ARL Library Investment Index: why is it important

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ARL Library Investment Index why is it
important?
Presented by Brinley Franklin Martha
Kyrillidou Colleen Cook Bruce Thompson
Chania, Crete, Greece May, 2009
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The real husky!
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New Ways of Measuring Collections Task Force

• Summary of activities
• http//www.arl.org/stats/aboutstats/tfnewways.shtm
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• Composition (convened Dec. 2004)
• Statistics
• Research Collections
• Membership
• Process (Spring-Summer 2005)
• Interviews of 100 ARL members

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Most Important Issues

• Data is not expressing uniqueness of materials
• Relevance to teaching, learning, research not
  adequately reflected
• Collections go beyond printed volumes
• Research library is more than collections
  include its services ARL is not telling the
  story
• Increase in expenditures for Electronic Resources
• Ownership to Access
• Consortial relationships/cooperative collection
  development

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Most Important Issues (cont)

• Shared storage facilities
• Duplicate serials based on bundling
• Special collections not reflected
• ARL Membership Committee wasnt basing membership
  on Membership Index

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Purpose of Measuring

• Historical significance of long dataset to show
  trends
• Accounting for universitys investment
• Comparison benchmarking
• But,
• ARL Membership Index had become misunderstood,
  misleading, and unhelpful

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October 2005 Task Force Recommendations to ARL
Board

• Exploratory factor analysis
• Profile of contemporary research library
• New meaningful measures development
• Publication of the membership index

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Consultant Reports

• Engaged Spring 2006
• Quantitative (Bruce Thompson)
• Confirm membership index
• Established new expenditures-focused index
• http//www.arl.org/stats/index/index.shtml
• Qualitative (Yvonna Lincoln)
• Profile
• www.arl.org/resources/pubs/mmproceedings/
• 149mmproceedings.shtml

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Action Agenda

• Reserve current membership index for membership
  issues
• Implement Library Investment Index (previously
  named expenditures-focused index) report these
  index scores to Chronicle of Higher Education
• Begin to develop service-based index
• Revise definitions of collections-related data
  categories, especially serial counts
• Collect qualitative data for individual member
  profiles that demonstrate the librarys value to
  its parent institution and to the broader
  research community

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The story of two indices
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Are they really different?
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Library Investment Index

• Principal Component Analysis
• Variance Explained 92.6
• Variables
• Total Expenditures
• Salary Expenditures
• Materials Expenditures
• Professional plus Support Staff

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Challenge

• ..measuring the size of library collections
  cannot be what it used to be
• Martha Kyrillidou, Reshaping ARL Statistics to
  capture the new environment Feb 2008,
  http//www.arl.org/bmdoc/arl-br-256-stats.pdf

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Profile elements as identified by Task Force

• services to the library and scholarly community
• distinctive research-oriented collections and
  resources of national significance in a variety
  of media
• the nature of use made of the collections and
  services by faculty, students, and visiting
  scholars
• the preservation of research resources
• the leadership and external contributions of the
  staff to the profession
• the effective and innovative use of technology
• consortial memberships (including cooperative
  collection development and preservation efforts)
• important locally created digital collections
• library collaborations with faculty.

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Celebrating Research

• Brief descriptions are offered of the special
  collections at each library
• http//www.celebratingresearch.org/libraries/index
  .shtml

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More info

• www.arl.org/stats/