We were welcomed to GA Tech by Catherine Murray-Rust, dean of libraries at GA Tech, who provided some context for our meeting and for the work that we do as access services practitioners. Murray-Rust set the stage by reading from a GALILEO strategic planning document describing the impact of the current economic climate on libraries. The increasingly homogeneous collections will have a great impact on access services, as will the Google Book Settlement, increased demand on libraries for services.
We were challenged to think about our role in the academic enterprise
What will our roles be as access services:
- information facilitators and aggregators and information advocates. We will be the ones to explain the impact of the GBS settlement and what that means for our students. All books will not be freely available.
- advocating for users. For example, how will we get the vast amount of public information to the public. Whose interests will we represent?
This morning, we heard from keynote speaker, Crit Stuart.
We need to understand who our students are. Take the time to know them.
At ARL, conducted many surveys, two of which centered on libraries as place and on instruction.
Results showed that libraries were not influencing the change; they were merely mimicking what was seen in other places. However, the rationale for the changes wasn't always solid. Solutions must be appropriate to your institution, taking the vision of the institution and the library into account.
Understand your users. Visit the libraries at different times of the day to see how its used. Some issues to be considered:
- Study space vs collection space?
- Quiet space vs group space?
- Where will funds come from?
- How will staff get on board? Engage them in the discovery.
- How to create campus-wide buy-in?
- Who are the stakeholders?
- What new skills will be required by the staff?
- What will services look like? Compressed, new, different
- What data have been gathered so far?
- Is the vision in sync with the university?
- Where is student learning outcome? What role does the library play?
- Are there student or faculty advisory groups
- Who makes the decisions? Is it only the department heads? Are they the ones really doing the discovery? Discovery should be done by the people closest to those served who will report on findings.
- Have any experiments already been conducted? Have they been successful? Pilot programs can be good for learning.
- Who are the most innovative faculty on campus? How do we get to know them? Have a weekly lunch at which a question is posed: if you could transform the library, what would you do?
- Environmental surveys: why are you here? How do you use? Why don't you use? How can we get you to use?
- How do you introduce the new community members to the library?
- What logical partnerships exist with the library?
Also visit Project Kaleidoscope
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