7th Canadian Learning Commons Conference, June 9-11, 2014
Sponsored by Bishop’s University
Sherbrooke, Quebec
Towards a more Perfect Union: Merging Service Points at Northeastern University’s Snell Library
Elizabeth Chamberlain Habich, Director, Administration & Finance, Northeastern University
Debra Mandel, Acting Associate Dean, User Services
Betsy Habich:
[SLIDE: TITLE]
Well, good afternoon!
In 2012-13, Northeastern University’s main Snell Library was renovated, and three new service points were created, staffed collaboratively by Library, Information Technology Services, and other staff. I will be first talking about the strategic and institutional context for the project and the services, and then my colleague Debra Mandel will talk about the process of actually making these new service points work.
So to start, some background information about Northeastern University, the Snell Library, and the Digital Media Commons Project – the context for our discussion.
[SLIDE: Northeastern]
Northeastern University is a private school located in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts, and enrolls over 33,000 students (nearly 28,000 FTE). Historically, Northeastern, which was founded in 1898, was known for its cooperative education program which let first-generationcollegestudents earn their way through college while getting practical work experience. In the last 25 years, Northeastern has increasingly focused on academic excellence, scholarship, and research, and the rate of improvement has accelerated over the past ten years. In the most recent US News & World Report rankings, Northeastern placed 49th after breaking into the top 100 in the mid 2000’s, the most rapid rise of any university. Ahigher percentage of students are now enrolled in graduate programs, and significantly more students attend full-time and live on campus. Over the same period, nearly 400 new tenured or tenure-track faculty have been hired and patent applications have increased almost three-fold. In short, NU is a university on the rise.
[SLIDE: Snell Library]
The Snell Library opened in 1990, as part of the University’s commitment to transform itself from a regional safety school to a national powerhouse. Significantly for the Library, over the 20+ yearssince Snell opened, the way study and learning take place and the nature of scholarly communications have both changed.
Trends in Study and Learning.
Let me first say a few words about trends in study and learning.
- First, we now understand that active, collaborative learning is more effective than passive listening, and more effectively prepares students to work in the teams and committees pervasive in organizations. Buzz-phrases such as ‘guide by the side instead of sage on the stage’ and the ‘flipped classroom’ acknowledge the currency of this understanding.
- Second, at least at Northeastern, learning is increasingly interdisciplinary, research-oriented, and entrepreneurial.
- Third, study is social. Even if I’m not collaborating with you on something, I don’t want to be alone in a carrel- I want to be sitting at a table with you, my friends. And I’m likely to have my laptop, cell-phone, and a backpack with my papers and personal stuff, so I need power, wifi, and space to spread out.
- Fourth, study takes place in informal settings. We now recognize that those lounge chairs we only had because some students liked to sleep in them back in the 1990’s are a vital part of the study space ecology.
- Interestingly, the LibQUAL studies administered by the Association of Research Libraries has found that in general, undergraduate students value the library as a place to study, faculty value the library as a source of informational resources, and graduate students value it for both reasons.
- Although more and more library-curated material is available digitally, students still persist in coming to the library to study, in preference to dorms, the student center, or other academic buildings. Why?
My theory is that when students decide to ‘go to the library’, they form the intention of doing academic work, and the presence of peers engaged in acting upon the same intention provides positive peer pressure that reinforces the individual in following through on that intention. It may also be that the stress of studying is reduced by knowing a safety net is available in the form of staff whocan help locate information or resolve a computer problem. This is a promising area for research – and work in this area would help us understand why the library building continues to be the preferred locus for study even while collections are increasingly available online. It is also an important area to study, and for practical as well as academic reasons. If we really understand why students value studying in the library and what it contributes to student learning, as a profession we will be better equipped to advocate for library study space in an campus environment where every square foot of space costs money and libraries are under pressure to give up space for other purposes.
Trends in Scholarly Information
Let me shift now to the changing nature of scholarly information. More and more of the information resources we all acquire are in digital formats. At Northeastern, enough material is now available in digital formats that the physical size of Northeastern’scollection topped out about five years ago, and hasbeen slowly declining since then.
