Author Archives: Nancy Turner

Setting the Path towards a New Library

Last week I had an unexpected 12 hours to spend at the Calgary International Airport, providing me plenty of time to consider all that I learned at the Designing Libraries conference.  While the airport provided fun rides between terminals and … Continue reading

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Moving Forward: Lessons Learned from the Last 10 Years of Risk Modeling

Last week the Libraries’ Assessment Community of Practice kicked off the year by hosting Alexandra Yanovski-Bowers (Assistant Director for Undergraduate Strategic Initiatives) and Michele Lynn O’Conner (Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies). The discussion was Undergraduate Studies’ work to build a … Continue reading

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Attending the American Library Association’s Annual Conference can be overwhelming – the crowds, the number of programs, the sheer size of the convention center and all the walking that comes along with that. This year I asked three colleagues to … Continue reading

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Strategic or Operational? That is the Question

  Or is it? This last year we’ve had many lively conversations at the Libraries/Press about distinguishing the strategic work from the operational work we do. Those conversations, coupled with this morning’s early yoga class, have me reflecting on how … Continue reading

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Springtime Refresh at Ambler

Continuous improvement is a kind of assessment that we don’t usually think of as assessment per se – there are no statistics, there isn’t a formal plan for data collection, and our efforts may not result in a report to … Continue reading

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An Agile Approach to Assessment

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with Emily Toner, our Technology Projects Librarian, about how she works with developers in Library Technology Development to conduct ongoing assessment of their work on the Blacklight project. (Blacklight is the software … Continue reading

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Improving Temple Libraries’ System for Systematic Reviews

Stephanie Roth, Biomedical and Research Services Librarian at the Health Sciences Libraries, doesn’t always think of herself as doing “assessment.” But my conversation with her about the evolving service and education she’s doing with Systematic Reviews is a good example … Continue reading

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An Interview with Gina Calzaferri: Temple’s Director of Assessment & Evaluation

Assessment at Temple University Libraries is part of a robust institutional culture of assessment, fostered by offices like Institutional Research and Assessment. I visited the IRA office last week to talk with Gina Calzaferri, just promoted as Director of Assessment … Continue reading

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A New Year’s Reflections and Resolutions

The beginning of a new year is a somewhat artificial, but useful time to reflect on the past and look toward the future. Reviewing the 2017 archives of this blog reminds me of all that has happened this year.  One … Continue reading

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Learning about Our Users: The Website Use Survey

Cynthia Schwarz, project manager for the Libraries’ Web Environment Redesign Project, contributed this post. She reports on the results and next steps of the team’s user survey conducted last month, providing us with a healthy return of 460 user responses. … Continue reading

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