Assessment Strategies In Technical Services

Are you spending money wisely? Can you prove it? The call for efficiency and evidence-based practice has sparked an examination traditional assessment and statistic-gathering.

Assessment has provided educational institutions with information about student learning outcomes and the quality of education for many decades. But has it informed practice and been fully incorporated into the learning cycle? Conrad and Openo argue that the potential inherent in many of the new learning environments being explored by educators and students has not been fully realized. In this investigation of a variety of assessment methods and learning approaches, the authors aim to discover the tools that engage learners and authentically evaluate education. They insist that moving to new learning environments, specifically those online and at a distance, afford opportunities for educators to adopt only the best practices of traditional face-to-face assessment while exploring evaluation tools made available by a digital learning environment in the hopes of arriving at methods that capture the widest set of learner skills and attributes.

By showcasing the work of technical services, and the ground-breaking changes they have encountered, this edited collection provides readers with an opportunity to re-assess the opportunities and challenges for library administration, and to understand how libraries should be managed in the future.

Effective library assessment is crucial for a successful academic library. But what do we mean by library assessment and how can it be used to improve the library service? This new book provides a practical guide for library administrators, managers and practitioners on how to make effective use of existing sources of information for assessment activities with the aim of improving academic library services. Putting Library Assessment Data to Work brings together key library assessment methodologies detailing how they can be used to improve an academic Library. The book takes common sources of data that academic libraries will already be collecting, and presents simple qualitative and quantitative techniques that can be used to evaluate and assess their services, both in detail and overall. The different assessment methods are presented from a practical perspective with a theoretical grounding, and include practical case studies to illustrate how the methodologies have successfully been applied. - The book includes coverage of: - The theoretical framework for assessment, its purpose and the tools and techniques used - Institutional, national and international student surveys and how they can be used to improve library service - The history and development of standardised library surveys (eg LibQUAL+®), how they have been used and their impact - The benefits of In house library surveys and case studies of where they gave been used - Library statistics, including standardised statistics sets and key performance indicators - Qualitative feedback in the library - Emerging techniques including UX - Taking a holistic approach to library assessment through advocacy and strategic planning This book will be essential reading for library and information service managers, administrators, assessment practitioners, educators and policy shapers. It will also be useful for students and researchers interested in library assessment.

Choose the right hardware and software for your school! This unique book is the first systematic work on evaluating and assessing educational information technology. Here you?ll find specific strategies, best practices, and techniques to help you choose the educational technology that is most appropriate for your institution. Evaluation and Assessment in Educational Information Technology will show you how to measure the effects of information technology on teaching and learning, help you determine the extent of technological integration into the curriculum that is best for your school, and point you toward the most effective ways to teach students and faculty to use new technology. Evaluation and Assessment in Educational Information Technology presents: a summary of the last ten years of assessment instrument development seven well-validated instruments that gauge attitudes, beliefs, skills, competencies, and technology integration proficiencies two content analysis instruments for analyzing teacher-student interaction patterns in a distance learning setting an examination of the best uses of computerized testing--as opposed to conventional tests, as used in local settings, to meet daily instructional needs, in online delivery programs, in public domain software, and available commercial and shareware options successful pedagogical and assessment strategies for use in online settings a four-dimensional model to assess student learning in instructional technology courses three models for assessing the significance of information technology in education from a teacher?s perspective an incisive look at Michigan?s newly formed Consortium of Outstanding Achievement in Teaching with Technology (COATT) ways to use electronic portfolios for teaching/learning performance assessment and much more!

An important resource for scholarly research, grey literature is relevant to every discipline. It’s also often more current than commercial publications. Unfortunately, though it provides a richness of content, this type of scholarly resource is often overlooked when conducting research. This book aims to change that, describing the importance of grey literature and offering a holistic approach to successfully integrating it into library collections. Readers will learn an overview of grey literature that discusses its importance to researchers, scholars, and students; collections policies for selection and deselection, complete with a suggested workflow; information about vendors, OA, and other aspects of acquisitions; guidance on cataloging, such as collection categories in the public-facing catalog, and preservation; and methods for promoting grey literature in library collections, including institutional repositories; and tips for marketing, branding, outreach, and best communication practices for colleagues, administrators, and patrons.

Used in library schools worldwide, this standard text provides students with a thorough understanding of technical services. Updated and expanded, the eighth edition further emphasizes the rapidly changing environment in which technical services are conducted. The book covers all aspects of the field—from acquisitions to managing the cataloging department—with five new chapters. "Technical Services Issues" includes material related to physical space needs; "E-resources Issues" examines how the growth of e-materials impact technical services work; "Copy Cataloging" reflects the ever increasing need to be more efficient and also to save limited funds for technical services activities; "Overview and Decisions" addresses the issue of why and how the local OPAC has become a gateway to the universe of knowledge; and "Processing Materials" covers the activities involved in making sure items that go into a library's collection are properly identified as belonging to the library and where the item is physically located in the collection. All other chapters have been extensively rewritten and updated to reflect 2010 technical service functions and activities. Complete with helpful illustrations, statistics, and study guide questions, this text is a must for library and information science students!

This report analyses the present system of identifying and testing medical technologies and of synthesizing and disseminating assess- ment information. The report focuses on the flow of information that is central to an efficient assessment system. Methods for te- sting technologies and for synthesizing information are explored, and a compendium of data and bibliographic sources are included. The re- port also describes the innovation process for medical technologies, the effects that federal policies have on that process, and the needs those policies generate for technology assessment information. It critiques the current system of assessment and provides policy options, both legislative and oversight, for congress to improve the system.