The fieldwork experience is drawing to a close. This is my final week here, as I will complete 100 hours on Friday, April 27th.

Much of April was spent working on a marketing plan for the library. I met with Eric, Jill and John to talk about potential promotions the library can institute and that I can incorporate into a planning document. These elements, along with some background information, went into the formal document that I submitted to Jill today. I will also submit this document as my Academic Libraries class final project.

I also had the opportunity to attend a Research department staff meeting in the past month. We spoke about some enhancements to the library's LibGuides, filling an upcoming staff vacancy and ideas for enhancing the library work study program for students.

And, of course, this month has included some quality time at the reference desk. The patrons have been a pleasure to work with and the librarians have been open to teaching me and giving valuable advice.

In March I've been able to really dig in to the research assignments given to me by Jill. This week I wrapped up my report on methods of reference service assessment, and have submitted it for Jill's review. Now I'm focusing on methods libraries can use in assessing the outcomes of information literacy instruction. Much has been written about the need for assessment, and how to build information literacy courses that focus on inforamtion literacy competencies. There are alos recommendations on the use of rubrics as yardsticks against which information literacy can be measured. I'm also looking for actual tools and methods for gathering data needed to evaluate a student's information competence.

While user satisfaction surveys measure how much the student liked the information literacy course, and how they feel the course helped them, it doesn't actually meausre that student's information skills. Other libraries have created tests for students to take to measure their fluency that were administered either as assignments in classes or as a study performed by the library. I will include information on these tools in my report to Jill.

I'm learning a lot through my weekly assignment at the reference desk. It's good to get some hands-on experience with user queries. Each new patron question is a new opportunity for me to learn about a resource, a new-to-me search strategy, or how the library and its resources are organized. When there aren't any patrons at the desk, I talk to the librarians about different library subjects -- collection development, ebooks, budgeting, and career advice are all examples.

At this point in my fieldwork, I have completed 66 hours twoard my 100 hour course requirement. At my current rate of 8 hours per week, I will have completed 100 hours by the end of April

This afternoon started with more research on assessment. It looks like a lot of librares use house-made questionnaires when assessing the quality of services. The challenge is making a sruvey that gets the information that is needed without being cumbersome for the patrons to answer.

One "unobtrusive" method of assessment, taken from the retail world, is the use of secret shoppers. Students are trained to approach the reference staff, ask specific questions, and then evaluate the service they received. This method of assessment raises some issues, in my view. First, there are ethical issues in assessing staff without their knowledge. If one tells staff that they are going to be observed via secret shopper, then it defeats the purpose - staff know they're going to be assessed, so the assessment might as well take place out in the open.

I do have experience with secret shopping in a retail environment - part of my job was to make fake calls to employees, asking for certain information, and to report on whether or not I got good service and correct information. In this specific situation, employees knew that they were going to get the calls, they just didn't know when. Most of the employees really resented the practice - they viewed it as sneaky and hostile. After a while, they also learned how to spot the secret callers, and treated them disrespectfully.

Today I also got to sit in on an Academic Policy Committee (APC) meeting. Jill is ont his committee, and she invitied me to come observe so I could learn a little bit about how decisions are made on campus. APC is a subcommitte of University Senate, the shared governance body of UW-EC. The current purpose of APC right now is to examine and revise the liberal education core at UWEC. At the meeting,t he committee spoke about a review that took place of the Art department's cirruculum. They also spoke about the necessity of the math competency requirement for graduation, and how this requirement should be worded in the new LE core materials. It was interesting to see the decision-making process in action, especially seeing representation of the different departments (including the library), as well as the structure of the meeting (Robert's Rules, etc). Very different from meetings in my current private-sector job setting!

    Today I worked on my assessment research. Jill suggested I look into obtrusive vs. unobtrusive assessment methods, and the ethical considerations involved with each. This is something I've come accross briefly in my research and it would be interesting to delve in further.

     I also observed another library instruction class, this time with Eric. This was an English 110 class (composition). This was more basic than the other classes, and involved forming queries, searching basic article databases, etc. A unique challenge with this class is that these students aren't necessarily looking for scholarly articles, but rather for more rhetorical pieces - like editorials or articles in consumer publications.

     I spoke with Jill today about my final project for Acadmic Library class. Initially I had chosen to do a profile of McIntyre Library, but I'm more interested in doing a paper on the subject of library anxiety. I asked Jill if it would be possible to interview reference works (librarians, staff and students) about their experiences with library anxiety in patrons. She thought this would be interesting, and would be a good tie in with the assessment project. She is going to inquire with the research board about getting approval for interview questions and mentioned a UW toold for developing online surveys, if I would like to go that route.

