Wilcox Library Principles/Goals
1. Instruct students in retrieval, evaluation, analysis and ethical use of information.
Performance Indicator – Library faculty provide instruction in a number of settings and different learning platforms.
Julie Hansen and Jennifer Sterling conducted 29 instruction sessions for 451 students in the Composition I and Composition II courses. In looking over the assessment information we have very mixed reviews:
“I thought you did great, you explained everything well”
And these comments:
“good lectures but this is my sixth time hearing it”
“teach us something different than what we already know from Comp1”
“make it interesting, I was getting bored”
Given the mixed reviews, coupled with ideas attained at the Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference and in the course “Gamming in Libraries”, we have decided to implement a new instruction program in the fall of 2017. The program would consist of instruction videos, gamming, and tutorials. The students who complete the instruction would earn a badge. This program has the added advantage of being available to all students irrespective of location. The Librarians would supplement the program with workshops throughout the year.
Performance Indicator – The library faculty support the library mission by equipping students with the skills to discover, access, use and evaluate information in support of academic achievement.
Our electronic resources had 570,055 searches and 75% of the William Penn students who used library resources had a GPA of 2.5 or above. Students from every academic division and both CASPS and OLE used the library’s electronic resources with rates from a low of 62% in the Academic Technology Division and a high of 100% from the Nursing Division. 75% of our graduate students used library resources. In support of a diverse community of learners, 34% of the electronic resource usage was by students of color and 33% of the reference queries.
Outcome - Student will be able to conduct a literature review in their major field of study, analyze results, and construct a course project display.
We continued our assessment of the Academic Symposium posters and award the annual Watland Richmond Research Award for the best literature review in each participating academic division.
Outcome – Students will be able to choose from a variety of instruction options available virtually.
LibGuides is a content management system that we use to construct library instruction tutorials that are available on our website to all William Penn students. LibGuide usage for 2016/2017 was 42,441.
2. Principle – Provide a physical space for reading, research and learning for the Penn Community.
Performance indicator – The library will be equipped with functioning technology and wireless access.
The Information Services Department has done a good job in maintaining our computers and printers this past year. They quickly respond to problems and develop solutions to printing problems, which seems like a small matter but is actually a big deal to students. This academic year, 94% of all CASPS students used library computers and in support of a diverse community of learners, 58% of the laptop usage and 34% of all computer logins were students of color. Laptop usage did decline from 2,477 to 1,675 as more students brought their own devices to campus.
Feedback from faculty:
“The Electronic Classroom is one of the most impressive classrooms on campus, and it works especially well for my statistics classes.”
Performance indicator – The library will be well maintained and furnished and provide an atmosphere welcoming to all students and conducive to all types of learning.
Our gate count was at a five year high in the fall of 2016 with daily average of 345 students using the library. In the nursing student evaluations we still receive noise complaints. We will be meeting with the nursing faculty to discuss strategies to solve this issue. We know from a building assessment that the lower floor is significantly quieter than the upper floor. We will give the nursing student building tours to ensure they know about all the student space available.
Outcome – Students value the library as a physical space that promotes study and learning.
Every year we conduct an assessment focusing on one aspect of our library’s mission. We use the results to make decisions and to develop future services and improvements. This year we accessed building usage. At the ARL Assessment Conference we attended a session on SUMA, Space Utilization Mobile App. The Information Services Department installed it on a server and we used the library’s iPad to conduct a survey of building usage during a normal week in the spring and during the finals period.
As stated above 63% of the usage is on the wide open upper level. During an average week, our midsized study rooms had over 100 usages, the smaller rooms, over 50 and the large group study rooms over 749. We will be adding additional study rooms in the summer of 2018 to accommodate increased study team usage and this will help with the noise issues. Our busiest times of day are morning and evenings. During finals usage increased 37% and we averaged 549 visits per day and the study rooms were continually occupied.
3. Acquire and maintain collections and resources aligned with the academic curriculum.
Performance Indicator – The library builds a collection of materials in a variety of formats accessible at point and place of student needs.
We cut our hard copy journal spending from $19,868.00 to $11,898.00 to free up money for online resources. Online resources account for 81% of our materials budget. Since 1996, we have focused on acquiring resources available to students irrespective of location.
The funds that we have allocated for streaming films have been beneficial to faculty and students alike. Below is a comment from a faculty member:
“I just wanted to write a little note and say thank you. We have a great choice of videos on demand for psychology/sociology and counseling. I am not sure if everyone is aware of how many resources there are, but from an online teaching perspective these videos have been a great teaching tool. “
Performance Indicator – The library expends sufficient resources to build a collection to support the student’s research needs.
