A library is the scholarly heart of campus, a place where faculty, students and staff can truly feel they belong. The trick to that vision, of course, is serving a large university community with a lean staff.
An approach to achieve this has three main components. First, we empower all library employees to generate new ideas and lead, regardless of where they are in the organisation. Second, we engage in continuous user feedback. Third, we take steps from the data we collect, using those ideas from across the library to reflect our users and their needs.
This is how that work happens.
Democratise participation in library activities
A bottom-up leadership model means every employee can suggest ideas, spearhead projects or serve as a subject-matter expert. Democratisation of participation ensures we use our collective talents to generate innovative concepts, develop pilots, try new things and allocate resources.
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We’ve operationalised this model through our “portfolio process”. In it, anyone from across the library can suggest a new service, changes to services or a project they would like to pursue. They assemble a team of experts (both library faculty and staff act as subject-matter liaisons) to get it done, and their progress is tracked with regular progress meetings. This includes presentations to library leadership and after-action reports using success metrics agreed upon by the committee. The portfolio is an ongoing, cyclical process, with new projects taking the place of completed ones.
Many of our most popular services – gadget circulation, rare book events, instructional offerings – emerged through this process. They started small and grew over time as we modified each based on the feedback we received.
Through this process, both our employees and users see themselves reflected in the work happening in the library. They don’t just see study rooms, technology or popular reading. They see a place where their effort is integral to daily work – a place where they belong.
Consistent user feedback to inform library services
Every idea is developed through surveys, focus-group research and passive feedback methods to understand user needs. For instance, we examine spaces and services to see which ones can expand or disappear or need to modify their missions to give more users a better experience. To accomplish this, the project teams survey segments of our population – for instance, polling heavy course-reserves users to figure out how to make the process easier to use for all faculty. We also use passive collection efforts such as empty whiteboards in popular spaces asking questions like: “What types of furniture would you like to see in this area?”
If a space is underused, use the collected feedback to understand users and adapt spaces to better serve their needs. If collections are going unread while study space is at a premium, consider turning a historically static book space into active, lively people space.
In focus-group research meetings, we learned that students needed a way to quickly assess where to study. This led to occupancy sensors and a rich new stream of data we use often. As soon as we launched the service, we heard from users that they appreciated our staff listening to their input. It was a win for us and them.
In end-of-year surveys, we saw that effort reflected in comments about how the library was a place that listened to students, a place that welcomed them and found solutions for the problems they were experiencing…a place where they felt they belonged.
Data-driven decision-making
The library is a data-making machine, with sources as disparate as the circulation of physical and electronic resources, use of card-mitigated study spaces, instruction tallies and event surveys. Each of these data sources powers our decision-making when assessing the efficacy of our labour.
An assessment librarian, who acts as a keeper of the data, collects and analyses data year-round. However, that librarian isn’t the sole owner. Project groups routinely gather use statistics – card swipes into specialised study areas, for example – to guide their decision-making.
Findings are open and available to all online, both in our public-facing dashboards and our end-of-year impact reports produced to tell our story to campus. That insight into our environmental drivers and decision-making process is appreciated by students and faculty who expect that type of transparency in their educational institution. Again, it allows them to take ownership of the library and its success, furthering their sense of belonging.
Libraries are more than publication repositories
Academic libraries are not just a collection of books and journals. They are people – a community – centred around information with a shared commitment to supporting the university’s academic and research mission as learners, educators, researchers and workers. That belief produces work that is relevant and visible, yielding results that benefit the community.
It takes daily effort, and the results might not be immediately apparent. But over time, they build into an undeniable system for success that attracts users and keeps them coming back.
Leslie Sharp is the dean of libraries and Jason Wright is the director of communications, both at Georgia Tech Library.
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