QQML2011

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SESSION TITLE: Using qualitative and quantitative methods in digital library education and research
Coordinators: Sirje Virkus, Lecturer, sirvir@tlu.ee & Aira Lepik, Associate professor, aira.lepik@tlu.ee, Tallinn University, Institute of Information Studies, Estonia
Scope & rationale:
This session aims to encourage the discussions and provide examples of usage of qualitative and quantitative methods in digital library research. This session compriseseightpapers,each of them will be presented by individual authors. Eight students explore in theirpapers social, economic, educational and organizational aspects of digital libraries and related issues in the different regions of the world - Africa, Asia, Latin-America, and Europe - using a quantitative and qualitative inquiry. The students’ papers of this session are based on research done within their Master Thesis projects in the Digital Library Learning (DILL) programme at Tallinn University. DILL is a two-year Master Programme for information professionals who intend to work in the complex world of digital libraries. DILL is offered in cooperation between Oslo University College (Norway), Tallinn University (Estonia), and Parma University (Italy).

Students of the Digital Library Learning (DILL) Master programme:

Marcial R. Batiancila, student, mbatiancila@gmail.com, The Digital Library Professionals’ Learning Culture: A Qualitative Study of the Community of Practice in Europe
Lin Bian, student, gracelinbian@yahoo.com, How Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing Facilitate Innovation?
Danijel Cuturic, student, d.cuturic@gmail.com, European Navigator: Users’ Expectations for the European Library
Nithin Lakshmana, student, nithinlaxman@gmail.com, Access to Knowledge in India
Ezerea Kulisooma, student, kezerea@yahoo.com, Cost Factors/Financial Implications of KM in Business Organisations
Andrew Wabwezi, student, wabwezia29@yahoo.co.uk, The Correlation between Knowledge Sharing and Innovation in Higher Education: A Case Study of Tallinn University
Juan Daniel Machin Mastromatteo, student, judamasmas@gmail.com, Exploring Users’ Information Behavior in Social Networks
Mehrnoosh Vahdat, student, mehrvah@gmail.com, A Study of Image Quality, Authenticity, and Metadata Characteristics of Photogrammetric Three-Dimensional Data in Cultural Heritage Domain.

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SESSION TITLE: Advocacy, networking and influencing: methodologies for building the evidence base in library and information services (LIS)
Convenor: Dr. Judith Broady-Preston, Director of Research, Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK
Scope & rationale:
Issues relating to assessing the impact of LIS, demonstrating the worth and value of LIS, especially in relation to advocacy activity by and for LIS, are of contemporary interest in relation to the global information profession. This section seeks papers which explore, identify and evaluate research methodologies and methods to build the evidence base and equip the profession to:

–network effectively,
–influence the political agenda,
–advocate effectively either as individual professionals or on behalf of specific services

A broad interpretation of the theme is encouraged and any enquiries as to relevance or suitability should be addressed to the Section convenor - jbp@aber.ac.uk
The theme of this section builds on issues explored in a one day session at the IFLA 2010 Conference in Gothenburg, and to be explored again at IFLA 2011.

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SESSION TITLE: Library management and marketing
Coordinator: Dr. Angela Repanovici, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania
Scope & rationale:
 Leadership in managing services for diverse and complex groups of patrons
In this session we are looking to learn from best practices from libraries that have demanding, diverse and complex groups of patrons. How will academic libraries balance between demands from scholars from different traditions; the bookish humanities and the more journal-oriented Social Sciences? Is there anything to learn about catering for the different emphasis placed on bibliometrics as a tool for funding agencies? On what basis will the academic libraries that are in this kind of situation act and make decisions?
 Performance indicators
Libraries, as well as other organizations, are under close scrutiny from patrons and funding agencies. The library manager needs some tools for assessing the performance of the library, both as itself and benchmarked with others. In this session we are looking for papers on best practice on performance indicators. What are good and useful indicators for performance for different kinds of libraries? How can library leaders and managers utilize the information derived from such indicators to improve the library services? Can performance indicators be used to market the library to stake holders?
 Evaluation
Library leaders have to find some ways of gaining systematic information about the activities in their libraries. Staff meets users every day, so there is no shortage of impressions, ideas and mental images, if one as a leader can find a way to utilize this. Often, though, this information will be ad hoc and qualitative rather than systematic and quantitative, and as such less useful for improvement and bench marking in a library. What are efficient ways of evaluation for libraries? What examples of best practice can we find of different evaluation methods for different purposes?
 User education
The traditional approach to library patron education is being challenged by several factors. One is the enormous amount of information that is available from libraries; so much, that it is not possible for anyone, not even the librarians themselves, to keep abreast of the development. Another challenge is the growing concern from stake holders and funding bodies that the population should become more computer literate and information literate, and seeing libraries as useful tools for this purpose. In this session we will look for papers describing best practises within the field of user education.

