The DLI Contacts and Designates Survey: A Portrait of the West Gaëtan Drolet DLI / ACCOLEDS Training 2008 December 2-4, 2008 Mount Royal College Calgary, AB

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 we can better serve DLI Contacts and DLI institutions Learn more about the situations and requirements of DLI Contacts and Designates

Quick Recap Final sample contained 97completed online surveys Response rate: Overall 82% (97/118) DLI contacts 92% (66/72) Designates 67% (31/46) Survey language used: English 78.4 % French 21.6 % DLI Contacts (68%) or Designates (32%) Respondents by DLI region: Atlantic 18.6 % Quebec 20.6 % Ontario 33 % West 27.8

Q9 Respondents by region in %

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?

Q12 Does your institution offer a dedicated data service?

Q16 % Data extractors used at your institution?

Summary: Section I (The environment) Canada A complementary pattern of DLI institutions: Very small, Small, Medium and Large. 25% of DLI contacts in each group. 50% of respondents have fewer than 5 years experience in smaller institutions; 64% have 6-10 years experience in large institutions. Approx. 70% have data responsibilities as part of their job description. Multiple hats with many variations (very small, small, medium institutions). The West Fewer designates (n=5). DLI contacts (n=18 of 22 contacts) consider themselves to be primarily reference persons. % of work dedicated to data: from 5.8% to 50%. One of the more experienced group of DLI contacts in the country in terms of years. Uses all the extractors listed in the survey. Collects more metrics/feedback info. than other regions.

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 Of the following areas of support, rank the areas that could most improve the data services at your institution / Canada As first priority for DLI contacts:

Q22 Relationships with RDC / Canada and West

Summary Section III- 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. Never=0. West:81% daily or weekly. 71.2% access CANSIM II on CHASS. One from the West daily and only 4 never. 87.8% of DLI contacts access the DLI Training Repository (West 77.3%). Seldom or never access: Reports and Reference materials (33.8%), Product release dates (26.2%) and Survey names and acronyms (26.2%).

Q28 How often do you read, write and search the dlilist? READ dlilist messages: 81.8% of contacts read the list daily (West 90.9%). WRITE: Canada: 36.9% never (n=9); less than 4 times a year (n=15). West: 45.5% seldom or never: 27.3% write seldom and 18.2 % never. One contact claims to write daily to the dlilist. DLI contacts SEARCH the list more than they write to the list. The recent improvement to the search tool is a good move. 21.5% search seldom or never (West 22.1%).

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

Section IV: Products, services and DLI section improvements 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.

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

A description of your training environment o Results of Section V: Satisfaction and improvements with DLI training o Focus on DLI Contacts. Results are mostly presented for Canada and the western region.

Q39 Do you usually attend DLI training workshops?

Q42 Overall, how satisfied are you with the DLI training?

Q43Training topics and their importance Fairly important and very important categories were collapsed and the 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 (n=18 training areas) for each region, we use the bottom 5 from the 18 categories of question 43.

Q 43 Most important training areas…

Most important training areas…

Q43 Less important training areas…

Less important training areas…

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 the West.

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

Designates characteristics Served since 4.66 years as designates (n=31) % of time dedicated to data (30.7%), GIS (20.5%) and 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: 1. Designates 2. Students 3. Professors 4. Researchers/Managers 5. Reference Librarians/Library Technicians

The Training Continuum Training the trainers Training the coordinators and training the instructors /the future coordinators Training the intermediaries DLI contacts Training the back-up Designates Training the local colleagues Reference/GovDocs/GIS Training the end-users Undergraduate/Graduate/Professors/Researchers /Managers

Discussion conducted by Anna Bombak o Training o Designates o Institutional support o DLI list o Products and services

Training Should the different sizes of institutions be considered in planning DLI training? If so, how? (For example, some institutions find that they are dealing more with statistics than with data questions. Should this be reflected in the type of training offered? Local training of colleagues, researchers, students ? Which support can bring the DLI programme? National workshop. Role? Timing of Accoleds training.

Designates The West has fewer designates compared to other regions. There are implications for back-up when a contact is not available. Possible solutions? Training of designates?

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.

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? (Training session on how to search the new dlilist search tool and/or article for the DLI Update?)

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) With the QC region (18.2%), the West is the most unsatisfied with the ftp site (14.3%). (Canada 10.5%.)