This article serves as a primer for assessment and evaluation design by describing the range of methods commonly employed in library settings. Quantitative methods, such as counting and benchmarking measures, are useful for investigating the internal operations of an access services department in order to identify workflow inefficiencies or…

Research consultations are a standard service in academic libraries and consume significant library resources. There is a lack of scholarship evaluating the impact of this service on faculty. This paper describes the impact of librarian consultations on faculty and their role in the research process. Data was collected from a survey of sixty-seven…

University libraries worldwide are reconceptualising the ways in which they support the research agenda in their respective institutions. This paper is based on a survey completed by member libraries of the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC), the findings of which may be informative for other university libraries. After…

The University of Michigan Library wanted to learn more about the kinds of searches its users were conducting through the "one search" search box on the Library Web site. Library staff conducted two investigations. A preliminary investigation in 2011 involved the manual review of the 100 most frequently occurring queries conducted…

A traditional mixed methods research model of citation analysis, a survey, and interviews was selected to determine if the Bruce T. Halle Library at Eastern Michigan University owned the content that faculty cited in their research, if the collection was being utilized, and what library services the faculty used. The combination of objective data…

Some of the most enduring, and engaging, questions within academic librarianship are those about students and research skills. The vocabulary employed for discussion has evolved, but essential questions--what skills do students need to be taught, who should teach them, and how?--have persisted from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first.…

This article reports on a content analysis of research articles focusing on library services in distance education published between 1999 and 2009. The study identified 472 articles on the topic and analyzed the citations, abstracts, and indexing to determine major topics, issues, and trends discussed; methodologies used; and major journals…

In recent decades the literature dealing with graduate students and library use, including bibliographic instruction, information-seeking behavior, and information literacy has grown. However, there still appears to be a lack of research and resources available on the information-seeking behavior skills of graduate education students, which can…

The growing pressures and the complex conditions which now bear upon research libraries are not adequately reflected in the development of policies, plans or current service activities. In the place of current, reliable, and extensive information which might be reflected in decisions and actions, librarians seem to operate normally on the basis of…

This report is a part of Phase I of the Detroit Metropolitan Library Project and contains suggestions for methods and procedures for Phases II and III of the Project in which patron use and costs of patron services at the Main Library are to be measured. The report includes recommendations for new instruments for measuring patron use and…

This article provides an overview of a new project for a long-range program of research to improve the quality of Federal technical library and information services. (MF)

The purposes of the Workshop on Measuring the Quality of Public Library Services were to explore attitudes toward service, discuss the many facets of measuring library services and get a close-up view of one particular method of evaluating services: "hidden testing." Informal proceedings of the workshop include: (1) a talk of Ernie DeProspo…

A discussion of the interrelated aspects of library performance measurement and what data collection means to library planning. Methodologies considered are cost analysis, quantitative vs qualitative measurement, community analysis, and citizen attitudes and opinions. (JAB)

Big data sets and powerful computing capacity have transformed scholarly inquiry across many disciplines. While the impact of data-intensive research methodologies is perhaps most distinct in the natural and social sciences, the humanities have also benefited from these new analytical tools. While full-text data is necessary to study topics such…

The multinational business enterprise is treated as a newly emerging transdisciplinary subject of research. After an historical background sketch, there follows a discussion of the significance of the phenomenon of the multinational firm and its implications for various segments of society--government, labor, business, academia, etc. These…