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If hosting a Research Sprint of your own intrigues you, the following this step-by-step guide is the perfect start. We provide you with progressive stages, templates, and recommendations based on experience. Follow our process proposed here, or modify it to accommodate your institutional needs.
Step 1: Plan
Step 1: Plan
Begin planning a minimum of 8 months in advance.
Set a target date range and identify possible co-working spaces.
Step 2: Propose
Step 2: Propose
Write up tentative proposal, budget, and timeline for Research Sprints to present to administration for support and approval.
Step 3: Team Up
Step 3: Team Up
When your sprint is approved, assemble a coordinating team that will coordinate and see the project through from the beginning to the end.
Step 4: Role Up
Step 4: Role Up
Outline roles and responsibilities for Research Sprints coordinating team members (e.g., reserving space, budgeting, designing, updating, and marketing web pages, ordering food and supplies, contacting library faculty and staff to serve on research teams).
Step 5: Space Out
Step 5: Space Out
Reserve space(s) to hold Research Sprints.
Step 6: Call Out
Step 6: Call Out
Develop a web page to explain and market Research Sprints.
Draft and share a call for proposals at least ten weeks before the Research Sprints.
Set the proposal submission deadline at least six weeks before the Research Sprints.
Recruitment Messaging Template
Step 7: Promote
Step 7: Promote
Market the Sprints program widely. Send out emails, attend faculty meetings, post flyers, encourage your library leaders to discuss it with other leaders across campus.
Recruitment Messaging Template
Step 8: Recruit
Step 8: Recruit
Contact your colleagues, remind them of Research Sprints’ structure and aims, and then work to identify and alert potential team members for all received project proposals.
Step 9: Review
Step 9: Review
Create rubric for project selection.
First round: Select finalists.
Second round: Confirm relevant colleague availability, identify project managers, rank finalists, select winners.
Step 10: Notify
Step 10: Notify
Write acceptance or rejection letters to all applicants.
For rejected applicants, offer individual consultations with relevant staff and point toward useful libraries resources.
Step 11: Order
Step 11: Order
Order food, supplies (e.g., whiteboard markers, power strips), and relevant technology (e.g., dongles, software).
Step 12: Orient
Step 12: Orient
Hold a Research Sprints team members orientation meeting:
Review the structure of and expectations for the Research Sprint
Designate roles and responsibilities for each group member
Address colleagues’ questions and concerns
Step 13: Meet
Step 13: Meet
One or two weeks before Research Sprints, project managers of each team call and lead a full-team, pre-Sprints meeting in order to set the agenda for the upcoming week.
Step 14: Sprint!
Step 14: Sprint!
Hold Research Sprints:
Monday: Welcome, introductions
Wednesday: Team check-in (optional)
Friday: Public presentations, faculty survey, and librarians survey
Friday: Wrap-up lunch or dinner
Step 15: Debrief
Step 15: Debrief
Take stock of the Research Sprints:
Analyze sprints feedback, including surveys
Write final report
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