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Assessing the Impact of Special Collections
Merrilee ProffittJennifer SchaffnerRLG Programs
“webinar”
14 August 2008
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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How we arrived at this issue:
Annual meeting photos/“What are they doing in there?”
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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Reference Queries
Total Circulation
ARL statistics
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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“Statistics are a sort of fetish.
We think of statistics as facts that we discover, not as
numbers we create.”
--Joel Best
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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All ARL reference with full-time students
REFERENCE
Special collections at a large public university
East-coast IRLA
West-coast IRLA
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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REFERENCE QUESTIONS
ARL statistics at that same private universitySpecial collections at a private university
Visit
Phone MailFax
Total Requests
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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East-coast IRLA”
CIRCULATION
Independent special collections at a public university
All ARL total circulation to full-time students
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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Southwestern state university
Midwestern flagship university
ARL institutionthe ARL’s own
special collection
West-coast public university
Circulation
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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http://eisengeiste.blogspot.com/
Over the course of three weeks, the Digital Collections site received over 2,100 hits from one blog post.
Ann Lally | University of Washington Libraries
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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Now is the time!
• In the United States… • MPLP / Greene-Meissner: pressure to “pick up
the pace” of processing (or shift processing to point of demand)
• Funding programs for “hidden collections”
• Everywhere..• More materials visible through increased
cataloging efforts, migration from paper to online systems, digitization efforts large and small.
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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“Building a culture of assessment”
• Archival Metrics project• Research projects• Toolkits to evaluate qualitative measures (online and in
person) • http://archivalmetrics.org/
• Specifically, ROAM (Repository of Archival Metrics)• “…an experiment in establishing performance measures
specifically for archives and special collections and in creating a repository of archival metrics that can be for benchmarking.”
• http://archivalmetrics.org/roam_select
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Our “mini survey” results
Reasons for collecting Yes / no / want to (%) (37 responses)
Reasons pertaining to larger institution
89 / 3 / 8
Motivation to better serve user 89 / 5 / 5
Improve archival / special collections management
81 / 5 / 14
Intellectual property/legal rights 27 / 57 / 16
Improve archival / special collections functions
73 / 8 / 19
RLG Programs 14 August 2008RLG Programs Webinar – Special Collections Metrics
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What do we want or need to do?
• Paul Courant – What special collections need are champions, not statistics.
• However….seeing where you can improve, providing excellent access to collections and service around collections will beget champions.
• “Just do it”? – collect information on an hoc basis• Build from what we have to a shared
understanding?• Establish (or build on) shared measures?