[alcts-eforum] TS Stats & Assessment - Final Summary

ALCTS eforum hosted a two-day discussion on technical services statistics and assessment during Aug. 22-23, 2012. Here is the final summary posted by Buddy Pennington, Director of Collections and Access Management, University of Missouri-Kansas City:

Turning Statistics Into Assessment : How can Technical Services Measure the Value of Their Services?
Moderated by Sarah Simpson (Tulsa City-County Library) and Buddy Pennington (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

The topic of “Turning Statistics Into Assessment : How can Technical Services Measure the Value of Their Services?” generated 160 messages from 55 participants during the e-forum held August 22-23, 2012. The moderators wanted to discuss with others how technical services departments collect and utilize statistics to measure their value.

Day one began with a lively discussion about the statistics we keep. Many of us do count almost everything anyone does – there is a sense that counting production is the bottom line. We count orders placed, items received, titles cataloged, items processed, serials added, and on and on. There were discussions of additional things that can be tricky – keeping track of money spent by subject area or department, OCLC cataloging and authority work, usage statistics, and how to deal with tracking our work on electronic resources – they give us a whole slew of new processes to count! This also led to a brief discussion of numbers we wish we had, like turnaround time, cost/item, and catalog use, with some people offering up their own methods of procuring these numbers, which was very helpful.

Another discussion focused on the complexities of using our ILS systems to pull these statistics, with some people noting that they still relied on manual counting, and others offering help with using the system to get those numbers. It became very clear that this is something that varies wildly from ILS to ILS, and can involve 3rd party software as well. However, manual counting definitely has its challenges – in both validity and time spent.

Reasons for collecting statistics included making collection decisions about what to buy and what to weed, assessing staffing levels, evaluating staff, justifying funding, demonstrating productivity, and making information available to many of the stakeholders for our organizations.

The second day turned toward the assessment component. We started the morning out by discussing how we use the statistics we collect for internal assessment activities. It is critical that we ask ourselves why we are collecting the data in the first place. Statistics can be utilized to establish production benchmarks that can be used to determine staffing needs and/or training priorities. It is difficult to compare different libraries so many establish internal benchmarks.

We also discussed reporting. Many of us issue reports and include statistics in those reports. Reports and statistics can be used to highlight accomplishments as well as trends from year to year. North Carolina State University posts there statistics on the open web (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/cataloging/stats/), pointing out that potential recruits can get an informed sense of the technical services operations from such information. Many of us are issuing reports to collection development librarians and/or to fulfill accreditation reporting needs.

Discussion on reporting inevitably turned toward discussing the impact or value of technical services. Assessment is turning into demonstrating the value of services to various stakeholders (Megan Oakleaf, The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2010. Available at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/value/val_report.pdf). How well do our statistics and reports do that? Demonstrating value can be done, but it can also be more challenging particular when trying to demonstrate technical services value to stakeholders outside the library. Technical services can demonstrate the value of services internally by educating other library departments on technical services through tours, cross-training, open houses and orientations.

The moderators thank Kristin Martin for her support as e-forum coordinator, and the participants for a thought-provoking discussion, and for some great ideas to consider moving forward!

ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services hosts YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/alctsce/

ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) launched a YouTube channel in February 2012 to host its growing collection of webinar presentations. Currently, there are five playlists available (some webinars are featured on more than one playlist): Collections, Cataloging, Preservation, Institutional Repositories, and RDA Series Webinars. Within each playlist is a wide variety of presentations; on the "Preservation" playlist, for example, you can find videos addressing topics such as disaster preparedness, mold prevention and remediation, and digital preservation. The topics covered on the "Collections" playlist include effective subscription management, the rise and fall of reference collections, evaluating e-resources, and buying library materials on the out-of-print market. The "Cataloging" playlist includes a presentation with the memorable title "Cataloging Icky Things, or, If You Can Catalog a Book, You Can Catalog Anything!"  Those who are preparing for the implementation of RDA will appreciate the 19 webinars featured in the RDA Webinar Series, including "Cataloging Law Materials with RDA."

Print Management at "Mega-scale"

Lavoie, Brian F. Print Management at "Mega-scale": Regional Perspective on Print Book Collections in North America. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research, c2012. At: http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2012/2012-05.pdf

Using a mega-regions ("geographical regions defined on the basis of economic integration and other forms of interdependence") framework to model regional consolidation of shared print book library collections, this report explores a counterfactual scenario where local US and Canadian print book library collections are consolidated into regional shared collections. The analysis in this paper builds upon findings from the OCLC Research report, Cloud-sourcing Research collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment (2011), and draws upon bibliographic and library holdings data from the WorldCat database.

App-titude

In its latest issue, The Charleston Advisor launches a new regular column focusing on "apps of interest in the library community".  The initial column provides a brief overview of vendor mobile apps with the promise of closer examination of specific apps in the future. Additionally, formal reviews of some apps will be offered in the review section of this publication.

Program for Cooperative Cataloging task group issues list of RDA training materials

The PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) Standing Committee on Training Task Group on RDA Training Materials submitted its final report to the PCC Standing Committee on Training in May 2012. The Task Group was charged with collecting existing RDA training materials to be used for PCC training.  The 36-page report contains an extensive list of freely available RDA training materials created by a wide variety of libraries and organizations. After gathering and evaluating more than 100 resources, the Task Group created an annotated list of 38 recommended resources. The recommended materials are divided into six categories: general documentation, theoretical foundations, introductions to the RDA Toolkit, RDA for general cataloging, RDA for special formats, and RDA and authority records. Libraries nationwide will benefit from the wide dissemination of these RDA training materials, regardless of whether they are PCC members or not. The Task Group report is available at: http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/sct/documents/Final%20Report%20of%20the%20SCT%20RDA%20Training%20Materials%20Task%20Group.docm.

Digital Preservation in a Box

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance just unveiled a new resource, Digital Preservation in a Box. This is an online collection of resources for the learning and teaching of digital preservation. Please see the following blog post on the Signal for more information about the collection:

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/07/digital-preservation-in-a-box-have-a-look-inside/

The Digital Preservation in a Box is located at: http://dpoutreach.net/

The site contains the following resources:

*Digital Preservation 101 – introductory materials, including videos, articles, and tutorials explaining the concepts involved in digital preservation
*Glossary – collection of glossaries from various institutions and programs, containing explanations of relevant terms
*Preservation by Format – where to find information for specific digital formats including photographs, audio, video, email, etc.
*Digital Preservation Tools – basic tools listed for either “consumer” or “information professional”
*Digital Storage – some options geared towards personal archiving or the basic knowledge needed to understand preservation storage technology.
*Resources for Educators – curriculum guidance and teaching materials
*Marketing and Outreach – links to marketing materials that can be adapted to support specific events.
*Event Guidance – what you need to know to prepare a digital preservation event at your institution
*Brief Introduction to Digitization – all about scanning, and making the distinction between digital preservation and digitization

ALCTS/LITA slides available

PowerPoint slides from the LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group Programs from ALA Annual 2012 are now available on ALA Connect.

Their speakers were:

Janis Young, Library of Congress - LC update to the Authority Control Interest Group.

Gary Strawn, Northwestern University - RDA and the LC/NACO authority file.

Ana Cristan, Library of Congress - Name authorities - What's new?

Karen Anderson, Backstage Library Works - Planning for RDA authority conversion.