Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries

Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries offers librarians a solid approach to begin conducting such assessment and to deliver valuable programming. In six short chapters the authors describe the five steps of the outcome-based planning and evaluation model. The steps include: gathering information, determining outcomes, designing and evaluating programs and services, and sharing the results. Particularly helpful are the appendices which include suggestions on how to conduct an environmental scan, assessing community needs, sample questions to ask during field research, and examples of questions that can be used in interviews and focus groups. Overall, this is a good introduction to outcome-based planning and evaluation. Although intended for public librarians, it would be useful for librarians in any type of library. 

Melissa Gross, Cindy Mediavilla, and Virginia A. Walter. Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries. ALA Editions, 2016, 102 pp., ISBN 9780838914045.

2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting; Day 2 Highlights

The second day of the 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting included two meetings of great interest to me. The first was the LITA Publications Committee meeting. Only four committee members, including the chair, were able to attend Midwinter, so we had an abbreviated discussion of the agenda and made plans to hold a virtual meeting after we get back. The agenda included the idea that Publications Committee members could provide an additional level of review for the LITA Guides series of publication, currently published by Rowman & Littlefield. We also discussed the role of the LITA Guides Acquisitions Editor, how Information Technology and Libraries fits into the mix of LITA publications, and how the LITA blog works. Other agenda items that we were not able to address included revenue generation, executive director's reports, marketing, and new topics for LITA Guides.

The meeting that is a highlight of every Midwinter Meeting for me was the Cataloging & Classification Quarterly (CCQ) Editorial Board business meeting and dinner. We discussed topics that might be appropriate for theme issues as well as the possibility of doing a general call for submissions. Such calls are generally more successful for theme issues than for general issues. CCQ editor Sandy Roe reported that Barbara Tillett has resigned from the Board. She asked for Board members to send her suggestions for potential future members of the Board. Taylor & Francis staff reported that CCQ is the most downloaded of all of its library and information science journals with approximately 62,000 downloads in the past year. We reviewed the CCQ publishers' report, including the top 10 downloaded articles.

In addition to these two meetings, I attended two publisher presentations of new books. The first was the HarperCollins presentation of new titles for the spring; I wrote about this meeting here. The second was the AAP LibraryReads Best in Debut Authors, which I discussed here. I collected a number of advance reading copies for review. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday at conference!

2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting: Day 1 Highlights

I generally travel to both the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference on Thursdays so that I can attend the Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Interest Group, otherwise known as Big Heads. They meet on Friday mornings from 8:30-11:30, and they usually have a fairly full agenda. This meeting was no exception, although as both the friend with whom I was sitting and I both noted, their agenda was particularly and surprisingly in the weeds. Here's a quick summary of the agenda and discussion.

Big Heads

The future of physical processing and the disposition of materials in relation to shared print repositories. This was a surprisingly detailed discussion about what physical processing is still done by the members' respective libraries. Member representatives shared whether their libraries continued to label, stamp, security strip, and barcode library materials. Obviously an issue that continues to resonate, but not something I expected to be discussed at this meeting.

Off-site Technical Services. Many member libraries are establishing technical services units outside of their main libraries and sometimes off campus. Member representatives discussed the challenges involved, including the shipment of materials back and forth, staff participation in library events, managers needs to go back and forth for meetings, transportation, the loss of ease in consulting with each other, and parking.

How are we sharing data in a new, distributed, collaborative environment? This item related to the metadata we're creating and maintaining in silos, as in our institutional repositories. We have the tradition of maintaining tradition metadata as MARC records in OCLC WorldCat. How are we going to pull all of the other disparate metadata together? (My suggestion: Google).

What are the impacts on technical services of collaborative collection development? As we enter into collaborative collection development agreements, how do we ensure that we can meet the terms of the agreements, e.g., the cataloging of the items in a timely manner or retention agreements. Do libraries consistently use the 583 field to record retention decisions? Do library staff look at the 583 field before they withdraw materials?

Staff Morale and Structure of Technical Services Work. This was brought up by the Stanford member representative who found that many library staff left for other jobs when Stanford made staff salaries public and library staff learned that comparable jobs outside the libraries earned much higher pay. A discussion ensued about how to retain library staff: flex-time, more cross-training, etc.

