Figure 1: LIW guide front page
Introduction
The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) Medical Library has regularly participated in Library and Information Week (LIW), with varying degrees of engagement from SCHN staff. SCHN has approximately 6500 staff, with approximately 70 researchers and 3700 clinical staff, both of which have been our target populations for our LIW activities. Our LIW programs have ranged from a Whodunnit murder mystery, online quizzes, tutorials, workshops and more. In 2016 and 2017 we ran “Library Month” throughout the entire month of May, which was then scaled back to a week from 2018 onwards.
Prior to 2023, our most successful LIW was in 2017 when we held in-person and virtual escape room activities, a morning tea, a cake stall and a range of training sessions across all of May including:
While the measuring research impact session, cake stall and escape room activity were popular with patrons, other sessions were not well attended. Many sessions were face-to-face, which made them difficult for busy clinical staff to attend. Our goal in previous years was the promotion of the library and its services, and so no statistics were recorded.
Library & Information Week 2023
During our Library planning day in January, the team decided to plan a comprehensive program for LIW 2023 and to track the outcomes. Our aims were to provide engaging training sessions, share key library resources and promote the library generally.
Once the theme was announced we swung into action and began brainstorming the events we wanted to offer.
Training sessions
We offered sessions on presentation design (Presentations that Pop and Introduction to Canva), online resources (UpToDate, Covidence and Cochrane resources) and tools to support research (using the Systematic Review Accelerator and measuring research impact).
We promoted our activities in weekly news bulletins, on the staff intranet homepage and by directly emailing contacts who would forward on information to their networks.
SCHN staff were asked to register for sessions and sent Teams invitations. This was partly to track interest, but also to ensure staff would be reminded of sessions. All staff who registered received the PowerPoint slides and handouts and the presentation recordings were available to view for all SCHN staff on our Library & Information Week guide for a two-week period. All but one of the training sessions were held online to allow staff from both the Randwick and Westmead locations to attend.
We made a point of offering a variety of topics and limited the amount of external training to two sessions, as webinars and videos for library resources are readily available and we wanted staff to feel that our LIW offerings were out of the ordinary and to promote our in-house expertise. We chose UpToDate, due to its popularity with staff, and Covidence, as it is a newer resource and highly relevant to all staff involved with research.
Canva and PowerPoint were offered by Grace Leo, a Research Fellow with significant expertise in this area. All other sessions were led by library staff. Most sessions were offered online and had unlimited capacity, however Canva was offered as a face-to-face workshop with a maximum of ten participants. An additional Canva session was added to meet demand and staff who missed out could register their interest for future sessions.
Labcoats in the limelight received six registrations, but unfortunately had to be postponed until a later date due to speaker unavailability.
Library resources
Library guide
We created a library guide page via LibGuides which became the hub for our LIW activities. The guide included a timetable for all sessions with booking links, information about all our LIW events, our source of the day, videos and daily Wordle competition.
Figure 1: LIW guide front page
Source of the day
We had five resources that we promoted during LIW. These were either new and/or underused resources, or new aspects of popular resources. This encouraged staff to come back to the LIW library guide each day.
We also subscribed to an AccessPediatrics trial during this period, as an additional resource to promote.
Videos
We had spent the months leading up to LIW developing a suite of short FAQ-style videos that covered a range of topics such as how to request an article or book a group study room. These were officially “launched” during LIW and promoted on our library guide.
Promotion
Wordle
Our daily Wordle competition served two purposes; it increased engagement with the library while also encouraging staff to return to the LIW guide daily to complete the new Wordle. The words were broadly related to LIW and we encouraged staff to look through the guide for ideas.
Chill zone
Inspired by other libraries’ clever use of space, we set up a chill zone for LIW for staff to take some time out and relax. The chill zone was in a corner of the library with lounges next to a large window. Activities such as Lego and colouring, fidget and stress toys, tea/coffee/hot chocolate, chocolates and free pens we left on a table for staff. The aim of the chill zone was to explore the possibility of repurposing some of the library’s spaces while also encouraging staff who may not have been in the library before to visit.
Figure 1: Chill zone
Board game night
We held a board game night to further promote the library space while offering something fun and specific to LIW week. We didn’t require registration for this and staff were encouraged to just drop in at any time during the two-hour session.
Results
Training sessions
Overall, 76 participants registered, for a total of 163 session registrations*.
|
Session |
Registrations |
Attendance |
|
PowerPoint |
40 |
Unknown** |
|
Covidence |
16 |
10 |
|
UpToDate |
14 |
Unknown |
|
Systematic Reviews |
28 |
At least 10 |
|
Canva 1 |
10 |
3 |
|
Canva 2 |
10 |
6 |
|
Cochrane |
19 |
7 |
|
TOTAL |
137 |
36+ |
Figure 3: Registration and attendance for individual LIW sessions.
* LabCoats in the Limelight, which had to be postponed, received a further 6 registrations. We also received another 20 Canva waitlist registrations from staff who missed out on a place in our two face-to-face workshops.
** We were unable to calculate the total attendance as training sessions were organised in Microsoft Teams via our shared library account. The UpToDate session was organised via UpToDate and attendance statistics were not provided to us following the session.
Although the link to training sessions was emailed to participants and made available on our LIW guide, we were also unable to view these statistics. However, we did receive some verbal feedback that having recordings available after sessions was helpful.
