Library Assessment Conference

Keynotes (Theme: Change)

Debra Gilchrist, Pierce College, USA

Keynote title: Leading with Strategy and Evidence

Bio:

Debra Gilchrist, PhD, is Vice President for Learning and Student Success at Pierce College, a community college in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. In addition to academic and student affairs, she leads efforts focused on regional accreditation and achievement of institutional outcomes. She has published and presented on outcomes assessment as a tool for change, demonstrating the contributions of academic libraries through assessment of both learning and program impact and quality. Serving as a collaborator with Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, they designed and led ACRL’s workshops and webinars on utilizing the Standards for Libraries in Higher Education for planning and demonstrating library contributions to student learning and success. She has served ACRL as an inaugural faculty member in the Immersion program since 1999 and was honored with ACRL's Miriam Dudley Award in 2007. Debra has a PhD in Higher Education Leadership from Oregon State University and an MLS from University of Denver. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the leadership role of academic librarians to influence instructional change.

Margie Jantti, University of Wollongong, Australia

Keynote title: Aspiring to excellence: maximising data to sustain, shift and reshape a library for the future

Abstract:

Perhaps more than ever before, libraries face the challenge of excelling during uncertain times. As leaders of our libraries, we have a responsibility to ensure our libraries are reputed as relevant, visible, valued and contemporaneous. It is imperative that we seek out new methods for maximizing the data that we are invested in and make it more readily accessible and comprehensible to key stakeholders; the senior leadership teams of the library and those of the institution. Yet where does the persuasive evidence lay to demonstrate outcomes aligned to the institution’s aims? It is unlikely that library data on its own will be sufficient for future assessment, evaluation and reporting requirements. It is necessary and vital that we rethink the indicators that are markers of a healthy, thriving library as well as extend our competency and capacity to leverage enterprise and third party data platforms for both library and institutional impact.

Bio:

Margie Jantti, as the Director of Library Services at the University of Wollongong (UOW) Australia, provides leadership and direction for library services spanning six onshore campus locations and guidance for offshore library partnerships in the UAE and Asia. She is an active member of UOW policy and governance committees. Within the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), she chairs the CAUL Quality Assessment Advisory Committee and the CAUL Leadership Institute and is also a member of the CAUL Executive. Key outcomes at UOW Library for the past three years include: significant restructuring of the organisation to extend capacity to support the research community, revitalisation of the physical space to support student learning, the creation of the Library Cube (an enterprise reporting system focussing on the impact of library resource usage and students’ academic performance). She is currently exploring, through third party arrangements, the efficient delivery and export of otherwise complex research impact datasets through handheld devices at point of client need. The repositioning of the Library to further improve alignment with University priorities has resulted in a revitalised approach to organisational performance monitoring and reporting frameworks. Margie holds a Master of Business Administration (distinction) and a BA in Library and Information Science.

David Kay, Sero Consulting, Ltd, UK

Keynote title: Discovering the pattern, discerning the potential: the role of the library in unraveling the cat’s cradle of activity data

Bio:

David Kay is a UK-based consultant at Sero (http://www.serohe.co.uk), which he co-founded in 2004 after over 20 years in systems design for education and library management and for learner support. Kay began investigating the potential of activity data and analytics in connection with Higher Education libraries in Jisc’s TILE project (2009). He has subsequently been involved in Jisc’s ongoing examination of those concepts in the MOSAIC demonstrator project, in the synthesis of the 2011 Activity Data programme (http://activitydata.org) and most recently in the LAMP project (http://jisclamp.mimas.ac.uk/2014/01/so-what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-analytics/). He has co-authored articles in the CETIS series on analytics and the whole institution and on legal and ethical considerations (2012) and a White Paper for Innovative. Kay sits on the SCONUL Shared Services and Collaboration Working Group.