Stand in their Shoes: Applying UX & Design Thinking to Community Initiatives

Meeghan Rosen, Molly Luby – UNC – Chapel Hill

As librarians, our instincts are to jump in and help where help is needed–whether that help is in the realm of early literacy, under-served populations, workforce education, or small business development. However, that help is amplified if we can more deeply understand the groups we want to serve and what their lives are like, what challenges they face,and what they aspire to do. In the first half of this session, participants will learn how UX (User Experience) mindset and design thinking can add value to large and small scale efforts around community improvement. In the second half, participants will get an inside look at how the Chapel Hill Public Library used UX and design thinking in collaboration with residents from the local homeless shelter.

Using Predictive Models for Better DDA Management

John Vickery – NC State

Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) programs have become an integral part of academic libraries’ collecting strategies. While DDA programs provide an effective way to build a just in time collection, it can be difficult to anticipate how many titles will be triggered for purchase and what the financial impact will be. This presentation will describe a project to build a predictive model to flag DDA titles that are likely to be triggered for purchase within the first year of being added to the catalog. We will discuss how we combined text analytics and structured data as inputs to the model using a combination of SAS and Python. In addition to the benefits of implementing a predictive model, we will also discuss the drawbacks and limitations involved.

Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide: Taming Online Research Guides at the NCSU Libraries

Lillian Rigling, Andreas Orphanides– NC State

Online research guides are a common feature of the academic library’s web presence, but their design is often at odds with typical users’ information-seeking behavior, which centers around automated discovery tools and just-in-time information access. We present an early report on our work to revisit online guides creation at the NCSU Libraries, with a goal of making guide content easier to maintain and more compatible with current best practices in web content creation. Our project includes a comprehensive review of existing guides content; a plan for elevating and enhancing discoverability of core guides; establishment of best practices for guide creation; and novel changes to site architecture (currently being developed) that continue to provide the freedom to create open-ended content as needed.

Can RDA Content, Media, and Carrier Coding Improve Discovery Facet Mapping?

Steve Kelley, Carolyn McCallum, and Kevin Gilbertson – Wake Forest University

Faceted searching in online public catalogs is often difficult, because the default facet mapping provided by discovery systems can be inadequate regarding the faceting of bibliographic formats. We worked extensively to revise this mapping, creating complex decision trees that require the system to consult multiple fields and subfields in bibliographic records, in order to assign more precise format facets. When our authority control vendor offered to add RDA coding to our bibliographic records, including the new Content, Media and Carrier fields, we wondered whether this coding might improve format faceting in our public catalog. And if not, what coding might improve faceting? This presentation will explore these questions, as well as describe the process of having a vendor add RDA coding to your catalog records.

I Need Space! Responding to Students’ Requests for Diverse Spaces and Furniture

Emily Daly, Joyce Chapman – Duke University

This talk will highlight several low-cost methods Duke University Libraries staff use to gather students’ suggestions and feedback related to library spaces and furniture in particular. We will describe ways we have been able partner with campus organizations and respond to students’ requests and thereby demonstrate Duke Libraries’ value and relevance to the campus community. Finally, we will detail a few of the most successful changes to library spaces over the past academic year and the ways we continue to evaluate and improve library spaces and furniture to meet our users’ evolving and increasingly diverse needs.

I Wish I’d Known That Earlier: Connecting Students to Research Services

Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Brittany Wofford, Melanie Sturgeon – Duke University

Libraries frequently struggle to make their services and resources known; typically, patrons only engage with a small portion of what we offer, and “I wish I’d know about that earlier!” is a familiar complaint. During the 2015-16 school year, Duke University Library’s Research & Instructional Services department formed a communications team to bridge the gap between user and library. In this presentation, we will explore the initiatives undertaken during this first year, including pop-up outreach, marketing during new student orientations, and how we used a recent student survey to tailor our outreach. We will also discuss work the team has undertaken to improve interdepartmental event coordination and to better connect student project-work with research services.

Aren’t They A Little Young to Be Freshmen? Touring K-12 Students in Hunt Library

Lisa Ruth – NC State

In the Human Centered Library, we start with people. But how does an academic library design for people who aren’t yet part of the university community? How can we not only support an increasingly diverse constituency, but also address the “pipeline problem” in our universities and profession?

When Hunt Library opened, we were inundated with requests to tour K-12 students, many of whom come from under-represented and at-risk backgrounds. Through a partnership with the Institute for Emerging Issues, what began as a small subset of tours has evolved into a program designed to introduce these students to the role of academic libraries and civic engagement. Our goal is to inspire them to consider attending college, knowing the library is there to support their success.

The Lab-Integrated Librarian: A User-Centered Engagement Strategy for STEM Communities

Alex Carrol, Bertha Chang, Honora Eskridge – NC State

In an attempt to demystify the enterprise research process and to try out a novel model of faculty engagement, a group of science librarians embedded themselves into research groups at their institution by attending lab meetings. This presentation will provide an overview of this new service, and discuss some of the findings of this pilot project. While this initiative started as a means of supporting faculty research and encouraging team science, it has revealed that important student learning occurs during the course of routine lab meetings. This presentation will suggest that attending lab meetings enables librarians to deliver point-of-need research support and to provide instructional services in authentic contexts that highlight the utility of information literacy skills to faculty and students alike.

THE NC AHEC Library Network Measures Value & Creates Key Performance Indicators: Three Examples

Diane McDuffee, Lauren Tomola, Mary Beth Schell – UNC – Chapel Hill

The AHEC Library and Information Services Network staff located at the UNC Health Sciences Library are implementing three studies to demonstrate the value and impact of AHEC library services for their core constituency of NC health professionals. Each study uses a different method to gather data, allowing the AHEC librarians to demonstrate value, impact and outcomes for the services they provide for the community hospitals and healthcare providers they work with throughout the state. Together, these value studies will explore the effectiveness of services and resources, test methods of measuring new resources, and the demonstrate different ways librarians improve clinicians’ care experience.

Enabling Student Success through Library Immersion into the Research Curriculum

Mira Waller, Shaun Bennett – NC State

At the NCSU Libraries, we are taking advantage of an increasing pedagogical emphasis on active learning and media technology to work collaboratively with faculty in developing curriculum and contributing to student success. This session focuses on our work with an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology as a case study on how librarians can actively collaborate with faculty on coursework and student engagement through integrating multimedia technology and visualization spaces into the curriculum.

Making Space – Increasing Inclusion through Targeted Programming and Outreach

Lauren Di Monti, Marian Fragola – NC State

Wolf Tales: Documenting Voices of Diversity at NC State

Virginia Ferris – NC State

Reaching New Audiences through the UNC T-Shirt Archive

Jennifer Coggins – UNC – Chapel Hill

Finding their Way: First-Year Seminar Scavenger Hunts at Davis Library

Joanekke Elliott, Jasmine Plott – UNC – Chapel Hill

Using Tableau to Visualize Your Data

Natalia Lopez – UNC – Chapel Hill

Streaming Media from the Southern Folklife Collection: Affordances, Challenges, and Future Opportunities

Aaron Smithers – UNC – Chapel Hill

Is It Useful?

Grace Sharrar – UNC – Chapel Hill

Long Night Against Procrastination: Reaching Students in the Residence Halls

Alena Principato – UNC – Chapel Hill

Unending Tech Lending: Virtual Reality and Beyond

Pete Schreiner, Abigail Nickels – NC State