The LTER Network Office (LNO) exists primarily to support the objectives of the LTER Network. As the objectives of the LTER Network evolve through the decadal planning process, the support activities of the LNO must also evolve and grow to meet new expectations. To assure that the LNO successfully adapts to evolving Network goals, the LTER Executive Board (EB) conducts an annual evaluation of the performance of the LNO. Part of this evaluation involves a survey that is administered to representatives of the 26 LTER sites.
The survey has undergone considerable change since it was first instituted in 2003. The original survey, developed as part of the LNO Strategic Plan, attempted to gauge site needs while at the same time providing feedback on the performance of the LNO. This year, the EB determined that the survey should focus on performance and eliminate questions on site needs, which will be assessed using other means. In addition, the Board decided that the survey would be administered to three individuals at each LTER site: the lead principal investigator, the information manager, and the graduate student representative. Questions for this year's survey were developed by members of the EB in consultation with the LNO Executive Director. An expert in survey development from the Institute for Public Policy at the University of New Mexico provided suggestions on the survey format.
The survey was administered at the end of April and results discussed by the EB and presented to the Science Council at their May meeting in Baltimore. Below I describe the principal results of the survey and outline how the LNO will respond to these results.
Sixty-four individuals responded to the survey, and all sites had at least one respondent. The largest proportion of responses came from lead PIs (24 of 26 sites), followed by information managers, and graduate student representatives. In response to the statement, "The general performance of the LNO meets or exceeds my expectations," 48 of the 64 respondents answered "Yes"; only three respondents answered "No", while the remaining respondents answered "Don't Know" or skipped the question.
Areas of satisfaction
Several questions elicited strong consensus from respondents that the LNO was performing well on certain tasks:
Respondents indicated that LTER web sites, archives, and data bases maintained by the LNO were available when needed.
Most respondents were "Satisfied" or "Very Satisfied" with the assistance their site had received from LNO staff in the implementation of Ecological Metadata Language.
- A strong majority of respondents were "Satisfied" or "Very Satisfied" with the LNO-organized training sessions in which they participated.
- Thirty-five respondents felt that the LNO responds to requests for information and assistance in a timely and effective manner; only two respondents disagreed.
- A strong majority of respondents were satisfied in the ease of discovering, accessing, and downloading data from Network data sets maintained by the LNO.
- A strong majority of respondents was "Satisfied" or "Very Satisfied" with the performance of LNO staff in facilitating research, planning, and governance meetings.
- Most respondents were "Satisfied" or "Very Satisfied" with outreach services provided by the LNO including site and network brochures and the Network newsletter.
Areas for improvement
The response to some of the survey questions indicated that the LNO needs to improve its service in certain areas:
- Four respondents indicated dissatisfaction with the timeliness or detail of the information they receive about the Network Information System, and 23 respondents answered "Neutral/Don't Know".
- Some respondents have had trouble finding information on the results of research, planning, or governance meetings in the LTER document archive.
- Seven respondents were dissatisfied with the content or format of the LTER public website-the site used to present information about the LTER Network to other scientists, agencies, students, teachers, and the general public.
- Thirteen respondents were "Dissatisfied" or "Very Dissatisfied" with the content and format of the LTER Intranet website-the site used to provide information about LTER activities to LTER scientists and students.
Additional issues raised by respondents
Several open-ended questions allowed respondents to bring up points that were not specifically covered by survey questions. The following comments represent the more commonly mentioned ideas:
"We would like to participate in developing/implementing strategies for dealing effectively with the massive streams of data we anticipate from new sensor networks...perhaps the LNO could be more proactive in helping all of us work on these problems effectively."
"' I was not aware that most of this cyberinfrastructure existed until I started taking this survey. Making sure that graduate students know about some of the services available to them would be a good start."
"Further development of the SiteDB concept to provide a uniform view of personnel, publications, databases, and general site information."
"I think LNO is headed in the right direction in providing support to sites for Network synthesis [and] for important IM training workshops' [I hope the LNO will] have funds to continue this activity [and] help the IMs organize ' to solve issues like Units and Data Dictionaries."
