Informing assessment training: library assessment practitioners’ perceptions of ACRL proficiencies

PurposeUsing the Association of Research Libraries' SPEC KIT 303 library assessment framework, this study examines and evaluates academic libraries' efforts toward establishing a culture of assessment.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative questionnaire is employed to collect data. The sample comprises 70 library staff working in eight academic libraries in public and private universities in Kuwait.FindingsThe findings document a readiness to create a culture of assessment in Kuwaiti academic libraries, though this was greater in private universities. Resources to develop this culture, such as assessment and analysis methods and the requisite skills and knowledge, are available, but commitment from academic leaders and plans for a shift toward culture of assessment were not evident. Overall, participating academic library staff acknowledged the value of developing a culture of assessment, but this seems not to be an institutional priorityPractical implicationsThe methodology and findings address gaps in library and information science education and library management on creating a culture of assessment and suggest future research avenues.Originality/valueLibrary assessment is a core function of libraries, but guaranteeing the continuity and consistency of related activities requires an organizational culture that facilitates and supports such assessment. While many articles have focused on the requisites for building a culture of assessment in higher education, few, if any, have assessed academic libraries in the cultural context of the Middle East.

Academic as well as public libraries nowadays have to face constant change. This paper gives an overview about leadership competences needed to succeed with deliberate large-scale changes in libraries. Most of the needed competences can already be imparted during undergraduate studies toward a bachelor’s degree in library and information science, as can be seen in the example of the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg. The critical success factors of every change project are information, communication and participation. Two qualitative studies concerning leadership in academic libraries and leadership in academic and public libraries in times of change, as well as a quantitative study in an academic library concerning the influence of a transformational and a transactional leadership style of the top management on the middle management as well as on team members including the influence of the organizational culture, emphasize the importance of these success factors, especially the communication competence of leaders in times of change.

This exploratory study identified and compared the organization, services, challenges of and motivations for makerspaces in public, academic, and school libraries in China. Although there is a significant body of literature on makerspaces in libraries, this study is one of the first ones that provides a comparison of library makerspace organization and operation by library type. Data was collected using paper and online surveys from 158 librarians. Supporting learning was the most frequently identified motivation for establishing a makerspace by all three categories of librarians. While makerspaces in academic libraries were mostly operated by library staff, school libraries more evenly relied on teaching staff, volunteers, library staff members, and paid instructors to operate their makerspaces. Makerspaces in public and academic libraries were funded mostly from the libraries’ budget, while school libraries were funded more by other units on the campus and institutional or individual investments. The most frequently selected technologies were 3D printing and modeling technologies, and makerspaces in academic libraries were better equipped than makerspaces in the other two types of libraries. Group study rooms and learning commons centers were the most frequently occurring physical spaces in academic and public library makerspaces. School library makerspaces differentiated themselves by offering wooden crafts centers more often than other library makerspaces. While participants selecting budget limitation and inadequate equipment as barriers to implementing makerspaces was not surprising, public and academic librarians also often cited the lack of professional instructors. Based on the findings, several suggestions were offered to the practice of planning and operating a makerspace in libraries such as bringing together internal and external funding to support makerspaces, consolidating the required physical space of makerspaces and the existing space arrangement of libraries, and developing additional training programs to address the problem of a lack of professional instructors.

A Review of:
 Johannessen, H. T. D. (2018). The need to grow, learn and develop – how does management affect motivation for professional development? LIBER Quarterly, 28(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10238
 Abstract
 Objective – This study explores whether there is a correlation between academic library leaders’ support for professional development and their employees’ professional self-esteem and motivation to participate in professional development.
 Design – Survey questionnaire.
 Setting – Academic libraries in Norway.
 Subjects – 1,637 full time equivalent (FTE) staff.
 Methods – The theoretical framework for this study is knowledge management. The author defines this as “The creation and subsequent management of an environment which encourages knowledge to be created, shared, learnt, enhanced, and organized for the benefit of the organization and its customers” (Sarrafzadeh, Martin, & Hazeri, 2006, p. 624, quoted on p. 3). An anonymous quantitative survey was made available to staff working in Norwegian academic libraries. The survey included questions about to what extent their leader encourages them to attend conferences, to what extent their leader understands their skills and competencies, personal belief in their own skills and competencies to perform their work tasks, and number of professional development activities they attended in 2015 (including conferences, continuing education seminars, and interdepartmental seminars).
 Main Results – 626 survey responses were collected, for a 38% response rate. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Over 50% of all survey respondents reported high satisfaction with their professional skills and competencies. There is a difference when broken down by gender, with 77% of men reporting confidence in their professional skills versus 63% of women. Education level, on the other hand, does not make a difference. The study found a correlation between perception by library staff that their library leader has a “good overview” of their professional skills and staff members’ confidence in their ability to perform their job well. Library staff with leaders who encouraged professional development were more likely to participate in external professional development activities. Participation in internal professional development activities was not affected by library leaders’ encouragement.
 Conclusion – When library staff are encouraged by library leadership to participate in professional development, they are more likely to do so. Library staff who perceive that their library’s leaders recognize and value their professional skills and competencies have a higher sense of professional self-esteem. Library leaders can use knowledge management to come to a better understanding of the knowledge and skills their staff members already possess, and to encourage communities of practice and the sharing of knowledge in the organization. This recognition can result in employees who are happier and more motivated to learn.

