These short “pecha kucha-like” sessions will feature five PowerPoint presentations of 6 minutes and 40 seconds each. We will have time at the end of the session intended for Q&A for all presenters. Come for a lively, rapid-fire group of talks.
1) Liaising the Liaison: A Newbie’s Approach to Challenge Assessment Resistance (Brianne Dosch, University of Tennessee)
Academic liaison librarians hold nuanced, varied, and numerous responsibilities throughout their libraries and institutions. These responsibilities are difficult to capture in traditional reporting structures, which can lead to siloing, workplace tension, and resistance to library-wide assessment efforts. One library answered this challenge by giving the opportunity to develop meaningful liaison assessment to a practicum student. This stopwatch session will explore this newbie’s approach to navigating institutional structures, inter-department relationships, and gaining buy-in from librarians and administrators alike. All while coping with being viewed as the “inexperienced outsider” and own personal insecurities. Some takeaways include: finding the courage to take on projects you might not feel qualified for, discovering what you may have to offer as a library “outsider,” and learning how to forge meaningful relationships with librarians at all career levels throughout the library.
2) Thirty Days and Counting: Conducting Effective Product Trials for Library Resources (Edward Lener, Virginia Tech; Tracy Gilmore, California State University)
Product trials for evaluating potential new resources can be a challenge for any library. To be most effective, several key elements must be addressed including determining suitable trial dates, establishing and confirming access, creating appropriate links, publicizing product availability, collecting usage data, and gathering feedback from participants. If one or more of these steps is missed it is all too easy for trial access to run out before much useful data is gathered. The University Libraries at Virginia Tech have developed a method for managing this process through a trials workflow team and using free, web-based project management software from Trello. This session will convey some of what we have learned about conducting product trials for library resources and ways to make the most of the limited time available. Attendees will learn about our workflow for conducting trials, see examples of the software and checklists we use, and discover how we work with our vendors to better manage the process for product trials.
3) The Carpentries: Teaching data science skills to researchers and people working in library- and information-related roles worldwide (Chris Erdmann, Data Carpentries)
In July 1998, Los Alamos National Laboratory hosted the very first Carpentries course, led by John Reynders, Brent Gorda, and Greg Wilson. After running several courses thereafter, the lessons they learned highlighted the growing demand from the research community for training in basic computing skills and that traditional educational opportunities did not entirely address these needs. Fast forward to 2018, there continues to be a tremendous demand from the research community to learn new computational approaches and improve their workflows leading to the growth of The Carpentries. Since 2012, The Carpentries has seen 58 Trainers badged and 1,480 Instructors certified who have taught 1,332 Carpentries workshops reaching over 37,000 learners in 44 countries. This talk will describe what we teach, why and how we teach it, the impact it's having, and what we're planning to do next.
4) New Standards for Quantitative Usage Reporting – COUNTER Release 5 (Lorraine Estelle, COUNTER)
COUNTER reports provide consistent, credible and comparable insight into database, ebook, journal, chapter, and article usage. They are an industry standard for measuring and evaluating a subscription and library’s value to faculty, and at the beginning of 2019 are changing to the new COUNTER Release 5 Code of Practice. This session, led by Lorraine Estelle, Project Director, COUNTER will build upon the presentation given at last year’s conference about Release 5. Attendees will learn about the improvements that Code of Practice 5 provides over previous releases, what these mean to collections, acquisitions, e-resources or administrative professionals. This is an essential session as Release 5 standards include new Master Reports, Metric Types, Attribute Types, SUSHI Standards and Reporting Configurations, which next year will become the de-facto standard for usage reporting.
5) A Statistical Story: Using LibInsights for Budgeting and Collection Development (Barbara Hilderbrand, Seminole State College of Florida)
Our Library has compiled usage statistics on a variety of resources in a variety of formats for a number of years. The statistics have been housed in shared spreadsheets across Library personnel. Like many other Libraries we’ve faced budget cuts in recent years while needing to increase services. We needed to build a narrative that would accurately represent our budgetary concerns to administrators.
LibInsights has provided an excellent solution for us. It’s provided a mechanism for housing all of our data. It is extremely difficult to compare apples to oranges but necessary when they are paid for out of the same budget. We’ve used this tool to streamline our data collection process. To consistently gather the same type of stats for the same type of resources. Then to compare the different types of formats and subject specific resources to make collection development and budgetary decisions.
