SPEC Kit 318: Impact Measures in Research Libraries (September 2010)
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SPEC Kit 318: Impact Measures in Research Libraries · 9 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Introduction In the face of ubiquitous access to online informa- tion, users tend to give libraries less and less credit for contributing to their success at their work. At the same time, funders and governing bodies increasingly challenge libraries to demonstrate their impact beyond the occasional user testimonial and anecdote. The number of volumes held or number of library instruc- tion sessions taught is no longer seen as compelling justification for continued funding. The question that the profession needs to be able to answer is this: what difference do library resources, services, and expertise make in their users’ lives? In their 2007 SPEC Kit on library assessment,1 au- thors Stephanie Wright and Lynda White reported that library assessment was alive and well in North American research libraries and that there had been considerable progress in that area from the mid-1980s through 2007. The authors of this SPEC survey were curious about how much research libraries have ventured beyond gauging user satisfaction and col- lecting input and output measures, into attempting to assess the impact of library use on academic and career success. What kinds of projects, experiments, or programs have taken place in recent years, how wide spread are these, what do their results reveal, have these results been shared and have they made a difference for the library? Are there best practices emerging? Finding answers to such questions and helping to spread best practices was our goal. The Survey Loosely following a framework presented by Roswitha Poll and Philip Payne in their article entitled “Impact Measures for Libraries and Information Services,”2the survey asked respondents in ARL member libraries whether they have investigated five major areas of possible library impact: correlations between mea- sures of library use and student success pre- or post graduation correlations between participation in li- brary instruction and information literacy skills corre- lations between measures of library use and research output attempts to calculate how much financial value the library contributes to the parent institution or user community and any other areas of library impact. Within each of these five areas, the survey asked which measures were correlated, which methods were used to collect data, what conclusions were drawn, who instigated the study, whether the study was one-time or ongoing, whether the results were shared outside the library, and whether the results were used to influence decisions at the library or par- ent institution. The survey was conducted between February 22 and March 31, 2010. Fifty-five of the 124 ARL member institutions completed the survey for a response rate of 44%. It is impossible to know whether the respond- ing institutions provide a representative sample of the impact assessment activities in ARL libraries, or whether the libraries that did not respond to the sur- vey indeed have done less in this area. Findings and Observations Despite the urgency the library community has felt in recent years to justify its value, the responding li- braries reported shockingly little work that focuses on investigating whether use of library resources and services correlate with measures of success for library users. Only 19 respondents (34%) report having conducted a study in one or more of the five impact