Using Google Apps in Library Routine Works

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1 THE GENERAL CONFERENCE CONGRESS OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN LIBRARIANS (CONSAL) XVI BANGKOK THAILAND, JUNE Using Google Apps in Library Routine Works Varasaya Soonthornsarathool Head of Stang Mongkolsuk Library and Information Division, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10140, Thailand ABSTRACT This study is aimed to develop an operation that can reduce internal communication gap in the library workplace. Faculty of Science Library, Mahidol University has started to use Google Apps for Education as the effective tool to solve communication problems in library routine works since March 2014 onwards. Google Apps for Education, developed by Google Inc., provide various collaborative cloud services such as Gmail, Google+, Google Drive, Google Site, Google Doc, Google Sheet, Google Slides, Google Form, and Google Calendar for universities worldwide. Five Google apps are used as the collaborative cloud services among Faculty of Science Library staff and executives in the year Google Form is used to create online questionnaires for user satisfaction surveys. Google Sheet is used to create online documents for virtual round-table discussion among the book purchase working group and the staff performance evaluation committee. Google Sheet is also used to monitor library service statistics e.g. collecting, analyzing, sharing, and discussing the results of the surveys among the library team. Google Drive is used to store and share files, photos, slides, videos, documents among particular groups of library staff. Google Drive is also used to distribute the circular notices, memos, or official letters among all staff. Google Calendar and Gmail are used for staff communication. Those cloud services could replace the telephone calls and the circulation letters in traditional ways of communication. After the first 8 months of the Google Apps implementation in the library routine works, we found that information gaps among staff and misleading information are reduced. The working environment in the library is better because all library staff properly understood the up-to-date information, news, commands, and policies. Google Apps for Education is an effective tool for the library management and the conformity of library works. In addition, Google Apps enable to control the permission levels of shared information and enable to provide information access anytime, anywhere. Keywords: Google Apps for Education, Library Routine Works

2 INTRODUCTION Google Apps for Education is a suite of free productivity tools for classroom collaboration, developed by Google Inc. It provides various collaborative cloud services such as Google Form, Google Sheet, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google+ and etc. (Google, 2015) Google Form is use for creating all kinds of forms, asking some quizzes and polls among teachers and students in the classroom. It s easy to create forms that allows teachers to gather immediate feedback during the class for real-time assessment. Google Sheet is a real-time collaboration for editing, commenting, and chatting as a team of teachers and students. They can open and edit Microsoft Excel files. In addition to create spreadsheets, it can calculate data and display as a chart. Google Drive is use for cloud storage and file backup. Various file types can be downloaded from various devices for sharing and collaborating. The owners can share their files or folders with anyone and control user access levels to view, comment, or edit file contents. Google Calendar is a free online calendar used for creating and managing appointments among teachers and students such as public events, holidays, and exam schedules. Gmail is a free web-based service. Users can access mails via POP3 or IMAP4 protocols by using Android, ios, and desktop devices. It provides anti-spam mail and search system. Google+ is a social networking and identity service. The users can connect and communicate with friends and families for sharing photo, story, and message sending. In the year 2014, Mahidol University has started to use Google Apps for Education as an alternative learning tool for increasing convenience and better performance in education and research for university students, faculties, and staffs in accordance with the university s ICT Strategy. From the library s point of view, Faculty of Science Library has modified the usage of Mahidol University s Google Apps for Education as an effective tool to solve communication problems in library routine works since March 2014 onwards. USING GOOGLE APPs IN LIBRARY WORKS Faculty of Science Library has implemented five Google Apps for library routine works e.g. communication, documents management, data sharing, and group discussion among staffs, etc. The details are as follows: Google Form Google Form is very easy-to-use and has complete functions for creating online questionnaires with various answering format such as text, multiple choice, checkboxes, rating scale, choose from a list, collecting data via website and social media. Google Form s questionnaire is user friendly and enable to reduce paper usage. At the Evaluation process, it is very convenient to manage real-time data and publish the results on the library website and social media. Faculty of Science Library used Google Form for user surveys such as e-journals & e- databases usage and perception, the frequency of e-journal usage in each title, satisfaction survey of Wi-Fi network available in the library, and satisfaction survey of e-resources usage via VPN or web services.