At the same time, recognition has grown that scholarly communication occurs in more formats than text, and indeed includes still and moving images, maps, art, moving pictures, sound recordings, and data sets. Several years ago, we noticed faculty had begun assigning students to create digital narratives in place of a term paper. Doing scholarship in new forms, though, requires new skills. In the past, students needed to know how to do discover, access, and assess the reliability of information in text formats, the discipline we call information literacy. Now students must become information literate in a range of formats with which not every librarian will be comfortable, learning how to:
- Find scholarly non-text resources, included those curated by the library and not available on the open Web.
- Distinguish between scholarly, unbiased non-text resources and popular material with a commercial or other bias – similar to text.
- Comply with copyright for non-text material, and
- Effectively integrate it into products of non-text scholarship, such as digital narratives, public service announcements, and maps with hyperlinked information or overlays.
Both these changes in scholarly communication and changes in study and learning in combination with the opportunity to redevelop space harvested as print collections shrank, were the genesis of the digital media commons project.
The Digital Media Commons Project
The Snell Library digital media commons project aimed to transform the first two floors of Snell Library into a new model of what a library could be. In collaboration with the College of Art Media and Design, the College of Computer Science, and faculty in other campus colleges, and drawing on models such as the UMass Amherst DuBois Library’s Information Commons, the Santa Clara (Klarcheck?….)., Colgate (?), and the Michigan Media Union, etcetc, the Digital Media Commons was developed around key concepts such as being a central capital resource for the campus, supporting interdisiplinarity (in contrast to the many local computer labs supporting specific courses or disciplines), and providing a platform for reifying the concept of new knowledge creation using scholarly digital media. Underlying principles included flexibility, ubiquitous power and network access, integrating new knowledge about learning and study, and incorporating user-centered design.
Service Trends
Moving into today’s topic, another important trend is in the area of services. In local administrations of LibQUAL, done to evaluate the quality of service at Snell Library, we found students consistently commented on ITS-operated computer labs, which were located IN the library, by not under its control… even though we specifically asked them to comment only on library services. Eventually we ‘got it’ and realized that if the students thought of the labs as part of the library, we should make it so.
After spending time working on graceful referrals between service points, we asked a critical question, which we all should be asking ourselves: “why should we make students figure out WHERE to ask a question?” This lead us consolidate most student-oriented services at a single service point, regardless of whether the services were offered by the Library’s access services (circulation and reserve), Research Instruction, or Information Technology Services’ Customer Services.
This new focus on effective, efficient service designed around our users’ needs instead of organizational structurealso lead us to create a second cluster of services, focused on faculty needs, including the Library’s Digital Scholarship Group, ITS’ Academic Technology Services, and the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research which reports to the Provost’s Office.
As with so many things, it’s easier to conceive an idea than actually make it work. Debra Mandel will now talk about how that was done.
Debra Mandel:
1. The goal to better coordinate and centralize service points in Northeastern University Libraries was a year and 1/4 in the making. Three new service points and new studios were phased in between September 2012 and January 2014 each with their own staffing model, mission and technologies. It was a whirlwind experience for staff involved.
2.There was great anticipation and some trepidation about a new Digital Media Commons, whose shared vision, services and collaborative learning environment would transform our 22 year old model. The former VP of Information Services requested that we consider this new venture like a marriage, and he was met with eye rolls and groans.
3. This quote best captures the essence of a project of this nature:
“Innovative teams need to navigate ambiguous, uncertain and often complex information spaces. What is unknown usually far outweighs what is known. In many ways, it's a journey in the fog, where the case studies haven't been written yet, and there are no examples of where it's been done successfully before. Voyages of discovery involve greater risks and more failures along the way than other endeavors. But the rewards are worth it.”
4. Our service coordination goal was articulated in the Libraries Strategic Plan. The dance began.
“In conjunction with planning for the Media Commons, plan and design an integrated service center/information point, and research support service point.”
5. To begin the road map toward unification, the Associate Dean of User Services created a Services and Operations Committee with various department representatives who had worked together over the years in different capacities to provide services to students, faculty and staff. Included reps were: Access Services, who handle Circulation, Resource Sharing, building safety and security and stack maintenance. Research & Instruction Librarians, who provide reference and instruction services, both on the premises and remotely, Digital Media Design Studio who manage multimedia production and instruction to support the curriculum, Information Services (now ITS), who directed a large general PC/Mac computing lab called InfoCommons, Academic Technology is an IS branch, housed in another building, which emphasizes faculty support for media production services, learning object creation, Blackboard implementation and training. The third unit was EdTech, a unit reporting to the Provost’s Office, who also collaborated with faculty on curricular design and application of technology to teaching and research.
