Category: Space assessment

AvatarMartha Kyrillidou , Posted in Academic Libraries, Collection assessment, Community College, Public Libraries, School libraries, Space assessment, Strategic Planning, Training, At March 10, 2021,

Play and Engage with Library Assessment

Register for this workshop series starting on April 1 offered through NISO!  Looking forward to some hands on, experiential, and engaging experience with a group of colleagues that want to solve and discuss their own library assessment projects and work towards making progress.  We are offering the NISO series on 21st Century Assessment in a new format, cohort based, engaging, and participatory.  We want to discuss and address the real issues, our webinar participants have and use the cohort based experience for learning and growth.  Come and play with us, have fun, and continue to learn from the amazing amount of content that has been produced on library research and assessment the last year.  Register now!  https://www.niso.org/events/2021/04/assessment-practices-and-metrics-21st-century-2021-participatory-learning-experience.  COVID-19 has provided opportunities for content to be produced and made available in an unprecedented way.  Beyond the rich content of the 24 webinars offered through NISO in the last three years (2018, 2019, 2020), the full set of 2020 Library Assessment Conference Presentations are now available on YouTube, as well as many other useful presentations through RIPL (Research Institute for Public Libraries) Data Boot Camp and the IRDL (Institute for Research Design in Librarianship) Speaker Series. Our goal is to create opportunities for reflection and engagement with this and related content in order to improve the assessment practice in the participating libraries, and to support assessment practitioners and administrators. In addition to the weekly 60-minute facilitated sessions, participants will spend 60 minutes preparing some reflections and content to share with the larger group each week. As in the past, this training series will be facilitated by Martha Kyrillidou, who will also provide interactive exercises to be used for improving assessment practice in your library.
AvatarMartha Kyrillidou , Posted in Academic Libraries, Community assessment, Community Engagement, Design thinking, Facilities planning, Public Libraries, Space assessment, Training, At December 31, 2019,

Remodeling library for the 21st century – a fabulous ending to 2019!

We worked over a six month period in Fairbanks and got to know the city by travelling there, talking to many people in the community about their needs and wants for the library, and working with our amazing librarian colleagues.  We summarized our findings in 125-pages which includes additional links to substantial appendices as well. Did you know that Alaska is five hours behind the east coast time zone? And, how do you think it feels to live in a place where 24 hours is light in the summer and almost as many hours is dark in the winter?  Did you know that traveling to Alaska in the winter is a big attraction for Asian tourists who are captured by the aurora borealis views? Did you even know that pictures of my dad’s village and family members from Galanovrisi are found on the walls of the Greek restaurant, Bobby’s downtown, in Fairbanks? My future plan includes a trip to Alaska during the winter season to experience the aurora borealis light! And, if you are not sure where Santa lives – Finland? Canada? Alaska?  One of Santa’s homes is North Pole, Alaska! Working on new building designs and library renovations is an exciting area for QualityMetrics.  We have studied library facilities in the past and made meaningful contributions in understanding the impact library spaces on communities.  Our recent research and assessment is moving us at the heart of infrastructure projects making a difference on the ground for every community we work with!  We deal with both the organizational and planning challenges and we can provide recommendations on adjacencies and design choices collaborating with our architectural firm partners. This past year we partnered with G4/HMC/brightspot/QualityMetrics for the planning and program delivery for the new building Chabot College in CA is designing. We are continuing to partner with these colleagues for yet another new building in another community college in CA this year!  We are truly excited to be making a difference at one of the largest higher education institutions in the world.  The California Community Colleges serve 2.1 million students and represent one of the largest student bodies. Community colleges serve important roles in providing job skills, supporting recreational interests, and providing an affordable gateway to four year college degrees. Supporting modern library services in these environments is critical — the community members are often first generation students with limited access to resources; discovering that library resources and services are readily available to them is a life-changing experience! We also offered our popular NISO webinar series again this year featuring 8 webinars on Assessment Practices and Metrics for the 21st Century: A 2019 NISO Training Series. Two of the webinars focused on space planning (slides for all of them available on the NISO website). The other six webinars focusing respectively on collections, services, and strategic innovations! Thanks for our colleague presenters who contributed to this series: Elliot Felix, Pedro Reynoso, Galadriel Chilton, Trevor Dawes, Erin Daix, Joe Zucca, Heidi Nance, Lisa Hinchliffe, Clara Chu, and Merinda Kaye Hensley! As we close the decade, I reflect on where I were ten years ago – finishing my dissertation in 2009 on LibQUAL+, a survey that has been used by more than 1,400 libraries across the globe and spearheaded many badly needed renovations and infrastructure projects for libraries by benchmarking the Library As Place. We opened our thinking to welcoming the voices of the library users in shaping our environments. Establishing QualityMetrics in 2016 allowed me to work more closely with libraries and make an impact with our library consulting services for four years now.  Seeing the impact of our work on the ground is gratifying! We have more exciting things coming in 2020! QualityMetrics is committed to continuing to help libraries improve their spaces, their services, their collections, and maximize the impact of the efforts our library colleagues are making day in and day out!  Libraries transform communities and QualityMetrics transforms Libraries in service to their communities by listening, engaging, sharing, and co-creating! QualityMetrics is looking forward to working with many of you in the coming year!
AvatarMartha Kyrillidou , Posted in Community Engagement, News, Space assessment, Training, At December 22, 2018,

A is for Assessment: Free Resources for Advancing Libraries in the 21st Century

Open access resources for advancing libraries in the 21st century: For 2019, we promise to continue to bring together the best thinking in research, design and marketing to advance libraries in the 21st century!
AvatarMartha Kyrillidou , Posted in Community Engagement, Design thinking, Space assessment, At October 3, 2018,

Three free online courses: create smart library spaces

Three free online courses are now available to everyone who is interested in creating smart library spaces through OCLC/Web Junction and QualityMetrics is available to join you in all related evaluation and assessment activities: 1. Active Learning and Community Discovery introduces the concepts of active learning and place making, and the tools and process for community discovery. 2. From Discovery to Design builds on the results of the community discovery process, adapting design thinking approaches to arrive at an actionable idea and a space ready for transformation. 3. Action Planning and Implementation takes the planning through the steps of making the space and service transformation happen.
AvatarMartha Kyrillidou , Posted in Community Engagement, Design thinking, Space assessment, At October 3, 2018,

What’s a smart library space?

Space assessment is a growing area as print book real estate is shrinking and innovative approaches to learning and library programming are taking its place! OCLC/Webjunction developed useful resources grounded in the reality of fifteen small and rural libraries who participated in the IMLS funded project we evaluated, Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces.  QualityMetrics worked with fifteen small and rural libraries to develop outcomes assessment for their new spaces and programs and it was an insightful and rewarding experience.