"It seems that the LTER Grad Student webpage is updated very infrequently, and is not utilized often ' if the LNO manages this [information], it would be helpful to figure out how to enhance the usefulness of the website. I also have had difficulties adding new graduate students to the LTER grads listserv."
"Improvements in interfaces for updating personnel lists and bibliographies. Development of web services or other means to automatically update these lists. Right now it seems we are maintaining separately and they are typically out of sync."
"More opportunities for small grants to support directed working groups. We need synthesis of ideas as well as of methods/approaches. Also, opportunities for mini-grants for graduate students for cross-site work would be very beneficial."
"Over the past few years, I have been really satisfied with LNO's services and performance, especially since the hire of Inigo, Mark and Duane. Their work has been outstanding and whenever I've needed assistance, they were able to solve my problems or answer my questions quickly. Thanks for the great job!"
"Additional information management training for graduate students. Working with long-term data ' can be a unique experience for grad students and training may not be provided at individual institutions. Working with LTER data and collaborating among sites can be particularly challenging for graduate students due to the short time horizons and challenges in mastering technology related to sharing information across sites. [LNO] could [offer] information management training programs to a few students from each site (new grad students in particular), [e.g.] a three day seminar covering topics such as database management, data archiving, metadata, and analysis of long-term data'"
"Although I am a graduate student at an LTER site, I haven't felt like I am part of the LTER network since the ASM in 2006. I wasn't able to answer most of the questions on this survey because I was not familiar with their content. It seems that there is not a lot of "networking" happening among the grad students in the LTER, or among grad students and PIs at other sites. I just visited the grad student website and the most recent text is three or four years old. I wonder why some of the visions and mission statements haven't been carried out."
"Overall, it is much easier to find documents in the archive [but] I am still trying to train people to go to the Intranet first [because] documents are much more accessible from there. A document search box on the main index page would be useful. The Google search box does not return the same hits as the box on the document archive page, and this has confused [some] people."
"It would be great if LNO could help get meeting products on-line, distributed, or announced in a timely manner following meetings. Not all groups are very good about getting things out."
The LNO will take all of these ideas into account in prioritizing future activities. Some tasks (e.g., further development of the SiteDB concept, migration of ClimDB and HydroDB to the LNO, development of web services, and revision of the Intranet website) are already in progress and will be given additional emphasis. Other issues, such as the need for additional funds for research working groups and training, are addressed in the LNO renewal proposal and hopefully will be funded in 2009. Some of the suggestions will require new approaches. The LNO will work with the Information Management and the Network Information System Advisory Committees to make sure that timely information about the development of the Network Information System is available to all. LNO staff will contact individual respondents to determine specific problems with the document archive and the webpages, so that fixes can be designed. Our efforts to address this problem since the last survey have apparently not been successful, since significant numbers of people still report problems. We will review all of the working groups we have sponsored and make sure that reports and lists of products are available.
The LNO will continue to work with site representatives to the Graduate Student Committee (GSC) to increase information flow to LTER graduate students and to address other issues raised in this survey. One approach is to add the graduate student representatives to the standard site description (for example, see http://www.lternet.edu/sites/knz/), and to ask sites to annually review and update graduate student information. One response to the survey suggested that the GSC could use a mentor to help the committee manage the webpage and interact with sites. The LNO is offering to sponsor an LTER graduate student mixer at the upcoming Ecological Society of America meeting and help the GSC co-chairs plan and execute a program. I will work with the LTER EB to identify ways to address other issues such as training. It is critically important to the LTER Network that graduate students become fully engaged and invested in Network activities.
The LNO is grateful to the people who took the time to complete this year's survey. The results will be very useful in helping us prioritize future activities. Looking ahead, the EB has suggested that the survey be administered every two years instead of annually. In addition, our professional survey consultant strongly recommended that the survey be administered to the entire LTER community. We will work with the Board to continue to improve the survey as well as the services that the LNO provides to the LTER Network and sites.
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