair, chair-elect for the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries committee.  The ACRL Value of Academic Libraries is one of three major areas as part of the ACRL Plan for Excellence.

I wanted to talk about the ACRL grant funded by the IMLS because of the opportunities it presents to individual CLIC libraries and their campuses and for us collectively in CLIC.  The focus of this grant is on student learning, both to prove the value that the library has in how we contribute to student learning and to use our assessment methods to work toward improvements in the work we do and outcomes achieved.  This is an opportunity to work closely with partners on your campus who are outside of the library.  If you haven’t already started to work with your institutional research colleagues, or have the attention of your campus committee for assessment or the committee that is perhaps working on student learning outcomes, this is your opportunity.  Assessment on your campus might be under the committee that oversees the accreditation process.  At the session last Friday, only a few attendees were familiar with members of their campus who managed their campus learning assessment program.  A very few CLIC institutions had librarians who served on campus committees that worked on student learning outcomes. So this grant also provides an opportunity to get to know members of your campus assessment team. You can read more about the grant here (Assessment in Action), but briefly, each participating institution will identify a team, consisting of a librarian and at least two additional team members as determined by the campus (e.g., faculty member, student affairs representative, institutional researchers, or academic administrator). 

Please consider applying and start now to prepare your strategy for campus involvement. Institutions need to apply individually, but as a cohort, if more than one CLIC institution is accepted, we will be able to collectively build on the work of each other and within CLIC if we can have multiple institutions, it provides opportunities to collaborate and reinforce with our administrations the value that we bring to our campuses.  It is also an opportunity to contribute to the broader audience of academic libraries and share our progress and stories of success.

You have time between now and January when the instructions for applications will be made available to do some background reading.  If you haven’t already perused:

• Value of Academic Libraries blog

• Connect, Collaborate and Communicate  - pdf of a white paper produced after the first summit 

• Value of Academic Libraries – ACRL statement of purpose

• Standards for Libraries in Higher Education - sample outcomes along with performance indicators and measures - valuable tool if you’re hoping to demonstrate to campus administrators your value and how your work influences student learning outcomes

These resources may help you to clearly articulate the value of the library in demonstrating: 

• your programs help students succeed which improves retention which helps the bottom line as far as college finances

• your programs contribute to positive experiences students have at your institution

• your programs provide positive experiences for students which helps make them supportive alums who contribute back to the college

• and most importantly, your programs provide them with the critical thinking skills that help them success in college and beyond as lifelong learners

Consider also the important role you play in the lives of students who are employees in your library.  We shouldn’t underestimate the important aspect of this activity in the lives of the students on our campuses.

I recognize that these aren’t your only contributions because we contribute greatly to the work our faculty members do, but in the perspective of keeping the library forefront in the minds of administrators on campus, those are just a few of the points you can think about in developing a frame of reference and a plan for continuous improvement as part of your assessment program focused on student learning.  I hope that you will all consider submitting an application for the Assessment in Action program and hope that we will be able to develop best practices and share our stories of success with a broader audience.

Assessment at Bethel University

The following post is submitted by guest blogger, Michael Mitchell of Bethel University Library, and summarizes his presentation at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.

At the CLIC Assessment: A View from the Field event, I presented the results of an ethnographic study that had been conducted in the Bethel University Library.  Below are some highlights of what we did and our findings from the study.  But first, let me provide a definition of "ethnography," taken from Oxford University Press' Dictionary of Sociology:  Ethnography is"a term usually applied to the acts both of observing directly the behaviour of a social group and producing a written description thereof."

We observe our libraries daily, but our ethnographic study aimed to make a more intentional observation.  We used two complementary tactics for doing this: the first was a series of one-on-one interviews conducted in the Bethel University Library with our users, asking them to tell us: (1) What they were doing in the library, (2) Why they chose the library, and (3) any other information they'd like to provide.   After gathering the data (more than 600 interviews total), we analyzed the responses to come up with themes about our library users and what they valued.   They told us about the benefit of studying in a library that aided their concentration and productivity, and about how valuable it was to have computers and printers available to them.  They also told us to create more group study rooms.

The second part of our study was a "mapping" project that used a seating chart of the Bethel University Library to map out where people were sitting and using computers within the library.  The mapping was done 5 times a day for a full calendar week, and the results were placed into a relational database. By doing this, we were able to see the popular places within our library, the busy and slow times of day, and the spots in which people were likely to be using laptops or  sitting in groups.   We found that the most concentrated spots of our library were our computer labs, and we determined which days were the busiest.  

