In June, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will be presenting at two sessions during the the EBLIP10 Conference at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. For more information about the conference, please see the EBLIP website.

  • Monday, 17 June 3:00-4:30pm: Christine and Janet Fletcher are speaking on “Collectively Supporting Faculty: A national study of research and teaching practices and needs.” Libraries are increasingly called upon to provide evidence that their decisions—about the services they offer, the spaces they create, and the resources they purchase—are supporting the mission of their institutions and the needs of their faculty and students. A group of universities in New Zealand recently collaborated with Ithaka S+R to better understand the communities they serve and gather evidence to inform their strategic decisions.  In this session, attendees will learn both about the research and teaching practices of faculty members internationally as well as the value of engaging in a cross-institutional research initiative to develop and strengthen collaboration at a national level. Presenters will share results on New Zealand faculty practices and perspectives as well as how these compare to those from other countries including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Presenters will also discuss how survey results like these can be used effectively for decision-making both within individual universities and collectively.

 

  • Tuesday, 18 June 11:00am-12:30pm: Christine is speaking on “Addressing Unmet Needs: Developing and testing services for important campus communities.” How do you identify the needs of important campus communities? Once unmet needs have been identified, how do you develop and test service concepts that might effectively address them? How do you know when the library is the right provider of those services? This session will detail how mixed-method approaches – including both semi-structured interviews and large-scale surveys – can be deployed in a variety of institutional contexts to uncover the practices, preferences,and needs of important campus communities. These mixed-method methods can also be used to test whether existing services are adequately meeting the needs of various campus communities. This session will illustrate successful utilization of these methods through a recent multi-year, cross-institutional, and collaborative research initiative aimed at understanding how students define success, what challenges they are facing, and what library and other academic support services might help them succeed.