Digital badging has seen widespread adoption within the US higher education sector with continued growth predicted. Might digital badging present an underrealized opportunity for libraries seeking new vehicles through which to deliver information literacy instructional content? This paper offers an analysis of badging in higher education and…

Demonstrating the value of library and information services has been a theme in library discussions in recent years. The application of many different approaches to evaluation has waxed and waned together with the development of theories of evaluation across the humanities and social sciences. Over the past two decades research and activity on…

Increasing demand for biotechnology and biomedical resources prompted the Engineering Library at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) to complete a collection assessment of the journals, books, and other resources provided by the University Libraries. This paper presents a variety of methods for evaluating library collections and describes…

Discussion of the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) E-Metrics project focuses on understanding how academic libraries might specify, produce, and assess institutional outcomes. Offers a framework for approaching the outcomes assessment process and suggests that multiple approaches to assessment are needed for an assessment of libraries in…

This essay served as the basis for the opening keynote speech during the Library Assessment Conference in Baltimore in 2010. It set the stage by tracing the demands for accountability in the beginning of the century and outlining progress made. It provided important background and context for the following four keynote papers delivered by Megan…

This kit contains a collection of representative documents on performance review procedures in academic and research libraries. Multiple documents from the Pennsylvania State University Libraries include a management guide to performance evaluation, a memo on performance evaluation from the librarian, and forms and instructions for use of both the…

Explores the number of dimensions needed to measure users' perceptions of library service quality based on data from the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) LibQUAL+ project. Results were consistent with a view that a single set of scores is one reasonable way to characterize user perceptions of library service quality. (Author/LRW)

A complex tool, data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to evaluate the relative efficiency of major academic research libraries that are members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Results of a two-year base line study using traditional measures taken from 1995-96 ARL statistics are reported. (AEF)

This Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) kit contains a collection of representative documents on performance review procedures in academic and research libraries. The kit comprises: (1) performance appraisal forms from the Stanford University Libraries; (2) a rating scale evaluation form and an essay evaluation form for professional…

Reports the design, methodology, and results of a research project which examined the effectiveness of bibliographic displays produced by online catalogs. A means of testing displays against several hundred thousand records at a reasonable cost and using that to test several display possibilities is described. (CLB)

This is the final technical report (in three parts) of a 15-month long project to study the costs and value of library functions at five major research libraries. Twenty-one services or service aspects were studied, and numerous measures of the importance or benefit of the service to the users were made. These measures were studied together to lay…

Evaluation is important. As the sea of information grows ever larger, educators must be able to teach their students to evaluate what they find and decide its relevance and accuracy. In the American Association of School Librarians' publication "Standards for the 21st Century Learner," evaluation is a skill (1.1.4, 1.1.5), a disposition in action…

This collection of library documents, which illustrates current techniques for conducting user studies in order to facilitate specific public services planning and priority-setting efforts at the member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), contains excerpts from: (1) four general user studies conducted at the University of…

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has collected descriptive data from its members for the better part of the 20th century. This data shows that as libraries' environments change to reflect increased interest in accountability and institutional outcomes. To account for this, an ARL New Measures Initiative has been established to develop…

Cost benefit accounting is not being used in academic reference libraries today but administrators are beginning to require quantitative evaluation of services provided. Several systems are described and evaluated. (35 references) (DH)