The 2008 DLI Contacts and Designates Survey: A Portrait Nicole Doyle Gaëtan Drolet Wendy Watkins DLI Ontario Spring Training University of Western Ontario April, 2009

Introduction to the survey Objectives of the survey: Provide important information to the DLI Section, the External Advisory Committee (EAC) and the Education Committee Help plan how to better serve DLI Contacts and DLI institutions Learn more about the situations and requirements of DLI contacts and designates Provide feedback to DLI contacts and designates Engage DLI contacts and designates in planning for the future

Quick Overview Final count --97 completed online surveys Response rate: Overall 82% (97/118) DLI contacts 92% (66/72) Designates 67% (31/46) Response rate for contacts allows us to treat it as a census DLI Contacts (68%) Designates (32%)

Quick Overview Survey language used: Respondents by DLI region: English 78.4 % French 21.6 % Respondents by DLI region: Atlantic 18.6 % Quebec 20.6 % Ontario 33 % West 27.8 %

Q9 – Respondents by region in %

Nature of and support for data services

Q5 In your wider work do you consider yourself to be a____ person Q5 In your wider work do you consider yourself to be a____ person? Recorded in %

Q7 Percentage of your work dedicated to data by region and size of institution

Q8 Are data and GIS tasks or responsibilities specified in your job description?

Q4 How long IN TOTAL have you served as DLI contact … at your institution?

Years of Experience – Distribution of Responses (n=20)

Q12 Does your institution offer a dedicated data service?

Q16 % Data extractors used at your institution?

Section II: Q23 Satisfaction with the support you receive from your local institution to provide data services From 1=completely dissatisfied to 5=completely satisfied

Q24 DLI contacts ranking the following areas of support as the first priority to most improve the data services at your institution Number in brackets indicates ranking Canada-wide Increased funding 66.7% (1) Computing support 57.1% (7) Statistical support 37.5% (5) GIS support 36.4% (4) Higher management support 33.3% (3) Reference service support 25% (6) Physical space 25% (8) Technical support 18% (2)

Q22 Relationships with RDC / Canada and Ontario

More on RDC Relationships % Canada % Ontario RDC as part of your DLI responsibilities 94.8 96.9 Have no RDC activity in your institution 27.8 30

Summary: Nature of and Support for Data Services – Canada Size of institutions can be measured in quartiles with 25% in each of the following groups: very small (<5K), small (5-10K), medium (10-20K) large (20K+) Half of respondents in smaller institutions have fewer than 5 years experience 64% in larger institutions have 6-10 years experience Approximately 70% have data responsibilities as part of their job description. Contacts with multiple hats with many variations exist in all but large institutions

Summary: Nature of and Support for Data Services – Ontario Highest number of designates in the country (n=12). DLI contacts consider themselves to be primarily data persons (50%) and government documents persons (40.6%). Percent of work dedicated to data ranges from 11% to 60%. After Quebec, one of the less experienced group of DLI contacts in the country in terms of years. Has the greatest percentage of dedicated data services IDLS, Nesstar and CHASS are the most-often used data extractors

Satisfaction with DLI products, services and DLI section

Q28 How often do you access DLI products and services: Almost all contacts (n=64) used CANSIM on E-STAT Ontario:70% daily or weekly. 76.4% access CANSIM II on CHASS Ontario 3.1% daily and 17% never. 65.6% of DLI contacts access the DLI Training Repository Ontario 72.2%

Seldom or Never Accessed Reports and Reference materials (33.8%) Product release dates (26.2%) Survey names and acronyms (26.2%)

Q28 How often do you read, write and search the dlilist? (%) Ontario is above average in the use of the DLI list…. Ontario Canada Read DLI list messages daily or nearly every day 84.2 78.9 Write DLI list messages daily or nearly every day 13.3 8.5 Search DLI list messages daily or nearly every day 26.7 13.8 Ontario write more than others DLI regions.

