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Showing posts with label librarians in training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label librarians in training. Show all posts

Friday, 18 November 2016

A manifesto and a spark - My recap of 'Creating a research culture in the workplace'

Chris Powis, Head of Library and Learning Services at Northampton University, came to Cambridge to deliver a session about the research culture that seems to be thriving in his workplace, providing an interesting case study and much food for thought for those of us working and researching in Cambridge libraries. His most powerful thesis to my mind was this: the reason librarians should do research is that it's one of the activities of universities. We are a service, yes, but we are also part of the academic fabric and as such we have a responsibility to take part in teaching and research. I have seen the difference it makes working with academics who think of us as colleagues in research, both to the quality of support we can give them and the quality of insight they can give us. It's a mutually beneficial relationship I feel lucky to have in my role.

At Northampton research by librarians is supported and encouraged at all levels. Chris emphasised that enthusiastic staff alone do not make a research culture, nor can you create one by managerial mandate. A true research culture derives from a collaboration between top-down and bottom-up support for research (not from some farcical aquatic ceremony - sorry, I went a little Monty Python there...). Support for research is included in the vision and plan for the library and staff who are interested in doing research have opportunities for training and resources that allow them to run with their ideas. The library has its own research ethics board, adapted from that of the University, and they report on the impact of their research annually as well as promoting published work by their staff in monumental banners in the library. All of this is serving to expand the perceived role of librarians to include research, just as it had to be actively and forcibly expanded to include teaching.

One of the most interesting practical steps they took to promote and develop a community and culture of research has been to hold library conferences that showcase NU library staff research. There are no keynote speakers - no external speakers of any kind - and so no-one's work is held above anyone else's. Most importantly, the conference is opened by the Vice Chancellor and open to academics from the university to attend. Additionally, research is often done in collaboration with academic colleagues. This level of visibility, professionalism and interdisciplinary work is a remarkable tool for changing both the perception of librarians and the quality of the research produced.

At Cambridge we do a lot of things very well with regards to library research. Our autonomy allows some wonderful small-scale, agile research projects to flourish. However, I think that lack of communication between libraries can sometimes lead people to believe that they can't do research because there's something fundamentally different about the libraries that do it, or that what they're doing already isn't research when in fact it is. I think it's worth tackling the barriers to a research culture across the University and developing a community of practice that would help cultivate top-down and bottom-up support. The session sparked a tentative discussion and it is my (not-so-secret) hope that this will provide a spark to get more of us involved with creating a research culture that fosters a rise in the quality of research and wider dissemination of what we do across all Cambridge libraries.


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Thursday, 23 July 2015

Library Inductions: Who, What, Where, When, How?

Do you know what an unconference is? Because I didn't until I went to LibCAMp, a Cambridge-based unconference on 21 July. So don't feel bad. (I still have to remind myself about the lower-case 'p'.)

I'm sure others will blog about the event, the various participant-led discussions, and of course there are always various Storify summaries to get a sense of the big picture. I specifically wanted to write my thoughts on the session I attended on library inductions, though, not because it was the most important talk of the day (the discussion led by two members of staff from the SPS library of what we as Cambridge Librarians can do to ensure services and resources are available to disabled students was - I hope - a major turning point on this important issue), but because inductions are part of what I do and for a couple years now I've been wondering how I can make them better. For this reason I thought it would be good to try to reflect and collect my thoughts on the session and maybe generate some ideas that would be doable.
Library induction tours are the first chance we get to talk to students about the library. We generally do four tours in the first week of term that last half an hour each, and attendance is entirely optional. Usually we'll get one group of around 25-30 and the rest have around 3-8 students. I've been following the format I learned from longer-serving members of staff, whereby we show them around, show the catalogue, explain borrowing, fines, rules for use and so on. The obvious problems with this are a) it's not very engaging - we try to ask questions, tailor the tour a little bit to the subjects people are reading etc. but not very much - and b) the first week of term for first years is a time of information overload, so I'm not sure how much information is actually sinking in from those sessions. Furthermore, the uptake is not great so come Lent Term there are a lot of people who still don't really know some basic things about how to use the library.

The pitch for the LibCAMp session was to share ideas on how to make inductions more engaging, so I was very keen to attend and hear what people might suggest.



Innovative forms of induction other libraries use include scavenger hunts, peer-led inductions, video/Vine inductions and hands-on sessions. Games were also mentioned as a possibility and in addition to SPRI's scavenger hunt, murder mystery style games were mentioned as something that other libraries around the world are doing. One of my favourite tips was to tell students that everything on the induction tour was something that a professor hadn't known, thus making it clear that it's normal not to have everything figured out and hopefully reducing the fear of asking "dumb" questions.

I was very pleased when the discussion moved toward User Experience (UX) and ongoing support. Many people agreed that inductions should not be thought of as a one-off session, but that we continue to communicate induction information through leaflets, signage, one-to-one troubleshooting sessions and so on.



