Collecting & Using Quantitative and Qualitative Data to Align Resources for Instruction & Research Support

Abstract

Academic librarians spend considerable time and effort planning and delivering instruction/presentations and providing research consultations on their campuses. In Canada, the number of presentations to groups reported in the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) Statistics (2018-2019)1 ranges from 197 sessions to 2,326 sessions delivered to 8,984 to 68,644 participants, respectively. The provision of research consultations is a standard service provided by academic librarians but not currently reported to CARL. In the fiscal year 2021-2022, librarians at my Library (University of Alberta) delivered 1,428 research consultations (mostly one-to-one interactions) to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members. This work is significant in meeting curricular and research needs across campus. However, in times of financial crisis, there are many demands on library staffing resources to meet well-identified long-standing services and potential new initiatives. Effective collection, gathering, and use of statistics and other evaluative tools can help managers make effective decisions and advocate for additional resources. Data describing impact can also highlight your impact on key stakeholders who can be potential advocates to support requests for resource investment. In the session, I will highlight several tools libraries can use to describe, highlight, evaluate, and advocate for resource allocation to support teaching and research consultations. I contextualize the presentation by centering it around an exercise undertaken in the Faculty Engagement Unit for the Social Sciences & Humanities at the University of Alberta and projects underway to re-design basic information literacy instruction and evaluate the research consultation from the librarian and user perspectives. A presentation at the "Demystifying Statistics and Evaluation in Libraries" Satellite Meeting, organised by the Statistics and Evaluation Section and held at the University of Utrecht in Utrecht, The Netherlands from 17–18 August 2023.