Hello:

 

A big thank you to our members who responded to the APLA Continuing Education interest group survey in March! We heard you and we are working on ways to provide remote and thoughtful professional development opportunities that are relevant to you and to our region. One initial way we intend to do this, while many of us are working remotely, is by providing a monthly informative email from the interest group. Our first email comes to you in the form of a review from interest group member Ben Mitchell (NS). Enjoy!

 

 

Review of The Teaching Librarian: Vol 27. Issue 3. May 2020

 

The Ontario School Library Association has made the May edition of The Teaching Librarian: data at your library free and available online. This issue reflects on how to acquire meaningful data about the impact of libraries, and provides some suggestions to help librarians access, collect, assess, represent, and protect that data.

The issue features interviews with Mona Chalabi about various impactful ways to represent data to make it meaningful for different audiences and with Deanna McFadden, publishing director at Wattpad, about the nature of the platform and how it might be used to make data-informed decisions. Anita Brooks Kirkland writes about how to assess the effectiveness of summer lending programs. Dianne Oberg provides five helpful approaches to providing evidence of library impact in “School Library Impact: Seeking Evidence.” The issue also features a handy, accessible breakdown of the research process as it applies to demonstrating the impact of libraries taken from the Canadian School Libraries Research Toolkit. Kimberly Senf provides five easy to use online resources to help communicate data and research with appealing visuals, which complements Mary Chisholm’s infographics and article on how to use them. In the article “Using Infographics to Tell Your Library Story,” Beth Lyons reflects on the process of using a monthly infographic to share the story of a library learning commons.

 

Trish Hurley provides a helpful list of databases for young learners to undergraduates in “Databases @ Your Library: Reliable, Authoritative and Curated” and argues for the value of specific databases, such as ProQuest, and what they have to offer that Google cannot. Kasey Whalley discusses how imaginative and effective usage tracking and representation of usage data helps paint a more complete picture of library use beyond traditional circulation statistics in “Data on the Rise: Finding Value Despite Diminishing Circ Stats.” Whalley asks readers to reflect on where, when, and how data should be collected in the library setting, and what kinds of use count as data. She also defines open data and provides several resources in “Open Data for Your Library.” Finally, Carlo Fusco shares ways of understanding and evaluating password security in “Understand Passwords to Protect Your Data.”

 

 

 

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