Measure for Measure: Exploring Library Assessment
Monday, May 21, 2012 at the Utica campus of MVCC (Mohawk Valley Community College), Information Technology Building
8:00 – 9:00 a.m. – Registration and refreshments – IT Building, first floor lobby
9:00 – Introductions – IT Building, Theater
John Cosgrove, ENY/ACRL President
Dr. Maryrose Eannace, Vice President for Learning and Academic Affairs
9:15-10:15 – Keynote: “To assess or not to assess, What is the question?” – IT Building, Theater
Dr. Danuta A. Nitecki, Dean of Libraries and Professor
College of Information Science & Technology, Drexel University
Dr. Nitecki will share thoughts about assessment, especially in relation to learning outcomes, learning environments and library space. She will also focus on decisions related to the assessment process, as well as recent assessment initiatives, such as the ACRL Summit. Dr. Nitecki is the co-author, with Peter Hernon and Robert E. Dugan, of: Engaging in Evaluation and Assessment research, Santa Barbara, Calif. : Libraries Unlimited, c2011.
Danuta A. Nitecki has explored assessment and evaluation from several perspectives throughout her career including as a manager overseeing operations, as an administrator advocating and accounting for library performance, as an educator preparing library researchers, and as an author trying to simplify the mystique of the applied research process. She welcomes this opportunity to focus on engaging the symposium participants in addressing assessment both in theory and in practice. Her application focus during breakout session will be on evaluation of library space, for which she has experience in providing programmatic oversight for several academic library renovation and building projects over the past three decades. At Drexel University, where she has been Dean of Libraries since 2010, she helped envision and introduce the innovative concept of the library as an embedded learning environment in the Library Learning Terrace, opened in 2011. She is currently working to engage students, faculty and staff in envisioning the future library to inform the remaining renovation of Drexel’s central W. W. Hagerty Library.
10:15 – 10:45 – Poster and Vendor session – IT Building
Vendors: First floor lobby
Posters: Second floor lobby
10:45 – 11:45 – Breakout sessions – IT Building
11:45 – 1:15 – Buffet Lunch and Business Meeting – MVCC Commons in the Alumni College Center (ACC)
12:45-1:15 – Poster and Vendor session – IT Building
Vendors: First floor lobby
Posters: Second floor lobby
1:15 – 2:00 – ”Guerrilla Assessment: A Practical Approach to Library Impact and Value” – IT Building, Theater
View the presentation
Zsuzsa Koltay, Director of Assessment and Communication
Cornell University Library
Guerrilla Marketing has become a widely accepted method of advertizing, one that uses low-cost and unconventional methods to achieve results that would require significant resources if pursued through conventional approaches. Compare graffiti or flash mobs to Super Bowl TV ads, and you understand the basic idea.
What can we learn from this approach when it comes to library assessment? Can we practice guerrilla assessment? Is there merit in light-weight approaches when it comes to cracking the hard nut of library impact? Come prepared to contribute to a lively discussion of expedient approaches that are appropriate for our super-busy and frugal times.
Zsuzsa Koltay has been Director of Assessment at Cornell University Library since 2008, adding Communication to her portfolio in 2010. Although assessment and communication seem like radically different fields, she has enjoyed finding synergies between them almost daily. Result-oriented and pragmatic, she has been attracted to finding low-overhead approaches to collecting, analyzing, and sharing data that can support decision-making or can add to the telling of the Library’s true story. Zsuzsa has been at Cornell since 1993. The Library’s original pinch hitter, her roles have included being the founding project manager of Project Euclid, an e-journal publishing venture in mathematics, leading multiple web service visioning and implementation projects, and being the longest acting Acting Director in the history of the Engineering Library (4 years!).
2:00 – 2:15 – Break with refreshments – IT Building, First floor lobby
2:15 – 3:05 – Lightning rounds – IT Building, Theater
3:05-3:15 – Evaluation and Wrap Up – IT Building, Theater
Tours: Library and new Robert R. Jorgensen Athletic/Events Center