Occupational Program Assessment Plan

Library Services Assessment Plan
2006

Use the form below to describe your assessment plan for the services your department offers. Include this form in your Instructional Plan and describe the plan in the narrative of your instructional plan.

List the specific services offered by your department. / Describe how each specific service helps students master any or all of the four college competencies
1. Transaction Services. Check-out and renew materials (in person, by phone & online); check out course reserve materials; sell printouts, computer disks, and other items; check out laptops; provide library cards (both in person & online).
2. Online & Electronic Services. On-campus & remote access to online subscription databases; computers for research or word-processing; specialized computer-aided-instruction programs; online catalog for access to library’s collections; specialized assistive technology workstations; audio-visual equipment; photocopiers; troubleshooting assistance in support of all electronic services.
3. Information & Instruction Services. Credit-based Library 10 Information Research course; in-class tailored instruction sessions for 150+ classes annually; research instruction & assistance at the Reference Desk; campus-wide directional & informational assistance at all service points; extensive web pages for organized access to local & remote information.
4. Collection. Acquire, process, and provide access to collection of books, videos, and other materials of sufficient breadth and currency to support instruction programs; collection liaison activities with faculty; provide online tools for accessing collection including catalog and various material-specific lists; provide institutional repository of materials in College Archives collection.
5. Service Management. Sufficient open hours and staffing for library to meet campus needs; track & assess volume & effectiveness of all services; safe & functional environment; ensure processes and services conform to current industry standards and available technologies. / 1. Many of the library’s transaction services directly reinforce students’ personal responsibility by requiring loaned materials to be returned on time or generate overdue fines. Indirectly, all of our transaction services help facilitate countless educational pursuits and therefore support communication, critical thinking, and global awareness.
2. Online and other electronic resources provide direct conduits to sources of research information and study materials used by most campus instruction programs, thus helping students improve their critical thinking and global awareness competencies.
3. The Library 10 course and the in-class instruction sessions represent direct instruction in critical thinking and the many subject areas represented within global awareness. Assistance at the Reference Desk is instruction-based, intended not to answer a student’s information need so much as to teach students how to use electronic tools and thinking processes to independently and confidently satisfy their own future information needs, thus contributing directly to critical thinking and communication skills.
4. The library’s physical and electronic collections are intended for direct support of the institution’s instruction mission, and provide students with countless opportunities to hone their critical thinking skills as well as their global awareness of countless topics.
5. Providing adequate staffing and sufficient open hours increases the availability and accessibility of the library’s resources to students. Tracking and assessing library services enables the library to provide services that are useful to current students, adequate for the volume of demand, and represent minimal inherent service barriers. In facilitating and contributing to overall library service availability, our service management efforts strongly support all core competencies.
Assessment of Services: List the services you will assess under each year of the 5 year Instructional Planning Process / Describe the Assessment Process your department will use to evaluate each service and its outcomes. Include the assessment tool you plan to use and the criteria to evaluate success. If using a rubric, attach it to the end of this form.
Year One
Service:
General services survey (instrument attached)
Library 10 ongoing efforts / Instead of a top-down approach, we decided to initiate a series of open library meetings, attended by both faculty and classified staff, to identify non-class-related services and assessment options. Services were identified, grouped in clusters described earlier in this form, & contributions to core competencies identified. A survey was selected as the assessment method, & the group developed a general survey instrument to conduct an initial broad review of library services. In Fall 2005 & Spring 2006, the survey was made available at both Library exits, & over 100 responses were collected during 3 days of each semester. Survey questions were intended to measure satisfaction with the specific activities a patron was engaged in, as well as self-assessment questions addressing several core competencies. Staff will assess results based on question responses and frequency of problem areas mentioned in written comments.
Library 10 instructors hold regular meetings every semester, during which problems, changes, and new instruction elements are discussed. The results of these meetings, plus any identified ambiguities in the Library 10 workbook and feedback based upon patterns of student errors or confusion, are folded into the following semester’s workbook. This process is repeated every semester.
Year Two
Service:
Repeat general survey
Begin identifying specific services to survey or otherwise obtain additional information about. Possible areas:
- library collection
- website review
- computer use
- catalog usability / The general services survey will be repeated every year. We will compare new results to earlier results, and discuss at regular library staff meetings.
Subsequent areas to survey or otherwise analyze will be determined by the results of the general survey, as well as library staff perception on high-impact areas to survey: areas which contribute most strongly to the core competencies, or areas which benefit large numbers of students. Once specific areas are chosen, the open group meeting process described above will be repeated, to select assessment method and develop tool to use in evaluation.
Year Three
Service:
In-class instruction sessions
Repeat general survey
Pursue other service area as identified in year two / To assess course-related instruction sessions, librarians who conduct most of these sessions will begin meeting to discuss evaluation options, including T. Smalley’s existing online feedback evaluation tool. Once options are selected, we will attempt to assess either comprehensively or a sampling of sessions. Results of the assessments will be consolidated and reviewed.
Year Four
Service:
Repeat general survey
Pursue other service area as identified in year two / See year two.
Year Five:
Service:
Repeat general survey
Pursue other service area as identified in year two / See year two.
Assessment Evaluation
Describe the process the department will use to evaluate assessment results. Include:
What meetings will be held?
When?
Who will be involved?
What will be discussed?
What process will be used to implement any improvements needed to services? / The regular open meeting format used for the initial identification of library service areas to assess worked extremely well, and so will be repeated for most future assessment efforts. The process allowed for both faculty and classified staff participation, contributions from multiple areas and specialties in the library, and helped us produce efforts that all participants could understand, support, and explain to other library staff. Our target will be to conduct these meetings periodically every semester, open to all library staff, for the selection of subsequent service areas to assess and the tools to use to assess them.
FLEX week department meetings will continue to be used to present results of the most recent assessment efforts to all library staff, and for identifying and prioritizing any specific service improvements. Service improvements will be implemented either by directly changing the impacted process, or by documenting and communicating to staff the desired workflow or process change.

5/12/20191