Defending the Value of the Academic

Library

Proving our Worth in the ‘Age of Outcomes’

Seth AllenLibrarian | Virginia College | Greensboro, NC

The Age of Outcomes

The market model of higher education challenges how traditional colleges operate ‘Concierge’ model of library service has

supplanted idealistic ‘information discovery’ model (Duke & Asher, 2011, p. 26)

The fiscal crises of colleges combined with the digital revolution in publishing brings traditional library services under scrutiny

Accreditation agencies and institutional effectiveness officers look to libraries provide tangible evidence of use and contribution to academic success

Denial: “What crisis?”Appeal to Tradition: “We’ve always had a library. Why should we change a good thing?” Evasiveness: “The crisis of academic libraries will have to be solved by the next gen. of librarians”, “5 years til I can retire with full benefits”, “Of course the library has value, to think otherwise is just plain silly”Complacency: “The values of libraries is self-evident and we shouldn’t have to prove it”, “We are valuable to the institution even if users don’t understand the value”Blind Optimism: “We will weather fiscal and existential crises of libraries and things will return to normal in a few years”

Gut Responses to the Age of Outcomes

A Better Response to the Age of Outcomes

• Emphasize the library’s strengths by tying what we

do to institutional goals.

Write down all the misperceptions

that users have of the library staff and the library.

• Create new benchmarks for library success where

traditional benchmarks are becoming obsolete.

Write down all the actual

shortcomings of the library.

Connecting Library Services to Institutional

Goals

Emphasizing Our Strengths by Connecting the Dots to Desired

Institutional Outcomes

Critical Misperceptions

The library staff are ‘busy’ and don’t have time to help students

The role of the librarian is essentially a cataloguer and a maintainer of order in the library facilities

Librarians deal with books, not broader range of information formats

The library is a semi-autonomous entity ‘attached’ the school

Library instruction serves the purpose of helping students retrieve books; it has no grander purpose

Faculty Need Librarians More Than Ever!

Adjunct faculty are on the rise and are often overburdened. They rely on academic support departments to assist larger classes. Many are unaware of the library’s potential to support course objectives.

“New Instructional Possibilities” Presentation given by Kelly McEnany, instructor at Asheville-

Buncombe Technical College (Asheville, NC), at the 2010 North Carolina Community Sociology and Psychology Association Conference in

Hickory, NC.

Librarians are presented positively as partners in

teaching students.

Debunking Myths About Librarians’ Roles

Find as many constructive ways to communicate the vision of the library to your allies.

Talking Point: Librarian Saves Faculty Members Time and

Stress!“While estimates ranged from 15 minutes to two

hours, depending on project and course, every faculty member interviewed considered the

time spent on this activity a negligible price to pay in light of the benefits they realized”

(as cited in Oakleaf, p. 46).

-Leslie Simmel “Building Your Value Story and Business Case”

Marketing Professor & Librarian Bentley College

Talking Point: Library Instruction Teaches Workforce-Ready Skills

Occupational Information Network’s List of Occupation

Skills1

1) Problem identification2) Information gathering 3) Information organization4) Synthesis/reorganization5) Idea generation6) Idea evaluation7) Implementation planning8) Solution appraisal

1. List was reprinted in Higher Education in the Internet Age, Patricia Breivik and E. Gordon Gee

ACRL Info Literacy Standards 1

(With Corresponding O-Net Skills in Parentheses)

1) Determine the extent of information needed (1, 2)

2) Access the needed information effectively and efficiently (2, 3)

3) Evaluate information and its sources critically (6)

4) Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base (4)

5) Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose (6)

6) Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally (8)

1. Retrieved from ACRL website: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency

Talking Point: Information Literate Students are More

EmployableSkills employers seek, per Terrell Rhodes (as cited in Oakleaf, p.27): • Critical thinking and analytical thinking

skills (81% of employers)• ability to analyze and solve complex

problems (75%)• ability to locate, organize, and evaluate

information from multiple sources (68%)

All of these can be covered some way in library instruction sessions!

Library Instruction Aides Student Retention, GPA, and is Cost-

Effective!Two longitudinal studies mentioned in Library Assessment in Higher Education point out that library orientation for freshmen result in higher library usage, higher grades, and higher retention rates (Matthews, pgs. 72-73).

“Freshmen orientation courses are cost-effective [emphasis added], given that they generate revenue due to increased student retention and thus offset the costs of the orientation class” (as cited in Matthews, p. 73).

– Kusum Ketkar & Shelby BennettSeton Hall University

New Jersey

Talking Point: Accrediting Agencies Want Info Literate Students & Access

to Info ResourcesATS Handbook on

Accreditation, Library Services

“Information literacy…encourages collaboration

among instructional faculty, librarians, and information technology specialists to

foster student learning and research….For librarians

and information technology specialists, information

literacy creates a dynamic view of information

resources and interpretive services. …It also

incorporates technologicaladvances in information

transfer and presentation as significant contributors to

students’ information literacy.”

NC Board of Governors Rules and Standards for

Non-Public Post-Secondary Institutions

“The library should establish and maintain a

range and quality of services that will promote

theacademic program of the

college. …[O]rientation and instruction in the use of

libraries should be provided for students and faculty.

When appropriate, teaching faculty should require the use of library materials

in instructional programs, such as supplementary readings and research

papers.”

