On December 4, 2014, Patricia Cia (Director, Academic Innovation) and Ryan Vernon (Coordinator, Technical Services) attended a workshop hosted by the Council of Post-Secondary Library Directors (CPSLD), entitled “Assessment – Challenges and Opportunities for Sharing.” Patricia and Ryan have provided the following synopsis of the event and some interesting lessons learned.
Where was the conference/workshop/event?
- At UBC, in the Ike Barber Learning Commons.
What was the conference/workshop/event? What was the theme?
- A combination workshop and unconference on the theme of assessment within academic libraries. After a morning of short presentations and sharing of local practices, attendees chose topics of interest for small group sessions.
Who was in attendance?
- Library directors were invited along with one of their librarians who conducted assessment or had an interest in assessment. Attendees were asked to not sit with others from their own institution to encourage networking opportunities and to promote the sharing of diverse perspectives.
What was the most interesting presentation/topic/idea/trend?
Interesting sessions included:
- Designing Data Plans: Collecting, Storing, and Delivering Data into the Hands of People that Need It / Kathleen Reed (VIU) who presented a methodology for library assessment. Her slides are online.
- Planning with Numbers: Building Assessment into Projects / Tania Alekson, (Cap U) who discussed the importance of building assessment into projects and tasks, as well as defining success as a necessary component of assessment.
- Data Visualization / Jeremy Buhler (UBC) shared some of his graphs during the presentation. He showed the importance of using data visualization to tease out anomalies or trends from large amounts of data for exploration and repackaging into smaller data sets for communication out.
Interesting take-aways:
- Assessment is seen as a way to “tell stories with our data.”
- Whether formal or informal, assessment plans need to be tied to Library strategic plans and institutional strategic and academic plans.
- A recurring theme was the difference (of lack of difference) between assessment undertaken for improvement internally and for reporting purposes.
- Libraries drafting and publishing their assessment plan is an increasing trend.