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Institutional Buy-in and collaboration

Buy-in​

Before you get started, make sure you have buy-in from your colleagues and administration. Don't assume that if you build it, they will come!

What kind of buy-in do you need?

Marketing and Promotion​

  • You will need your colleagues to help market and promote usage of the tool.

Get people excited about the idea before you build it and keep them updated and engaged throughout the process. This can be done through information sessions, screen shots and email / Teams or Chat messages, or little surveys that give them an opportunity to provide some feedback to your process. When the tool goes live, your colleagues at the reference or circ desk will be one of the best ways to let students using the tool.

  • If you have marketing or communications person in your library, make sure to engage their support and help in getting the word out as well.

Cooperation and communication​

At minimum, you need both cooperation and communication from those who manage your spaces. Ideally they will also work with you to help gather data and provide feedback and ideas from their perspective on managing spaces.

I had both cooperation and a bit of time from our facilities manager. Their perspective and input was very valuable in building the site.

Additionally, while the site itself hasn’t required significant time since it went live, there have been changes to rooms that have needed to be updated. This requires ongoing support and communications from the people who maintain your spaces.

Accessibility support​

- Accessibility Team. Does your institution have an accessibility teamn with expertise in accessibility issues? Engage them from the get-go to share their expertise and provide feedback.

- Colleagues who can help identify accessibility issues. Do you have specific colleagues with expertise? I was fortunate to work with a visually impaired colleague who specializes in accessibility. He enthusiastically supported the project and provided invaluable feedback. We also hired a student in a wheelchair to some in depth review as part of our usability work.

Student worker(s)?​

I was able to hire her to work a significant number of hours to build out directions and maps to our locations throughout the building. While you can do this yourself, this is a great task for a student employee. If your institution cannot afford to hire a student for you, you might look for small grants that support accessibility at your university.