Below is our budget compared to our peer institutions for the 2015/2016 academic year. That year was a particularly lean year for us but we are not completely out of the ball park.
|
Total expenditures |
FY 15/16 |
|
Central College |
$491,747.00 |
|
Coe College |
$542,863.00 |
|
Loras College |
$292,421.00 |
|
Mt Mercy University |
$270,623.00 |
|
Simpson College |
$294,101.00 |
|
William Penn |
$185,916.00 |
Our hardcopy book expenditures are at the low end of comparable institutions but our eBook and other electronic resource expenditures are similar to our peer institutions. Our peers are maintaining hard copy collection and expenditures and to a degree that we are not.
|
Book Expenditures |
2015/16 |
EBook Expenditures |
2015/16 |
|
Coe |
$76,244.00 |
Coe |
$10,921.00 |
|
Simpson |
$48,042.00 |
Central |
$5,375.00 |
|
Mt. Mercy |
$32,758.00 |
Simpson |
$4,195.00 |
|
Central |
$26,288.00 |
Loras |
$2,951.00 |
|
Wm Penn |
$11,018.00 |
Wm Penn |
$2,951.00 |
|
Loras |
$8,495.00 |
Mt. Mercy |
$2,951.00 |
|
Electronic Resources Expenditures |
2015/16 |
|
Coe |
$115,352.00 |
|
Central |
$111,673.00 |
|
Wm Penn |
$111,305.00 |
|
Loras |
$89,581.00 |
|
Simpson |
N/A |
|
Mt. Mercy |
N/A |
Outcome – Students consider access to collections and resources sufficient to support their educational and research needs.
Though our budget is lower than our peer institutions our students borrow significantly fewer materials from other libraries as the Interlibrary Loan statistics below show.
|
Central College |
2,277 |
|
Simpson |
1,838 |
|
Mt. Mercy |
1,466 |
|
Coe |
1,409 |
|
Loras |
810 |
|
William Penn |
82 |
4. Create discovery tool interfaces that access all collections and resources at point and place of need.
Performance Indicator – The library deploys a content management system that organizes information for ease of access and retrieval.
Our content management system and our integrated library system have superior functionality and ease of use that allow students to easily access the library’s resources and provide the library staff with necessary management tools to track usage.
Performance Indicator – The library has the technological foundation to support ever evolving modes of information access and retrieval.
Last year we were able to re-negotiate a deal with our integrated library system vendor and purchase a discovery tool that Jennifer Sterling, our Instructional Resources Librarian, implemented this spring. The first week it was up we had 2,561 searches.
Outcome – Students can access collections and resources needed to successfully complete their course assignments from any location.
The library website had 41,941 views this academic year. 47% of our proxy server access, meaning access to our electronic resources, was from off campus.
Outcome – Students choose the library web site to begin their course assignments.
This spring the Advancement Office rolled out a new campus website but did not have the library link at the top and a student led ruckus ensued. Everyone heard from students how important easy access to the library website was and the Advancement Office addressed the issue after three days. It was a chaotic three days.
5. Provide user-centered services, in all environments, to Penn students and faculty.
Performance Indicator – Library faculty and staff will continually engage in professional development opportunities to improve knowledge and skills.
Library faculty and staff posit a problem statement for the year and select professional development conference and courses that will address the issue. Library faculty and staff have attended the following this past academic year:
Julie Hansen
ARL Assessment Conference
Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference
IPAL Conference
Julie Hansen, continue
Describing Photographs in the Online Catalogue course
Nic Steel
Gamming in Libraries course
Jennifer Sterling
ARL Assessment Conference
Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference
IPAL Conference
IACRL Conference
Appendix A details actions that have resulted from professional development activities.
Performance Indicator – The Library will employ sufficient number of educated staff to provide excellent service to students and faculty.
A low level of staffing is our biggest struggle, a constant weakness and an incredible headache. Whenever we have a staff member gone we are short handed and as a result our chat reference is suspended during service hours. We did have a student complaint about this, it is a problem.
|
Hours of operation |
2015/16 |
|
Central College |
87 |
|
Coe College |
106 |
|
Loras College |
91 |
|
Mt Mercy University |
93 |
|
Simpson College |
95 |
|
William Penn |
92 |
Our hours of operation, noted above, are comparable to our peer institutions, but our FTE staff size is significantly smaller.
|
FTE faculty/staff |
2015/16 |
|
Central College |
6.59 |
|
Coe College |
10.2 |
|
Loras College |
4.88 |
|
Mt Mercy University |
6 |
|
Simpson College |
6 |
|
William Penn |
5 |
Outcome – Students will express high levels of satisfaction with library services.
