ALA Competency 5: Reference & User Services
INFO 5400: Eugene McDermott Library Needs Assessment - Completed March 7, 2022
The point of this assignment was for us to research how our chosen library performs needs assessments typically, and then for us to conduct our own needs assessment. We had to determine the purpose for the assessment based on our previous knowledge and research on our chosen library.
This assignment taught me more about performing needs assessments and how they can be used to inform programing. For my assessment I decided to conduct a survey of UTD students, using Google Forms, to determine the general interest in and thoughts about UTD's biannual library game nights. Obviously, I did not actually have access to UTD students to give them a survey. The professor knew this would be the case, so she created a discussion board where we could post our surveys so we could fill out each other's surveys. Writing and administering the survey was not that difficult since Google Forms is pretty easy to use. I really did not get that many respondents to my survey despite the fact that my classmates were well aware that the survey discussion board existed. I feel this does not bode well for real life survey efforts. In conclusion, I think this assignment fits into this core competency because it taught me about the principles of using assessment to determine user needs and preferences.
INFO 5600: Group Project - Completed November 2019
The goal of this project was to develop a library instructional service with a team of other students. For the project, we had to create the instructional materials as well as publicity materials for our instructional service.
This assignment was good learning experience because it gave me some insight into what it takes to develop an instructional program for patrons. It was a collaborative effort and it was great being able to bounce ideas off of other people. As part of the project, we had to create a needs assessment to evaluate the potential usefulness of the proposed program, and we also had to create a mechanism through which we could evaluate the actual effect of the program. The evaluation mechanism we used was a post-workshop survey that the students would be asked to take. The meat of the program was a power point that would be shown to the students during the workshop. This assignment fits into this core competency because it taught me about teaching information literacy and about the principles and methods of advocacy used to reach specific audiences to promote and explain concepts and services.