A sustainable/consistent model for vendor records. Vendor records, again! We maintain high standards for some vendors, while with others we'll take anything (just to have something). Do we need to maintain consistency. General consensus: this ship has sailed.

BIBFRAME update and Linked Data for Production grant. Several of the libraries shared their work on a variety of BF projects. Better summarized elsewhere.

Update on the CIC Cooperative Cataloging Pilot. The University of Chicago has been a leader in a CIC project to share cataloging expertise across institutions. Their final report has been completed but not distributed pending a discussion by the CIC library directors group in May. 

ALCTS Executive Board I

As ALCTS News Editor I'm an ex-officio member of four ALCTS committees, including the Executive Board which meets for a total of 8 1/2 hours during each conference: four hours on Friday afternoon and 4 1/2 hours on Monday afternoon. This is where much of the business of the Division takes place. The Board votes on a consent agenda, meaning the they ratify in person all the votes taken electronically as well as documents that are submitted by key committee chairs. They include budget documents from Budget and Finance, the LRTS Editor report, the 2016 election slate, and more.

We had a visit from the ALA Treasurer candidate, Susan Hildreth, (the only candidate as the other one withdrew). The ALCTS past-president, president, president-elect, and ALA Councilor all give brief reports. This was followed by discussion items, which is generally the real meat of the agenda. This time the discussion items included the Program Coordinating Committee report and plans to maintain a database of ALCTS programming activity; a review of progress on the strategic plan; a suggestion to form an ALCTS mentoring program; and plans to conduct a membership survey. For the first time in my experience with the ALCTS Board, we ended a little early, getting out by 4:15 or so.

Exhibits Opening

The Midwinter Meeting exhibits opened at 5:30, with hordes of librarians surging down the aisles looking for freebies, advance reading copies, tote bags, snacks, and free drinks. I visited some of my favorite publishers, including HarperCollins, where I got a copy of Louise Erdrich's LaRose. This was especially exciting because I just read her Tracks in December and brought along The Antelope Wife for this trip. I also got Sunil Yapa's Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, which has been getting a lot of pre-pub attention. After about 15-20 minutes of the exhibits I had a bag full of books and I decided to leave before I started on another bag!
 

 

Letting Go of Legacy Services, edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong

I just reviewed Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies, edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong. My review's going to be published in the Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship v.27, no. 3, so I won't repeat the review here. I will say that the book raises some interesting questions about "planned abandonment." Some of the case studies address the abandonment of services that are considered core by most libraries. For example, the University of Arizona has abandoned both print and electronic reserves. After more than a decade of evaluating both services, they found that print was used very little, but took up a lot of staff time. Electronic reserves were incorporated into the university's course management system.

I think this book has a lot to offer library managers who are trying to offer new services while maintaining traditional services. It's clear from these case studies that it's valuable to periodically review and evaluate services offered. Whether services are abandoned or simply modified, a thoughtful approach to what we do and why is always useful.

Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies. Edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014. 159 pages. ISBN 9780838912201.

ELUNA 2015

The 2015 Ex Libris Users Group of North America (ELUNA) conference was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 5-8. It included four full days of programming about all of the Ex Libris (EL) products presented by a variety of practitioners as well as Ex Libris staff. The first morning was devoted primarily to a keynote and presentations by ELUNA leadership and Ex Libris staff. One of the things that I noted during the morning presentations was that Ex Libris considers libraries that migrate to Alma between 2015 and 2020 to be "early adopters." Meaning that we could migrate five years from now and still be considered to be in the forefront!

