Tue, Oct 3, 2023, 9:00am-4:00pm
Library UX Chicago is pleased to host Drs. Donna Lanclos and Andrew Asher for an in-person workshop on ethnographic research methods in libraries held at DePaul University's John T. Richardson Library on the Lincoln Park campus. CARLI and RAILS will sponsor this full-day workshop that empowers participants to think critically about the contexts in which their library’s services and spaces operate. Participants will work together to identify patterns and trends in ethnographic data which they will be asked to collect prior to the workshop. They will learn frameworks for analyzing qualitative data, strategies for identifying and communicating actionable insights with these data, and approaches to developing areas for future inquiry or partnership. Learning outcomes:
Presenter Information: Dr. Andrew Asher is the Assessment Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington, where he leads the libraries’ qualitative and quantitative assessment programs, conducts research on the anthropology of information, and teaches research methods in information science. Asher’s most recent work examines search and discovery workflows of students and faculty, information fluency development, and the ethical and privacy dimensions of learning analytics data. From 2019-2022 he was a member of the Data Doubles research team, a three-year IMLS funded study of student perspectives of privacy issues associated with learning analytics initiatives in libraries. Asher holds a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has written and presented widely on applying ethnography and mixed-methods research in academic libraries, including the co-edited volume, College Libraries and Student Culture. Dr. Donna Lanclos is an anthropologist who has been working with libraries and higher education as her field site since 2009. Her first fieldwork was in the late 1990s in Northern Ireland, which prepared her well for dealing with the fragmented and fractious landscape of universities and libraries, and conflicting and confounding identities, practices, and priorities therein. She writes, thinks, and speaks about the nature of information, digital and physical places, and higher education generally. Her work is relevant not just to libraries or universities, but to conversations about how we as a society make sure that people have opportunities to learn how to think critically, to practice those skills, and to find their voices. She is a methodologist, invested in training people in qualitative approaches to institutional research in education, as well as a qualitative practitioner in her own right. She runs workshops and talks on these issues and blogs about her work at www.donnalanclos.com. Library UX Chicago held a discussion on current trends and issues in academic libraries.
We used the following article to guide the discussion: Research Planning and Review Committee, 2. (2022). Top trends in academic libraries: A review of the trends and issues. College & Research Libraries News, 83(6), 243. doi: https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.83.6.243 Date and Time Friday October 28, 2pm-4pm Location John T. Richardson Library, DePaul University 2350 North Kenmore Avenue Chicago, IL 60614 Room 207 Additional information about the Richardson Library:
Join us for a happy hour to follow at Parsons Chicken and Fish in Lincoln Park. Library UX Chicago offers free professional development to the library community in and around Chicago. Our events cover a wide range of topics such as instruction, assessment, user experience, and more. While we focus on academic libraries, all are welcome. It has been a while since we talked with you! Library UX Chicago wants to invite you to catch up with your Chicago-area library colleagues. For the coffee chats, we will be discussing planning strategically while we still face uncertainty, as well as sharing new and exciting initiatives and projects we are all working on.
Please see the links below to register for the events so we know how many people to expect. Hope to see you! Happy Hour* Thursday May 19, 4:30pm Half Acre Beer Co 2050 West Balmoral Avenue Chicago, IL 60625 Register Virtual Coffee Chat Tuesday May 24, 9:00am-11:00am Zoom. Log in information will be sent after registration. Register In-person Coffee Chat* (Weather-permitting. The plan is to meet in their outdoor space) Wednesday May 25, 9:00am-11:00am Spoke & Bird Cafe (South Loop) 205 East 18th Street Chicago, IL 60616 Register *Since COVID guidelines change, you may wish to check the business website prior to attending an in person event In response to COVID-19, many libraries have closed their physical buildings, offered fully remote services, and experienced staffing decreases, amid other disruptions. Despite this, administrators, consortia, and funding agencies will expect the same data that we report each year. This poses an interesting question: how do we communicate the value of what the library has been doing for our communities during these tumultuous times? Join Library UX Chicago for an online event exploring ways to think about data collection and apply storytelling techniques to convey value to administrators and stakeholders. We plan to discuss ways of documenting innovation in the libraries during COVID-19, strategic decision-making and goal setting using data that cannot be meaningfully benchmarked, the short-term impact of maintaining typical data collection methods, and more.
Call for Participation! Library UX is looking for lightning round presenters to share ideas they have for framing library data for administrators, methods for collaboratively establishing a value framework, or experience with applying communication or storytelling techniques to library data. Brief presentations (about 10 minutes) will be given via Zoom followed by an open discussion. If you have ideas, concepts, or lessons-learned to share with the group, please email Abby Annala at [email protected] or Devin Savage at [email protected]. RSVP for the Event Thursday, October 1, 2020 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm Location: Zoom A link to the Zoom session will be provided upon registration. This session will not be recorded. RSVP here Name: Frank Sweis Title: User Experience Librarian Library: Northwestern Libraries You have worked in UX before, but are new to libraries. Have you found any similarities/differences in the work?
Yes! For context my last role before starting at the library was in IT. IT often needs to react to production support and client/business partner needs. These can add constraints to UX work in terms of effort, scope of research, and access to users. The biggest difference in my experience is that a sizable portion of our library staff interact with students and faculty daily, which means there are a lot of folks with a great understanding of the user perspective. In IT a lot of that knowledge lived in the teams doing the research, or our support staff (who were excellent!). I’ve been at NUL for only a few months, but I am excited about the level of expertise about users across teams. I think this allows for greater collaboration, and a proactive approach to problem solving; great ideas for our experiences can emerge from many places. What tools or methods have made the most difference in your work and why? I think the most successful method I utilize is inviting teammates (developers, project managers, product owners, etc.) to observe and/or participate in user research sessions. Having other members of the team with you helps streamline communication, quickly get to insights and solutions, and dispel any uncertainty your team might have about how or why we need to do user research. It’s very motivating to see a teammate, who hasn’t interacted with users previously, take notes, ask questions to participants, and generate ideas on how they’ll implement what they observed into their work. Do you have a specific project you are particularly proud of? Most of my projects for the library are currently in progress. Previous to my time in the library, I was part of a team redesigning a version of Northwestern’s alumni profile and directory. It was a fun project because we had a lot of space to research/design/test, but what I am most proud of is how that research and testing led to privacy decisions that benefitted the user. This included default settings that displayed less information, not more, clear communication about privacy, and a number of ways to control privacy. There was a lot of difference-of-opinion about privacy across the team and stakeholders, but the insight we collected from research helped reach a consensus across the team. The settings weren’t perfect, but the project showcased how UX is more than an easy-to-use interface, and how user research helps with decision making. What have you read lately? I have a terrible habit of trying to collect and read too many books at once, but this summer I thankfully slowed it down. In the UX world, I enjoyed Regine Gilbert’s Inclusive Design for a Digital World which is fairly comprehensive and a great resource to refer back to again and again. On the sci-fi side of things, I just started Martha Wells’ All Systems Red which is about a cyborg and its growing feelings of empathy (go figure…). |
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