| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Where are AWE uses counted

Page history last edited by Kim Miller 10 years, 7 months ago

Question:  August 5, 2013

 

Joyce Chapman (NC)

 

Do you all have your libraries report uses of AWE stations? If so, where do they report this? Since they aren’t internet-enabled  they can’t be counted with the other computer uses. It would be a shame not to capture this statewide somewhere even if it doesn’t make it to a national stat. We have a technology lending circulation question that’s new this year and I was wondering if I should have folks include AWE sessions there, since we told them to count in-library circulation of other technology lending. What’s the difference between giving someone a laptop with specific software to use in-house and giving them access to a stationary AWE machine with special software to use in-house?

 

Thanks for your wisdom.

 

See also:  Early Literacy Station (ELS) from AWE

 

************************

 

August 14, 20013

 

Joyce Chapman (NC)

 

I didn’t get any responses to this. I checked in the archives and saw that Nicholle asked about whether folks tracked these as internet computers back in February. Everyone said no, don’t track them as internet computers or computer uses. However, no one mentioned whether they  track the uses anywhere else locally. That’s what I’m interested in knowing. I don’t think NC has any local questions where they can be reported unless I shove them into Technology Lending (where I’m not sure they belong). They libraries want to be able to report it somewhere though.

 

Thanks for your wisdom.

************************

 

SDC Comments:

 

Michael Golrick (LA)

 

You know….I noticed that there were no responses in my mailbox and thought that folks replied to you.

 

In Louisiana, we ask for computers connected to the internet, and computers not connected (and we also ask for each of those categories for staff and for public computers), so I do have a place to count them. However, I don’t *report* them to Census/IMLS because there is not a place to do so. For most libraries, I think their use is counted in the computer use numbers, but I am thinking for many it is simply unreported.

 

Hope this helps.

************************

 

Bruce Pomerantz (MN)

 

I didn’t respond because, since no one locally has asked about AWE, I assume that no library has any or if they do, they’ve made their own decision and I’m blissfully unaware of the situation( aka ignorant).

************************

 

Laura Stone (AZ)

 

We (generic, meaning those of us who keep state and national numbers) don’t count everything. We don’t count stuffed animals in the children’s section, and we don’t count inhouse use of reference materials. We don’t count the books that the patrons who spend their days at the library (but have no borrowing privileges) read. We don’t count the number of people who peruse the job help bulletin board. We don’t count parking spots, ask how close the nearest bus stop is to the library, or how many cups of coffee the library café sells.

 

I hope that the local library is counting a lot of these things – the numbers should inform staffing, purchasing and marketing decisions. On a state and national level, we just have to be a lot more selective. I think it’s okay to leave the AWE station usage to the local library.

************************

 

Eleanor Bernau (NM)

 

New Mexico counts in a way that’s very similar to Louisiana’s, e.g. computers connected to the internet and computer use sessions.

************************

 

Joyce Chapman (NC)

 

Our new governor is very interested in early childhood education and economic development and wants data on how each branch of government is contributing to these things. Once we start poking around for data that shows how our libraries intersect with those topics, we suddenly realize there are a number of areas in which our libraries are actively working but we are not collecting any data about it. Not having data on it limits our ability to function as an advocate for our libraries up at the top. While we collect statewide data on children’s programming, circ, and summer reading program stats, we have no data at our fingertips about the number of children’s librarians, every child ready to read efforts, things like the AWE stations, etc. Not to mention economic impact data. That’s one reason NC revamped our local questions on the survey this year to include stuff like offering and attendance counts for programs related to workforce development and technology skills. We do have a few libraries that were collecting that information already, and while that’s helpful to them on a local advocacy level it doesn’t help the State Library advocate for public  libraries at the state level. And they want us to do that! So I’ve found they’re happy to have more questions added to the survey if it’s going to help demonstrate the value of libraries to the legislature. The State Library has also funded a number of AWE station purchases for libraries over the years with LSTA funds, so we are invested in knowing more about their use for that reason.  

 

While I see what you’re saying about not counting everything at a state level, collecting statewide data for some of the things that libraries might be collecting locally ends up being very helpful to the individual libraries. Data needs context to have meaning. Instead of having to present their data totally without context to their funders or boards, the State Library makes comparative data available to individual libraries. So instead of being limited to saying “we don’t have any AWE machines and we’d like one” they could argue “we’re the only library in the state that doesn’t have at least one AWE computer” or “those libraries with AWE stations average X number of uses per machine annually; this is a highly used service that the children of our county are missing out on.” I recently helped a library argue to avoid staff cuts by preparing some comparative data from the PLS dataset that showed how far behind peer group averages the library already lagged in per capita staffing, salaries, etc. She would not have been able to do that if she only had her own library’s data without a higher level organization collecting and making available statewide /national datasets.

 

I’m kind of veering off the email thread here now, but as part of a new data website we just launched for our public libraries (http://plstats.nclive.org) we actually created some “data dashboards” with the goal of helping the libraries use their data to make these kind of contextualized arguments. The dashboards give them performance indicators by library and allow them to choose a comparison group (we only have two at the moment but I hope to make more as soon as I have time). Then the dashboard shows them the average for their comparison group, and also their own library’s difference from that group mean. Same with census data about their community. I think library systems that encompass more than one county in particular have a tough time using demographic and community data from the census because they don’t have the time or knowledge to compile it into single numbers for their multi-county legal service areas, so our dashboards do that for them (as long as I set up my math equations up right… we’ll probably see the error notifications come rolling in after we present the dashboards to our libraries next week!) This is the link if anyone wants to take a look:  http://plstats.nclive.org/dashboard.php.

************************

 

 

Robert Jones (IL)

 

Same here Bruce.

 

 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.