Stopwatch Session 7

Tina Buck (University of Central Florida) & Sara Duff (University of Central Florida)

Keywords: Career, Jobs, Job-search, Interview

Whether you're new to the profession or looking to make a mid-career change, the presenters have tips and support to offer. Acquisitions is a specialized area but people from other areas in the library (as well as lots of vendors) have found success there.  The presenters surveyed thousands of librarians about career changes in libraries and wrote a book on the topic to provide guidance for those wishing to make such a change. Come learn how to prepare yourself, practically and emotionally, to land an acquisitions job. 

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Shannon Pensa (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), Raquel Estrada (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) & William Flores (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)

Keywords: poster exhibits, scholarly communication, online resources, outreach, content creation

During the pandemic, our library, like many others, made the switch to promote library resources for an online centric world. Book displays were reimagined in the form of LibGuides, online flyers and social media posts became more commonplace to reach our patrons. Yet throughout all this online marketing, we had overlooked our institutional repository (IR) to disseminate our creative works. That changed in 2021, when we decided to start uploading poster presentations created to promote library resources and realized that in effect, we became content creators. While the posters are not the traditional form of research and publication, we are creating unique scholarly content for the purposes of teaching and learning. Library display posters became an opportunity to inspire staff creativity and showcase unexpected talents.

Join us as we discuss the intended (reaching a wider audience) and unintended (accidental content creators) benefits of using a free design platform (Canva) along with our IR (UTRGV ScholarWorks) in the promotion of library collections and materials.

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Tasha Mellins-Cohen (COUNTER)

Keywords: Metrics, Impact, Collaboration

Scholcomm is changing. Two of the big factors driving change are OA and the increasing demand for measuring ‘impact’. We're human and like to simplify complex matters down to numbers. As a measure of impact, citations are very direct, but they are laggy and in some fields take decades to accrue. Altmetrics are more immediate, but often reflect fleeting attention rather than lasting impact. I argue that usage metrics – particularly comparable, consistent usage statistics of the kind produced by COUNTER-compliant platforms – are a third type of impact measure. Unlike citations, usage accrues from the day of publication, and unlike altmetrics we can be sure that usage reflects some form of engagement with the original content. In this interactive session we'll explore how libraries and publishers can collectively deliver value to researchers, funders and institutions, as well as to their own activities, by using usage metrics as a measure of impact.

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Meredith Taylor (Appalachian State University)

Keywords: Process Mapping; Process Improvement

Collection management and resource acquisitions are heavily process-driven work in most libraries. So, what happens when one of your libraries’ fundamental processes, electronic resource renewals, isn’t working anymore? This presentation will describe how the University Libraries at Appalachian State University applied the principles of process mapping to examine its existing eResource renewal process and make needed process improvements that resulted in staff time savings, fiscal optimization, and more collaborative and transparent decision making. The mapping and assessment undertaken examined the entire eResource renewal process, from receipt of renewal terms from the vendor, through internal deliberations over decisions to renew, to procurement and contract processing though the University’s system. Although this presentation will focus on a process mapping project for eResource renewal, this valuable assessment framework can be applied any process-driven work being undertaken throughout the library.

This presentation will describe big picture concepts of process mapping and improvement including capturing the current process, identifying gaps and inefficiencies, developing process improvement recommendations, collaboratively vetting the improvements, and moving them into implementation. But it will also cover the nuts-and-bolts strategies of project sponsorship, data collection, data analysis, creation and implementation of process improvement recommendations, and project documentation and visualizations. It will also discuss the political and interpersonal nuances of this assessment process including project roll-out, data anonymization, stakeholder buy-in, and project communication. The speaker will provide insights into the process mapping method from the perspective of the individual mapping the processes, the project’s executive sponsor, and the manager overseeing the implementation of the improvement recommendations.