Using Needs Assessment to Determine Library Services for Distance Learning Programs

ABSTRACT

This article provides guidance in using the needs assessment process as a planning tool specifically for library services supporting distance learning programs. The first section covers pre-assessment planning activities, which include defining the specific purpose or purposes of the assessment, assigning responsibility for various aspects of the project, establishing time frames, and defining target groups. The section related to conducting the assessment itself discusses, along with other issues, selecting data collection tools and constructing questions. Promotion of the assessment and methods of encouraging participation are also considered. Since Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery personnel are an integral part of library services, they may be called upon to support distance learning programs. Thus, topics discussed in this article will be applicable to their situations.     

Assessing,Analyzing, and Adapting: Improving a Graduate Student Instruction Program Through Needs Assessment

This article highlights an assessment of library instruction needs among graduate students in the social sciences. The article addresses the development and implementation of the assessment and the application of assessment results to an established set of library instruction workshops. The article provides a detailed summary of assessment findings and a discussion of how the findings were successfully used to create a user-centered instruction program. The findings were used to make significant changes in workshop content, as well as refinements in the overall number and format of workshops offered, schedule of workshops, and marketing of the instruction program.     

Bibilometrics Services and the Academic Library: Meeting the Emerging Needs of the Campus Community

The increasing importance of research assessment is but one factor within the ever-changing scholarly communication landscape that is challenging libraries to develop new services to serve the needs of their academic communities. Institutional budget allocations, grant funding, and faculty tenure and promotion increasingly depend on performance indicators, including bibliometrics such as citation counts, impact factors, the h-index, and other quantitative measurements of research output. With their longstanding expertise in collecting, categorizing, and analyzing data, not to mention their familiarity with scholarly databases and indexes tracking cited references, librarians are well qualified to meet the emerging demand for bibliometrics services.     

Creating a Role for Embedded Librarians Within an Active Learning Environment

In 2013, the librarians at a small academic health sciences library reevaluated their mission, vision, and strategic plan to expand their roles. The school was transitioning to a new pedagogical culture and a new building designed to emphasize interprofessional education and active learning methodologies. Subsequent efforts to implement the new strategic plan resulted in the librarians joining curriculum committees and other institutional initiatives, such as an Active Learning Task Force, and participating in faculty development workshops. This participation has increased visibility and led to new roles and opportunities for librarians.     

Center Stage: Performing a Needs Assessment of Campus Research Centers and Institutes

Outreach to research centers and institutes is often overlooked in academic libraries. This article discusses a needs assessment conducted by the Liaison Services Department at the University of Houston Libraries that reviewed library services to centers and institutes at the University of Houston's main campus. The assessment was conducted for two purposes: to build collaborations with centers and to determine how the libraries might create new services and/or market existing services to meet the centers and institutes' growing research needs.     

Appraising the Community of Practice at a Hospital Library System Using a Critical Librarianship Lens

Abstract

The Kaiser Permanente health sciences librarians created inter-regional policies to standardize and guide the work of all librarians across regions. In response to the larger organization’s emphasis on promoting diversity and equity in healthcare and the workplace, the library policies have evolved over time to include aspects of critical librarianship in the information services that the Kaiser Permanente librarians provide to their organization. The article describes how the inter-regional group of hospital librarians provide information services through a critical librarianship lens and provides examples of how other health sciences librarians can incorporate these principles to expand their services.     

A Community of Practice: Librarians in a Biomedical Research Network

Providing library and reference services within a biomedical research community presents special challenges for librarians, especially those in historically lower-funded states. These challenges can include understanding needs, defining and communicating the library's role, building relationships, and developing and maintaining general and subject specific knowledge. This article describes a biomedical research network and the work of health sciences librarians at the lead intensive research institution with librarians from primarily undergraduate institutions and tribal colleges. Applying the concept of a community of practice to a collaborative effort suggests how librarians can work together to provide effective reference services to researchers in biomedicine.     

