Fall Training Series Addresses Assessment Practices in a Pandemic

What Will The 2020 Assessment Training Series Cover?

To explore planning, management, and assessment practices in libraries during COVID-19, this training series will bring information professionals together to discuss effective practices for planning of library spaces, collections, services, and strategic innovations – the third installment of NISO's popular Training Series on this topic. 

What do current shifts mean for the 21st Century Library and the way we assess and measure our success? The world has been challenged this year with the COVID-19 pandemic, so this 2020 series will explore some new and some familiar topics on spaces, collections, services and strategic innovations, specifically through the lens of COVID-19. Our seminar series this year will focus on the transformations happening in today’s 21st century library and the accompanying, ongoing changes faced by all. Guest lecturers will address the planning overkill professionals are experiencing, mechanisms for seeing what is successful, and how attendees may emerge resilient and sane when all is done. 

Confirmed guest lecturers include among others C. Colleen Cook, Trenholme Dean of Libraries, McGill University, Elaine Louise WestbrooksVice Provost & University Librarian, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Bob Fox, Dean of Libraries, University of Louisville, Lorraine J. Harricombe, Vice Provost and Director, UT Libraries, University of Texas - Austin, and Karen Stiles, Senior Library Manager, The Open University. 

The training series will begin on September 18, 2020 and continue through November 6, 2020. It consists of eight (8) segments, one per week and each lasting approximately 60-90 minutes. Each segment is intended to cover a Friday lunch period (11:30pm - 1:00pm, US. Eastern).

Registration details will be found on the NISO event page. These particular training series have a history of selling out, so don't delay in getting staff colleagues signed up!

Course Moderator

Martha Kyrillidou has been conducting the NISO training series on assessment practices and metrics for the past four years, even while she consults in management, evaluation, assessment and R&D activities. She helps libraries respond to customer needs through the development of user-focused services and culture that enhance the user-experience. With an understanding of trends in services, collections, facilities, and personnel, she is able to help a library tell their story through narratives, visuals and numbers.

As the original architect of the StatsQUAL suite of services at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Martha Kyrillidou is well positioned to share expertise in this realm, having worked on digital library as well as special collections assessment and evaluation methods. Her work has defined the growing and dynamic library assessment community of practice across the globe. Martha is a Research Associate at the iSchool at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, bridging research and practice.  She teaches Research Methods at Kent State University and is leading the redesign of this course for the SLIS core curriculum team.