Ideas I hope will become trends: assessment

This series is, at its core, a recap of my trip to ALA's Annual Conference in Anaheim. But I prefer talking about the practical applications of what I learned to simply recapping programs.

The first installment was about user stories and the second was about communication.

The third installment is about assessment.

I was not planning on attending LITA's Top Tech Trends panel. But, I returned back from an off-campus lunch too late to attend the session I'd hoped to catch and too early for the next round of programs.Having found myself with a few minutes on my hand, I decided to catch a few minutes of the program.

Meredith Farkas was one of the panelists and I found myself nodding in agreement when she talked about how academic libraries can't really stand on the assertion that the library is the center of the academic community anymore. Instead, academic libraries are being asked to justify their impact on those they serve.

Farkas suggested that assessment tracking tools were a good way of managing data that would help libraries build stories of user impact.

But this isn't so much about what Farkas had to say as it is about what people had to say about what she had to say.

It seemed like the Twitter backchannel was musing about how difficult it was to cultivate the kind of organizational culture that breeds an interest in assessment. Basically--nobody teaches this kind of stuff in library school.

The thing is, I couldn't agree more with the notion that academic libraries are being asked to justify their impact on those they serve. It's no longer enough for them to say that they're the center of the academic community. Researchers, both novice and expert, are finding other sources for information than traditional library resources. And many academic libraries grapple with how to stay at the center of the campus community--a completely different challenge.

And I also couldn't agree more with the idea that data helps libraries build stories about their impact on the lives of users.

And, while we're at it, I also couldn't agree more with the idea that creating that kind of organizational culture is really, really hard.

But it's not impossible.

So, how do we do it? How do we create organizational cultures in our libraries that embrace assessment and the data it generates?

I think we start by shifting our focus toward things that are measurable. Which means that every project or program needs to have outcomes built into it during the design phase. How else will we know if the project is successful? And, in the case of programs, how will we know if the audience has learned what we'd like for them to learn?

Academic libraries need to think critically about how adopting this kind of culture could affect them for the better. What would it look like to have data supporting your assertions about how bibliographic instruction sessions have prepared student researchers for upper-level research? It's one thing to consider gate count (which is valuable data, indeed), but it's another to show how you've created good consumers and stewards of information.

I think it's equally important for user-centered back room folks to generate, synthesize, and store data as well. If it's true that academic libraries are being asked to justify their impact on the academic community, it's equally as true that many units performing back-room functions are being asked to do the same. And, when the day comes that you have to advocate for your job, it's much easier to do so using data.

So, try gathering some usage statistics after you finish a cataloging project. Did usage of a hidden collection go up after you added it to the catalog? Did analyzing that serial prompt more people to use it? This kind of data collection can help justify some of the most important work you're doing.

Alternately, though, data of this kind can help you decide what to let go of when budgets are tight and time is fleeting. You can see what your users value most and what they can live without and make decisions about resource allocation accordingly.

So...start with an outcome and measure your success accordingly. And let the data do the talking.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Fixing the PR problem

I tweeted this yesterday:
I've come to the conclusion that libraries, generally speaking, have a PR problem. We do a crap job of explaining to users the how and why.

The problem with our inability to explain the how and way leads to feedback from users that makes us feel especially uncomfortable. We react defensively or want to dismiss it and often our response is more ham-fisted than anything else.

There seem to be two kinds of feedback that we get that speak to this PR problem:
1. Users ask us to develop services we've already developed but haven't done a good job of marketing. Or, users ask us to better market something that we've been trying really hard (but failing) to connect with users on.

2. Users balk at a reality (usually a policy) that can't be changed because of the way we've negotiated a contract or a law that exists.

I think there are two ways to solve this problem.
1. Be transparent in all things--even the unpleasant ones.
Sometimes the response to the requests that your users make is not the one they want to hear. But, as a general rule, people want to be heard and they want to feel like their voice matters. Explain your policies clearly and without jargon. And when you have to say no, explain why in an empathetic way. Log the suggestions and complaints your users give you and respond to them in a public way. Don't make people feel ashamed to ask for what they want, even if you can't give it to them.

2. Be where your users are...not where you think they are.
If you're trying to promote a service, put up fliers in your students' dorms. If you're trying to get more people through the doors of your library, step outside your library and find out why more people aren't there. Or, even better, take your services on the road to where people do spend their time.

It's hard to get out of the echo chamber and learn to tell the stories of your users and their experiences. But part of fixing the PR problem is seeing your users face-to-face, listening to their feedback, and responding to it swiftly. Sometimes that response is a tweak to your services to make them easier to use, but sometimes the response is to explain those services (and their limitations) in language that your users can understand.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Controlling the message

According to this article, the Harrison Public Library is cold and heartless.

They charged the daughter of a recently deceased woman the $0.50 fine upon the (late) return of the book her mother had checked out at the time of her death.

The appropriate higher-ups are included in the article as saying that they have no comment.

I'm not really concerned about who's in the right or who's in the wrong in the situation. I mean, I have opinions, but that's not the point of the post.

If you're a library in a similar situation and a reporter comes knocking at your door to talk about this situation, you need to deal with it. You need to take responsibility for what happened and you need to make the readers of that newspaper see you as sympathetic people who made a mistake.

You need to have already contacted the person who feels wronged and expressed how sorry you are. You need to know what she needs from you to feel better and you need to do it. You need to back up those words of remorse with actions.

When the newspaper contacts you, you need to have the person in charge of spinning your message seem contrite for being unresponsive to the woman's needs. You need to have disciplined the person who upset the woman. You need to express how sorry you are at what happened.

You need not only to care, but you also need the people reading the article to believe that you care.

People who have never been to the Harris Public Library--people who don't have a picture of the library--now think that the staff there is rude and unfeeling. It doesn't matter how true the story is or isn't. The reporter has already painted them as a library with a cold, uncaring, unsympathetic staff.

And that message is a powerful motivation not to visit the Harrison Public Library. It doesn't matter how much information they have or how many services. It doesn't matter what kind of programs they put on or if their catalog is shiny. Because they didn't handle this crisis very well, they will lose users.

"Read" done right

Remember when I commented on the city council member trading cards?

I found something, by way of this post at Library Stuff, that illustrates the point I was trying to make.

The Carmichael Library at University of Montevallo in Alabama has these great Read posters with prominent members of their staff and student body. You can find them on the Carmichael Library Blog.

They got it right! Yay!

I think that the key to making successful library promotional materials like this is to focus on a diverse group of people who are high-profile enough to be easily recognized.

In a university setting, I could see putting posters up in the student union and some of the lecture halls in addition to having them in the library. Product placement is a good way to keep the library at the front of your users minds.

For a public library, I could see putting them in a grocery store or local ice cream shop.

I think that this adds a new dimension to "be where your users are." This is a way to promote your services in places where people go on a regular basis without beating them over the head with the "Library good! Reading good!" message. It is subtle yet captivating.

--Erin