Librarian education in information literacy. Case study from the Romanian Library Association by Angela Repanovici.
Abstract: User education is a priority in the informational society. Information literacy becomes more than a user orientating course, it is a way for students to survive the explosion of information and every day changes of technology. For these reasons the Romanian Library Association organised a 3 days information literacy course for 20 librarians, the representatives of the most important university and public libraries. The course structure was conceived and planned taking in consideration the changes imposed by open access to scientific information and new open sources of information, like institutional repositories. The 20 librarians trained their colleagues, between at least 5 and maximum 10 librarians in each library. A qualitative marketing research was done to see the results of this cascading instruction. In this article the course structure, the organising of the course, the participants, lectors and final results of marketing research will be presented.
Keywords: Information literacy, User education, Opens access principle, Institutional repository and marketing research
Performance indicators in libraries: Concrete and practical use by Halvor Kongshavn, Ane Lnadoy and Johanne Raade.

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SESSION TITLE: Reference services: responding to users? changing needs and information behaviour
Coordinator: Dr. Maria G. N. Musoke, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, East Africa
Scope & rationale:
Reference service is a core library function that has been around for a long time. However, due to various paradigm shifts and rapid advances in information technology, the library users? needs and information behaviour are changing, and the reference librarian has to keep abreast the changes. This session focuses on reference services in all types of libraries to support various target groups. The session will highlight the changing role of the information professional in the provision of reference services to meet the changing needs of library users. Furthermore, the session will explore innovative and new ways resulting from reference services research, case studies, practical outcomes, lessons learned, etc, and how different libraries have effectively and efficiently provided the reference services in a changing information environment. Examples are:
- Evidence based reference services;
- Dissemination of reference services research;
- Redefining the role of the information professional in the provision of reference services in a digital era;
- Re-tooling the reference librarian to respond to the changing needs;
- Technology advances and library users? changing behaviour for reference services;
- Innovative ways of reference services provision in low resource countries? libraries.

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SESSION TITLE: Historical and comparative case studies related to librarianship
Coordinator: Teresa S. Welsh, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Library & Information Science, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
Scope & rationale:
Historiography is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as «the writing of history». Krzys defined library historiography as «the writing of the history of agencies, people, and movements within or contributing to the development of librarianship; written history of those agencies, people, or movements» (1975, p. 294).  This session will focus on historiographies or comparative case studies related to libraries, special collections, or library programs/services.
Krzys, Richard (1975) «Library Historiography.» Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science 15: 294-330.

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SESSION TITLE: Bibliometric research
Coordinator: Teresa S. Welsh, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Library & Information Science
University of Southern Mississippi, USA
Scope & rationale:
Bibliometrics literally means «the measurement of books» but it has come to mean the analysis of patterns of information related to usage data or publication data in print or electronic format.  This session will focus on research such as citation analysis and content analysis of scholarly literature, Web sites, databases, or colllections.

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SESSION TITLE: Managing Change in Academic Libraries in a Strategic Way: The nature of evidence for change management
Convenor: Raynna Bowlby
Scope & rationale:
This set of presentations will focus on how libraries are managing change in a strategic way by highlighting the ARL Scenarios activity, how this activity can inform performance measurement and metrics and how are libraries organized for assessment. For example we will examine how a library scorecard would look like for the library in 2030 assuming different scenarios for the future of scholarly communication and information transfer. The concept of the value scorecard has been articulated before in papers by Stephen Town; ARL has recently embarked in articulating four different scenarios for 2030 that have implications for the future of research libraries. This set of presentations will articulate different value metrics for research libraries under the different scenarios and also will highlight what libraries are doing nowadays in terms of assessment activities that could point to their future viability and sustainability.

The ARL User Guide on Scenario Planning and its value in relation to assessment activities by Brinley Franklin, Raynna Bowlby and Martha Kyrillidou.
Libraries values as emerging in the four scenarios articulated in the ARL User Guide on Scenario Planning and their relation to the Transcendent Value of Libraries  by Martha Kyrillidou and Stephen Town.
Strategic planning and key metrics for change management at the University of Connecticut by Brinley Franklin and Raynna Bowlby.
How research libraries organize for assessment: Case studies from Cornell, Columbia, and McGill by Martha Kyrillidou, Kornelia Tancheva, Damon Jaggars, and Colleen Cook.

