Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Problem Lah! Learning To Tell The Story Of Continuous Assessment And Improvement, Tamera Hanken

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

To succeed organizations rely on the purposeful application of the management functions, planning, organizing, leading and controlling, i.e., assessment. Assessment involves the collection and analysis of service and performance data to inform planning, organizing and leading-- opening the door to a culture of assessment and continuous improvement. Like other organizations responding to ever challenging economies and ever changing customer expectations, libraries are examining continuous improvement methods such as Lean, or Six Sigma, to ensure operations and services are customer focused and can be continuously assessed and improved with limited resources. Librarians though, often lack a general understanding of assessment and …

The Embedded Library: A Marriage Made In Heaven Or In Hell?, Glenda Myers, Trish Warner

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

This case study covers a number of areas in which a 90 year old medical library has been able to redefine purpose and services, and considers both the positive as well as the negative aspects of the embedded relationship.

According to the Shumaker assessment of readiness for embeddedness, the Witwatersrand Health Sciences Library (WHSL) and the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand were more than ready to embrace a partnership by 2010. A survey indicated that a high proportion (93.5%) of academic staff felt that evidence-based information literacy (IL) should be included in the formal medical …

Towards A Holistic Analysis Tool To Support Decision-Making In Libraries, Lorena Siguenza-Guzman, Ludo Holans, Alexandra Van Den Abbeele, Joos Vandewalle, Henri Verhaaren, Dirk Cattrysse

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Academic libraries have recently been subjected to continuous budget reductions, mainly due to the increasing costs of information and the global economic crisis. As the primary purpose of an academic library is to provide well-balanced collections and a wide range of services to support education and research, an efficient use and allocation of limited resources is vital. However, allocating resources such as money, staff, time, and infrastructure between the library collection and services represents a challenge due to the multitude of data sources required to consult during a decision-making process.

Academic libraries are accustomed to keeping voluminous statistics on their …