New for the 2016 Conference! These sessions are 10 minutes in length, and will be timed by a moderator. We scheduled 4 presentations back-to-back during a 60 minute concurrent time slot with time for questions and answers at the end.
1. Go with the Flow: Utilizing User & Staff Feedback to Develop Training Modules for a Peer-to-Peer Roaming Service (Rachel Winterling, Barry Falls)
In response to growing demand for patron assistance detached from the traditional library desk model, J. Murrey Atkins Library rolled out a peer-to-peer roaming service in fall 2015. Currently, roaming staff walk around the library, equipped with an iPad and visible identification, seeking user questions related to research, printing, directions, technology, circulation policies and study rooms. Our goal is to increase staff visibility while reducing library anxiety.
An assessment was conducted to gather quantitative and qualitative data to inform recommendations to improve client interaction of the library's peer-to-peer roaming service. The assessment utilized an employee survey and user focus groups to inform recommendations. Feedback from users and library staff played an integral role in shaping the service to better meet the needs of the community.
Based on the the assessment's findings, the Roaming Services Coordinator is adding responsibilities to the roaming staff as well as creating training modules to keep staff up-to-date on changes to the library including resources, policies, and services. In the past year, J. Murrey Atkins Library has undergone major physical and digital changes. Examples of the changes include a first floor remodel and the implementation of self-help kiosks, Technology Support Desk, and a website redesign.
Attendees will be introduced to the peer-to-peer roaming service and will gain insight on conducting service assessment as well as developing training modules to meet the changing needs of an academic library community.
2. Operational Fusion: Supporting innovation and enduring commitments through design, strategy and cross-sector collaboration (Laura Sill, John Wang)
The session shares ongoing efforts at Hesburgh Libraries of the University of Notre Dame to transform traditional technical services to meet new challenges of modern academic libraries. A large-scale organizational redesign in 2012 continues with subsequent phases of change, positioning staff squarely with the library mission of “Connecting People to Knowledge†and creating a nimble, learning organization supported by cross-sector collaboration in strategic areas of resource sharing, metadata strategy, collection services, and systems support and development. Resource Acquisitions and Discovery (RAD), one of three programs of the Digital Access, Resources, and Information Technology (DARIT) division, is the collection acquisitions and cataloging backbone with staff and faculty who have traditional technical know-how and longevity of service at the university. RAD is evolving organizationally and culturally, continuously building on past strengths, while uncovering new sources of value in an extended discovery function. The DARIT Strategy Map supports this shift and it articulates shared principles with focus areas of learning and growth, internal process improvement, financial, and customer perspective. The Map provides a unifying strategy of purpose and mindset of both builder and maintainer. The session will highlight culture shift and fusion of innovation and enduring commitments through the establishment of blended teams for several key areas: ILL, acquisitions, electronic resources and collection assessment, the use of project management and active skills assessment for improving program effectiveness, and the adoption of a fresh view of resource description and discovery for driving traditional, archival and digital resource description priorities through multiple systems.
3. Getting the Message Right: Developing a Strategy for Communicating with Faculty about Collections (Dolsy Smith, Robin Delaloye)
How can we engage faculty more constructively in collection development? How can we help faculty become effective advocates on behalf of library budgets, and effective partners in the process of prioritizing the resources that support their research and scholarship? At the George Washington University, we are developing a comprehensive communication strategy about collections, starting with a big-picture, holistic approach that helps faculty understand the key challenges facing library collections. Working together, experts in collection development, communication, and graphic design have developed a toolkit of narrative and visual materials that library staff can use in presentations, emails to faculty, print and online publication, etc. These resources leverage the power of infographics and analogies to make the "scholarly communication crisis" more salient and intuitive to audiences across the disciplines. In our presentation we will discuss how we drew on talent from across the organization to produce multi-modal messaging aligned with our strategic objectives, and how this messaging supports a collaborative, transparent, and evidence-driven approach to collection development.
4. Building Library Analytics with a little help from your friends in Institutional Research. (Jennifer Murray)
Modern ILS's produce a wealth of data, that properly blended and analyzed, would add value to the Library mission. The challenge is that while Librarians have the data and understand the mission we lack the analytics tools and skillset necessary to extract actionable intelligence. It simply isn't one of our core competencies . Fortunately college campuses do have offices that have the tools and skillsets necessary to analyze our data; Institutional Research. This presentation will explore how the University at Buffalo Libraries partnered with its campus' Institutional Research office on an analytics initiative using their visualization platform; Tableau.