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SESSION TITLE: ARL Assessment Activities: Lessons learned from implementing Balanced Scorecards, ClimateQUAL, LibQUAL+, MINES for Libraries, ARL Profiles and Lib-Value studies
Convenor: Martha Kyrillidou
Scope & rationale:
This set of presentations will describe how recent ARL measurement activities are helping libraries articulate their value proposition for the future. In particular we will examine recent efforts by ARL libraries to develop balanced scorecard frameworks, and implementing tools like ClimateQUAL, LibQUAL+®, and MINES for Libraries.
ARL invited interested libraries to participate in a pilot effort to develop library scorecards along the lines of the Balanced Scorecard approach developed by Harvard business professors Kaplan and Norton. The ARL effort was a collaboration with the Ascendant Strategy Management Group and four participating libraries: McMaster, Johns Hopkins, University of Washington, and the University of Virginia.
The Ascendant Strategy Management Group brought deep expertise in the application of the Balanced Scorecard to Mission Driven organizations that are facing challenges to demonstrate their impact, increase leadership and management effectiveness, leverage networks of stakeholders, and ensure organizational capacity for growth. They also strongly advocate that «the cornerstone of an effective Balanced Scorecard, or any strategic measurement system, is to identify strategic priorities and clarify the cause and effect linkages among them.» In setting strategic priorities it is important to have buy in from library staff.  ClimateQUAL is an effort that measures the organizational climate in a library especially as it relates to diversity and assessment. The relationship between ClimateQUAL and service delivery is being explored through these studies and a positive relationship between diversity and service quality is hypothesized. The latest developments related to the implementation of measuring service quality through LibQUAL+®Lite will also be explored and a summary of practical applications of LibQUAL+® will also be highlighted through case studies. Last case studies in relation to the implementation of MINES for Libraries® will also be highlighted in this panel especially as these studies offer insights about the importance of the infrastructure of assessment in libraries and institutions of higher education. Key and emerging elements of the infrastructure of assessment related to learner analytics and action analytics, i.e. the ability to make informed decisions about real life outcomes by tapping on data and information readily available.Furthermore it will describe what we know about research libraries from the ARL Profiles project and how recent activities in the Lib-Value grant are informing and shaping our thinking about the value of libraries.

ARL Library Scorecard Pilot activities by Martha Kyrillidou, Jim Self and Steve Hiller.
Library Staff Values and Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment: Bounded realities and unbounded missions: Lessons Learned from ClimateQUAL and its Community of Practice by Martha Kyrillidou and Paul Hanges.
LibQUAL+® Lite 2010: what have we learned from LibQUAL+® Lite by Martha Kyrillidou, Colleen Cook and Bruce Thompson.
The technology infrastructure for assessment as depicted through MINES for Libraries® and related studies by Terry Plum and Martha Kyrillidou.
Capturing digital developments through qualitative inquiry: the ARL profiles by Martha Kyrillidou, William Gray Potter and Colleen Cook.
Lib-Value: Measuring the value of culture as depicted through functions and services provided by academic libraries by Martha Kyrillidou.

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SESSION TITLE: Performance Measurement and Competitiveness
Scope & rationale:
This session aims to declare the relationships between performance indicators and performance results. Especially it examines:
The criteria of performance indicators (PI) selection for libraries and the kinds of PI.
The different methodologies proposed for library assessment,
The technological effect,
Financial indicators,
Organizational performance,
The comparison among governmental and non-governmental organizations' performance.

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SESSION TITLE: Financial Management for Excellence
Scope & rationale:
This session seeks about how libraries and information centres are currently budgeting. Some relevant topics are:
Survey research, interviewees and annual reports, within a single library and/or samples of libraries and information centres across multiple countries, are the methodological tools,
Budgeting processes, in connection with the operational and strategic planning, are primarily the conceptual organizational problem that usually justifies the Excellency,
Cost assessment and cost effectiveness are crucial decision making factors that justify the competitiveness of the organization,
Fund raising methods, best practices and lessons learned,
Risks Assessment and Control measures.

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SESSION TITLE: Development and Assessment of Digital Repositories 
Scope & rationale:
Establishing quality control into digital libraries, institutional repositories, disciplinary repositories, learning object repositories or cultural heritage repositories meant various complex issues including technical support for quality evaluation, automation of quality assessment for log files or implementation of the their organizational framework. Nowadays, Librarians and Information specialists are challenged to manage and organize these digital libraries, storage, digital knowledge mining, digital reference services, electronic information services, and manage the archive and their access. The session is targeted shedding light on trusted digital repositories and their challenges, such as:
Preservation of their records for the next generations.
Demonstration on fiscal responsibility and sustainability.
Development of new metrics of their usages.
Evaluation and best practices.

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SESSION TITLE: Technology transfer and Innovation in library management
Scope & rationale:
The recent technological developments and the economic crisis have their impact to libraries and the interdependent context they act. The session seeks the strategies and lessons learned relevant to libraries management for survival. The transformation of the library involves initiatives and the organization commitment. Consequently, the redesign of responsibilities for the staff is a matter for research.
Innovative management
Human resources management
Competence management
Communications in organizations
Intercultural management
Information technology and knowledge management
Library's ethics and social responsibility.