The Flip Side… 10.0 12.6 30.0 45.8 33.3 36.2 Ontario Canada Read DLI list messages seldom or never 10.0 12.6 Write DLI list messages seldom or never 30.0 45.8 Search DLI list messages seldom or never 33.3 36.2

Q30 Level of DLI contact satisfaction with DLI products and services/Canada

Q34 Top improvements to DLI products and services that would help you to work more effectively with data users at your institution

Same List Without Percentages… Expansion of business/economic collection Expansion of aggregate statistics collection A single version of CANSIM on the STC website Access to longitudinal pumfs Quality and standardization of metadata Expansion of administrative public use files

Summary: Satisfaction with Products, Services, DLI Section DLI section: numerous and positive comments about the DLI staff top improvement mentioned is language of your choice n=5 contacts. FTP site: negative comments about the organization and documentation of the FTP site, version control, directory naming Census/Geography products of most concern here Products and services: comments on Pumfs/metadata about CANSIM (n=19) comments about access. Improving the DLI website as first priority.

The training environment

Q39 Do you usually attend DLI training workshops?

Q42 Overall, how satisfied are you with the DLI training? Highest level of satisfaction for training in the country.

Q43Training topics and their importance Fairly important and very important categories were collapsed Top and bottom ranks are presented. Results are provided first for Canada as a whole and then for your region. In determining the least important training areas for each region, we use the bottom 5 from the 18 categories of question 43.

Q 43 Most important training topics and delivery modes…Canada

Most important training topics and delivery modes…Ontario

Q43 Less important training topics and delivery modes…Canada

Less important training topics and delivery modes…Ontario

Summary on importance of training areas Common important training areas: - Regional workshops - Subject matter presentations - DLI section presentations - Hands-on training Less important training areas for all regions: - National workshops

Q45 Knowledge and competencies How do you evaluate your own knowledge and competency on 12 aspects. Fairly competent and very competent categories were collapsed and the top and bottom ranks are presented below. Results are provided first for Canada as a whole and then for Ontario. We would like you to concentrate on these as a guide to tomorrow’s discussion. These are only part of the picture of core competencies.

Q45 Evaluation of your knowledge or competency on the following aspects:

Evaluation of your knowledge or competency on the following aspects:

Q45 Less knowledgeable or less competent on the following aspects:

Less knowledgeable or less competent on the following aspects:

Summary on knowledge and competency All regions feel competent in: - Census - Finding and retrieving aggregate statistics - Knowledge of DLI surveys o But feel less competent in: - Using software to manipulate variables - Using software to create specific file formats - Knowledge of data outside DLI - Statistical and data literacy

A few facts about designates

Designates characteristics Served an average of 4.66 years as designates (n=31) % of time dedicated to data (30.7%) GIS (20.5%) other work (48.8%) 42.5% do DLI classroom instruction (Contacts 54% - 85%) DLI workshops attended by 53.3% Overall satisfaction with DLI training 4.19 (Contacts 4.13 – 4.58)

From the comments: The clientele for DLI training Official clientele for the DLI workshops: DLI Contacts Respondents have identified other clients who have DLI training needs: Designates Students Professors Researchers/Managers Reference Librarians/Library Technicians

The Training Continuum Training the trainers Training the intermediaries Training the back-up Training the local colleagues Training the end-users Coordinators Instructors Future Instructors DLI contacts Designates Reference, GovDocs, GIS Librarians Students, Faculty, Researchers, Managers

discussion

Discussion: The Survey Results General reactions? What surprised you? What did not surprise you?

Discussion: Training Should the different sizes of institutions be considered in planning DLI training? If so, how? Should the focus of training be mostly on data or on statistics as well? Does DLI play a role in local training of colleagues, researchers, students ? National workshop. Role? Timing of DLI training?

Discussion: Designates The Ontario has the highest number of designates compared to other regions. There are implications for back-up when a contact is not available. Should we strive to include more in our training?

Discussion: Institutional support Do you have it? Can you talk directly to your library director? Need to inform or train the directors about the programme? DLI role? Ways DLI can help with institutional support.

Discussion: DLI list Why do some contacts never write to the list? Should this be a concern? If so, what can we do about this? Why do just over 20 percent of contacts never search the DLI list. Should this be a concern? Is so, what can be done about this?

Discussion: Products & services Is there a need for more information on seldom- or never-accessed products & services (i.e., reports & reference materials, product release dates, survey names & acronyms) Suggestions for improvement of the ftp site?

Discussion: Competencies Think about what competencies are most important for your role and type of institution. Think about competencies that you don’t have, but would like to. Think about how your competencies and training needs have changed over time. Bring your thoughts to our competencies session tomorrow...