Using Evaluation Data to Change
& Improve Virtual Reference:
Call for Virtual Poster Session
Proposals
MARS Management of Electronic Resources and Services (MERS) Committee
How does your library (or consortium) use the results of evaluation to
change and improve your Virtual Reference service? Have you used data,
statistics, opinions, or other feedback to persuade administrators, librarians
and staff, or your patron body? To plan budgets, hours, or training? To test
anecdotal assumptions? To offer a new service? Are changes driven by evaluation
significantly different from those driven by technological advancement or new
VR products?
Share your successes and challenges via a Virtual Poster Session sponsored
by Management
of Electronic Resources and Services (MERS), a Machine-Assisted
Reference Section (MARS) Committee.
We seek virtual posters which describe how libraries use evaluation to
change and improve their Virtual Reference services.
Virtual Reference can include reference assistance provided via chat, IM,
e-mail, videoconferencing, or other means. Evaluation methods can include
statistical analysis, patron surveys, transcript analysis, use of standards and
guidelines, interface usability testing, or any other method or combination of
methods that the library uses to evaluate its service.
Virtual posters can be submitted as Web pages, PowerPoint presentations, or
other formats which can be mounted on the Web.
Accepted posters will be mounted on the American
Library Association (
web site before the ALA 2008
Annual Conference and will be
announced at the conference. Presenters will be asked to participate in
on-line discussions of their posters through the Reference and User Services
Association (RUSA) blog.
To apply, please use the form at http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaourassoc/rusasections/mars/marssection/marscomm/mersvps2007.htm.
Proposals will be accepted through 5 p.m. Eastern, Thursday, January 3, 2008.
Authors of selected proposals will be contacted by e-mail by January 18, 2008.
Completed virtual posters must be submitted to the committee by April 1,
2008. The committee will review the
posters and work with the creators on any suggested edits needed for clarity
and to comply with
and other guidelines.
Questions? Please contact the MERS Chair, Kathryn Courtland Millis at millisk@depauw.edu, or (765) 658-4427.
MERS is a committee of the Machine-Assisted
Reference Section (MARS) in the Reference and User
Services Association (RUSA) of the American
Library Association (ALA).