Thanks so much to the 152 people who took the 2007 Metrowest CE Survey! Results follows.
The entire report is online at http://www.metrowestce.org/Materials/JuneCEWeb.pdf
The majority of participants attended 4-6 workshops last year. For those not attended, lack of staff coverage, schedule conflicts and lack of relevance of topic to individual/job were cited as the top reasons for not attending. “Despite good intentions, there seems to never be a good time to come--during school I have kids coming in, and after school I feel pressed to get home to my own kids…also, Waltham is the opposite direction from home, and traffic tangles are a real obstacle for me.”45% of respondents rated continuing education as very-highly important (8, 9 or 10 on a scale of 1-10); 50% of of respondents rated their continuing education as completely-highly satisfying (8, 9 or 10 on a scale of 1-10).
Content, variety, speakers and handouts were chosen as favorite aspects of classes, while time, day and location were the biggest dissatisfiers. For Adult Services topics, Customer Service, Marketing and Reference are of MOST interest, while Summer Reading and Facilities are of LEAST interest.
Collection Development, Programming, Summer Reading and Marketing for Children Services are of MOST interest, while Facilities and Customer Service are of LEAST interest.
Marketing Databases and how to use NetLibrary, OCLC, and ProQuest NYT Historical are of MOST interest, while World Book Online and Newsbank are of LEAST interest, perhaps because we have recently held classes in this topics.
For management topics, Managing Change emerged as the topic of MOST interest, followed by Time Management, Conflict Resolution, and Performance Reviews. Budget is of LEAST interest. ALL Reader’s Advisory Topics EXCEPT Romance are of interest.
In Technology Topics, Trends, Web 2.0 and Web Design are of MOST interest, while Technology Advocacy and Train the Trainer are of LEAST interest. Results were mixed on WordProcessing and other productivity software.
Other suggestions included more Minuteman workshops at our location, field trips, Leadership topics, more intense technology workshops, and Reader’s Advisory: Audiobooks. “Stress Reduction, Collaborative Practices, School Library programming, Connecting with Administration, book talks/groups” wrote one respondent; “Explanation/demonstration of link resolvers,open URLs, federated searching,” wrote another.
Thirty-eight people offered speaker suggestions, including Stephen Abram, Jessmyn West, and locals like April Mazza and Cindy Roach. 65% of participants hear about CE via email, and through our website. The majority of respondents were from public libraries (41%), followed by school (25%), Academic (7.25%) and Special (5.25%).
Not all responded to this question.Thanks again! Please feel free to leave additional comments on our blog