Visibility tools help promote your work beyond your institution . Many of the tools allow others to leave feedback on your work or track usage. Blog Tools: These tools can allow you to share your professional knowledge in a public forum. Many free tools are available and simple to set up, such as WordPress and Blogger. Website/Portfolio Tools: These tools allow you to present your accomplishments and potentially network with other professionals. LinkedIn is a way to share this information without requiring technical expertise, but you could also take the time to develop your own website. Presentation Tools: These tools allow you to post your presentations and workshops online for colleagues and patrons to view. Tools such as slideshare and Prezi are two different modes of sharing information, but both allow viewers to leave comments.

Job specific tools can assess specialized tasks you are expected to perform as part of your position’s responsibilities.

Web Usage Tools: If you develop content for your library’s website, blog, or other web presence, you can use web analytic tools to measure your content’s effectiveness. Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools.

Database Usage Tools: If you collect statistics about database and journal use in your position there are a number of options available. This can be done manually or with online tools, such as Serials Solutions 360 Counter.

What is Self-Assessment?

A process used to examine and measure oneself based on a set of predetermined criteria such as productivity and

outcomes that match individual job descriptions.

Our Purpose

Our Focus & Goals

Our immediate focus was our own promotion and tenure process. Tabatha recently finished her Comprehensive Review, which is the halfway point before the Tenure Review. Beth is in the process of creating her first dossier for the Preliminary Review, which is the beginning of the tenure process at our university. We wanted a better way to track our progress and measure our accomplishments based on our Library’s criteria for the tenure process. However, we quickly realized that the tools we utilized could be used by other librarians in any type of library who are interested in tracking and assessing their work.

Our Goals

1. Prepare for the Tenure Process: Tenure requirements vary by university, but in general you need to collect evaluative data about your work to clearly show how you matched the requirements stated in your tenure guidelines.

2. Organize ourselves for Annual Evaluations: Each year we go through an annual evaluation. We wanted to regularly track our accomplishments to make this process easier for ourselves and our supervisors.

3. Track our Progress as New Professionals: We wanted a method for personally assessing our improvements and identifying areas to grow.

4. Share our Toolkit: First we shared these tools between us to collaborate. A colleague suggested we repurpose our toolkits for new librarians in our library and the profession.

1. Start with an updated job description or tenure guidelines. It is important to make sure your toolkit is actually measuring your responsibilities. You should use the same language as your job description, as it will be easier for your supervisor to track your progress.

2. Examine tools to determine which will help portray your work. Equally important is to make sure the tools are ones you will use. To make it easier, you can keep them accessible in your browser’s bookmarks or by using a wiki.

3. Assess often! Once you are using these tools, periodically review your results and modify as necessary. For example, you may need to revise a survey or add categories to your time tracking for more relevant data.

Building Your Own Toolkit

Unexpected Benefits & Outcomes

The purpose of our self-assessment study was to better prepare ourselves for promotion and tenure, but we realized the set of tools we compiled could be of use to any librarian at any stage of his or her career. Despite the type of library, all librarians will undertake a review process, and this information about your contribution can demonstrate the value you bring to your workplace.

Assess for Success: Building Your Self-Assessment Toolkit Tabatha Farney Web Services Librarian tfarney@uccs.edu

Beth Larkee Kumar Electronic Resources Librarian bkumar@uccs.edu

Tracking Tools

There are many ways to record your daily output for both qualitative and quantitative methods. If your library does not already have tracking software in use, you could develop your own or use a customizable online tool. Many of these tools are freely available, but some may have more advanced features that require a subscription.

Our Toolkit:

Tracking tools can be used to measure statistics and feedback with a report feature to analyze the data.

Statistics Tools: These tools can quantify your productivity by recording your reference, instruction, cataloging or other statistics. We use RefSTATS, an in-house reference tracking tool. Other customizable options, such as Zoho, can be used with little technical expertize.

Survey Tools: These tools can offer qualitative feedback to evaluate your performance. While we use several survey tools, one of our favorite methods is to embed a Google Form into LibGuides. Other tools include SurveyMonkey, which allows you to send your surveys via email.

Polling Tools: These tools can analyze results on the fly, such as a mobile or clicker device, which can provide instant response in an instruction session or workshop. Our library has the iClicker system, but you could use software such as Poll Everywhere that uses mobile phones to text a response.

Organizational Tools

Organizational tools can assist your project management, keep track of your time, store your documentation and share it with others.

Time Tracking Tools: These tools can be used to record how you spend your time, in user defined areas such as research and service, or by specific tasks. Some tools, such as toggl and BeeBole have mobile interfaces to make it easier to track your time on the go.

Cloud Computing for Documentation: Cloud Computing is any place to store your documents online, so they can be easily accessed from anywhere. These tools are great for online collaboration because you can edit your documents jointly with your colleagues. We use the PBWorks wiki for working together on projects and research.

Visibility Tools Job Specific Tools

Try to match your job description to the tools.

• Research & Publishing Responsibilities: Track your research impact using Scopus or Google Scholar.

• Exhibit Creation: Document your work and track comments on displays if you are using tools such as Flickr or Picasa.

• Service Responsibilities: Create a survey to collect feedback or use a project management tool to record your service activities.

Tips for your job:

Tracking Tips: Choose tools you will use.

• Find tools you can incorporate into your daily activities. • Try mobile apps if you are always on the move. • Cloud computing is a great choice if you divide your time between

your office and the reference desk. • Don’t overcomplicate your tracking, it will be easier to use if you keep it simple.

Overall, using these tools made us more organized and collaboration easier. In addition, we found an interesting and practical topic to research. 1. Compile your dossier: We found gathering data throughout the year, helped

us contribute to our dossiers continuously, making the process smoother.

2. Help justify needs: By using the documentation we created, we were able to show where improvements could be made. For instance, Beth realized that there was enough volume in electronic serials management to warrant student help.

3. Learn about yourself: We added an assessment tab to our LibGuides that included an online form to evaluate our library instruction. Through the feedback gathered we could make improvements for future sections.

4. Understand your users: Through statistics, such as our reference tracking tool, Tabatha was able to incorporate common questions at the reference desk into the design of the library’s new website.

5. Inform new librarians: We have recently hired a new tenure-track librarian and we have shared our toolkits with her to help her start tracking her tenure process. We thought other librarians outside of our library would also benefit, and we hope other librarians will share their tips and tools with us.

Do you have some great tips or tools you use to assess yourself? Let us know by going to http://libguides.uccs.edu/selfassessment or scanning the QR code. Click on the Share tab!

Share Your Tips & Tools!