Some of these results are intuitive, and we probably could've guessed at what most of the findings would be.  The benefit of the ethnographic study, however, is that now we can say those things with certainty; we have data to back up our gut feelings, and that data is much more convincing when talking to outside constituencies.  The results also challenged some of our own assumptions going into the project, showing us that it's important to talk to your users to find out what their actual habits and needs are.  We were constantly forced to think about this data both in a holistic way and on a case-by-case basis to see what future improvements we can make to our space and the services we provide.  

CLIC's Year of Assessment

The following post is submitted by guest blogger, Dan Gjelten, CLIC Board Chair and Director of the University of St. Thomas Libraries, and summarizes his presentation at CLIC's Kick-off Program on October 26.

The CLIC libraries’ year of assessment activities take place in the context of a national discussion on the value of higher education.  Though there is plenty of evidence that a college degree leads to better chances of employment and a higher income, perhaps the most important value of higher education is in the way in which it changes the way graduates think and act for the rest of their lives, thought even that assertion is under scrutiny.  Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift, Limited Learning on College Campuses  (U of Chicago, 2011) concludes that:

"Specifically, while others have applied the metaphor of a river to the journey through college of today’s students, our findings call attention to the fact that many undergraduate students are academically adrift on contemporary campuses.  Educational reform requires improved measurement and understanding of the processes and factors associate with student learning.  In an increasingly globalized competitive economy, the consequences of policy inattention are profound.  Regardless of economic competitiveness, the future of a democratic society depends upon educating a generation of young adults who can think critically, reason deeply, and communicate effectively.  Only with the individual mastery of such competencies can today’s complex and competitive world be successfully understood and navigated by the next generation of college graduates."

Those words “think critically, reason deeply and communicate effectively” remind me of UST’s mission statement: “The University of St. Thomas educates students to be morally responsible leaders who think critically, act wisely and work skillfully to advance the common good.” 

What we want to talk about today is the way that we can measure how well we in the libraries are supporting these higher goals of our institutions.   Traditionally, we’ve measured our quality and value by counting things – books, computers, chairs, librarians, classes, gate clicks - but moving forward, we think we (as well as the whole university) will be better served by trying to measure the outcomes of our work. That is, how did we change the lives of our students, how are they more effective as graduates, as citizens, as employees and employers, as consumers, because of what the library has done.

I feel strongly that what we do in the libraries is very important, and  I’ve got some data that suggests that what we teach students is considered by them, in retrospect, at least, to be among the most important things that they learn in college.  The University of Washington regularly surveys its graduates and asks them to identify the most important skills out of a list of 17.  I’ve ranked the skills that they identify as “Essential” and “Very important.”  In every survey I’ve looked at the following are at the top of the list:

1. Defining and solving problems
2. Locating information needed to make decisions or solve problems
3. Working/learning independently
4. Working effectively with modern technology
5. Speaking effectively
6. Critically analyzing written information (April, 2009)

I would suggest that most of those skills are ones that the library, in collaboration with teaching faculty, can provide to students.

The ACRL has recently taken two major steps towards developing an agenda for the measurement of library effectiveness.  The publishing of revised standards for academic libraries in 2011 takes very seriously these new kinds of assessment measures.  Under the rubric of “Institutional Effectiveness” ACRL defines outcomes as ‘the ways in which library users are changed as a result of their contact with the library’s resources and programs.’”  Examples include:  “The library develops outcomes that are aligned with institutional, departmental, a d student affairs outcomes;” The library contributes to student recruitment, retention, time to degree, and academic success;” and “The library articulates how it contributes to student learning, collects evidence, documents successes, shares results and makes improvements.”

The Value of Academic Libraries, published in the fall of 2010 and authored by Megan Oakleaf (Syracuse University), describes the current state of assessment in academic libraries and provides a long list of next steps and recommendations for libraries. We are very lucky in CLIC to have Terri Fishel as a member of the Value of Academic Libraries committee.

The Value of Academic Libraries suggests many ways to measure library value including trying to connect library programs to student academic achievement in the ways that Huddersfield University in England and at the U of MN Libraries have done – or connecting library collections and services to faculty research productivity, grant application success, institutional prestige, even graduate employment. 

This assessment and measurement process is not about “proving” value, or “looking valuable” but increasing value and being valuable. It is not about justifying our existence; it is about insuring that we continue to remain central to the academic mission of the institution.

Most of us will probably not be able to devote any single person just to assessment (as in the library which advertised for the position of “Impact Evaluation Specialist”) but will expect all staff to participate in one way or another in our assessment activities, and our activities in CLIC this year are aimed at learning from each other and raising our skills in the area of measuring library effectiveness.