    I'm starting to feel more comfortable working at the reference desk. Our patrons are, for the most part, friendly and grateful for the help we offer them. Today there seemed to be a theme of students needing help searching the catalog and locating materials in the stacks. At our reference stations there are two monitors -- one for the staff to work on and one for the patron to observe. I found this especially helpful today because it allowed me to to show the students how to find things instead of just finding the items for them.

     Jill showed me the UW libraries Forward website, which is a new shared catalog initiative through UW-Madison wherein you can search all the UW libraries' holdings. Jill indicated that the options for narrowing search queries are better here than on the UWEC catalog when it comes to searching for certain materials. An example she had was a student searching for a musical score. Forward allows for narrowing based on fromat, where "score" is one of the options. The material was easily found on Forward, where it may have taken quite a bit longer to find it in the UWEC catalog. However, whatever you find on Forward you need to bring back to the UWEC website in order to order it through interlibrary loan - this feature isn't available on Forward yet.

     This afternoon I observed a library instruction class held by Greg, from the Special Collections and Archives department. This class was very different than the social work class that I observed with Robin, and it was good to see the variety in subject matter and teaching styles.

     Greg was teaching students from a core history class how to locate resources online, how to request materials from other area research centers, and how to find primary sources in digital formats. He, like Robin, did things to engage the students - including asking questions, having students follow along on their computers, and using visual aids.

     In showing students how to find primary sources online, Greg showed them how to sue Google. I think this is important in teaching information literacy. Students today are going to use Google no matter what, so I think librarians should show them how to get the best scholarly results from it for their college assignments.

     In the second part of class, Greg took us up to the archive for a tour and a hands-on activity with some of the archives collections. It was great - now those students are familiar with how to use the archives, so they're more likely to do so. It was fun to see how excited the students were when they got the opportunity to dig in to those collections. I heard one woman say something about this being her dream job - she's probably a good candidate for library school!

    I also worked on my research on library assessment tools. I'm learning that there are a lot of options out there, and that there's no one universally-agreed on assessment method. I'm also familiarizing myself with the background and reasoning behind assessing reference services. jill thought it would be a good idea to present my findings at a staff meeting after my research is complete. This research also dovetails nicely with my Academic Library class, where I've chosen to write my midterm paper on library assessment methods.

This morning I met with Robin about the LibGuide. She said it was good, and that the search tips will help students be more independent in their searching. A snapshot of the finished guide can be seen below. Once the guide is published to the web, I'll provide a link to that as well.

I also met with John, the director, this morning. I asked him some questions about the library's planning process, his personal management style, and budgeting for the library. He told me that there isn't a current strategic plan in place for McIntyre, but he recognizes the need for one.
John sees his management style as somewhat hands-off. He feels that his role should be "to hire talented people, marshal resources and then get out of the way." Another big part of his role is to set the vision and mission for the library, and to help the faculty and staff of the library pursue that vision and meet the library's goals.
John wants the library to be a place of collaborative learning. He is not alone in seeing the emphasis shifting from the library's collection to the learning services the library provides. The shift to a collaborative learning center can be hard to get going -- John mentioned that it's hard for someone faculty to understand the shift. But John feels that it's his job to keep promoting the vision to the rest of the campus.
John also meets with the heads of the library units on how to allocate resources and make other decisions for the library as a whole. While this kind of collaboration is important, John also recognizes that sometimes his role is to make the final call and move the decision process along.
Another part of John's job is to allocate financial resources in the library. For the most part, the budget is pretty stable. However, with recent legislation, the library has had to make some changes to accommodate budget cuts. John and the other unit leaders have done this by trimming the collection budget, hold off on hiring, and changing some positions from part time to full time instead of adding more full time positions.
On a more personal note, John has not always been a librarian. He as a masters degree in history, and worked as a truck driver to support his family. When his kids were older, he decided to go to library school. Since then, he has worked exclusively in academic libraries, at first as a reference librarian. His goal was always to become a director.
Toward the end of the interview, I asked John about what his thoughts were about librarianship as a profession. This is a topic that has interested me since my foundations class where I first learned about the debate about whether or not librarians should be considered professionals. John said that he doesn't buy into the traditional divide between professional librarians and paraprofessionals. To the patrons, there is no discernible difference between the two. To him, the difference is in responsibility. Professional librarians, with their commitment to getting an MLS degree, are agreeing to a larger commitment to the job, as well as to community outreach.

The last part of my day was spent covering a shift at the reference desk. Jill and I helped a student find an empirical study for a psychology class. We also took pictures for promotional materials for a new on-campus book delivery service that the library is offering.

Jill has also gotten me started on researching reference assessment strategies. My first step is to conduct a literature review of the different possibilities of reference assessment that's out there.