LIAISON EVALUATION
While the librarians always intended to formally evaluate the program and individual
liaison activities, between 2008 and 2010, the program—and more
importantly the librarians involved—grew into the role of Your Librarian
without formal evaluation. The Olin Library has conducted the LibQUAL
survey three times since 2006, the MISO survey twice.2 These are all useful
sources of information, but none provide the detailed data necessary for
the librarians to effectively evaluate and reflect upon their individual liaison
work. Librarians at Rollins carefully reviewed responses to appropriate questions
and comments in the LibQual results and addressed liaison activities
in all library faculty reviews, but they did not begin to develop a formal
evaluation of liaison until 2011. In their deliberations, the librarians decided
that it was important that the evaluation system be simple to use for both respondents
and librarians, that the confidentiality of the respondents be maintained,
that the system respect the privacy of librarians; and that the results
be used for formative (that is, self-reflective assessment aimed at supporting
continued development) as opposed to normative assessment (comparing
librarians to each other or to some external standard). The instrument asks
respondents to identify the department or program with which they are most
closely associated; to identify their librarian; and with a series of closed and
open questions, to identify their perception of how, how well, and to what
extent the librarian has engaged with them over the last academic year. The
survey ends with some simple demographic questions (see Appendix 2). The
survey was distributed via SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com).
The survey was distributed in April/May 2012 to all full-time faculty
(excluding faculty librarians, n = 193) and received 77 responses (a 40% response
rate). Sixteen of these respondents chose a rank other than assistant,
associate, or full professor or did not answer this question. The inability to
limit delivery of the survey to only full-time faculty with rank encouraged
us to bite the bullet and attempt to gather responses from adjunct faculty
and other teaching staff with more tenuous relationships to academic departments.
The survey was distributed a second time in March/April 2013
to all faculty including lecturers, adjunct, and academic staff (excluding faculty
librarians, n = 364) and received 88 responses, a disappointing 24%
response rate. However, only 14 respondents identified themselves as lecturers,
adjuncts, or academic staff.3 The number of full-time faculty in 2012–13,
excluding faculty librarians, was 208, so we had a response rate of 36% from
that group.4 After piloting the survey twice and finding it to be effective,
the librarians have now decided to avoid survey fatigue by only distributing
the survey every 2 years, after spring break and before the busy end of the
academic year. The librarians are also committed to finding better ways to
communicate with adjunct faculty and teaching staff, both in terms of liaison
and in terms of this survey.