Full Program

Map of Building Locations (followed by detail programme)

Wednesday October 14, 2015
8:00 – 8:30 Registration
8:30 –10:15 Using Google Analytics (PDF)This course is designed to help new and intermediate users who are using Google Analytics to increase and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of website interactions, track user behaviour, and analyze the reach of our resources. Participants will learn to exploit GA’s capabilities to produce relevant analysis & meaningful reports about your site’s visitors

Course participants will be guided through the Google Analytics features most relevant to reference and web librarians, and receive links to resources to support the hands-on exercises.

This workshop will be a combination of hands-on demonstrations and instructor-led presentations. Participants will use their own Google Analytics account to analyse individual data during this workshop.

June Li, CLICKINSIGHT

Ryerson Library 2nd Floor, Information Learning Commons Lab

10:15 – 10:30 Break
10:30 – 12:00 Using Google Analytics (continues)
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch (on own)
13:00 – 14:30 Using Google Analytics (continues)
14:30 – 14:45 Break
14:45 – 16:00 Using Google Analytics (continues)
18:00 Dinner on own
– Dine around sign-up sheets will be available
Thursday October 15, 2015
7:30 – 9:00 Registration
8:00 – 9:00 Assessment 101 Newcomer Breakfast (PDF)Library Assessment basics including best practices, training and professional development opportunities, how to organize assessment activities at your library, and some real-life examples from the field.

Cara Commons, Ted Rogers School of Management

9:00 – 9:15 Welcome Remarks
9:15 – 10:15 Demonstrating value with evidence (PPT)Academic libraries are increasingly being called upon to demonstrate the value that library services and collections contribute to the University. It is no longer just assumed that library services are integral to fostering successful teaching and research – direct links need to be made. This need to demonstrate value is one reason that assessment librarian positions have risen in popularity over the past few years. This presentation will explore the increasing need for librarians to have research and assessment skills and why such skills are so crucial to demonstrate value to others and build knowledge within our profession.

Denise Koufogiannakis, MLIS, PhD
Collections & Acquisitions Coordinator
University of Alberta Libraries
Cara Commons, Ted Rogers School of Management

10:15 – 10:30 Break
10:30 –12:30 Linking Assessment Plan to the Library Strategic Plan (PDF)Struggling to see if your finely crafted strategic plan is measuring up?

This workshop will help you develop an assessment plan to find out. The workshop will provide both a theoretical background and practical advice on developing an assessment plan that links to the organizational plan.

Participants are encouraged to bring copies of assessment plans and/or strategic plans from their home institutions that will be used in the session’s activities.

Lorie Kloda, Assessment Librarian
McGill University
Kathy Ball, Director of Assessment
and Accountability
McMaster University

Cara Commons, Ted Rogers School of Management

12:30 – 14:00 Lunch round table discussions
14:00 – 15:15 Unbundling the Big Deal (PDF) (PDF)In the past year, four Quebec university libraries – the libraries of the Université de Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, Université Sherbooke and Université Laval – undertook large-scale operations for analyzing their periodical collections. To do so, the four institutions called upon Vincent Larivière, associate scientific director of the OST and assistant professor at the School of Library and Information Science of the Université de Montréal to advise them on the methodology to adopt and on performing the analysis. For a number of years, Vincent Larivière has been studying the various impact factors and their relevance in determining the value of scholarly journals. The methodology he has worked on helps identify, for each institution, the core of electronic periodicals that are most valued by the respective communities.

