Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Peers To Shed Light On Service Hours For Librarians, Hector Escobar, Heidi Gauder

Hector Escobar

Purpose: Public service hours for many academic librarians have changed within the last decade. As reference statistics have declined, so have job descriptions changed. We often hear terms like outreach, liaison work, embedded librarianship, consulting hours, scheduled appointments. etc., for what used to be normal desk hours. With a changing service model, comes accountability. How do institutions account for these new forms of work and duties that have replaced traditional service desk hours? How does this feed into performance or merit review?

The purpose of this short paper is to shed light on the roles of librarians at medium-sized universities, …

Integrated Service Spaces: New Ways Of Assessing Collaboration., Hector Escobar, Heidi Gauder

Hector Escobar

Many academic libraries have participated in the growing trend in creating unified service desks, where users visit one desk to get help from a variety of library and other campus services. The University of Dayton’s Roesch Library, however, is exploring a different model. It is piloting a service that lends itself to true integration with external departments. Although unified service desks offer the convenience of one-stop assistance, the various units may still act as silos. Service integration facilitates better cross-training and less confusion for students who may need multiple forms of help in one common area. The library began to …

Using Assessment To Leverage Collaboration With The Campus Writing Center, Heidi Gauder, Hector Escobar

Hector Escobar

Purpose

Like many academic libraries, the University of Dayton’s Roesch Library houses a writing center. Currently located on the Library’s 2nd floor, it will soon move and become integrated with the library’s reference service. Since the writing center operates independently from the library (e.g., it is staffed by students and reports to different campus administrators), the library reference team, comprised of tenure-line faculty librarians, wanted to better understand writing center services. Given that research and writing are often intertwined, the library was particularly interested in learning how the writing center addressed the evaluation, integration and attribution of sources, tasks similar …

Write Together: Assessing Writing Center Data For Library Collaboration, Heidi Gauder, Hector Escobar

Hector Escobar

Two academic support units, the library and the writing center, will be co-located on the library’s first floor starting Fall 2014. With a mandate to integrate services, the library was particularly interested in learning how the writing center addressed the evaluation, integration and attribution of sources, tasks similar to the work of reference librarians. Learn how we analyzed the writing center’s consultant reports in order to gain a deeper understanding of their work and prepare for a more effective service integration.