Research methods in library assessment

I gave a workshop about research
methods in library assessment at Santa Clara University Library earlier this
month. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with SCU librarians. The
workshop focused on two things: 1) how to develop the research question in a
library assessment project; and 2) how to determine the proper research methods
for conducting the assessment. Research question develop is the critical first
step in any research project – Albert Einstein once said “If I had an hour to
solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes
thinking about solutions.” In the workshop, we first talked about the progressive
focusing process of formulating the research question (overall goal –>
objectives –> research questions), and discussed the criteria we can use to
evaluate the quality of a research question. ACRL’s 2015 January Assessment in
Action Report titled “ACADEMIC LIBRARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO STUDENT SUCCESS:
Documented Practices from the Field” provided some examples of research
questions in library assessment, and we spent some time examining each one of
them (see the picture below) – it was a great way to look closely at the process of developing research
questions. Then we reviewed the major research designs (based on the analytic
objective, time dimension, and degree of variable manipulation) and the frequently
used qualitative and quantitative methods in library assessment. Quantitative
methods seem to be more popular in assessment projects.

I’m glad to have this opportunity
to chat with SCU librarians about research methods – I admire their initiative
to engage in library assessment using valid and reliable research methods. This
workshop made me think about, as LIS research methods instructors, what we can
do to work more closely with libraries and librarians that conduct assessment.
Looks like I need a lunch date with some of my fellow methods instructors and
my assessment librarian friends. 🙂

QQML 2014

I just got back from the 6^th QQML conference in Istanbul. As always, it’s a fruitful trip. What I particularly liked this year was Cornell University Librarian Anne Kenney’s keynote talk “Defining 21^st Century Research Libraries to Implementing 21^st Century Research Universities”, where she talked about the paradigm shift among academic libraries that are focusing less on measuring what libraries are doing and more on developing metrics that measure how well they are enabling research universities to thrive in the 21^st century. Her talk gave me a lot to think about, particularly for the research methods course I intend to develop that focuses on academic librarianship.

I also enjoyed the LibQUAL-related presentations at the conference, which not only included presentations sharing results of LibQUAL surveys in libraries in different countries, but also one interesting presentation that described translating LibQUAL in other languages ( the historical context, the functionality of the current web interface in handling different languages and a reliability and validity analysis for selected language versions). LibQUAL is a great example of conducting survey research in LIS, and in the fall I will be teaching a course about survey research. So these presentations were timely and beneficial.

During the conference I spent quite a bit of time talking to a group of scholars from Taiwan. Two of them got their master’s in LIS and PhD in education. Their students are school teachers, and they are developing information literacy standards and instruction strategies at K-12 level. In Taiwan, teachers are responsible for information literacy instruction in addition to subject teaching, and now the increasing workload has made it necessary to have special teacher positions that exclusively focus on information literacy. This is quite different from the US, there the trend is reversed and school librarian positions are getting cut everywhere because of budget problems. Another Taiwanese Professor comes from National Chengchi University and they have the only online LIS master’s program in Taiwan. We talked a lot about online education and I invited her to share the experience of their online program at the Library 2.014 conference. It’s always nice to learn about online education from the international perspective.

Finally, another highlight of this conference was seeing my old friends Songphan and Cristina. I saw them last year in Rome but didn’t get to talk much because of our different schedules. It’s just wonderful to see them again and catch up with them.

QQML 2013

Last week I was in Rome attending the 2013 International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML), where 288 papers from all over the world were presented, covering a wide variety of topics in LIS. I had a great time talking to librarians, educators and researchers from different countries and learning about their research. Two of my old friends from Chapel Hill were also there – it’s been six years since I last saw them, and it was just wonderful to see them again.

The papers that interested me most were the ones about library assessment and valuation. Recently I have been thinking about developing a course entirely on library assessment. This topic has been a component in many courses in our program, but I think it is important enough to spend a full course on it. More and more libraries, especially academic libraries are facing increasing pressures to establish their relevance and value, and assessment is critical in this process.

Here are a few papers about library assessment that I enjoyed:

A survey study to examine students’ use of an academic library, its resources and spaces, and their engagement and persistence at UT Austin (by Meredith Taylor).
A project using the Understanding Library Impacts (ULI) protocol to assess library contributions to undergraduate student learning at Barnard College (by Derek Rodriguez and Lisa Norberg).
A study using the MISO survey to assess the quality and effectiveness of library services (by David Consiglio, Katherine Furlong and Gentry Holbert).
The single or joint use of qualitative and quantitative metrics to support library accreditation efforts, funding requests and assess user needs and expectations ( by Michael Maciel).
The best practices of data visualization and examples of how some of them have been applied in libraries (by Rachel Besara).

There are also a couple of papers about health information access that caught my attention. This is an area that I wish to further explore. I just learned this morning, my first paper in this area, “Preparing Public Librarians for Consumer Health Information Service: A Nationwide Study”, co-authored with Dr. Van Ta Park, has been accepted to publish in Library and Information Science Research. Van and I will also discuss ideas of developing grant proposals together to fund our collaborative research pursuit down the path of health information.

Overall, I had a great time at QQML 2013. Now with all the ideas and inspirations grained from the conference, I’m going to have a very busy summer.