SACS Principles of Accreditation 2012

“The institution provides facilities and

learning/informationresources that are appropriate

to support its teaching, research,

and service mission. The institution ensures that users have access to regular and

timely instruction in the use of the library and other learning/information

resources. The institution provides a sufficient number of

qualified staff—with appropriate education or

experiences in library and/or other learning/information

resources—to accomplish the mission of the institution.”

General Accreditation Requirements for

LibrariesMost of the agencies accrediting the schools I have

worked for require the library to have: Information resources in a variety of formats Timely instructional services Qualified staff Comfortable, spacious environments A seamless, integrated user experience in

discovering resources and services

Implementing Change in Areas of Weakness

Finding New Benchmarks for Measuring Library

Effectiveness

Actual Shortcomings

More staff time is devoted to cataloging and bibliographic control than actually helping users and should be shifted to better assist students, faculty, and staff.

The library is a storehouse for books that are rarely circulated while study space is in critical demand at the school.

Very little assessment is done, mostly limited to circulation statistics and no. of students attending bibliographic instruction workshops

Library staff do not ‘connect the dots’ for library services and tangible outcomes Many librarians still cling to a liberal/idealist model of education

proposed by John Dewey (Duke & Asher, 2011, p. 26)

In short, I realized that my library was adrift both in mission and practice!

Circulation statistics are not a good

benchmark of library success in the age of outcomes!

Chart is reprinted from p. 65 of the

Library Assessment in Higher Education

by Joseph R. Matthews

Finding New Benchmarks for Library Effectiveness

The old paradigm of using circulation statistics as a proxy for library effectiveness does not work in the ‘age of outcomes’. Some tangible benchmarks might include: Visits to the library website and/or remotely hosted

instructional tools (LibGuides, YouTube) Subjective surveys of patron satisfaction with the

library Visits the to the physical library, not necessarily

usage statistics Counting the number and/or depth of library and

faculty partnerships in coursework

Assessing’s Users Needs

Assessing’s Users Needs

Recasting the library committee, required by

many accrediting agencies, as a chance to eat free food is a good way to bring students

out who would not otherwise attend!

Shifting Staff Priorities

From a management standpoint, I let my assistants know of the changes in service philosophy: serving the students instead serving the books (a false dichotomy, but you get the point!).

Retooling Library Facilities

Consider consolidating

space to create study and

collaborative space.

Retooling Library

Facilities

-Geoffrey T. FreemanPrincipal, Architect

Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott Architectural Firm

“Our experience…with a full range of libraries – professional, undergraduate, and research facilities – has

confirmed that there will always be a demand for a physical embodiment of the library. Early predictions that technology would create a ‘virtual’ library, with students

and researchers networked from research halls, have proven wrong. In fact, as electronic media has

increasingly been introduced on college campuses, and paper has made way for electronic data, the use of libraries has increased in staggering proportions” (Building Libraries for the 21st Century, p. 169).

Making the Website the Primary Portal to the

‘Library’

A user-friendly website

communicates professionalism and makes

the library more

accessible – plus

accreditors love a strong web presence for the library!

Making the Website the Primary Portal to the

‘Library’According to Lynda Duke, librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University and investigator in a 2009 study, “Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Library” (ERIAL), users studies of library websites reveal that users want the following items on the library’s website: • A site map to help pinpoint a specific need• Concise summaries of library resources and services• Map of the library stacks• Federated search engines• A detailed list of FAQs• Biographical info about the librarians (students didn’t

know what librarians did!) (Duke & Asher, 2011, p. 154-55).

Using Accreditation Guidelines To Retool

Library Services Consider rewriting your library handbook to

address specific learning outcomes and ‘new’ library services mirroring the language of accreditation manuals

Become well-versed in the specific wording of library accrediting requirements, what administrator can argue with SACS?

Use the accrediting standards to make the case for more funding for instruction – new instructional tools and additional staffing.

Summary of Talking

Points1.Librarians can lighten the

load of overworked faculty.

2.The library has a direct role in equipping students to achieved goals set by the administration.

3.The library’s physical environment is conducive to both quiet study and collaboration.

5. A vital, well utilized library is essential for accreditation.

6. Library services are user-centered, both in-person and online.

7. The library adds value to the institution for all the aforementioned reasons.

Discussion

What challenges do your face in communicating the value of your library? What talking points do you have about your library’s worth?What are some practical steps you can take to address what library detractors are saying? What are your library’s actual weaknesses (not just perceived ones)? How can you begin to address them?

Works Cited

Association of College and Research Libraries. Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report. Researched by Megan Oakleaf. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2010.

Breivik, P. S., Gee, E. G., & Breivik, P. S. (2006). Higher education in the Internet age: Libraries creating a strategic edge. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers.

Duke, L. M., & Asher, A. D. (2011). College libraries and student culture, what we now know. American Library Association.

Ethnographic research in Illinois academic libraries (ERIAL). (2013). Retrieved from http://www.erialproject.org/

Holtze, T. (2002). 100 ways to reach your faculty. Retrieved from http://www.ltu.se/cms_fs/1.1546!/eca7bf55.pdf

Matthews, J. R. (2007). Library assessment in higher education. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.

Webb, T. (2004). Building libraries for the 21st century: The shape of information. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co.