CLIC Year of Assessment Kick-off Program

On October 26, CLIC hosted "A View from the Field: Overview of Recent Assessment Activities in CLIC Libraries," a kick-off program for CLIC's Year of Assessment. More than forty attended to hear speakers from CLIC libraries discuss their recent assessment activities.  

To see the agenda, with links to the speakers' presentations, handout, and resources, see the Kick-Off web page. To see more photos, please visit CLIC's Facebook page. Over the next few weeks, some of the presenters will guest-blog on CLIC News to post summaries of their presentations. Stay tuned!

Another feature of the Kick-off program was to gather input from attendees on their preferences for topics for the series of CLIC mini-workshops slated for early 2013.  We are using their input to develop a survey which will go out to the CLIC membership later this week.  

CLIC Assessment Workshop Series Schedule:

Friday, January 18, 2013, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 noon, Assessment Mini-workshop: Andrea Koeppe (UST) and Ginny Heinrich (Macalester) will present a program summarizing what they learned at ACRL Information Literacy Immersion Program Assessment Track; Location: Hall of Fame Room, Macalester College

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m., Assessment mini-workshop: topics and location TBA

Wednesday, April 3, 2013, 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m., Assessment mini-workshop: topics and location TBA

Wednesday, May 1, 2013, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 noon, Assessment mini-workshop: topics and location TBA

Tuesday, June 4, 2013, 9:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m., CLIC-wide Assessment Conference: The Value of Academic Libraries, Presenter: Megan Oakleaf of ACRL and Syracuse University; Location: TBA

Call for Nominations: CLIC 2012 Awards

The CLIC Executive Committee would like to receive your nominations for CLIC’s two annual awards for 2011-12: User Service Award and Group Effectiveness Award. When you submit a nomination, please indicate the reasons that the individual or group is deserving of the award.

The User Service Award is presented to an individual within CLIC who has done the most to improve service to users during the past year.

The Group Effectiveness Award is presented to a group within CLIC which has best exemplified group action for the benefit of CLIC and its mission.

For a list of past winners, please see: http://clic.edu/newclic/dir/awards/pastaward.asp

Please email your nominations to Maureen.fitzgerald@clic.edu no later than Monday, November 26, 2012.

CLIC Libraries Represented at MNIUG

Several staff from CLIC member libraries presented at the MNIUG Conference at St. Olaf on October 23.

Nathan Wunrow and Kate Burke, both from University of St. Thomas, presented "Mobile Libraries: Beyond the plaster / tear down this wall!" The UST Library has reinterpreted the traditional concept of library as "place" by bringing samples of its collection and services to the many social environments of the University community.  The presenters outlined their experience and observations, and they motivated the audience to consider alternative interpretations of library as "place."

Angi Faiks, MaryLou Steiner, and Jack Davidsen, all from Macalester College, presented "Ready for Shelf Ready?" Macalester's DeWitt Wallace Library is in the midst of a pilot project to test complete automation of their acquisition workflow with Ingram from request to the shelf, including order submission to acquisitions, invoicing, cataloging, and physical processing.  The pilot involves coordination between Macalester, Ingram, OCLC, and CLIC to ensure smooth and accurate automated delivery and processing of shelf-ready materials.

Linda Hulbert from University of St. Thomas, Dixie Ohlander from Augsburg College, Earleen Warner from Bethel University, Emily Asch from St. Catherine University, Jennifer Carlson from Concordia University, and Paddy Salzer from University of St. Thomas participated in a panel presentation, "CLICtrek: The Next GENeration: a Consortial Odyssey."  The presenters, who are all members of CLIC's ILS Task Force, discussed their evaluation of eight "next-gen" library systems and the process they used to narrow the field to three contenders.  It was an odyssey!

Congratulations to all presenters for their programs at MNIUG!

REMINDER: Session proposals for the 2013 Library Technology Conference still being accepted

Library Technology Conference 2013
Macalester College - St. Paul, MN

The Library Technology Conference has already received many great session proposals on a wide variety of topics - but there is still room for your proposal. The call for proposal deadline is just a couple of weeks away. Submit your session proposal today!

Call For Proposals – Deadline October 26, 2012

The 6th Annual Library Technology Conference will be held March 20-21, 2013 on the campus of Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, and the planning committee invites you to submit your session proposal ideas. We're looking for session ideas about technology use in libraries that challenge, entertain, and inspire discussion. We encourage proposal submissions from public, school, or special libraries as well as academic libraries.

The Library Technology Conference is a conference that mixes keynotes, traditional lecture-style presentations, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and poster sessions highlighting many of the technologies affecting how users interact with libraries, as well as how libraries are using technology to create new and better ways to manage their resources. The focus is on sessions that are interactive and which provide practical information that will allow participants to apply what they've learned at their own library.

