First, BIG thanks to Danielle K. for putting Google Forms on our radar with an email she sent out to one of our Reference teams in which she surveyed us with a Google Form!  I wanted a solution to Springshare’s relatively inadequate libguide survey templates, so I could record users’ analytics on both my Business Research Guide and Instruction sessions.  Enter the customizable (screenshot below) and embeddable Google form, which includes a nifty auto-populated Excel file of responses saved in your Google Drive.  The current iteration of my form is here.

Now the plot thickens; how to ask precise questions that yield accurate results? Coincidentally I had recently filled out a Likert scale form for the (great!) ANTPAC training session run by Caitlin P.  Afterward Cynthia J. approached me to brainstorm from feedback on the session, and we started talking about the potential for usability snags with Likert scales entries in terms of users reading left-to-right and rapidly entering answers.

Well a Google search for: ‘Likert scale left to right’ yielded this excellent citations-and-all entry called Survey Respondents Prefer the Left Side of a Rating Scale from the Measuring Usability Blog.  In a nutshell the author recommends one err on the side of having the more negative rating (e.g. poor, strongly disagree) on the left side of a Likert scale to avoid an agreement bias, though it’s worth noting that the effect is marginal compared to factors like participant number and survey wordiness.  I hope this best practice method can help colleagues who also try Google Forms or other survey means.

(How poetic that this post immediately follows Kevin’s entry on Survey Fatigue.)

One of the challenges that we face when seeking feedback from students:  Want Data? Ask Students.  Again and Again.

(post transferred from the Management Forum wiki)

The UC Learning & Development Consortium and Chief Human Resources Officers have published a model of core competencies to serve as a foundational tool for the development of staff, managers and leaders in the UC.   A variety of free online courses related to each of these competencies is available on the UC Learning Center website (go to http://www.uclc.uci.edu, click on ‘Learn’ in the upper left hand side of the screen, and select  “Catalog.”   Core competency classes are listed under the “UC Core Competencies” heading.

(post transferred from Management Forum Wiki)

Think Like A Startup: a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism (by Brian Matthews): http://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/18649

(post transferred from the Management Forum wiki)

Recently, I traveled to North China to attend three conferences, including:

1. 2013 International Conference on Chinese Digital Publishing and Digital Libraries (Dunhuang)
2. The Second Sino-American Academic Library Forum for Cooperation and Development (Lanzhou)
3. Forum on Northwest Regional Resources and SuperStar Discovery Tool (Urumuqi).

The three cities, all on the ancient Silk Road, are definitely worth visiting. As for the conferences, I learned some recent advancement in our library counterparts in China that you, as non-Chinese library professionals, might also be interested. Here they are–

• A cool mega-search (meta-search, federated-search, cross-search…) and knowledge discovery tool (i.e., SuperStar Discover Tool). It allows not only a simultaneous scross-search in different types of databases (book, journal, news…), like MetaLib does, but it also supports visualization of data/information/knowledge.  This type of  visualization can be used in citation analysis, documentation analysis, scholarly communication trend analysis, and beyond. The current version is for Chinese resources only; however, the good news is that Stanford University just signed a contract with the company in late June 2013 for developing an enhanced discovery tool for both Western and Eastern language resources.  The anticipated beta version release date would be the end of this year. So, stay tuned.
• Smart mobile libraries become popular now in China. User authentication is no more needed as long as mobile phone numbers are registered. See this library instruction (sorry the texts are in Chinese. But you ask Google Translation for help:) )
• Libraries in China are now setting up large-size touchscreen stations inside library and other locations on-campus for making library and its online e-resources more visible and accessible. Below is a sample touchscreen. Maybe our library could get a few for the library lobbies, main classroom building  hallways, campus cafeteria…?

Check out this URL

One word: word.