1. The 2008 DLI Contacts and Designates Survey: A Portrait
Nicole Doyle
Gaëtan Drolet
Wendy Watkins
DLI Ontario Spring Training
University of Western Ontario
April, 2009

2. Introduction to the survey
Objectives of the survey:
Provide important information to the DLI Section, the External Advisory Committee (EAC) and the Education Committee
Help plan how to better serve DLI Contacts and DLI institutions
Learn more about the situations and requirements of DLI contacts and designates
Provide feedback to DLI contacts and designates
Engage DLI contacts and designates in planning for the future

3. Quick Overview Final count --97 completed online surveys
Response rate:
Overall % (97/118)
DLI contacts 92% (66/72)
Designates 67% (31/46)
Response rate for contacts allows us to treat it as a census
DLI Contacts (68%) Designates (32%)

4. Quick Overview Survey language used: Respondents by DLI region:
English %
French %
Respondents by DLI region:
Atlantic %
Quebec %
Ontario %
West %

5. Q9 – Respondents by region in %

6. Nature of and support for data services

7. Q5 In your wider work do you consider yourself to be a____ person
Q5 In your wider work do you consider yourself to be a____ person? Recorded in %

8. Q7 Percentage of your work dedicated to data by region and size of institution

9. Q8 Are data and GIS tasks or responsibilities specified in your job description?

10. Q4 How long IN TOTAL have you served as DLI contact … at your institution?

11. Years of Experience – Distribution of Responses (n=20)

12. Q12 Does your institution offer a dedicated data service?

13. Q16 % Data extractors used at your institution?

14. Section II: Q23 Satisfaction with the support you receive from your local institution to provide data services
From 1=completely dissatisfied to 5=completely satisfied

15. Q24 DLI contacts ranking the following areas of support as the first priority to most improve the data services at your institution
Number in brackets indicates ranking Canada-wide
Increased funding 66.7% (1)
Computing support 57.1% (7)
Statistical support 37.5% (5)
GIS support % (4)
Higher management support 33.3% (3)
Reference service support 25% (6)
Physical space 25% (8)
Technical support 18% (2)

16. Q22 Relationships with RDC / Canada and Ontario

17. More on RDC Relationships
% Canada
% Ontario
RDC as part of your DLI responsibilities
94.8
96.9
Have no RDC activity in your institution
27.8 30

18. Summary: Nature of and Support for Data Services – Canada
Size of institutions can be measured in quartiles with 25% in each of the following groups:
very small (<5K),
small (5-10K),
medium (10-20K)
large (20K+)
Half of respondents in smaller institutions have fewer than 5 years experience
64% in larger institutions have 6-10 years experience
Approximately 70% have data responsibilities as part of their job description.
Contacts with multiple hats with many variations exist in all but large institutions

19. Summary: Nature of and Support for Data Services – Ontario
Highest number of designates in the country (n=12).
DLI contacts consider themselves to be primarily data persons (50%) and government documents persons (40.6%).
Percent of work dedicated to data ranges from 11% to 60%.
After Quebec, one of the less experienced group of DLI contacts in the country in terms of years.
Has the greatest percentage of dedicated data services
IDLS, Nesstar and CHASS are the most-often used data extractors

20. Satisfaction with DLI products, services and DLI section

21. Q28 How often do you access DLI products and services:
Almost all contacts (n=64) used CANSIM on E-STAT
Ontario:70% daily or weekly.
76.4% access CANSIM II on CHASS
Ontario 3.1% daily and 17% never.
65.6% of DLI contacts access the DLI Training Repository
Ontario 72.2%

22. Seldom or Never Accessed
Reports and Reference materials (33.8%)
Product release dates (26.2%)
Survey names and acronyms (26.2%)

23. Q28 How often do you read, write and search the dlilist? (%)
Ontario is above average in the use of the DLI list….
Ontario
Canada
Read DLI list messages daily or nearly every day
84.2
78.9
Write DLI list messages daily or nearly every day
13.3
8.5
Search DLI list messages daily or nearly every day
26.7
13.8
Ontario write more than others DLI regions.

