Transcript Document
Assessment @ Cornell Xin Li For ARL Assessment Forum January 11, 2008 At ALA 2007: Cornell and Assessment In Anne Kenney’s presentation: http://www.arl.org/news/enews/enews_july07.shtml Strategies: Think Value • What data do we have? • Are they still worth mining for current library activities? • What data do we need? • What’s the value to collect new data? • Will new data lead to decisions/actions? • Is the return worth the investment in collecting them? • If we don’t have the data, who else has? • Can we use others’ data, why and why not? Sample Activities Strategies: Think Measures of Success • Align Library assessment with University priorities – University strategic planning and campaign – Renovation • Embrace competition as motivator for bench marking – ARL new measures initiative – Best colleges and universities (what do their libraries do?) • Recognize organizational climate as key success factor – Correlation of customer satisfaction with library services and the climate of the organization the library staff perceive Sample Activities Strategies: Think Collaboration • Research and Assessment Unit • Library committees Avoid redundancy and maximize use of data and findings • Project Groups • Functional units and staff within • Offices of the University • Context-specific peers Align with larger goals and benefit from and support peers at the same time Sample Activities 2008 In the Works • Participate in Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment • Conduct use and user studies to support library priorities • Drop low-value measures and automate annual statistics collection • Re-design Cornell Library Annual Statistics Report • Finish data mart pilot • Standardize measures to prepare for longitudinal study • Launch GoFigure! Noteworthy for CUL staff • Consider producing news briefs for University administrators, faculty and stakeholders • LibQual mining • NCES mining • And more… Growing Pains • Staff training and retooling • Project management • Risk taking and acceptance of good enough data • Data management • Selling the value of assessment • Political ramifications • Data discomfort • Decentralized assessment landscape Tools That Helped Us Thank you! [email protected]