Document Type
Article
Publication Date
June 2011
Keywords
academic libraries, reference, public services, assessment, staffing, desktracker, decision making, on-call reference, tiered reference, virtual reference
Abstract
Declining reference statistics, diminishing human resources, and the desire to be more proactive and embedded in academic depart- ments, prompted the University of South Florida Library to create a taskforce for re-envisioning reference services. The taskforce was charged with examining the staffing patterns at the desk and developing recommendations to give librarians greater flexibility and to better respond to the information-seeking needs of users. These recommendations were based on statistics of desk usage, collected with the newly adapted online tool Desk Tracker, and structured interviews with library administrators. The taskforce was interested in how these stakeholders use quantitative data in decision making.
Rights Information
Scholar Commons Citation
Todorinova, Lily; Lewis, Barbara; Huse, Andy; and Torrence, Matt, "Making Decisions: Using Electronic Data Collection to Re-Envision Reference Services at the USF Tampa Libraries" (2011). Academic Services Faculty and Staff Publications. 50.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/tlas_pub/50
Comments
Author Posting. (c) Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Taylor & Francis Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Public Services Quarterly, Volume 7 Issue 1, January 2011. doi:10.1080/15228959.2011.572780 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2011.572780)