The Impact of Grey Literature in Advancing Global Karst Research: An Information Needs Assessment for a Globally Distributed Interdisciplinary Community

A survey of the global karst community was conducted in 2006. The survey was distributed via the World Wide Web to known karst researchers. The instrument was designed to generate an initial inventory of core grey information types, to assess levels of usage of grey information by the respondents, and to gauge the karst community’s willingness to participate in building and expanding both this collection and the associated controlled vocabularies.     

Reference Librarians Speak for Users: A Learning Commons Concept That Meets the Needs of a Diverse Student Body

ABSTRACT

This article describes creating a learning commons at a main campus library.     

高校图书馆社会化服务的需求与优势

针对我国公共图书馆存在文献资源不足,地区发展不平衡,服务网点少,高层次信息增值服务不理想等问题,提出高校图书馆服务社会要充分考虑与公共图书馆在资源和服务上的互补与协调,根据社会需求发挥所长,与公共图书馆一起更好地满足社会信息需求的举措。     

Assessment,Analytics, and Analysis: Demonstrating the Impact of LMS Embedded Librarians on Student Learning

Librarians are committed to supporting teaching, learning, and research. They are equally committed to supporting student success and retention. Demonstrating the impact that learning management system (LMS) embedded librarians make on student learning has been difficult to correlate, however. Studies that assess this connection, using qualitative and quantitative data have been undertaken in recent years. In a university regional campus library study conducted in 2016–2017, LMS embedded librarians explored the relationship between student learning and information literacy instruction, relying primarily on a customized LMS embedded librarian page of library resources and learning objects. They used a rubric to assess student research papers and bibliographies, LMS course analytics, instructors’ grades, and student feedback. This article reviews the literature and their methodology, challenges, and findings. They wish to guide colleagues, committed to assessing how librarians contribute to student learning, in selecting assessment approaches and validate their instructional role.     

Effectiveness of a Liaison Program in Meeting Information Needs of College of Pharmacy Faculty

This article describes the creation and implementation of focus groups to evaluate the effectiveness of a health sciences library's liaison program of the College of Pharmacy faculty and to better understand the faculty's information needs in order to design new and improved library services. The liaison services support the teaching and research needs of faculty and students through literature research, classroom teaching, and an extensive library collection of pharmacy literature. Focus group results demonstrated a high level of satisfaction with library liaison services and collections. Opportunities exist for expanded interaction with graduate students and greater marketing of library services to increase faculty awareness of specific library programs.     

Librarians as Authors in Higher Education and Teaching and Learning Journals in the Twenty-First Century: An Exploratory Study

The future of academic libraries largely depends on our ability to be innovative, anticipate our users' needs, adapt to a changing landscape, and prove our value through evidence. However, if our higher education colleagues do not perceive the profession as being relevant, our ability to innovate, anticipate, and adapt will be moot. This study investigates the visibility of librarians as authors in scholarly higher education (HE) and teaching and learning (TL) journals between 2000 and 2012. Findings include that 1.38% of articles published in these journals were written by a librarian author or authors, most of who are employed at research institutions. Information literacy was the most common topic, and theoretical articles were the most popular article type.     

我国人文社会科学学术图书Altmetrics评价:挑战及应用

[目的/意义] 试图探明Altmetrics应用于我国人文社会科学学术图书影响力评价中面临的主要挑战及应对措施。探索如何应用Altmetrics评价我国人文社会科学学术图书学术影响力及社会影响力。[方法/过程] 采用文献回顾及网络调查的方法,对国内外Altmetrics研究理论与实践成果进行分析。[结果/结论] 我国人文社会科学学术图书Altmetrics评价面临六大挑战,但这些挑战并不会贬损其价值,而是提供了开展深入研究的空间。虽然我国人文社会科学学术图书Altmetrics评价面临挑战,但这些挑战是可应对的。应用Altmetrics可分析我国人文社会科学学术图书的学术影响力及社会影响力。     

Assessing Academic Library Services to Distance Learners: A Literature Review of Perspectives from Librarians,Students, and Faculty

Many academic libraries are expanding services to online and distance students to keep pace with enrollment trends in higher education, prompting additional research to evaluate the use and effectiveness of library reference and instruction services to distance users. This literature review explores this research from the perspectives of academic librarians, distance students, and faculty teaching online and distance courses, and finds both commonalities and contradictions among these viewpoints.     