6. The committee created a basic memo of understanding, listing core operational components: hours, levels of support which we had divided into tier 1 for basic level, or first floor services and tier two for more advanced support to be available on the 2d floor. At that point, basic operations, such as room booking, equipment circulation were being handled by two departments, the library had long made a commitment to security, and statistics and assessment. But time was not on our side and we created no detailed plan about how we were going to implement these operations, so we worked things out as we went along.
7. Here are some images of the former service desks of some of these units: Library Circulation desk and InfoCommons Help Desk.
8. Here is a shot of the reference desk and the Digital Media Studio Help Desk, behind the student working at the computer.
9. The DMC was envisioned to be a dynamic, creative space where students would have 24/7 access to a wide range of tools to create new knowledge using high-end computers with advanced audio, video, GIS, CAD- 3D Modeling software, previously only available in specialized labs, or in small number.
10. So fast forward to September 2013, the 2D floor Digital Media Commons Studio, which incorporated 3 staffs, seated from left to right- 1 reference librarian, between 1 and 2 ITS workers, and Digital Media Commons Studio Staff. Reference librarians handled walk in and telephone services, the ITS staff responded to technology problems and questions and wrote service tickets, and the Studio staff provided video and editing support for some of the higher end Macs. Use of the DMC exploded overnite.
11. Soon my own position expanded beyond the daily management of the previous Digital Media Studio to include sharing oversight of the DMC with ITS staffs.
From the start customer service was a big area of concern as it was clear that ITS and the library had different perspectives on training and supervision. Reference librarians were appalled at some of the poor service delivery they witnessed and ITS supervisors were often nowhere to be found.
Most of the questions at the desk related to printing, as there lacked an understandable, intuitive method for printing color and black and white in multiple sizes.
We collaborated successfully with ITS to integrate the Studios video and audio recording equipment ITS’ inventory of laptops cables and adaptors into the cabinets and conducted cross training to use the library’s circulation system to check in and out everything. Prior to that ITS kept poor documentation of their loans and thus lost a lot of their equipment.
The ubiquity of whiteboards made marker dissemination and retrieval became a top challenge. We experimented putting them in baggies and checked them out—this became a costly and time consuming headache. Markers don’t last long, and people started getting fined for overdue markers.
One of the biggest problems was keeping the DMC looking neat and clean and dividing up the labor to help with this. Being a 24/7 space with portable furniture and a liberal food and drink policy made this frustrating and physically exhausting.
12. So staff were juggling all these things in a popular busy and noisy space. This slide shows the original risky furniture layout in front of the help desk on Open House day. Some of those tables have since been relocated.
13. This is one of the five DMC group rooms in the space with a white board, display and plug-ins for multiple devices. The Library added these spaces to its reservation system until a newer enterprise system came on line a year later.
14. After some reorganization and staff departures, another complication during this period, a different Library and ITS team formed to discuss concerns and to update the original MOU. We developed a longer checklist to articulate which unit did what and which responsibilities were shared. Having this codified was paramount. You can see some of the items spelled out on the slide.
15. To keep each group informed of the others’ services. I created a Lib Guide with links to essential information for use at the desk. This was primarily used by Library and Studio staff.
16. Later that fall, the DMC website came on line which improved access to DMC information such as software, room and technology particulars and training events. It is linked from the Libraries’ home page.
17. The DMC Studio staff held weekly sessions and software teach-ins with R & I staff to discuss issues and suggestions for improving service experiences.
18. Unprofessional behavior of the students at the desk was a chief concern. Although librarians appreciated the opportunity to sit besides students, and learn from them, reports of students eating, falling asleep, using headphones and skype were plentiful. So we drew up a list and disseminated it to all student supervisors.
19. At the end of the semester, I planned what I called a Pow Wow for reference librarians and studio staff, with the goal of improving things for the next semester, I solicited help from the user engagement librarian to survey them in advance. These were some of the positive comments. Working at the desk was an opportunity to make easy hand-offs and see close up what working with students was like and observe them using the space.
20. These speak to the experience of sitting at a poorly designed service desk: