All Sessions

Libraries in higher education are increasingly required to demonstrate their value and document their contributions to overall institutional effectiveness. The Standards for Libraries in Higher Education is a framework for library planning and assessment that can be used for a variety of circumstances including annual planning, program review, and accreditation self-study. Through presentation, discussion, and group activities, learn how to use the Standards to communicate your library’s impact!

A pre-conference session for academic assessment librarians and senior management. Presented by Joe Matthews, noted library consultant, library assessment guru, co-author of the award winning book "Listening to the Customer", as well as "The Customer-Focused Library: Reinventing the Public Library from the Outside-In".
Sponsored by Counting Opinions.

Please join us for the The Cataloging and Metadata Management Section (CaMMS) RDA Conference Forums and Programs Task Force (TF) ALA Annual RDA Update Forum. Panelists will outline steps being taken in preparation for implementation of RDA sometime after January 2013. Scheduled presenters include: Beacher Wiggins (Library of Congress), Linda Barnhart (Chair PCC), Glenn Patton (OCLC), John Attig (JSC update), Sally McCallum (MARBI) and Troy Linker (ALA Publishing).

Did you attend this forum? Take our post-conference survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/alctsevents2012

Taking instruction to the next level: creating evaluations to assess student learning online: Attendees will be provided with a brief background in assessment methods as well as examples of assessments used specifically to evaluate online learning tools such as tutorials, course guides, course management systems, etc. Participants will learn how to create effective assessments tailored to their needs, and examples of assessments used at several institutions to evaluate various online learning tools will be shared. Co-sponsored by the STS Hot Topics Discussion Group and the STS Assessment Committee.

Meeting of the Chief Collection Development Officers IG

Did you attend this Interest Group meeting? Take our post-conference survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/alctsevents2012

A demonstration and discussion of ACRL Metrics for current and prospective subscribers. Presentation will highlight how it can be used for advocacy, budget defense, and demonstrating value. New features and capabilities will be showcased.

The Cataloging Norms Interest Group program will focus on some of the challenges in today’s changing cataloging environments.

Allison Jai O'Dell, Assistant Archivist and Librarian, The Barnes Foundation
Converting to RDA – from what? An Exploration of RDA Training that Does Not Assume Knowledge of AACR2
This presentation will review published and publicly available RDA training materials produced to date as well as survey results from participants of the U.S. RDA test, in order to set the framework for discussion of the utility of AACR2-based instruction tools within a realistic assessment of catalogers' needs. It will conclude with suggestions for appropriate, efficacious education in FRBR concepts, RDA rules, and the independent decision-making necessary for creation of RDA-compliant data.

Walter Walker, Head Cataloging Librarian, Loyola Marymount University
Changes in Cataloging Workflows at Loyola Marymount University
Many cataloging departments are trying to decrease backlogs, decrease the time it takes for new books to reach the circulating shelves, and decrease staff time copy-cataloging. How can we use shelf-ready cataloging without sacrificing record quality? Walter Walker, Head Cataloging Librarian at Loyola Marymount University, will explain the procedures recently adopted by LMU that help us to only check a small percentage of our new books for potential errors, sending the rest quickly to the shelves, and to maintain cataloging quality.

Cyns Nelson, Colorado Voice Preserve
Metadata for Oral History Collections
Cyns Nelson will briefly describe the Colorado Voice Preserve -- a library that consists entirely of oral histories: interviews, first-hand recollections, personal narratives -- focusing on research and planning for an oral-history metadata scheme. The hope is to engage attendees in a discussion of the need, use, and practicality of “Oral History Core.”

Did you attend this Interest Group meeting? Take our post-conference survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/alctsevents2012

The RBMS Task Force on Metrics and Assessment is charged with examining current practices for gathering and reporting information to demonstrate the value and impact of special collections and archives. The Task Force shall conduct a survey of the literature and establish relationships with groups working on similar issues such as ARL, SAA,.

The Task Force will consider both what activities warrant assessment and how to undertake the assessment of those activities. The Task Force will identify needs for best practices and guidelines that will enable more meaningful assessment of the spectrum of what we provide to our various constituencies. The Task Force will provide a preliminary report by Midwinter 2013 and a final written report prior to Annual 2013.

What do you do with students you rarely see in the library? University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has a growing adult learner population, most of which take classes solely online. Reaching these students can be challenging. Librarians conducted an assessment of adult students to investigate their needs. This poster session will focus on the assessment results and the outreach plan put into place. It will highlight several initiatives, including librarian-faculty collaboration with introductory courses, the embedded librarian program, and the targeting of library services to adult students. It will also address using data to argue for increased budgetary support and collaboration with offices outside the library. Based on preliminary feedback from students and faculty, an increase in reference questions, as well as high usage statistics from librarian-created tutorials and discussion boards, the outreach plan is working. The poster session will include charts of the assessment data, handouts of the assessment tool, teaching and marketing materials (LibGuide, tutorials, newsletters), and photographs of embedded librarian best practices.

Springhare's LibGuides, and the ability to create class and course guides using the system, have resulted in an explosion of class/course pages. Librarians are expending time and effort on creating pages. In addition, given the collaborative nature of the tool, librarians are freely sharing (and copying) pages at an amazing rate. Yet outside of page count hits, it appears that little is being done to assess the effectiveness of these pages. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and Bloom's Digital Taxonomy provide framework for reviewing and considering class/course guide content and its relationship to information literacy student learning outcomes. This extensive survey of over 500 pages from eight southeastern land grant institutions, along with two historically black colleges in the region, provide a number of data points for discussion, including a percentage breakdown of where pages fall in terms of the taxonomies, the prevalence of information literacy learning outcomes, prominent vocabulary used by the creators, and whether or not active learning or student assessment/feedback is included within the guides.

Librarians have designed a number of information evaluation methods to use in library instruction (e.g., the CRAAP test from California State University, Chico). Instruction librarians and staff at the University of Tennessee (UT) Libraries have implemented a new information evaluation method based on the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, why, how). This technique is currently used in UT undergraduate English composition library instruction sessions. The 5 W's method is influenced by the educational theory of instructional scaffolding, a teaching strategy that builds off a student's previous knowledge, provides students with simple tools to apply to increasingly complex tasks, and prepares students for independent learning through recall and familiarity. Our poster will compare this new method to existing information evaluation methods and will also discuss preliminary results from a study focused on student recall of the method and value placed on the method by English composition instructors.

RAILS (Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) is an IMLS-funded, three-year project designed to help academic librarians assess student information literacy skills exhibited in "artifacts of student learning" like research papers, presentations, worksheets, portfolios, or reflective journals. Using the AAC&U VALUE rubrics and the ACRL information literacy standards as starting points, RAILS assists librarians who seek to create campus-specific rubrics, "norm" them for use with multiple raters, and gather results data that inform instructional improvements. Of interest to both academic and school librarians, the RAILS project advances the use of direct, authentic assessments of information literacy learning, as well as trains librarians to score learning artifacts reliably over time or across student groups. This poster will 1) report the rubric results of 10 higher education institutions that participated in RAILS from 2010-2012 using graphs and charts, 2) share a list of rubric "best practices," 3) communicate research-based strategies for norming rubrics with multiple raters, 4) supply RAILS publications and tip-sheets, and 5) employ laptops to demonstrate the RAILS website (www.railsontrack.info), including its tested training materials and rubric clearinghouse.

Assessment, Assessment, Assessment. This presentation covers a span of 12 years of a mid-sized academic library and the progress achieved, detours made, and pending projects. The presenter will illustrate planned changes that occurred due to the institution's strategic plan and the impact of three surveys (1999, 2004, & 2009), and the "unplanned" changes that had to be implemented immediately due to external forces and national trends.

Be it strategic planning, tracking operational performance, report filings, stakeholder relations, customer satisfaction, accreditation, etc., data management (collecting and report output and sharing) is increasingly "mission critical." This session will demonstrate a practical, integrated and affordable solution for these issues.

"21st century challenges require 21st century solutions."

Sponsored by Counting Opinions.

The shift from traditional reference desk activity has become an accepted reality in most academic libraries. Librarians now offer a variety of reference services including live chat, “roving” reference in the library, embedded or personal librarian service for classes, and research services in residence halls, gyms, and campus centers. This program will focus on the challenges that college libraries face in deciding how to provide and assess reference services that best meet local needs without straining resources.

The science fiction action film – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – relates the trials and triumphs of a human man caught between two warring factions of alien robots. This panel highlights the ongoing adventures of library metadata specialists caught in a war between an outdated code of the past and the developing frameworks of the future. Come explore their trials and triumphs. Catch a glimpse of the action and what it might be like to live in a world powered by shards of many standards.

Did you attend this forum? Take our post-conference survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/alctsevents2012

Taking library services outside of the library seems to be a growing trend in academic libraries, but is it really? In 2011, the authors conducted an online survey of academic libraries to measure if and how off-site reference is being utilized in academic libraries in order to provide a snapshot of current and past off-site reference trends. Broken down into four sections, the poster will look at the four questions asked of survey participants: Those who currently hold off-site reference hours, those who have held off-site reference hours in the past but stopped, those who have never held off-site reference hours in the past but plan to offer them in the future, and, finally, those who have never held off-site reference hours and would not consider it in the future. The poster will present, among other things, how programs were developed, if they were individual or library-wide programs, why programs stopped, and why people weren't interested in holding off-site hours.

Learn about the user studies Georgia State University Library conducted to guide the included features on its library's mobile website, and gain tips for engaging in user-centric design of your own mobile site. Poster presentation will include data used to inform the mobile site content (drawn from a user survey of undergraduates, graduates, and faculty on the desired features for a mobile library site as well as Google analytics), graphical shots of the mobile site, marketing of the mobile site, and post-development user study data (yet to be conducted at this juncture) to inform any redesign/adaptations of the mobile site.

How much do librarians really know about the demographics of their virtual reference patrons? The authors of this study staffed virtual reference at the Auraria Library, a multi-institutional academic library in Denver. They sought to discover how much information about identity patrons chose to provide during transactions that were theoretically anonymous. They kept in mind the idea that virtual reference patrons may or may not have quite the same demographics as those that they see at the reference desk or in the library instruction classroom. To help answer their questions, the authors developed a matrix for collecting and analyzing personal identifiers (such as year in school, non-native English speakers, and majors). The data they gathered helped them and their colleagues to know more about which patron groups chose to reach out for assistance via virtual reference. The authors believe that the matrix and process they have developed can serve as a model for colleagues at any institutions that provide anonymous virtual reference.