Statistical Report Advisory Meeting Highlights

ALA Midwinter Meeting 2007, Seattle, WA

Mary Monaghan

January 21, 2007

The committee reviewed the 2007 survey with particular attention to the Young Adult questions.  Megan Mustatoff relayed that the Federal-State Cooperative System (FSCS) is interested in adding questions about Young Adult services to their survey. 

Megan Mustatoff demonstrated the new online survey (which will be ready for the 2008 survey) and the PLDS online database.  Both were well received by the committee.  One advantage of the online survey form is that some of the information (name, address, etc) can be carried over from year to year.  The committee requested that the previous year’s statistical information be shown as well.  Megan (and Lauren Teffeau in a follow-up email) requested that committee members work with the FSCS database to help inform the design of the PLDS database.  That database can be found at http://lrc.lis.uiuc.edu/web/dataTool.html. 

The special questions section for 2008 will be on Finance.  The committee reviewed the questions from the previous offering and made several suggestions for changes, particularly in the areas of fee for service. 

The committee discussed how to increase survey response.  It was noted that people feel inundated with surveys.  We discussed offering an incentive to respond, particularly covering the cost of registration at the 2008 PLA conference.  We will also explore the possibility of offering a Talk Table at next year’s PLA conference to introduce attendees to the database.

Members present: Mary Monaghan, Stephanie Beverage, Robb Morss, Susan Waxter, Megan Mustafoff (UIUC representative), Candace Bancroft McKinniss, Denise Siers, Kathleen Hughes

Members absent: Louise Sevold, Nancy Laskowski, Elyse Adler

Annual Conference - Chicago - 2005

Irene Blalock, chair
June 26, 2005

The committee had a very productive meeting and made strong plans for the upcoming six months before Midwinter and the launch of the 2006 PLDS. The committee committed to the following:

●   To publicize the strengths of the survey report—Stephanie Beverage will see that news of the survey will go our in early November on electronic listservs for public libraries and in the Nov/Dec issue of Public Libraries. We hope to encourage libraries to complete the survey and to be sure that they know why it is important to do so. Also, there is some concern that with the survey becoming online only some of the libraries may not submit.

●   The Committee decided that the special questions should have stability. Certain ones like the children’s survey should continue to recur every three years. For this reason we will not include a special section on young adult data in the 2006 survey but will do so in 2007 when we have traditionally held open for one time questions or hot topics. Louise will contact YALSA and request that they have a representative at the meeting at Midwinter to hash out their data needs and what the PLDS can provide for them.

●   The special questions for 2006 will be the children’s services survey. However, the committee will work on the questions, data elements and format of the questions in order to ensure that they are up to date. We will also add a few YA exploratory questions such as how libraries define YAs. The committee will check on references in the survey such as to Outcome Measures and the City County Data Book—Are they still valid? There will be some tweaking of the survey. We will check on the census to see how it breaks down children and will need to rework technology so those questions match the reworked electronic use questions in the survey as a whole. We will continue an emphasis on preschool literacy. Kayne Ferrier will look closely at the children’s questions and report to the committee where she thinks changes are needed.

●   Technology Questions—The committee will work on these to determine what should be asked. We did decide that the questions may need to challenge librarians and lead them in what they count. Of particular interest among the emetric questions is database use. The committee feels that it is no longer valid to count just the locally funded databases. Metafind searches across all databases will also affect these counts and this should be considered in writing questions for electronic use.

●   The committee feels that some questions concerning the use of wireless technology especially for public use is an important area to examine and include in our survey. The committee will take a look at Technology for Results and see what they have to say about measures.

●   We will drop Internet access if it is under 5%. (#35)

●   A few quick decisions were made:

Add:
Wireless
Virtual reference
36-Change to meta search
37-Change to virtual reference
38-Public
Keep:
#34
#39-add a way to discern patron choice.
#29, 30, 31—Need the most work.

●   Louise will talk to John Bertot after the committee looks into the emetric questions.


MEMBERS = Attending: Renee Blalock, outgoing chair, Louise Sevold, incoming chair, Diane LaBarbera, Consultant, Katy Mullally, Consultant, Kayne Ferrier, Nancy Laskowski, Stephanie Beverage, Denise Siers

ABSENT = Elyse Adler, Lynn Johngrass

ALA Midwinter Meeting 2005, Boston

Irene Blalock, Chair
January 16, 2005

The committee was joined by John Bertot who helped us in our plans for integrating the EMIS questions into the PLDS Survey for 2006. We also learned that our longtime consultant, Diane LaBarbera is retiring from full time work at the Library Research Center and will be replaced by Katy Mullally. They brought copies of the 2005 survey which was mailed about the time of the conference. We also discussed adding questions about young adult programs and use as the "special questions" in 2006. The big change coming is that the survey will be Web only in 2006 and we will no longer produce the print version. The majority of surveys are already completed online and the cost of producing them in paper has become prohibitive. The committee plans to spend the next few months before Annual working out and testing emetric and YALSA questions.

