Measure for Measure: Developing an Assessment Plan for Access Services

1. Measure for Measure: Developing an Assessment Plan for Access Services Robin Ewing Brick & Click 2 November 2007

2. All About Robin Robin Ewing Access Services Coordinator, Assistant Professor St. Cloud State University rlewing@stcloudstate.edu • Presentation materials will be available after the conference at web.stcloudstate.edu/rlewing

3. Agenda for Today • Background information • St. Cloud State University • Learning Resources & Technology Services • Access Services • Elements of an assessment matrix • Examples • What not to do

4. St. Cloud State University St. Cloud State University (http://www.stcloudstate.edu) Located on the Mississippi River in St. Cloud, MN, St. Cloud State University has 16,000 students and is a part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System.

5. The Miller Center

6. Learning Resources & Technology Services • Library and information services • Academic computing and technology support • Technology related instructional services • Organizational structure: http://lrts.stcloudstate.edu/about/lrtsorg.pdf

8. Access Services • One of three library workgroups with Reference Services and Collection Management • Circulation • Interlibrary Loan • CMLE: Central Minnesota Library Exchange • Periodicals Service Counter

9. Why an Assessment Plan • ACRL workshop: Assessment in Academic Libraries: Using the ACRL Standards for Continuous Evaluation, at ALA Midwinter Meeting, San Antonio, January 2006. • Workgroup goals • Building survey • Simplicity and coolness

10. Parts of an Assessment Plan • Challenge: A higher-level goal • Goal: A sub-goal of the challenge • Strategies: Action steps for achieving a goal • Assessment Procedure: How you determine if an strategy is effective • Indicate the frequency of assessment. Avoid survey fatigue. • Results: The results from the assessment

11. Assessment Matrix Sample

12. Assessment Matrix: Version One

13. Goals & Strategies • Goals • Flow from library’s mission statement • Must be assessable • Strategies • Action steps for attaining goals

14. Access Workgroup Goals

15. Assessment • Did your strategy (action steps) work? • Assessment can simply be that you did what you said you were going to do.

16. Assessment Examples • Review existing institutional evidence • NSSE: National Survey of Student Engagement • Institutional self studies for accreditation • Surveys of graduating students • LR&TS • Building survey • LibQUAL+™ • Annual Report

17. Example • Goal: Welcome new librarians to SCSU • Strategy: Hold an Access Services open house for new librarians • Assessment: Open house happens

18. Assessment Matrix: Version Two

19. What’s Left to Do • Implement strategies for remaining goals • Complete assessment for each strategy • Review assessment techniques for each goal • Review results • Apply this technique to entire library

20. Learn from My Mistakes • Improve goal setting • Peer comparisons • Integrate assessment plan with LR&TS mission, vision, goals • Review ACRL standards for suggested outcomes

21. Agenda for Today • Background information • St. Cloud State University • Learning Resources & Technology Services • Access Services • Elements of an assessment matrix • Examples • What not to do

22. Questions? Comments? Suggestions?