September 28, 2017
Recommended Reading: Academic Library Impact
I’ve been reading through Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research, which was released this week (the result of a partnership between ACRL and OCLC Research). Especially at this time of year, when we are welcoming students back to our campuses, preparing for a busy season of teaching, and and just generally turning things up to 11, I’ve found it interesting to spend time with a document that is equally full of possibilities and new avenues.
The report itself is a hefty thing, so I’m not going to try and break it all down for you. Rather, I’ll share a few highlights about content and structure.
The “Essential Areas to Research” identified in the report are as follows:
- Communicate the library’s contributions.
- Match library assessment to institution’s mission.
- Include library data in institutional data collection.
- Quantify the library’s impact on student success.
- Enhance teaching and learning.
- Collaborate with educational stakeholders.
For each suggested research area, the report sketches out a brief summary of the issue, followed by a short list of “suggested actions,” and a set of potential research questions.
Equally intriguing are the two tools built on the hundreds of citations included in the report’s literature review.
One is a visualization dashboard, which you can access here. The dashboard allows you to sort the several hundred articles included in the literature review by a variety of attributes–publication year, outcomes measured, method of analysis, and others.
The other is a literature search, which allows you to pull documents based on either a keyword search or a set of criteria. At the very least, this could be a valuable tool when looking for examples of studies using a particular data collection or analysis methodology.
Obviously, this is a busy time for us all, so consider bookmarking this report and revisiting it later in the year!