24. The Flip Side… 10.0 12.6 30.0 45.8 33.3 36.2 Ontario Canada
Read DLI list messages seldom or never
10.0
12.6
Write DLI list messages seldom or never
30.0
45.8
Search DLI list messages seldom or never
33.3
36.2

25. Q30 Level of DLI contact satisfaction with DLI products and services/Canada

26. Q34 Top improvements to DLI products and services that would help you to work more effectively with data users at your institution

27. Same List Without Percentages…
Expansion of business/economic collection
Expansion of aggregate statistics collection
A single version of CANSIM on the STC website
Access to longitudinal pumfs
Quality and standardization of metadata
Expansion of administrative public use files

28. Summary: Satisfaction with Products, Services, DLI Section
DLI section: numerous and positive comments about the DLI staff
top improvement mentioned is language of your choice n=5 contacts.
FTP site: negative comments about the organization and documentation of the FTP site, version control, directory naming
Census/Geography products of most concern here
Products and services:
comments on Pumfs/metadata
about CANSIM (n=19)
comments about access.
Improving the DLI website as first priority.

29. The training environment

30. Q39 Do you usually attend DLI training workshops?

31. Q42 Overall, how satisfied are you with the DLI training?
Highest level of satisfaction for training in the country.

32. Q43Training topics and their importance
Fairly important and very important categories were collapsed
Top and bottom ranks are presented.
Results are provided first for Canada as a whole and then for your region.
In determining the least important training areas for each region, we use the bottom 5 from the 18 categories of question 43.

33. Q 43 Most important training topics and delivery modes…Canada

34. Most important training topics and delivery modes…Ontario

35. Q43 Less important training topics and delivery modes…Canada

36. Less important training topics and delivery modes…Ontario

37. Summary on importance of training areas
Common important training areas:
- Regional workshops
- Subject matter presentations
- DLI section presentations
- Hands-on training
Less important training areas for all regions:
- National workshops

38. Q45 Knowledge and competencies
How do you evaluate your own knowledge and competency on 12 aspects.
Fairly competent and very competent categories were collapsed and the top and bottom ranks are presented below. Results are provided first for Canada as a whole and then for Ontario.
We would like you to concentrate on these as a guide to tomorrow’s discussion. These are only part of the picture of core competencies.

39. Q45 Evaluation of your knowledge or competency on the following aspects:

40. Evaluation of your knowledge or competency on the following aspects:

41. Q45 Less knowledgeable or less competent on the following aspects:

42. Less knowledgeable or less competent on the following aspects:

43. Summary on knowledge and competency
All regions feel competent in:
- Census
- Finding and retrieving aggregate statistics
- Knowledge of DLI surveys
o But feel less competent in:
- Using software to manipulate variables
- Using software to create specific file formats
- Knowledge of data outside DLI
- Statistical and data literacy

44. A few facts about designates

45. Designates characteristics
Served an average of 4.66 years as designates (n=31)
% of time dedicated to
data (30.7%)
GIS (20.5%)
other work (48.8%)
42.5% do DLI classroom instruction
(Contacts 54% - 85%)
DLI workshops attended by 53.3%
Overall satisfaction with DLI training 4.19
(Contacts 4.13 – 4.58)

46. From the comments: The clientele for DLI training
Official clientele for the DLI workshops: DLI Contacts
Respondents have identified other clients who have DLI training needs:
Designates
Students
Professors
Researchers/Managers
Reference Librarians/Library Technicians

47. The Training Continuum
Training the trainers
Training the intermediaries
Training the back-up
Training the local colleagues
Training the end-users
Coordinators
Instructors
Future Instructors
DLI contacts
Designates
Reference, GovDocs, GIS Librarians
Students, Faculty, Researchers, Managers

48. discussion

49. Discussion: The Survey Results
General reactions?
What surprised you?
What did not surprise you?

50. Discussion: Training
Should the different sizes of institutions be considered in planning DLI training? If so, how?
Should the focus of training be mostly on data or on statistics as well?
Does DLI play a role in local training of colleagues, researchers, students ?
National workshop. Role?
Timing of DLI training?

51. Discussion: Designates
The Ontario has the highest number of designates compared to other regions. There are implications for back-up when a contact is not available. Should we strive to include more in our training?

52. Discussion: Institutional support
Do you have it?
Can you talk directly to your library director? Need to inform or train the directors about the programme? DLI role?
Ways DLI can help with institutional support.

53. Discussion: DLI list
Why do some contacts never write to the list? Should this be a concern? If so, what can we do about this?
Why do just over 20 percent of contacts never search the DLI list. Should this be a concern? Is so, what can be done about this?

54. Discussion: Products & services
Is there a need for more information on seldom- or never-accessed products & services (i.e., reports & reference materials, product release dates, survey names & acronyms)
Suggestions for improvement of the ftp site?

55. Discussion: Competencies
Think about what competencies are most important for your role and type of institution.
Think about competencies that you don’t have, but would like to.
Think about how your competencies and training needs have changed over time.
Bring your thoughts to our competencies session tomorrow...