3 Figure 1 is the example of chemistry journals usage survey created by Google Form. Academic staff and students from the department of Chemistry and the department of Biochemistry, as the target groups, were asked for their frequency uses of each journal title. All statistic usages were summarized in pie charts and graphic charts. Librarians then used those survey results, including all comments and suggestions from the respondents as the valuable evidence for decision making of the journal renewals. Figure 1: Chemistry journals usage survey 2015: created by Google Form Google Sheet In routine library works, there are some communication problems occurring among the library staff. Using Google Sheet is an alternative choice to solve them. Google Sheet is

4 used for data sharing and collaborative editing with comments in order to create a common understanding among the library staff. Google Sheet for book-purchase working group Google Sheet is used to create online documents for virtual round-table discussion among the book-purchase working group. The list of books from user recommendations is evaluated together as a teamwork. The criteria for consideration are as follows: 1) the requested items are correlated with teaching courses and research areas of the Faculty of Science 2) the requested items are not duplicated with existing items in the library collection (except for the new edition) 3) the availability of library budgets. The structure of Google Sheet for the book-purchase working group comprises of book titles, authors, edition, price, published year, and other information such as the existing editions in the library, comments written by the working group members. Finally, the acquisition librarian will gather all suggestions from this Google Sheet and make decision to buy new resources. Google Sheet for monitoring library service statistics For library management, service librarians will collect all service statistics every month. Google Sheet will help all service librarians working together as a team. They can input data and their comments collaboratively, sharing, and discussing the results of the surveys among the library team in real-time. Then, the head librarian can collect, analyze those data, and create the monthly report for the Faculty Executive Committee (Figure 3).. Figure 3: Collaborative library service statistics: created by Google Sheet

5 Google Form + Google Sheet for Staff Performance Assessment The library executive committee use Google Form and Google Sheet for staff performance evaluation. Google form is used to survey 360-degree feedback and opinion from all library staff. All library staff can match the competency skills with the most suitable colleagues for each skill. They can also share comments and give feedback about their colleagues in this Google form. The head librarian will compile, analyze the data, and then use the result for library staff performance evaluation (Figure 4). Figure 4: 360 degree feedback: created by Google Form Google sheet is used by the library executive committee as the virtual round-table discussion for competency-based performance evaluation of all library staff (Figure 5).

6 Figure 5: Collaborative staff performance assessment: created by Google Sheet Google Drive Google Drive is used for cloud storage and file backup. All library staff can share their files, photos, slides, videos, documents with their colleagues (Figure 6). The head librarian can distribute the circular notices, memos, and official letters among all staff. The usage of Google Drive can replace original way of communication such as hard copies and the university . Besides, the storage of Google drive from Google Apps for Education is 30 GB while the free Google Drive is only 15 GB.

7 Figure 6: File sharing among library staff: created by Google Drive Google Calendar Each library staff can create their own Google Calendar and share with their colleagues. The collaborative calendar is convenient for making appointments. It also has a function to send notification to all staff and ask them to join the events. They can view and manage multiple calendars across all devices even if offline. Gmail Gmail form Google Apps for Education is an alternative for the library staff. There are a lot of benefits when using this gmail. The whole storage including mail box from Google Apps for Education is 30 GB while the free Gmail is only 2 GB. The whole list of Mahidol University staff s and reading offline are provided. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESSTION There are more than 10 Google Apps for Education provided for Mahidol University. After implementation of Google Apps in library work for 8 months, it is found that there are only 5 applications suitable for the library e.g. 1) Google Form for user surveys 2) Google Sheet for book purchase, staff performance evaluation, library service statistics monitoring, and 360 degree staff feedback 3) Google Drive for file storage and document sharing 4) Google Calendar for making appointments and 5) Gmail for staff communication. The advantage of Google Apps for Education is not only for teachers, students and their classroom, but also for the librarians and their university library. Google Apps for Education are free, easy-to-use, and up-to-date. They are effective tool for library management, staff communication in library routine works.

8 REFERENCES Google (2015). Google Apps for Education. Retrieved from Owayid, A., & Uden, L. (2014). The Usage of Google Apps Services in Higher Education. In L. Uden, J. Sinclair, Y.-H. Tao & D. Liberona (Eds.), Learning Technology for Education in Cloud. MOOC and Big Data: Vol (pp ): Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Tabot, A., & Hamada, M. (2014, September). Mobile Learning with Google App Engine. Paper presented at the 2014 IEEE 8th International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Manycore SoCs (MCSoc). Abstract retrieved from