“The Library is awesome” – this is a student comment from a nursing focus group and it is what we want to hear. The students are the top priority. A few years ago we started a “countdown to finals” program that brought food and dogs for stress relief into the library. The Student Government Association has commented on how much the students appreciate all the food provided.
Additionally in the 2016/2017 academic year, we partnered with the Student Success Center to provide tutoring help in the library during the evenings. 195 tutoring sessions occurred.
6. Collect, preserve, digitize and provide access to the historic record of William Penn.
Performance Indicator – The library has a safe physical environment dedicated to the preservation of archival material.
We are continuing to re-house endangered materials and images and digitize images for inclusion into the Wilcox Library Digital Archives. This year we spent $5,923.00 on archival materials and software and that is a large amount for an institution our size.
Performance Indicator – The library makes original source material, pertaining to the history of the university, digitally accessible.
The Library conducts a robust program of presentations telling the story of Penn College and keeping our history relevant and alive for students, faculty, staff and alumni. Julie Hansen used images from our Digital Archives for 5 classes in Quaker Values totaling 121 students, 13 College Foundations classes for a total of 257 students, and 3 history presentations to 91 faculty, staff and alumni. From an assessment conducted in the College Foundations classes we ascertained that 92% of the students had an understanding of the Quaker values listed in the university’s mission statement. Our Digital Archives is used heavily in the Library’s social media and the community of Oskaloosa’s various Facebook pages.
Outcome - Researchers are provided with the information they needs for the Wilcox Library Archives.
We answered 110 archive reference questions this year and we provided information to the National Football Foundation regarding our former student John Outland and they updated their website based on that information.
We get positive feedback from all of our archival activities from faculty:
I enjoyed your historical presentation very much. It is interesting to hear that the University has gone through many ups and downs over the years. There sure is a great deal of history.
I enjoyed the presentation on Penn’s history during the faculty retreat. It is always nice to hear that Penn is diverse, but I have more pride in Penn when I hear specific examples.
Fantastic stories you make our history as a college a great tale, one that should be shared.
And from Students:
“I liked the way you talked it was very nice. You present very respectfully. You were even a little funny. I think hit every point skillfully so keep it that way.”
COs would be put in jail if there were against the war. Women were allowed to teach/study here from the start. Baseball started in 1891. People from all countries and religions were welcome from the start.”
‘I really liked how she could answer any question. I like how everyone was accepted in Penn. I learned when women started sports. Is Lewis Hall really haunted?”
And from the State Library of Iowa:
I was referred to contact you by Pam Rees, Digital Librarian with the State Library of Iowa. I was browsing the William Penn digital collections that Pam harvested into our digital repository (IHDC) and am very impressed, not only with rich history of William Penn, but also the amount of images and metadata that you have collected.
I also work at the State Library and often help create digital collections and exhibits in Iowa Digital Heritage Collection. I am reaching out to you to see if you would be willing to allow us to create an exhibit about William Penn University's History. I would create the exhibit from photos and metadata that is provided in Wilcox Library Digital Archives, and would run the draft by you before publishing it to see if you would have any suggestions on how it could be changed.
