ALA Committee on Research and Statistics

Agendas & Minutes | Conference Information | Webinars | Dissemination Of Research in LIS | Committee Members

Charge of Committee

To serve as an advisory committee for the Office for Research and Statistics.

Mission Statement

To facilitate research and related activities in all units of the Association, especially activities related to library statistics.
To advise the ALA Council and Executive Boards on programs, policy, and priorities regarding research and related activities.
To recommend procedures to achieve expeditious consideration of all ALA unit proposals for research and related activities by the ALA Executive Board.
To encourage the establishment of divisional committees for the purpose of stimulating research and statistics; to maintain liaisons with all units of the Association regarding research and related activities in the units.
To identify questions regarding library service which need to be answered through research and promote the conduct of research to answer those questions.
To review and make recommendations concerning national data collection efforts pertaining to libraries, recommending inclusions, definitions, procedures, and policies as appropriate.
To serve as a base committee for liaisons from other associations and groups with shared concerns about library statistics.

2015 Past Annual Conference session

Leveraging Your Library's Data for Decision Making, Strategic Planning, and Advocacy

[Video Recording of session to come]

Circulation, program attendance, user satisfaction…you already collect a lot of data about your library, but how do you make these data meaningful?

Learn from Carl Harvey (School Librarian, North Elementary School, Indiana), Janine Reid (Director, High Plains Public Library District, Colorado), and Rebecca Vargha (Head, Information and Library Science Library, University of North Carolina) about how they use data and evaluation in their libraries for decision making, strategic planning, and advocacy.

Webinars

Past webinar

"Recent developments in library evaluation, statistics and measurement, and why they are important”.

Date and time

Wednesday, June 3, 1:00-2:00 PM EDT/10:00-11:00 AM PDT

Description

Over the past five years, there have been several key developments in library evaluation. During this webinar, our presenters will discuss these developments and their implications for librarians and the library research community:

-the demand for evaluation expertise is beginning to outstrip supply;

-there is a technology-enabled shift in research and evaluation focus from the world of the library to the information world of potential library users;

-there is growing experience across countries of conducting library evaluation that goes beyond outputs to measure impact;

-there is a recognition that sustaining impact evaluation efforts is a core element in ensuring sustainability of libraries;

-there are early signs of movement towards more ethical evaluation; and,

-as library services become more innovative the limitations of simple evaluation models are beginning to show.

Presenters

Sharon Markless and David Streatfield.

Sharon is a Senior Associate with Information Management Associates and a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at King’s College London. David is Principal of Information Management Associates, a research, training and consultancy team working in the public sector and concentrating on education, health and libraries.

Both Sharon and David also work as consultants on impact evaluation and methods for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries Program, as well as for the International Federation of Library Associations. They are co-authors of Evaluating the Impact of Your Library (2013, Facet Publishing).

Archived webinars

Altmetrics Are Here: Are You Ready to Help Your Faculty?

This webinar, brought to you by ALA's Committee on Research and Statistics, offered an essential primer on altmetrics - new measures of how scholarship is shared, saved, consumed, and commented upon online - and offered specific steps librarians can take to educate and support cutting-edge faculty on their campus.

Presenter: Stacy Konkiel

Seeing is Believing: Understanding Data Visualization for Library Research

A free webinar sponsored by the ALA Committee on Research and Statistics that provided an overview of best practices in the graphical presentation of quantitative information, emphasizing the need for clarity, fairness, accuracy, and visual efficiency.

Presenter: Ray Lyons

Linda Hofschire, Chair 2014-2015

Kathy Rosa, Staff Liaison, krosa@ala.org

Norman Rose, Staff Liaison, nrose@ala.org