Academic Library Advocacy Toolkit: Student Success

Developed for ACRL by OCLC Research, this valuable resource investigates how libraries can increase student learning and success and effectively communicate their value to higher education stakeholders. It demonstrates how libraries are now measuring library contributions to student learning and success, and recommends where more research is needed in areas critical to the higher education sector such as accreditation, student retention, and academic achievement.

This report was published as part of the Library Integration in Institutional Learning Analytics (LIILA) project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The results of the project are detailed in this report and address the four project goals: (1) to increase librarian awareness and engagement in learning analytics; (2) to craft a plan for integrating academic libraries into learning analytics initiatives that support student learning and success; (3) to develop sustaining partnerships and collaborations among academic librarians and learning analytics lynchpins, institutional and library systems professionals, and library vendor communities; and (4) to explore, design, and develop library use cases and data profiles that can be used with learning analytics standards to integrate library data with institutional data stores.

We encourage you to use this document to start a conversation with your chief academic officer, provost, president, or your library’s advisory committee. At our request, Dr. Oakleaf wrote the executive summary with an external audience in mind. It is, we hope, a document that can stand alone, so that you can share it with administrators on campus in order to promote dialogue on the value of the academic library in higher education.

Academic Libraries and the Academy is a thorough collection of best practices, lessons learned, approaches, and strategies of how librarians, library professionals, and others in academic libraries around the world are successfully providing evidence of their contributions to student academic success and effectively demonstrating their library’s value and worth to institutional administrators and stakeholders. Forty-two case studies over two volumes—Volume One and Volume Two—are divided into four sections, from beginning assessment work through assessment activities that are more difficult to measure and generally more time- and resource-intensive. Each study provides practicable ideas and effective strategies for all levels of experience, assessment skills, stages of implementation, and access to resources

Building Teaching and Learning Communities is an entry into some of the most interesting conversations in higher education and offers ways for librarians to socialize in learning theory and begin “thinking together” with faculty. It proposes questions, challenges assumptions, provides examples to be used and adapted, and can help you better prepare as teachers and pursue the essential role of conversation and collaboration with faculty and students.

The Community College Library: Assessment explores the research, comprehensive plans, and new approaches to assessment being created by community college librarians around the U.S. Chapters include sample activities and materials and cover topics including assessing student learning while shifting from Standards to Framework; investigating and communicating library instruction’s relationship to student retention; and building librarian assessment confidence through communities of research practice.

The Engaged Library provides case studies, examples, and discussion of how academic libraries can create successful partnerships to contribute to the integration of high-impact practices on their campuses, and ways to execute these practices well. Each chapter addresses one of the ten original high-impact practices through the lens of library partnerships, contributions, and opportunities, and provides ideas for and examples of outcomes assessment.

Faculty-Librarian Collaborations collects chapters, case studies, and lesson plans detailing why these collaborations are important, how to develop and execute them, specific lesson plans, and ideas for assessing their effectiveness.

Assessment examines how library services and resources impact and are perceived by users, and guides strategic planning discussions and development of future acquisitions and services. Assessment is fundamental to positioning your library within your organization and effectively demonstrating how it furthers your institution’s goals. And it can be more of an art than a science, using the qualitative and quantitative data available to you to show your library’s alignment with the needs and mission of your organization.

Whether the library assessment is driven by external pressure or by an organizationally inspired desire to improve, library managers are expected to be able to plan and implement both comprehensive and targeted evaluations of their impact, services, resources, programs, virtual and physical spaces, and partnerships. Many librarians have been invited to serve on review teams for other academic libraries, either as part of a reaccreditation process or as part of a general cyclical program review process. At their own institutions, librarians have initiated reviews of their libraries or been asked to do so by a senior administrator. There are no blueprints for conducting external reviews and self-studies. In this volume, the reader will find essays by key thinkers and leaders that address the major aspects of the formal assessment and review of academic libraries. This volume offers practical and applicable information, contextualized through current theory and approaches.

Shaping the Campus Conversation on Student Learning and Experience serves anyone seeking to activate the results of the AiA program: academic librarians new to assessment; libraries that have ongoing assessment programs and are looking for new directions or ideas for expanding their efforts; librarians demonstrating to campus administrators the library’s impact on student learning and success; campus assessment officers and higher education administrators; and library and information science faculty and scholars.

Standards for Libraries in Higher Education are designed to guide academic libraries in advancing and sustaining their role as partners in educating students, achieving their institutions’ missions, and positioning libraries as leaders in assessment and continuous improvement on their campuses.

This toolkit is meant to assist academic librarians as they consider responsibly engaging with campus learning analytics at their respective institutions.

A free online toolkit designed to help academic libraries assess and communicate the impact of essential library programs and services

Higher education institutions of all types are facing intensified attention to assessment and accountability issues. Academic libraries are increasingly connecting with colleagues and campus stakeholders to design and implement assessment that documents their contributions to institutional priorities. In this day-long workshop on strategic and sustainable assessment, participants will identify institutional priorities and campus partners, design an assessment project grounded in action research, and prepare a plan for communicating the project results. This workshop is based on the highly successful ACRL Assessment in Action program curriculum.

ACRL’s Open Educational Resources (OER) and Affordability RoadShow will help you understand the basics of OER and how libraries can be involved in affordability initiatives at your institution. This day-long, introductory workshop is intended for academic librarians and library staff interested in learning about OER and/or developing OER initiatives. The workshop begins with a morning of foundational knowledge about OER: What are OER? How do they impact faculty and students? Throughout the day, we also discuss examples of and opportunities for library involvement in affordability initiatives, analyze stakeholders and institutional context, and determine appropriate strategies and goals for real-world application.

Libraries in higher education are increasingly required to demonstrate their value and document their contributions to overall institutional effectiveness. The Standards for Libraries in Higher Education is a framework for library planning and assessment that can be used for a variety of circumstances including annual planning, program review, and accreditation self-study. Through presentation, discussion, and group activities, learn how to use the Standards to communicate your library’s impact.

ACRL Standards for Libraries in Higher Education RoadShow - Resource Guide: Libraries in higher education are increasingly required to demonstrate their value and document their contributions to overall institutional effectiveness. The Standards for Libraries in Higher Education is a framework for library planning and assessment that can be used for a variety of circumstances including annual planning, program review, and accreditation self-study. Through presentation, discussion, and group activities, learn how to use the Standards to communicate your library’s impact.