|
Acquisitions |
Statistics |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2012/13 |
2013/14 |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
|
Books |
239 |
404 |
433 |
498 |
234 |
|
Databases |
35 |
32 |
37 |
38 |
32 |
|
AV |
243 |
279 |
220 |
193 |
211 |
|
Periodical |
140 |
115 |
112 |
100 |
56 |
|
Full Text |
68,455 |
47,463 |
43,493 |
47,631 |
48,768 |
|
EBooks |
118,000 |
8 |
0 |
20,229 |
9 |
|
Circulation |
Statistics |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2012/13 |
2013/14 |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
|
Books
|
2,767 |
3,926 |
2,089 |
2,525 |
1,226 |
|
EBooks |
9,523 |
3,061 |
1,022 |
2,096 |
809 |
|
Periodicals |
85 |
230 |
122 |
178 |
96 |
|
AV |
6,954 |
4,961 |
2,925 |
2,807 |
3,151 |
|
Films |
5,438 |
4,942 |
5,842 |
5,291 |
3,043 |
|
Full Text |
51,857 |
32,840 |
37,909 |
29,310 |
23,821 |
|
Reserves |
320 |
358 |
540 |
152 |
1,459 |
|
Archives |
|
749 |
12,916 |
24,514 |
12,161 |
|
Laptop |
|
1,372 |
2,526 |
2,477 |
1,675 |
|
Total |
76,944 |
52,439 |
65,891 |
69,077 |
47,441 |
|
Non-student |
Circulation |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2012/13 |
2013/14 |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
|
Staff |
245 |
317 |
211 |
221 |
130 |
|
Community |
201 |
230 |
234 |
227 |
294 |
|
Faculty |
418 |
468 |
486 |
357 |
214 |
|
Desk Transactions 2016/2017 |
|
|
|
|
Laptop |
Reference |
|
Male |
890 |
185 |
|
Female |
785 |
173 |
|
Student of Color |
985 |
121 |
|
Total |
1,675 |
358 |
|
|
|
|
|
Archive Reference |
110 |
|
|
Equipment |
253 |
|
|
Room Bookings |
1,914 |
|
|
Total transactions |
4,310 |
|
|
ILL Statistics |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2012/13 |
2013/14 |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
|
Books Lent |
110 |
55 |
92 |
102 |
50 |
|
Articles Sent |
11 |
6 |
16 |
9 |
4 |
|
Books Borrowed |
28 |
27 |
32 |
15 |
24 |
|
Articles Received |
76 |
39 |
89 |
67 |
84 |
|
Total Transactions |
225 |
127 |
229 |
193 |
162 |
|
Computer Log Ins |
|
|
2016/2017 |
980 94% CASPS 34% Student of Color |
|
Tutoring session at the library |
|
|
2016/2017 |
195 |
|
Home Page View |
|
|
2016/2017 |
41,941 |
|
Gate Count Typical Week in the Fall |
|
|
Fall 2012 |
2,125 |
|
Fall 2013 |
2,408 |
|
Fall 2014 |
1,983 |
|
Fall 2015 |
2,272 |
|
Fall 2016 |
2,412 |
|
Instruction/Presentations |
|
|
|
|
Number |
Attendance |
|
Instruction Sessions |
29 |
451 |
|
Orientations |
2 |
17 |
|
Mid East Presentation |
5 |
121 |
|
Mission Presentation |
13 |
257 |
|
Archive Presentation |
3 |
91 |
|
Total |
52 |
937 |
|
LibGuide Usage |
42,308 |
|
|
Expenditures |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2012/13 |
2013/14 |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
|
Books |
$2,835.00 |
$8,571.00 |
$6,535.00 |
$5,344.00 |
$6,499.00 |
|
Databases |
$76,246.00 |
$83,794.00 |
$97,135.00 |
$108,354.00 |
$92,027.00 |
|
AV |
$18,989.00 |
$16,147.00 |
$11,640.00 |
$16,019.00 |
$5,090.00 |
|
FILMS |
|
|
|
|
$10,345.00 |
|
Periodicals |
$17,113.00 |
$18,530.00 |
$18,378.00 |
$19,868.00 |
$11,898.00 |
|
EBooks |
$3,543.00 |
$5,610.00 |
$2,811.00 |
$2,951.00 |
$3,857.00 |
|
Archives |
$6,002.00 |
$5,679.00 |
$5,445.00 |
$6,719.00 |
$5,923.00 |
|
Total Materials |
$124,728.00 |
$138,331.00 |
$141,576.00 |
$159,255.00 |
$129,716.00 |
|
Professional Development |
$2,722.00 |
$1,696.00 |
$5,624.00 |
$1,098.00 |
$5,792.00 |
|
Total Budget |
$181,890.00 |
$202,000.00 |
$199,700.00 |
$185,916.00 |
$201,557.00 |
|
Holdings |
|
|
Titles |
56,569 |
|
Volumes |
61,804 |
|
Periodicals |
56 |
|
AV |
2,526 |
|
Full Text |
48,768 |
|
EBooks |
162,694 |
|
Films |
25,784 |
NOTE on data: Data comparing our institution to other colleges is from the 2015/2017 academic year. Our data is from the 2016/2017 academic year.
APPENDEX A
Professional Development activities and resulting actions:
2011/2012 Academic Library Planning and Revitalization Conference
2012/2013 Focusing on UX User Experience: Understanding and meeting users needs
2013/2014 Fundamentals of Preservation
Getting More Active Learning into your Classroom
2014/2015 Library Assessment Conference
Affirm the Freedom to Read Class
Visual Literacy Class
2015/2016 Trends and Emerging Technologies that will impact Higher Education and Libraries in 2020
Everyday Statistics for Librarians
2016/2017 Association of Research Libraries Assessment Conference
Electronic Resources Conference
Gaming in Libraries
Describing Photographs for the Online Catalog