Provide opportunities for professional development and training for librarians and staff to maintain knowledge and skills in all aspects of Librarians.
Objective
Professional Development And Training
Participate in programs that will develop and maintain skills in applying knowledge effectively to established library systems; to identify best practices and adapt them to the local environment, thus ensuring the librarians will be able to provide quality service to the SHSU community and the Library.
KPI
In-house Development Program
Increase the number of in-hours development programs. Last year the Library hosted one development program to improve service. This year the Library will host one development program each semester.
Result
In House Staff Development Program
Forty librarians and staff members participated in the ALA workshop "How to Deliver Great Library Customer Service" April 2012. The workshop described satisfied customers as part of a strong library. In addition to learning how to fulfill the expectations of the people who use your library, the participants also received pointers on listening and communications skills to help their conversations with angry, chatty, or overly demanding patrons as gracefully as possible. The topics included: the top 3 customer service qualities for your library and how to achieve them; defusing conflict with difficult patrons; ensuring that staff makes positive customer experience a priority; and how to question library users effectively.
KPI
Training
Participate in as many training opportunities provided by Amigos, product vendors, professional organizations, etc. as possible, either face to face or online.
Result
Continuing Education And Training
The Library sponsored 23 continuing education courses and workshops during this fiscal year with 117 individuals participating. Twelve webinars on Library issues and trends were offered and attended by 1 to 8 librarians. The Library took advantage of 21 training sessions offered by product vendors.
KPI
Professional Meetings
Support participation in professional meetings by librarians and staff. Professional meetings provide an excellent venue for identify best practices.
Result
Professional Meetings
Twenty-six librarians attended 15 professional meeting and conferences. Librarians attending these meeting brought back information that will improve library services in a variety of areas: instructional programing; online instruction; and access to electronic resources; preservation of materials.
Action
Professional Development And Training
The program on "How to Deliver Great Library Customer Service" provided pointers on listening and communications skills to help their conversations with angry, chatty, or overly demanding patrons as gracefully as possible. The topics included: the top 3 customer service qualities for your library and how to achieve them; defusing conflict with difficult patrons; ensuring that staff makes positive customer experience a priority; and how to question library users effectively. The discussion after the presentation indicated that most of the staff in public service areas tried to diffuse situations with difficult patrons; the demanding patron seemed to be the most difficult to work with since you want to get the individual to the best information source without seeming abrupt. Overall the staff felt this ALA workshop seemed to be more oriented to public libraries than academic libraries.
The Library will support professional development activities and training. These activities help librarians sustain their skill level and develop new skills. The Library benefits from the participation in these programs. Librarians and staff are able to easily transition into the upgrades and new procedures when they participate in training classes. This makes change easier on everyone. This year's activities sparked interest in using mobile devices to demonstrate access to NGL information resources.
Goal
Collection
Provide seamless access to a collection of high quality resources, including print, web-based resources and locally produced content, which meet the curricular and research requirements of the University
Objective
Use Of E-books By Graduate Students And Faculty
Determine the preferences and characteristics of graduate students and faculty who use e-books.
KPI
E-book Survey
Three NGL reference librarians conducted the study. The survey link was delivered by email to 2,621 graduate students and 1,151 faculty members during the Fall 2011 semester. A total of 322 surveys were returned for an overall response rate of 8.5%. Eleven responses were subsequently removed from the results pool due to incompleteness.
Result
E-book Survey Results
Overall, 38% of respondents have used e-books from the library. The proportions of e-book users amongst graduate student (40%) and faculty (37%) were similar.
The majority (68%) of graduate student non-users indicated they would “probably” or “definitely” use e-books in the future.
Faculty non-users are less enthusiastic: 22% percent of faculty non-users indicate they would “definitely” or “probably” continue to avoid e-books in the future. This attitude was shared by only half (11%) of their graduate student non-user counterparts.
Only 31% of all student and faculty non-users reported a dislike of e-books, 69% simply did not anticipate any need to start using them.
Among respondents who have used library e-books, when given the option, 28% would prefer e-books and 31% would prefer print books. “Tangibility,” as one respondent put it, was one of the most cited reasons for preference for print.
An additional 42% either did not care (14%) or preferred some library e-books but disliked others (28%). The latter finding likely reflected user preference for specific e-book platforms.
Compared to non-users (31%), more e-book users (70%) reported the dislike for e-books as the reason for their preferences for print.
Both user and non-user groups ranked the ability to search the whole text and printing as the most important functions, followed by the abilities to take notes and highlight texts.
Both group also agreed that the ability to print individual pages (ranked 4.01 out of 5) was more important than the ability to print an entire chapter (3.8/5) or the whole book (3.05).
Text interactivity, such as embedded videos and hyperlinks, was ranked as the least important feature by both groups.
71% of graduate students (compared to 47% of faculty) ranked automatic citation as a “very or somewhat important” e-book feature.
More non-users (77%) than users (68%) placed high importance on the ability to download and read e-books offline, which was a feature not offered by library e-books at the time of this survey.
While distance learners were not any more likely to have used any e-books, more distance learning non-users (70%) indicated they will “probably or definitely” give e-books a try in the future than other non-users (60%).
When they need to read a book for class, 55% of distance learners indicated they would read the book online from the library, 21% would buy a print copy for themselves, and 8% would borrow the book from another library closer to where they live. Only 7% of respondents would consider borrowing the book by mail through the library’s Distance Learning Service.
A mere 7 of the 80 self-identified distance learners have ever used the library’s Distance Learning Service, and 4 of these 7 respondents would prefer to read an e-book than borrowing a print copy by mail.
Action
E-books Survey
It seems that there is a general preference for print over e-books but:
Faculty will recommend e-books to undergraduate students
Graduate students indicated they would probably or definitely use e-books
Distance learners responded they would prefer to read an e-book than borrow a print copy.
Next year the library will conduct a patron driven acquisitions program allowing faculty and students to select e-books for the collection to provide access to resources “just in time” rather than “just in case”.