It’s the new year, and a time of reflection. As for me, I’ve been thinking about this ‘new position (relatively) at Temple and changes since I began in 2014. I love what I do, and here are some of the reasons why.
Assessment is about asking questions. We are always asking why. Data is not the answer, it merely prompts us to ask more questions. Assessment is about growing an organizational culture at the Library that encourages the sharing of our expertise and insights as well as the data we collect. We don’t take our value for granted and we are willing to change to improve services to our users.
Assessment affords us an opportunity to be transparent in our decision-making. This isn’t always the case, of course, but we do use data to help us understand technology use and profile our technology offerings based on that, or determine the best hours to service public desks and how.
Assessment is about building a technical infrastructure that will allow us to learn more about how our users connect to the library. This has been a long and complex technical challenge, but here at Temple we are able to connect demographic data from Banner (user status, college) with transactional data (circulation, interlibrary loan, use of computers and Ezproxy), to improve our understanding of how scholars from different disciplines use library services and resources.
Assessment is about continually learning new technologies and skills, from a less-used Excel formula to regular expressions to SQL. More importantly, for me anyway, it’s learning how to talk the language of technology colleagues so we can most effectively work together.
Assessment is about partnering with all the departments in the library, as well as with external units on campus like IT, Institutional Research & Assessment and the Institutional Research Board.
It’s about helping to develop a community of practice in the Philadelphia area – colleagues at Penn, at Drexel, Bryn Mawr, Philadelphia Community College and the many others who contribute to our PLAD meetings. In this blog I have had the opportunity to profile numerous meetings and conferences on library assessment, regionally as well as nationally.
The job is never dull and varies from qualitative research projects to working with colleagues on the strategic planning retreat. A recent workflow analysis pulled together staff from three departments to improve our process for rush reserves. This process of collaborating toward a common goal was instructive for all of us and will result in improved service for faculty and students.
Slowly but surely, we are indeed building a culture of assessment here at Temple Libraries and beyond. Diane Turner, curator of the Blockson collection said to me recently, “I think about assessment every time we have an event.” Thanks for that small indicator of change!
Here’s to a new year with more insights and improvements in the service of the Library’s users.