The workshop will be divided into three parts:

  • Assessing periodicals: the methodology, advantages and limitations (PDF)
  • Whether to remove from the large sets or not: the Université de Montréal’s experience with Wiley, Science Direct, Sage (PPT)
  • The issue of index usage statistics, data compilation with Excel, cancelled indexes     (PDF)

For more information:

New era for the collections at the Université de Montréal’s libraries (PDF)

http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/collections-nouvelle-ere/

Assessing periodicals that are essential to teaching and research in the UQAM’s faculties and schools

http://www.bibliotheques.uqam.ca/evaluation

Vincent Larivière, professeur
l’École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, l’Université de Montréal

Stéphanie Gagnon

Directrice des collections
Université de Montréal

Arnald Desrochers
Bibliothécaire, Service de l’acquisition et du développement des collections
Université du Québec à Montréal

Cara Commons, Ted Rogers School of Management

15:15 – 15:30 Break
15:30 – 17:00 Unbundling the Big Deal (continues)
Evening Dinner on your own
– Dine around sign-up sheets will be available
Friday October 16, 2015
7:30 – 8:30 Breakfast
8:30am–10:00am Data Driven Decision Making: Getting There(PPT) (PDF)We collect a lot of data at the library for various purposes (ARL, CARL, accreditation, service level assessment, usage statistics, etc.) and from various sources; but is this data being used to help make decisions or simply to fill in surveys? What data is being collected automatically through our various systems?

In this workshop, we will introduce a method to be more strategic in the collection, analysis and use of data. Together, we will work through a five part strategy for how to tackle data collection for each decision required of your assessment plan (which is linked to your library’s strategic plan). The goal is to learn to leverage the benefit that the data represents.

For best results, come with an issue from your assessment plan that you need to make a decision about.

Liz Hayden, Assessment Librarian
University of Ottawa
Pam Jacobs, Manager of Electronic Resources, University of Guelph

Mattamy Athletic Centre
Alumni Lounge

10:00 – 10:15 Break
10:15 – 11:30 Data Driven Decision Making (continues)
11:30 – 13:00 Lunch

Pickle Barrel
312 Yonge St
(Yonge and Dundas)

13:00 – 14:30 Concurrent Sessions
Guerrilla Assessment or Assessment for the Rest of Us. (PPT) (PDF)

  • Libraries often need to make decisions on services and operations which can’t wait for, and don’t need, a research study.
  • Management decisions benefit from testing assumptions already held before moving ahead.
  • Deciding whether or not to pursue a particular initiative benefits from user input to decide whether or not it’s worth doing.
  • Tweaking a new web tool with the people who are actually going to use it controls for unhappiness, before the complaints come in.

This workshop will explore how to inform decision using quick guerrilla assessment such as whiteboard polls, observation, focus groups and user testing.We will also talk about how to bolster your decisions by repurposing existing library activity data in ways other than the purposes for which they are collected. We will discuss when guerrilla assessment is appropriate and what methods suit what purposes? We will talk about the surprising secondary benefits of guerrilla assessment. And we’ll discover how we can finally use the good information that is in all those library stats we collect year, after year, after year. And yes, you will have to talk to some people!

Debbie Green, Reference Librarian,
University of Toronto

Lisa Gayhart, User Experience Librarian
University of Toronto

Student Learning Centre
Room 514

Data Visualization (Recording)

Want to step up your visualization game? Sick of staring at Excel charts? This workshop explores why visualizations matter in library assessment and how to tell a story with them. We’ll talk about what makes visualizations effective, and introduce tools and resources to help you on your path to becoming the next Alberto Cairo (spoiler alert: he’s one of the resources!). The presenters will review some of their previous data viz work, and explore why certain visualizations took off and others fell flat. Participants will engage in hands-on visualization activities; it’s recommended that those who are bringing a laptop install Tableau Public.

Jeremy Buhler, Assessment Librarian
University of British Columbia

Kathleen Reed
Assessment and Data Librarian
Vancouver Island University

Student Learning Centre
Room 508

 

14:30 – 14:45 Break
14:45 – 15:45 Concurrent sessions (continue)
– Guerrilla Assessment
– Data Vizualization
15:45 – 16:00 Heading up to the Balcony: Taking a Strategic and Enterprise-Wide Approach to Assessment PlanningVivian Lewis, University Librarian
McMaster UniversityStudent Learning Centre