ABSTRACT

With special funding from the HKUST Vice President for Academic Affairs Office, the Library set up an Information Commons (IC) in 2006. This was a new model for delivering services to our students, staff, administration, and even to the Library itself. The model offered great potential for facilitating teaching, enhancing the learning experience for students, and hence contributing to students' learning outcomes. From the start, we realised that its success would lie in vigourous evaluation programs.

In its first year of operating the IC, the Library monitored monthly usage to constantly monitor use patterns and users' behaviour. Then, 10 months after launching the service, we conducted a user satisfaction survey. The monthly usage figures and survey data helped to understand users' needs, to identify strengths and weaknesses of the service, and to set direction for future development.

This presentation describes how the HKUST Library uses assessment to constantly evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the IC.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Gabrielle Wong has been the Information Commons coordinator at the HKUST Library since the IC opened in 2006. In this capacity, she oversees the administration and operation of this service facility, ranging from service delivery, assessment, staff training and supervision, to liaisons among various units in the Library.

She joined the HKUST Library in 1998 as a reference librarian. Besides her involvement at the IC, she is also the coordinator for the HKUST Institutional Repository, a subject librarian for physics and mathematics, and participates in the design and content of the Library website. In 2004, she led a survey on assessing the impact of the Library's instruction program; the result of which was reported in a conference and subsequently published in Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Gabrielle obtained her B.Sc. degree in Physics from the University of Hong Kong, and the MLIS from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She started her librarian career at the University of Hong Kong Libraries before joining HKUST.