高校图书馆学习支持服务活动体系及其模型建构

[目的/意义] 总结高校图书馆学习支持服务活动体系并建构模型,以更好地理解高校图书馆学习支持服务的整体结构和运行机理。[方法/过程] 基于实际调研和主要职能总结出高校图书馆学习支持服务的基本形式和支撑条件。以活动为基本单位,分析学习支持服务活动的运行机理,进而尝试建构高校图书馆学习支持服务活动模型。[结果/结论] 资源服务形式和素质培育形式是高校图书馆学习支持服务的基本形式,空间、技术、人员是学习支持服务的3个支撑条件,应与基本形式相结合。两种基本形式与3个支撑条件的各种组合构成了高校图书馆学习支持服务的活动体系,需要基于活动的设计和组织进行深度融合。建构了一个高校图书馆学习支持服务活动的双螺旋模型,在机理上呈现出主体性的活动推动、非线性的逻辑递进、协同化的支持服务、共生式的融合发展等特征。     

Perception and Use of YouTube by Music Lecturers and Librarians in Selected Tertiary Institutions in Kwara State,Nigeria

This study examined the music lecturers and librarians use and perception of YouTube in selected Kwara State tertiary institutions. Survey approach was adopted to conduct the study. The sample comprised 35 respondents (20 librarians and 15 music lecturers). Three research questions were answered while data were analyzed using percentage, frequency count, and cross tabulation. YouTube was used by the music lecturers mostly for teaching, research and learning, enhancing learning experience, and engaging students with the contents of music lessons. Librarians on the other hand use YouTube mostly as reference point for events and occurrences, teaching tool for library instruction; and for communicating other libraries.     

Analyzing Food Science Research for Publishing Characteristics as a Model for Understanding the Needs of Researchers

Abstract

This paper provides a methodology to study the characteristics of the research output from a university department. The faculty publications and their cited references over a 10-year period were used as the basis for this study to identify their publishing patterns and the types of material they are publishing; a core set of journals and other resources they are publishing in and citing over this period; the characteristics of the journals in which they publish and cite; the degree of openness of their publications and their citation advantage; and the age of resources that are referenced.     

关于高校教师教学学术水平的思考

本文对目前高校中普遍存在的重科研轻教学的现象进行反思,对高等学校教师的教学学术水平的内涵及其性质进行分析,提出若干提高教师教学学术水平的意见和建议.     

大数据时代哲学社会科学学术成果评价:问题、策略及指标体系

[目的/意义]学术成果评价是推进哲学社会科学健康发展的重要因素,长期以来,传统同行评议和科学计量学方法在哲学社会科学学术成果评价中暴露出的问题越来越多,挑战固有方法的统治地位、开发有针对性的评价策略已刻不容缓。文章试图探索大数据环境下哲社学术成果评价的变革及其实现,特别是提出了大数据思维下的哲社学术成果的评价指标体系。[方法/过程]基于比较分析和综合分析,对传统哲学社会科学评价方法的弊端进行分析,然后对大数据给哲学社会科学评价带来的改变进行分析,最后提出基于大数据环境的哲学社会科学评价策略和指标体系。[结果/结论]提出大数据时代哲学社会科学学术成果评价的策略：由引文著录分析转向多维度的引用内容与行为分析,由面向成果的阶段性静态评价转向以"学术活动"为中心的全过程动态评价,由学术影响力评价转向学术价值和社会效益评价。在此基础上,构建由两个一级指标、5个二级指标和34个三级指标组成的大数据背景下哲学社会科学学术成果评价指标体系。