Members present: Stephanie Beverage, Kayne Ferrier, Nancy Laskowski, Louise Sevold,Denise Siers, Irene Blalock
Diane Labarbera, consultant
Katy Mullally, consultant

Members absent: Elyse Adler, Lynne Johngrass

Visitors: John Bertot

Annual 2004, Orlando, FL

Irene Blalock, Chair
June 27, 2004

For the first time the PLSDS contained questions addressing the use of filtering. The committee's consultant, Diane Labarbera,reported that she had not yet had time to review these data elements but would in the near future. These questions are basically a pretest of these data elements. We won't know their usefulness for awhile.

John Bertot joined us and we had a discussion of the importance of adding emetric data elements to our survey. We decided that we would rework our questions on John's model and include them in the 2005 PLSDS. We will also include questions about funding for electronic resources.

Diane also reported that she has been working with Bob Molyneux on preservation of the records of past PLSD surveys. She will check with the University of Illinois and PLA about permission to do this.

This year we will include youong adult questions as our special questions section.

Members present: Stephanie Beverage, Kayne Ferrier, Irene Blalock

Diane Labarbera, consultant

Members absent: Elyse Adler, M. Lynne Johngrass, Denise P. Siers

Visitors: John Bertot

Midwinter 2004, San Diego, CA

Irene Blalock, Chair
1/11/04

We recieved a copy of the 2004 PLDS Survey from our consultant and the special questions section on filtering and the changes we made and questions on electronic use. We also talked about what to do with questions which were replaced by the filtering questions for this survey. Bob Molyneux from the National Commission on Libraries and Science joined us. The committee talked about how fast responses should be handled in future and where we need to go on the filtering phase II. We discussed trying our questionnaire to the web site by John Bertot and Charles McClure to train public librarians on data and statistics for electronic resources in public libraries.

Members present: Irene Blalock, Stephanie L. Beverage, Diane Labarbera, Consultant

Members absent: Elyse Adler, Kayne Ferrier, Lynne Johngrass, Brendan Dowling, PLA Liason

Visitors: Robert E. Molyneux, US National COmmission on Libraries and Information Science.

Annual 2003

Nancy Laskowski, Representative
Sunday, June 22, 2003

Brendan handed out a history of the special questions since 1990; Diane reviewed the Finance questions for the 2003 survey and reiterated the need for revisions to be completed by October 2003. Diane and Renee will work on an article for Public Libraries, tentatively for the Jan/Feb 2004 issue.

We decided we needed further research and discussion on the issue of incorporating Children's Services and Teen Services into the annual questionnaire, possibly using a PLA-sponsored web survey to determine the long-term statistical importance of these topics.

Diane will implement several of John Bertot's suggestions to the Section D "Electronic Annual Counts" questions; she will send the "tweaks" to the committee members for review. We decided to delete Questions 34, 36, and 38 from Section E and to modify and expand Questions 41 and 42.

Nancy will email specific tasks and deadlines to the committee members.

Members: Nancy Laskowski, Diane LaBarbera (consultant), Kayne Ferrier, M. Lynne Johngrass, Rosemary Mesh, Brendan Dowling (PLA staff

Absent: Irene Blalock, Deborah Mesplay, Elyse Adler, Rhonda Boyd (e-member)

Midwinter 2003

Irene Blalock, Chair
January 26, 2003

The Statistical Report Advisory committee met during the all committee meeting. We had a lively discussion during which we determined our plan for work during the next year. We also discussed questions asked by Christie Koontz in relation to the IMLS project she is heading which is developing the US Public Library Geographic Database. Diane Labarbera, our consultant, gave a summary history of the report and its evolution.

Members Present: Irene Blalock, Kayne Ferrier, Nancy Laskowski, Rosemary Mesh, Elyse Adler

Staff/Consultant: Brendan Dowling, Diane LaBarbera

Absent: M. Lynne Johngrass, Deborah Mesplay, Rhonda S. Boyd (electronic member)

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