Understanding the values individuals bring to making cataloging assessment decisionsmay help us as a professionto have more meaningful discussions about when to use which assessment tools
I appreciate the introduction to this methodology and can see where it could very useful for strategic planning or other scenarios where alignment between personal/institutional values is desirable.
Results
I think I am still wrapping my head around Q-Sort. From scanning the appendicies, I think that each of the statements that are identified as "core" to the various factors (i.e. online catalog and/or discovery tool usability) have a one-to-one correspondence to a Q-statement that participants were asked to rank. Is that true? Or are there multiple Q-statements that might be reflected in one short-hand descriptor. If so, are these grouped together before hand or after the software analysis?
our academic libraries
The information about the libraries and participants below is useful. Am also curious to know how participants were recruited.
Appendix 1 and Appendix 2.
Yay for appendices w/survey instruments!
Methodology
This section clarifies a lot of my questions about the previous Q-Sort section: might be useful to present this information in one place.
cohort
This literature review is quite impressive!
Q Methodology
This section was enough encourage me to learn more about Q-Sort, but a some of it flew over my head. (Especially the part about factor analysis.) I wonder if narrating a few concrete examples from your study alongside the description of the method would have made it a little easier to process?
For this study, envision a triangle: participants ranked each statement from least to most like their opinion, with the tallest part of the triangle containing the neutral responses, and the shorter edges containing their most positive and negative responses.
I would have found a diagram very helpful here.
Applying Simon’s organizational management ideas to the realm of cataloging assessment, decisionsabout what and how to assess can be evaluated by determining whether the desired objectives are achieved
Minor question about wording: Because of the placement of this sentence, I am not sure if what follows (i.e. the statement about two different kinds of organizational decision making) come from the Simon article or are the author's assertion. (I'm assuming it's from the Simon article...)
Source of web chats:
This was very helpful re: measuring the relative effectiveness of the various chat reference interventions; would love a similar measure for in-person intervention, although I recognize that's much more difficult (impossible?) to capture.
Does anyone have an idea how that could be done?
Figure 3
Would be helpful if discussion explicitly referenced the Figures for additional context.
If we succeed we will improve service but reduce our chat counts.
This is a good indicator that simply "increase reference interactions" is not a meaningful goal in its own right.
the addition of chat reference reversed that by a very modest .96%.
Addition of chat reference isn't actually one of the interventions that were part of this study, so it seems inappropriate to refer to it as an outcome. This data is better suited for the previous section, which described the introduction of chat reference to the library.
questions per FTE studen
The fact that they normalized reference transaction data per FTE to account for the changing enrollment at the college (described in the paragraph above) over time is a strength.
These studies, plus librarians’ own observations, showed that students frequently needed the help of a skilled librarian even when they did not ask.
I would have liked to see a deeper exploration of the literature supporting this statement, as motivation for this project beyond the observation that reference transactions are declining.
Our students are typical graduates of New York City public schools
"typical graduates of NYC public schools" is under-defined; could lead reader to make problematic assumptions about the library's users.