The program tracks were devoted to specific product lines: Aleph, Alma, Voyager, SFX, Primo, Verde, Metalib, Digitool, Rosetta. Ex Libris presentations generally demonstrated the latest developments in each of their products. Practitioner presentations address a wide variety of issues. Three of us attended from UAlbany, and we informally split up the sessions. I tended to go to sessions about migrating to Alma. The breakout sessions that I attended were:

• Keep calm and Alma on: implementing Alma in six months (at the University of Tennessee)
• Choice and diversity in acquisitions methods (Alma) (this was an Ex Libris session)
• Alma product update (also an EL session)
• Alma product working group meeting (led by Betsy Friesen, University of Minnesota)
• Planning and completing a full catalog RDA enrichment project in Alma (at the University of Minnesota)
• Alma Demo: Acquisitions (an EL session)
• What to expect when things are unexpected: how we went live in Alma and quickly practiced thinking on our feet, accepting change and letting things go (at the University of Minnesota)
• A collaborative review of Ex Libris Support (an EL session)
• 57 to 1: What are the odds? (presented by SUNY Office of Library and Information Services staff: about the One Bib merged bibliographic records project)
• Building a province-wide private research cloud for Ontario's academic libraries (this was unrelated to EL products, but of interest to academic libraries)

Presentations by the practitioners were very interesting. The keynote presentation on the first day of the conference was by Nancy Sims (University of Minnesota) and was called "User Stalking for Fun and Profit." While tongue in cheek, Ms. Sims demonstrated that it's almost impossible to make data anonymous. Even when you try to anonymize data, it can be de-anonymized easily with just one or two other data points, such as gender and zip code. It was very sobering, especially as libraries are looking at using student data to demonstrate the impact libraries have on the success of their students.

Presentations from the 2015 ELUNA Conference are posted here.

Minneapolis was a good venue for this conference, although it would be nice if everyone could fit into one hotel. Next year the conference will be in Oklahoma City.

ARL Membership Meeting, Spring 2015

I recently attended the spring 2015 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) membership meeting, held at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA, April 28-30, 2015. It's been a while since I attended an ARL meeting as a member of the ARL Research Libraries Leadership Fellows Program in 2007-2008. While I was in that program I attended ARL meetings in St. Louis, Coral Gables, and Washington, D.C. The Coral Gables meeting included a memorable dinner at the home of Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami. This time I was looking forward to participating as an official delegate (filling in for my boss, Mary Casserly), and also to meeting the current group of leadership fellows, some of whom I know from ALA or past positions.

The first day of the membership meeting was mostly dedicated to the work of the Association. ARL had in recent years undertaken a strategic planning initiative, which resulted in a report that charted their new direction: Report of the Association of Research Libraries Strategic Thinking and Design Initiative. Discussion revolved around future directions including a focus on leadership development, collections, innovation, libraries that learn, and libraries as scholarly communication engines. Committees will be smaller and include Advocacy and Public Policy, Assessment; Diversity; and Membership Engagement and Outreach.

Highlights of the meeting for me were the invited speakers and panelists. William C. Kirby (Harvard University) gave a presentation on "A Chinese Century? The World of Universities and Information in the 21st Century." Brian Nosek (University of Virginia, and Executive Director, Center for Open Science) presented on his efforts to support open scholarship as well as common practices regarding transparency, accuracy, sharing, reproducibility, and more. Panels addressed both copyright and shared print repositories. Finally, ARL and SPARC staff provided a series of updates on their advocacy and policy efforts. I had to catch my flight home so I unfortunately missed the last panel, which was on data science and supporting new research methods.

Aside from these substantive programs and panels, ARL membership meetings include introductions of new member delegates and tributes to retiring delegates. UCs Berkeley and Davis hosted a reception at the Morrison Library the first evening, and there was another reception held at the Claremont on the second evening. Overall, I found the meeting to be very stimulating and I have pages of notes that I want to follow up on later.

NOTSL 2015 Spring Meeting

I recently gave the keynote presentation at the Northern Ohio Technical Services Librarians (NOTSL) Spring 2015 Meeting. NOTSL meets twice a year and this meeting was held on April 24 at the Cuyahoga County Public Library Parma-Snow Branch Auditorium. I was asked to speak about using assessment to advocate for technical services. I appreciated the opportunity to talk about this aspect of assessment because I usually talk about technical services assessment in the context of improving services or processes. There was a lot of interest in using assessment to advocate for funding, positions, or changes to procedures or policies. You can access my presentation here, published in the University at Albany's institutional repository, Scholars Archive.