In many ways the librarians present felt a tension between wanting the library to speak for itself - so that users could come in and accomplish their goals without ever needing intervention from library staff - and the desire to tell users what we think they should know. The problem is that we don't know what the gaps in knowledge are. Has everyone on the tour used a catalogue before? Have they already been told about search strategies? It's hard to know who will be bored by this basic information and who will be hearing it for the first time.

But the information overload of the first week – a factor over which we have very little control – may be a more critical factor in how students respond and how much they remember from the induction. That’s why it’s important to have induction information available at the point of need as well, or at least in a format that students can come back to when needed (like a postcard in their Freshers packs or a series of YouTube videos). The library should ideally be easy to navigate and the design should be unobtrusively helpful at the right points, meaning that inductions are not necessary in order to interpret the service.

I have been thinking about other kinds of induction that we might do and when we might do them. By the beginning of Lent Term, for instance, students will have gotten over the initial information overload and will have had personal experiences with library services. This seems like it would be a good opportunity to add some tips and tricks that will help students navigate the information landscape at Cambridge. I've been developing just such a course, adapted from Emma Coonan's "Here Be Dragons" presentation into a (hopefully) engaging look at "How to make the most of Cambridge Libraries". I would ask participants what barriers they've encountered using library services and tailor the session to address those issues, or if they don't highlight any issues then I can simply talk about tips and tricks to make better use of the library system at Cambridge. The problem with this approach is that one confusing, frustrating or otherwise negative experience in a library during Michaelmas Term may be enough to turn a library user into a non-user for the rest of their time at Cambridge.

For this reason I think it’s still important to have the initial contact of the induction tour and for students to have a positive impression of the library at this stage. I want to tell them: If you take only one thing away from the induction tour, I hope it’s that we’re here to help you do the best you can. We can then try to make the library experience easier through good design, through helpful staff and through ongoing training opportunities that emphasise what the library can do for users, "induction" will be an ongoing process of mutual development.

So I'm looking at a three-facet approach to inductions: the tour (Fresher's week), ongoing information/library literacy training and good design of library services and informational material. But how to make that initial tour inviting and engaging? Part of it is just being a friendly face, but I must admit I'm really tempted by the idea of a game or other hands on activity. But because we never know how many will be in a tour, I think it's likely we'd have to have people sign up if we tried to "gameify" the induction tours. It's something I'll definitely have to think about. At the end of the day, though, if students leave the induction tour feeling like the library staff are on their side and that it's not a scary place I will consider it a job well done.

What creative ideas have you heard for library inductions? Do you think they're useful or do you think the design of the library should tell users everything they need to know?
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Saturday, 31 January 2015

UX and Ethnographic Methods for Librarians

I feel extraordinarily lucky to work where I do. I have a lot of latitude, including the opportunity to really shape my own role, I have been able to usher in pretty major changes in the culture and services at my library working from the bottom of the hierarchy and I have a pretty sweet work space from which to research exhibitions, explore avenues of outreach and publicity and keep up with what's going on in other libraries.

One of the nerve centres of the UX revolution (AKA my desk)
One of the best things about working here - and in Cambridge Libraries in general - is the focus placed on the CPD (continuing professional development) of library staff. We have great opportunities to learn and grow as a community, not least of which is the Librarians in Training courses that run throughout the year. If you're working in Cambridge libraries and haven't yet taken advantage of these, you should really think about doing so. Not only can you learn a lot from courses targeted to Cambridge librarians, but it's a fantastic opportunity to meet people from other libraries who will be your allies and resources in projects you might want to take on in future. (And they're all lovely people, it goes without saying!)

I attended a course yesterday afternoon entitled "UX and Ethnographic Methods for Librarians" taught by hippest-of-the-hip Cambridge librarians Meg Westbury (Wolfson) and Georgina Cronin (Judge Business School). Both of these women are inspirational innovators who really care about providing great services to library users and it's fantastic to get an insight into how they've done what they've done at their own institutions and for the wider Cambridge library community. The class itself was pretty much a perfect mixture of instruction and activity as far as I was concerned. I think I'm not alone in having had a really good time with it.

Introducing UX and ethnography


Meg began by defining and explaining UX and ethnography. Very briefly, UX (user experience) is a term originating with Apple, who are masters of the art. It encompasses UI (user interface) and usability (a term that itself encompasses how easy a tool or service is to navigate, learn, remember etc.), but goes beyond both to look at the qualitative dimensions of experience, emotion and cognition at the point where users interact with products or services. Essentially, it puts the focus on the individual's motivations, needs and feelings. It looks at barriers to use as well, trying to determine who is missing and why. Ethnography is writing about culture, with the worthy goal of doing so from ground level instead of top-down. As much as possible the aim is to understand the shifting points of view of the individual user without imposing assumptions or putting them in a static, statistical box. You can learn more about students from an ethnographic study with four participants, Meg said, than from surveying 100 with a standardized questionnaire.