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SESSION TITLE: The Change of Libraries and the Managerial techniques
Scope & rationale:
Libraries are in a phase of continuing changes. The challenge of competitiveness and excellence guide to modern management strategies. In order to survive, libraries start re-thinking and redesigning their administrative services. It is a matter of research, how does organisational culture and structure effect on the choice and implementation of modern managerial processes. It is also researchable if libraries resist or not to the improvement of efficiency and the flexibility of organisational structure,
Human resources management,
Organizational challenges,
Strategic management,
Re-engineering change in higher education,
Fast-responded library,
Learning organization.

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SESSION TITLE: Information literacy: Information sharing, Democracy and lifelong learning
Scope & rationale:
The session seeks the new trends in information literacy, the innovative ideas and the methods of the implementation and the assessment of information literate people.
The session focuses on the following topics:
Information Literacy and citizenship,
Strategic approaches to Information Literacy,
New pedagogic challenges for libraries
Collaborative work between librarians and academic staff,
Independent learning skills, online information skills and lifelong learning,
Concepts of learning, teaching and the developments in networked technology,
Staff development and Information Literacy,
New areas of practice and research,
Information literacy projects on special scientific disciplines,
Advocacy, marketing and promotion,
Benchmarking,
Evaluation and assessment.

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SESSION TITLE: Library Cooperation: Problems and Challenges at the beginning of the 21st century
Scope & rationale:
Library?s cooperation should be developed widely. The relations among libraries are dependent on the network environment and technology. However, the cooperation and needs organizational infrastructure and human support.
Some common items on library cooperation and sharing are the following:
Union catalog and storage equipment,
Collection policy and collection development,
Joint acquisitions (purchasing, access, inter-library loan and document delivery),
Joint digitization?s projects,
Local, regional and country heritage,
Human resource in local, regional and country level,
Organizational culture
The management and the economics of the cooperation.

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SESSION TITLE: Information and Knowledge Services
Scope & rationale:
The importance of the Information and Knowledge Services advanced because of the support of technology. The new conditions bring new theories and technologies, new processes, tools and standards, and team work.
Especially, the session focuses on:
Resource development policy,
Resource project description,
Research and development of the services,
Knowledge discovery and knowledge creation,
Knowledge mining,
Team building and management.

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SESSION TITLE: Human resources and competencies for the 21st century
Scope & rationale:
The qualities of library director and of the staff are crucial for the success of knowledge innovation. A variety of multilateral skills are requested for the achievement of the competitiveness. On the other hand, staff development is prerequisite in order that they fulfill innovative, flexible goals.
Topics:
Staff training,
Creativity skills,
Lessons learned,
Ideas exchange,
Core competencies,
Fast response organisation,
Reorganisation restructure,
The impact of internal and external factors,
Expectations satisfaction services system analysis,
Advocacy of profession and professionals.

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SESSION TITLE: Technology in the Communication: an interactive tool for development
Scope & rationale:
The session discusses the change that come in libraries, museums and archives by using technology. One of them is Web 2.0 which brings Library 2.0 and Culture 2.0. There are open topics for discussion, such as the organizational structure, the management of changes, the strategy and the potential users? policy.
Topics:
New audiences, new target groups, potential users.
Social networks and social cohesion.
The diversity and the participation to library?s initiatives.
The scientific knowledge and sustain cultural participation.
New models of interaction and participation for future libraries, archives and museums.
Effective models of participation and collaboration to improve services and products.
Analytical Communication and Knowledge Management.
Means and methods for Knowledge Communication.

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SESSION TITLE: E-Learning and the contribution of the libraries, archives and museums
Scope & rationale:
The session seeks the effect of the e-learning to the operation of libraries, archives and museums. It also seeks how libraries, archives and museums distribute to the effectiveness and efficiency of e-learning projects.
Topics:
The value of learning and the new educational concept
Purposes and Objectives of E-learning
Educational, technological, organizational processes
New roles of the library and new services
Distance learning and the role of the library
Knowledge Based Systems and their Applications
Knowledge Communication and Learning
Evaluation methodologies
Effect on Research, Peer review publishing.

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SESSION TITLE: Scholarly Information and the new communication technologies
Scope & rationale:
The session aims to find out the context of scholarly communication, the influence of new technologies and innovative business models to research activities and knowledge dissemination.
Topics:
Knowledge Reception, Depreciation, Evaluation and Estimation,
Conceptual and Organizational Perspectives of Knowledge Communication,
Library services and operations relevant to the scholarly communication process,
Creation, organization and structure of scholarly resources,
Preservation, archives, retrieval, availability,
Scholarly communications campaigns,
Benefits of researchers, faculties, students,
Library's lessons learned,
The needs of scholars, students, the academy, and society,
New Publishing Models, Processes and Systems,
Open Access and Open Source.