Other speakers were Anthony McMullen (Systems Librarian, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania) and Robin Buser (Supervisor of Technical Services, Columbus State Community College). Robin has recently co-authored the book Project Management for Libraries: A Practical Approach (along with Bruce E. Massis and Miriam Pollack). She spoke briefly about "Assessing Projects: Before, During and After."

The Spring 2015 NOTSL meeting was very well organized and attended by more than 60 people, including a mix of public and academic librarians. The venue was very nice, close to restaurants, and easy to get to. NOTSL is not a fee-based organization; everyone who attends a NOTSL meeting is considered a member. You can learn about their past programs here.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

With Linchpin: Are You Indispensable, author Seth Godin makes the case that we need to stand out from the crowd and be indispensable to be successful. While I appreciate this concept and believe that it's true to a certain point, Mr. Godin did not make a very strong case for it in this book, which is repetitive and unorganized.

The book begins by stating that we are all cogs in a giant machine, too timid to stand out from the crowd and be noticed. In fact, one of the early headings in an early chapter reads "We are Surrounded by Bureaucrats, Note Takers, Literalists, Manual Readers, TGIF Laborers, Map Followers, and Fearful Employees." While I agree that some people are 9-to-5ers, just doing what it takes to get by, I have a hard time believing that the majority of people are like that, although I admit that my perspective might be skewed by having worked in higher education for 30 years, as opposed to the corporate world that Mr. Godin is clearly referring to.

Another concept that I had trouble with is Mr. Godin's idea of art. He constantly refers to the goal of becoming artists, no matter what our job. A Starbucks barista is an artist when he goes above and beyond his responsibilities by making customers feel welcome, etc. I don't think this analogy was necessary, and strained his argument somewhat. Mr. Godin's main point is that people need to stand out, put more effort in, challenge the rules, offer edgy solutions, etc. to make others (i.e., management) notice them. If their solutions or creativity aren't rewarded, they should leave and find a company that recognizes what they can offer.

Mr. Godin devotes a chapter to what he calls The Resistance. This refers to our basic animal nature, the lizard part of the brain that is full of fear and afraid to do anything worthwhile. I also found this completely unconvincing. Admittedly, we all have some anxiety about taking risks in the workplace, but his indictment of people's reasoning and rationalization for inaction was overblown and overstated.

Finally, I found the book to be poorly organized. I read it over the course of three days, including a plane ride from Minneapolis to Albany, and over a weekend. It felt like I was reading a brain dump of overgeneralizations that were grouped together somewhat by chapters. It was repetitive and filled with anecdotes that weren't very convincing. It could have used the skills of an editor, although Mr. Godin does provide a long list of people in his acknowledgments, all of whom presumably read it and gave feedback. I really wanted to like this book, but in the end, it's not a strong contribution to the business self-improvement or management literature.

Seth Godin. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011. 244 pages. ISBN 9781591844099.

27 Powers of Persuasion, by Chris St. Hilaire

Whether in work or in one's personal life, most people have to persuade others at some point. 27 Powers of Persuasion: Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences & Win Allies will help you develop the skills to make persuasive arguments. Although "seduce" might be overstating the case, this book does provide a lot of tips on how to get others to think about things in a different way and open them up to your viewpoints.

Author Chris St. Hilaire starts out by advising readers to focus on the goal. It's too easy to be distracted by details and positions when discussing options, and it's important to remind everyone involved to think about the end goal. That ensures that everyone's on the same page; it's less about how we get there and more about finding the best solution to achieve our goals. Each chapter in this book is numbered Power #1, Power #2, etc. They include helpful discussions about evaluating the egos in the room; using the first five minutes to make people feel safe; framing the discussion in terms of choice, fairness, and accountability; and using (just a few) statistics to bolster your case.

I found this book helpful in making me think about how I frame new ideas or approaches to work situations. Some of Mr. St. Hilaire's examples, especially those from the political sphere, seemed a little manipulative to me, but most examples were useful and could be applied to many situations. This book would be a good (and very quick) read for any manager. I read it in just a few hours on a flight from Albany to Minneapolis.

Chris St. Hilaire with Lynette Padwa. 27 Powers of Persuasion: Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences & Win Allies. New York: Prentice Hall Press, 2010. 204 pages. ISBN 9780735204591.