A follow-up survey was sent to all registrants which received 9 responses. One participant noted they were only able to attend one session, yet rated every session including those without available recordings, so their ratings have been excluded with the exception of the session they attended.
|
Session |
Number of responses |
Average rating (out of 5) |
|
PowerPoint |
8 |
4.8 |
|
Covidence |
2 |
4.5 |
|
UpToDate |
2 |
5 |
|
Systematic Reviews |
2 |
5 |
|
Canva |
5 |
4.8 |
|
Cochrane |
2 |
4.5 |
Figure 4: Participant session ratings.
Participant feedback
Participants noted that the highlights of LIW were the PowerPoint and Canva sessions and requested that these be repeated in the future. The Wordle competition was also popular.
Resources
Videos
Our videos were only viewed once or twice during LIW, but we received positive verbal feedback from several staff. This was consistent with our expectations, as the information they provide is quite specific and only relevant at point of need.
Library Guide
Although we haven’t retained all library guides from previous LIWs, one page of our 2017 virtual escape room guide received 60 hits, while the front page of our 2018 guide received 128. In contrast, our 2023 guide received an impressive 845 views, with 236 of those being our calendar of events.
This increase in engagement continued throughout the rest of August, with 115 views to our LIW guide in the following week. Other guides also saw an increase in views including Critical Appraisals (July: 9, August: 30), Endocrine (July: 16, August 35), and Paediatric Feeding (July: 4, August: 63)
Promotion
There was a significant difference in the number of visitors to the library, with 5479 people in August compared to 2243 in July, suggesting that our promotional activities did result in increased engagement.
Wordle entries
We had 57 total Wordle entries with five people entering every day, which was a good level of engagement. We gave away four prizes; first, second, third and a “lucky draw prize” to an entrant who had submitted all five correct entries.
Chill zone
The chill zone was rarely used during the week, although the chocolates, tea and coffee, and pens were popular. The lack of use suggests that this this would not be a good ongoing use of our space right now. Some potential reasons for the underuse of this space may include limited staff time to get away, and the fact that the chill zone was in an open area of the library which may have led to staff feeling self-conscious about engaging with the space.
Board games night
We received a lot of interest in our board games night although only two staff attended. Despite this, we are considering offering further board games nights in the future if there is further interest as the staff who attended gave very positive feedback.
Figure 5: Games night in the library
Lessons learned
Technology
With the majority of our programming being virtual, using LibGuides was an excellent way to centralise all LIW information while also promoting additional library services. In particular, we were able to quickly and easily hide or publish certain elements such as recordings and the daily Wordle question.
We had to change our Wordle competition midway through the LIW due to technical issues, pivoting to the official New York Times Wordle for the rest of the week. To eliminate this issue in the future we will ensure any competitions we run can be hosted via our own pages rather than linking out to external sites.
Although the sessions ran well over Teams, we were unable to retrieve attendance information and recording views as the sessions had been created using a shared library email that did not have an associated Teams login. This was done so that calendar invitations were sent from the library rather than an individual staff member. However, due to this we were unable to access meeting organiser statistics. As we hadn’t held training sessions via Teams in this way before, we weren’t aware of this until partway through the week. We would probably still use a shared email in future, but make sure that we recorded attendance during the session, or host sessions via another platform such as Zoom to make statistics easier to record.
Time
We began planning for LIW in January at our staff planning day and by the end of April we had an outline of the training sessions we wanted to offer and were able to organise speakers well in advance. Our team met weekly which helped us keep on track and keep across what still needed to be done. By early July we had finished the LIW library guide and were working on final drafts for training sessions and the staff-wide comms.
Creating the library guide was time consuming but we were really happy with the end result, and the skills we used building the page are transferrable to our other LibGuides.
Overall, these things were well worth the effort but were only successful because we were able to allocate enough time to them.
Program
Offering a variety of programming including new, unique sessions increased engagement and perceived value of LIW activities. Limiting the number of external training sessions was particularly successful as we were able to focus on those that were most relevant, while tailoring our in-house sessions to meet SCHN staff needs. The overwhelming popularity of our PowerPoint and Canva sessions demonstrated a significant demand for training in this area as well as a lack of current learning opportunities for staff. We are now investigating ways in which we might be able to address this need, while also acknowledging limited library staff time and that these sessions fall outside our core business.
Our chill zone was an experiment in repurposing some library spaces. Rather than simply providing activities as we did during LIW, a more successful approach would be to take into consideration the ways our spaces are currently used. As parts of the library are already used for relaxation, we are investigating how we can support this through adding additional resources such as cushions or charging points.
Advertising
A large part of our success this year was due to increased promotion. We contacted our PR department well in advance to ensure LIW was included in weekly bulletins, the fortnightly Chief Executive update and on the front page of our staff intranet. We also sent out emails to targeted areas including Education and Research, which resulted in a significant spike in registrations. Taking the time to develop an advertising strategy is critical and an area we will continue to focus on in future years.
Simplicity
We used colours and fonts from the SCHN brand guidelines to create a logo for our library guide and carried the colour scheme across our signage, posters and email signatures. The library guide had a clean, clear design that made it easy for people to navigate and explore. This consistency resulted in strong branding that assisted with promotion.
Figure 6: LIW promotion poster
Our booking form was intentionally designed to be simple, enabling participants to tick all sessions they were interested in attending with a single submission. Library staff then transferred this information to a spreadsheet and sent out calendar invitations. Although this system was more time consuming for us than many alternatives, it made minimal demands on participants, leading to increased bookings as a result.
Following the success and popularity of this year’s LIW we are looking forward to building on what we’ve learned and continuing to offer engaging programs tailored to our staff at SCHN.