Academic Libraries and the Academy: Strategies and Approaches to Demonstrate Your Value, Impact, and Return on Investment, Volume One

Decreased student enrollments, diminished budgets, and the fiscal reality of declining state appropriations are forcing higher education administrators to closely examine the allocation of funds and resources across the institution. With increased expectations of accountability and transparency for budget expenditures, institutions scrambling to do more with less, and the emergence of new budgeting models that view units as either cost centers or profit centers, academic libraries are under new pressures and scrutiny. It’s become incredibly important and necessary for academic libraries to clearly articulate to their institutional administrators their contributions to institutional outcomes, short-term and long-term value, and in essence, their return-on-investment.

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. This first volume examines assessment activities that are beginner to intermediate, and generally less time- and resource-intensive: 19 case studies are divided into two sections. The first, Seeding the Initiative, examines eight cases of academic libraries at the beginning stages of their library’s assessment initiative and are considered works-in-progress where no outcomes or results are yet available. The value in these cases is in the process of creating and planning the initial design of the initiative and the reporting of initial progress. The second, Low-Hanging Fruit, examines 11 initiatives that were easy to launch and implement due to few constraints: They were low-cost and adequate support and expertise were already in place. These assessment projects tend to be shorter in length, typically under a year, and can be managed by one individual or a small group of individuals with limited financial and external resources.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to demonstrating a library’s worth and value, so Academic Libraries and the Academy captures a range of successful approaches and strategies utilized in different types of academic libraries around the world. Each case study opens with a one-page summary presenting fourteen descriptors of the chapter’s content that will allow you to quickly ascertain if the case study is of immediate interest based on your individual needs, interests, and goals. This book is designed to provide guidance and support to many of you—librarians, library professionals, and others involved in library assessment—who struggle to find the best approach and strategy at the right time in your assessment journey, and help you successfully articulate your academic library’s value.