1. Keeping a Gimlet Eye on Reference Data Ken Simon Reference and Instruction Technologies Librarian Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California Twitter: @ksimon Email: kenneth.simon@lmu.edukenneth.simon@lmu.edu

3. READ scale Dr. Bella Karr Gerlich http://readscale.org/

4. Librarian Training Where is “The Sun Also Rises?” Directional or Reference? It depends! How do I request a book from storage? Policy or Reference? It depends! How do I access a database from off-campus? Technical or policy? [Well, you get it by now.] Difficulty of non-reference questions on the READ scale: Policy = always 2 Directional = usually 1 Referrals: how long you spend, not difficulty of question

5. Student Training and Evaluation Blackboard training module + exercises Guides to Gimlet, READ Scale, tagging Easy evaluation of students: search by initials Flag or email questions for follow-up

6. Gimlet LibGuide for LMU http://libguides.lmu.edu/gimlet

7. DATA DUMP 2 years = 29,000 records

8. It’s Not Social Tagging!

13. Crunch all you want… Excel: sort and filter by fixed fields Content analysis using Simple Concordance Program:Simple Concordance Program – Directional: led to signage improvements – Technology: Fixes, training, State of Technology in the Library report for campus I.T. Technology Next up: coding the data

14. Coded Data

15. Reference Tags Note: these tags differ from the ones used in Gimlet 1 = Catalog Use & Lookup 2 = Database Help & Use 3 = External Web page 4 = Internal Web page 5 = Reference Book (print) 6 = Referral 7 = Reserves 8 = Retrieval 9 = Other 99 = empty / unknown

16. Conclusions To assess and improve, you need data! It takes work to get the data into shape. You can’t escape subjectivity… …but you can help to manage it. Experiment with tools for analysis: – Excel, concordance software, codebook/SPSS Why? – To better fulfill our mission – Potential cost savings, better use of staff time

17. Credit where credit is due: Alexander Justice Susan Gardner Shannon Billimore Courtney Hoffner Jason Campos Meg Gregory Bonnie Rainey

18. Keeping a Gimlet Eye on Reference Data Ken Simon Reference and Instruction Technologies Librarian Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California Twitter: @ksimon Email: kenneth.simon@lmu.edukenneth.simon@lmu.edu