Research Workshop Metrics

Executive Summary

Marketing

Our overall most effective marketing methods are emails, the OU Libraries website, word-of-mouth, and outreach to instructors.

This determination is made by combining what methods bring in high attendee counts (1) and what methods bring the highest ratio of attendance to registration (2).

1. The top three marketing methods that bring in the highest counts of attendees who fill out our post-workshop surveys (hereafter, “attendees” and “attendance”) are emails (including directly from UL), word-of-mouth (particularly supervisors and colleagues), and the OU Libraries website (which at the time of this analysis in fall 2025 featured 2-3 events from each upcoming week)

2. The marketing methods with the highest response “intensities” (relative proportion of attendees to registrant numbers) were class requirements (making liaison outreach to instructors critical), direct emails from OU Libraries, personal recommendations from a librarian, and announcement in class

Attendance

For all workshops (whether requested by patrons, or scheduled independently by librarians), total people reached per year reached a new high in 2025.

For workshops that we as librarians independently schedule,

• for most topics, virtual and hybrid workshops have higher attendance (6.4) than in-person (4.3) in the last two calendar years (2023-2025)

• a few topics have higher attendance (15) than others regardless of format

• more detailed event descriptions seem to get higher attendance than title only descriptions

Otherwise, workshops requested by someone either standalone (such as by a department or research group) or within a course have the highest attendances.