The 2013 Service Quality Evaluation Academy, co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), is now accepting participant nominations, with a deadline of December 14, 2012.
The academy is an intensive five-day program that focuses on introductory qualitative and quantitative methods for collecting and analyzing library service quality data. Although some of the training will be presented in the context of ARL assessment programs and activities (LibQUAL+®, ARL Profiles, etc.), the program will emphasize basic concepts and skills in measurement and data analysis that will be applicable to service quality evaluations in general. There will be some time spent on relevant software skills, including the use of ATLAS.ti to analyze text-based evidence like responses to open-ended surveys and the use of SPSS for quantitative data analysis.
Date & Location
March 11–15, 2013
New Orleans, Louisiana
Academy Instructors
Colleen Cook, Trenholme Dean of Libraries, McGill University, past Chair of the IFLA Statistics and Evaluation Section Committee
Bruce Thompson, Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology and CEHD Distinguished Research Fellow, and Distinguished Professor of Library Science, Texas A&M University, and Adjunct Professor of Allied Health Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine (Houston), and Executive Director, Southwest Educational Research Association
Nick Woolf, Woolf Consulting and Visiting Academic Fellow, Henley Business School, The University of Reading
Who Should Attend
The academy is designed for librarians across library types and organizational structures, with a strong commitment to service quality assessment efforts. It is most appropriate for those who have direct responsibility for their library assessment efforts and show high potential for developing new and innovative assessment tools.
Nominations & Application
Library directors are invited to nominate candidates for the 2013 academy class. Directors can nominate an organizational team, but must rank-order individual team members when doing so. To maximize training impact and ensure the geographic diversity of the participants, first-ranked nominees will be admitted before second-ranked nominees. Library directors and deans can be nominated by their provost or president.
Each nomination should include the following materials from the nominees to complete their application package:
- nomination letter from library director;
- half-page description of possible assessment project including research questions of primary interest, or a brief statement (250 words) of interest emphasizing assessment activities; and
- curriculum vitae.
The application deadline is December 14, 2012.
Selection of Candidates
Members of the Selection Committee, composed of ARL and CARL library directors, will review candidate nominations and the selection of participants will be based on the following criteria:
- assessment experience as illustrated by applicant’s statement of interest, or viability of proposed assessment project;
- demonstrated commitment to service quality assessment efforts; and
- support of the participant’s institution as demonstrated by the nomination letter from the library director.
Fee
The participation fee for this five-day event is id=”mce_marker”,500 per participant. This covers the cost of tuition, all program and instructional materials, and daily refreshments (lunch and dinner are on your own).
Send all nomination packets and inquiries to:
David Green
Library Relations Coordinator, Statistics and Assessment Program
Association of Research Libraries
21 Dupont Circle, Suite 800
Washington DC 20036
Phone: 202-296-2296
E-mail: david@arl.org
More Information
For more information, see the academy website:
https://www.arl.org/stats/statsevents/sqacademy/
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 126 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
CARL—the Canadian Association of Research Libraries—is the leadership organization for the Canadian research library community. The Association’s members consists of 29 major academic research libraries across Canada together with Library and Archives Canada, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI), and the Library of Parliament. CARL strives to enhance the capacity of member libraries to partner in research and higher education, and to seek effective and sustainable scholarly communication and public policy encouraging of research and broad access to scholarly information. CARL is on the web at http://www.carl-abrc.ca/.