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, by Adam Grant

According to author Adam Grant, everyone is either a giver, taker, or matcher, both at work and in their personal lives. The meanings of these labels are obvious. Givers like to give more than they get from others. They give feedback, mentor others, review others' work for accuracy, and provide help any time they're asked. Takers, on the other hand, like to get more than they receive from others. They will ask for help, but they aren't there when others need help in return. They will take what they can get and then dump you. Most common are the matchers, and we see them often in the workplace. Matchers often help others, expecting help in return when they need it. They keep a subconscious tally to keep track of the relationship, expecting to keep the effort on both sides even.

Mr. Grant's research addresses which of these three personalities is the most successful at work. As an example he uses Abraham Lincoln's early political career in which he sacrifices an early race for senate to help a colleague; what might have seemed like a mistake at the time came around to help him far more in the end. In chapter 2 the author discusses the differences between how takers and givers build networks. Subsequent chapters address the ripple effect of giving, identifying givers and their potential, and how communication styles differ between givers and takers.

Whereas early chapters of Give and Take discuss how giving personalities tend to be more successful in the long run, the second half of the book addresses some of the pitfalls of giving and how to avoid them. Chapter 6 discusses the potential for burnout and how to avoid it (hint: the trick is to become more engaged but in different ways). Chapter 7 addresses how giving personalities can avoid becoming a doormat for others who ask for too much and take you for granted. In chapter 8 the author discusses how a culture of giving can be encouraged and uses as one of his examples the online service Freecycle. Finally, Mr. Grant provides 10 action items that will help readers develop their giving tendencies and create stronger networks.

Give and Take is an excellent exploration of how the tendency to help (or not) can make a huge impact on your life and career. Backed by a lot of research, cited in a fairly lengthy references section, Grant provides a lot of fodder for thought and discussion. Filled with anecdotes to support his research, Give and Take is well-written and fun to read. This would be an excellent book to use for a reading group or a workplace discussion.

Adam Grant. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. New York: Viking, 2013. 305 pages. ISBN 9780670026555.

How to Write a Lot, by Paul J. Silvia

This slim volume has lots of good advice for academics who want to write more. In a concise and humorous manner, author Paul Silvia manages to give practical advice that (if followed) is guaranteed to help readers write more.

Mr. Silvia begins by debunking all of the excuses that people have for not writing:

• There's not enough time
• I need to read more articles before I begin
• I need a new computer, a better printer, etc.
• I'm waiting for inspiration

He tells us that the only way to ensure that you write more is to write according to a schedule, such as two hours every morning. He then discusses tools to help writers set goals, set priorities, and monitor progress. He denies the existence of writer's block for academic writers: "Writer's block is nothing more than the behavior of not writing" (p. 46).

Mr. Silvia goes on to suggest setting up a writers' group and describes his experiences with such a group at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he works. In subsequent chapters he tackles writing style and the art of writing journal articles and books. His discussions on handling reviews and rejection are especially helpful. He concludes by stressing that you don't need special qualities to write; you just need to keep to your writing schedule. If you do that, you're guaranteed to write more.

How to Write a Lot includes an index as well as a list of recommended books for further reading.

Paul J. Silvia. How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2007. 149 pages. ISBN 9781591477433.

RDA and Cartographic Resources

RDA and Cartographic Resources is a well-written and timely overview of the instructions found in Resource Description and Access (RDA) for cataloging print maps, globes, atlases, and maps in electronic form. Organized into five chapters and seven appendixes, it includes a short history of cataloging rules for cartographic materials, descriptions of the changes between AACR2 and RDA, an introduction to FRBR concepts, and field by field instructions for cataloging. 

The book is strengthened by many illustrations and examples including MARC records and fields;  and side-by-side RDA and AACR2 examples that readers will find very helpful. The book is well-written and will reassure catalogers as they build confidence in applying RDA to their cataloging. It is a strong addition to the growing field of publications addressing RDA and its application to a variety of formats. I recommend RDA and Cartographic Resources for personal and professional libraries where there is need and interest.

Paige G. Andrew, Susan M. Moore, and Mary Lynette Larsgaard. RDA and Cartographic Resources. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2015. 144 p. $62.00. ISBN 9780838911310.