Outcome Assessment Tools for the Library of the Future

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Outcome Assessment Tools for the Library of the
Future
Martha Kyrillidou Director, ARL Statistics and
Measurement Association of Research Libraries
ACRL Conference 2005 April 7, 2005 Minneapolis, MN
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The Association of Research Libraries

• Mission influences the changing environment of
  scholarly communication and the public policies
  that affect research libraries and the
  communities they serve.
• Members 123 major research libraries in North
  America.
• Ratios 4 of the higher education institutions
  providing 40 of the information resources.
• Users 3 million students and faculty served.
• Expenditures 3 billion annually of which 25
  is invested in access to electronic resources.

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ARL Roles
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ARL Statistics and Measurement

• To describe and measure the performance of
  research libraries and their contribution to
  teaching, research, scholarship and community
  service

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ARL Statistics and Measurement

• To describe and measure the performance of
  research libraries and their contribution to
  teaching, research, scholarship and community
  service

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Web Presence
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The Challenge of Assessment in Academic Libraries

• Traditional statistics emphasize inputs,
  expenditures, acquisitions, holdings, etc.
• National Rankings are often misleading
• No demonstrable relationship between expenditures
  and service quality
• The lack of metrics describing outcomes success
  from the users point of view

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Assessment

• The difficulty lies in trying to find a single
  model or set of simple indicators that can be
  used by different institutions, and that will
  compare something across large groups that is by
  definition only locally applicablei.e., how well
  a library meets the needs of its institution.
  Librarians have either made do with
  oversimplified national data or have undertaken
  customized local evaluations of effectiveness,
  but there has not been devised an effective way
  to link the two. Sarah Pritchard, Library
  Trends, 1996

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Needs that Create Opportunity

• Increasing demand for libraries to demonstrate
  outcomes/impacts in areas important to the
  institution.
• Increasing pressure to maximize use of resources
  benchmark best practices to save or reallocate
  resources.

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New Measures Initiatives

• Collaboration among member leaders with strong
  interest in this area
• Specific projects developed with different models
  for exploration
• Intent to make resulting tools and methodologies
  available to full membership and wider community

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A vision
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StatsQUAL
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New Measures

• LibQUAL
• E-metrics
• MINES for Libraries
• DigiQUAL
• SAILS
• Learning Outcomes Working Group
• Task Force on New Ways of Measuring Collections

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Measuring Collections

• In an environment with increasing emphasis on
  digital resources, what are the metrics that are
  appropriate for describing and characterizing
  collections, and what collection trends are
  particularly important to identify and track over
  time?

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a revolution in making

• Il est plus nécessaire d'étudier les hommes que
  les livres
• FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (16131680)