Ethnographic UX research in libraries is growing rapidly as library professionals confront the fact that not only do we not necessarily know best about how to meet our users' needs but maybe we don't even know their needs as well as we like to think. As so-called "disruptive" technologies undermine the privileged position libraries have occupied as the sole gateways to information, how can we change our relationship to the information landscape and to our users in ways that will create meaningful, inspiring opportunities for our users? Luckily, UX research can be a lot easier to implement than more traditional research. Since you're looking for qualitative data that is not exhaustive so much as a window into a single user's experience at a single point in time, study design can be more flexible and creative. Many of the methods utilize things as basic as users' own mobile phones and post-it notes and require less planning and preparation than a questionnaire.

Methods


The majority of class time was spent looking at a few of the potential methods with Georgina, including trying them out for ourselves! First off was my favorite, cognitive mapping. The task was to draw from memory a map of your working spaces. The exercise lasted 6 minutes, and we changed pens every two minutes. This highlighted what was most significant in our minds, what was lower priority and what was most peripheral. (The order was blue, red, black, in case you want to psychoanalyze me based on the drawing below, i.e. I drew the Space Marine figure on my monitor long before drawing a representation of reshelving).

My cognitive map of the places I work. Don't judge me. I have not the skills of an artist.
Normally participants would label their maps and discuss them with the researcher, but before doing that we swapped maps with someone else and tried to interpret theirs without any labels. This clever exercise showed how easy it is to misinterpret or assume you know what something means when actually you have it all wrong. It was also interesting to experience firsthand how it is slightly nerve wracking to do the drawing but really quite fun to talk about the drawing afterward.

The other main activity was looking at observation. Georgina herself learned a lot about how users move through her library simply by sitting and watching for an hour at a time on different days. She created a heat map and a list of activities performed by library users and got a better idea of how people were actually using the space. We went out into the wilds of the University Library to try it out! It's surprisingly difficult to be discrete, especially when you're an adult in a student space. A few people were asked if they worked for the UL. Not so subtle. It is interesting how much you can learn even from five minutes. On the top floor I found that no one really stayed up there to work but rather came and got their books and left, but that there was some difficulty locating items, meaning users were backtracking a lot and looking at the signage to try to work out where their book was. There were many other interesting observations from the other participants as well. I think it's a useful method, but would work better in conjunction with something that elicited user responses as well, for instance maybe I would interview a few students about what spaces they avoided in the UL and why, or ask them to do a photo diary of places they feel confused in the library.

We received handouts at the end with a list of resources to get started (which I will copy below) and an expanded list of methods (which I won't copy, but I'm sure Meg and/or Georgina would be happy to supply if you email them). I'll be hanging on to these long-term, I think, and referring to them for inspiration.

Conclusion-y type things


After a discussion about analyzing and presenting the results, the class ended with a brief discussion of ethics, which boiled down to common sense: let participants know how you're going to use their data, and don't let incentives create an imbalance of power or a sense of obligation. When in doubt, use a consent form, and let participants know that they can leave the study at any time. Also, food-based incentives are often more than enough to make participants feel appreciated for giving you their time.

One thing I would have liked to discuss in more detail is what kinds of questions lend themselves to these sorts of studies. I came away feeling like people might just pick a study that sounded fun without first designing it to address a specific gap in knowledge. I think it would be more useful to start from a particular aspect or question you wanted to investigate, as in this passage from Nancy Fried Foster et al.:
"Our first task was to identify one trenchant research question to guide the project. The question we developed was, What do students really do when they write their research papers? Between the assignment of a research paper and the finished, submitted product was a black box that largely concealed the processes undertaken by the student. We wanted to take a peek into that box to see what we could find. We felt that this question accurately reflected our ignorance of student work habits while providing a manageable focus for our information-gathering activities." - Studying Students
I like that this passage acknowledges the ignorance of the researchers. In studying social science research methodology for my librarianship course I often felt that studies commenced with researchers already having an idea about the results in their heads. It left little room for flexibility and possibly influenced interpretation, especially when studies attempted to fit qualitative experiences into quantitative data. Statistics have their place, of course, but they don't tell a story and they certainly don't put the individual at the heart of research.

I will certainly be using some of these methods to conduct studies in my own library and have already started annotating my hand-outs with potential research topics/questions.

I'm sticking notes on so I can keep the handout for longer. Yeah.
I really enjoyed this course and got a lot out of it, most importantly the confidence that this is something very achievable and useful to do. I am excited to find out what my library users need and want, and how we can more closely align our services to those real needs. Thanks, Meg and Georgina!

Resources to get started


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