Some possible session topic ideas might include:

• Surviving in an increasingly mobile world
• Cloud computing in libraries
• Augmented reality
• Working with vendors in a digital age
• Digital Preservation
• Institutional repositories
• Impact of technology on copyright and intellectual property rights
• Social networking for outreach and service promotion
• Virtual research environments
• Search engines / Information discovery
• Web 3.0
• Creating Library-specific apps
• Technology and Information literacy
• Electronic books

Please do not let this list of suggestions limit your imagination on session proposal topics. We are interested in hearing about how changes to established technologies are being made to meet the evolving needs of libraries and also about cutting edge projects that libraries are doing with technology. We want to hear about your successes as well as what you learned with your failures.

• More information about the Library Technology Conference 
• Submit a proposal

Proposal Submission Deadline: October 26, 2012

Court ruling on HathiTrust case

This week, the U. S. District Court (SDNY) issued an Opinion & Order in the Authors Guild lawsuit against HathiTrust et al., finding that retention and use of millions of digital books for purposes of preservation, text search, and accessibility for the visually impaired were within the limits of fair use.

For a good analysis and discussion of the Judge's Opinion, see the following resources:

Kenneth Crews, Columbia University Libraries  http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/2012/10/11/court-rules-on-hathitrust-and-fair-use/

Nancy Sims, Copyright Program Librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/2012/10/authors-guild-v-hathi-trust-a-win-for-copyrights-public-interest-purpose.html

Help Create New ACRL “Assessment in Action” Learning Community

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is seeking four smart, creative, and skilled individuals to help ACRL shape a unique set of learning experiences for campus-wide teams. Are you someone who believes in the power of peer-to-peer learning and communities of practice? Are you skilled as an instructional designer or teacher with a philosophy based in the positive power of experiential learning? Then you might be the person ACRL is looking for! Read the ACRLinsider post for details of the  project, the criteria, and how to apply.

Reference COI to Tour Hamline's New Student Center

On November 7, CLIC's Reference Community of Interest will hold their regular meeting at Hamline University's new Carol Young Anderson and Dennis L. Anderson Center.  Meet in the lobby at 1:00 p.m. for a tour of the new Center.



To prepare for the meeting, please read: "Active Learning in the Library Instruction Environment: An Exploratory Study," by Alanna Ross and Christine Furno. portal: Libraries and the Academy, ISSN 1531-2542, 2011, Volume 11, Issue 4, pp. 953 – 970. 

More News from Circulation

More news from Circ: Bethel University is opening their DVD, VHS, and CD collections to CLIC holds.

New CLIC COI for WorldCat Local

CLIC has a new Community of Interest (COI) for library staff interested in WorldCat Local. To receive information on upcoming meetings, sign up for the WCL email list.

News from the Circ Committee

Macalester and Northwestern are now lending their DVD, VHS, and CD collections. 

CLIC at MLA

Are you heading to the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) conference in St. Paul next week?  CLIC institutions are well-represented on the program.

Thursday, October 4:
9:00 a.m.  C4. Going the Extra MILE: MLA Institute for Leadership Excellence 2013
, Heidi Hammond and Laura Morlock from St. Catherine University MLIS program.

2:30 p.m.  E4. MLA and YOU: Knowledge Networking for Students and New Librarians, Heidi Hammond, Sarah Park, and Laura Morlock from St. Catherine University MLIS program.

3:45 p.m.  F4. What a Queer Idea: LGBT Resources for Your Library, Karen P. Hogan, Serials Coordinator, Augsburg College.

Friday, October 5:
9:00 a.m.  G2. Flipping the Classroom: First Year Course Experiences, Ginny Heinrich, Assessment Coordinator & Instruction 
Librarian, Macalester College; Beth Hillemann, Reference Coordinator & Instruction 
Librarian, Macalester College; and Dave Collins, Associate Director, Access & Research 
Services, Macalester College.

9:00 a.m.  G3. Read That License! Provisions to Look for in Electronic Resources Agreements, Ruth Dukelow, CLIC Executive Director.

9:00 a.m.  G6. Libraries and Librarianship in Zambia: A Global Perspective, Mary M. Wagner, from St. Catherine University MLIS program.

9:00 a.m.  G9. AskMN Open Discussion Forum, Karen Dubay, Bethel University, and Kimberly Feilmeyer, Bush Memorial Library, Hamline University.

10:45 a.m.  H7. Online Reading in the Contexts of New Literacies, Sook Lim from St. Catherine University MLIS program.