A Review of the Literature on Assessment in Academic and Research Libraries, 2005 to August 2011 Jon R. Hufford (bio) Introduction Assessment in United States higher education has become very important in recent years. Virtually all colleges and universities are now striving to prove through empirical evidence that they are committed to improving student learning. Created in late 2005, the US Department of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education was charged with the task of "developing a strategy for higher education to meet the needs of America's population and address the economic and workforce needs of the future."1 The Commission's final report, A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of United States Higher Education, makes several recommendations for reform and states in a summary that "improved accountability is vital to ensuring the success of all the other reforms we propose. Colleges and universities must become more transparent about cost, price, and student success outcomes, and must willingly share this information with students and families." Though the report was not an early wake-up call for assessment, since articles on the need and importance of assessment in higher education had been published in the literature before 2006,2 it was an important document on the topic from a political and administrative perspective and has had a significant impact on campuses across the nation. This is because, in response to the Commission's report, the regional accreditation organizations made changes in their standards, and these changes have been directly responsible for the trend toward assessment. As might be expected, some of the standards of several of these regional organizations relate to academic libraries and have changed the way they are assessed. This article reviews the literature on assessment in academic and research libraries that has been published since the Commission on the Future of Higher Education was created in 2005 and up until August 2011. Much has been written about assessment [End Page 5] over the years. The author felt that coverage of the literature of the most recent six years would include sources that would still be reasonably relevant for academic professionals in 2011. The author was also interested in providing an examination of the coverage since the Commission's report to disclose new developments, ideas, and directions in the assessment of academic and research libraries. Also, to offer a competent and manageable review of the literature, the article focuses on assessments concerned with the management or administration of libraries and their collections, public services, and issues or projects affecting more than one department within a library. Assessments in the acquisitions and technical services areas have been excluded. The author's goal was to treat the topic comprehensively. However, some sources were not considered significant enough to be included, and it is possible that other sources that perhaps should have been included were inadvertently left out. A representative selection of noteworthy older monographs and textbooks generally recognized for their contribution to academic and research library assessment has been included, along with a selection of publications on assessment in higher education that provides a more comprehensive perspective of the topic. Though the majority of the sources reviewed in this article were published in the United States and cover developments in the United States, some sources published in international or foreign publications that cover developments in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, or South Africa were included because they discuss developments similar to those taking place in American academic and research libraries and provide important insights into the topic. Assessment is often equated with evaluation. To education professionals, assessment occurs when a researcher wants to discover what a student knows or can do, while evaluation is used to determine the value of a course or program. Authors of books focused on academic and research libraries normally use evaluation when they discuss the measurement (or evaluation) of a library's operations and services. In The Measurement and Evaluation of Library Services, F.W. Lancaster explains in his definition of evaluation that it "consists of the comparison of performance with the objectives of the agency, in order to determine (a) whether there has been any change in performance for a...

Reviews the literature on outcomes assessment in academic libraries in the 1990s, focusing on performance measures and indicators, outcomes and impacts. More and more, academic libraries are being asked to demonstrate their impact on student learning and faculty research outcomes, and to frame their assessment in relation to the goals and objectives of the parent institution. Librarians need to find ways of measuring outcomes and impacts in relation to inputs.

Developing Tomorrow's Library Leaders Brian E. C. Schottlaender (bio) One of the hallmarks of the professions is the commitment to, if not the requirement for, continuing education. This is as true of librarianship as it is of medicine, the law, or teaching. In fact, the American Library Association is on record as saying that: Education and Continuous Learning is one of five key action areas adopted by the American Library Association to fulfill its mission of promoting the highest quality library and information services for all people . . . For librarians, continuous learning is critical to renewing the expertise and skills needed to teach and assist members of the public in the new information age.1 Continuing education encompasses a spectrum of possible activities, including workshops, credit-granting classes, professional development programs, leadership development programs, and training—or (shudder) "trainings." Any of these can be certificated, or not; and, increasingly, many take place online, in whole or in part. While professional and leadership development are often considered interchangeable, they are actually different—at least in their focus and intent. Professional development is learning intended to help one earn or maintain professional credentials, while leadership development is the acquisition of skills and knowledge to expand one's capacity and capability for performing in leadership roles within organizations.2 In what follows, I will consider the latter. One of the first post-master of library science (MLS) development efforts of the modern era was launched in 1968 by the Council on Library Resources (CLR): the CLR Fellows program. While one can debate the point, I consider it to have been professional development, not leadership development. The following description, extracted from the College & Research Libraries News announcement of the eighth cohort in 1976, supports this view: "Each fellow will spend three months or more pursuing a self-developed study project, aimed at improving his or her competence in the substantive, administrative, or technical aspects of librarianship."3 This language is much like that used to describe what is arguably the program's follow-on nearly four decades later, the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program that CLIR4 began in 2004: "Fellows work on projects that forge and strengthen connections among collections, educational technologies, and current research."5 The program lists leadership [End Page 227] first among its core goals, followed by awareness, changing roles, relevant resources, and young scholars.6 Nevertheless, its focus strikes me as one of professional development, rather than leadership development. In 1982, Robert Hayes, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), launched the longest-standing leadership development program in librarianship, Senior Fellows. Following my retirement from UC San Diego in 2017, I was appointed director of that program. I shall describe it in greater detail following this brief overview of cognate programs. In the mid-1990s, CLR and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, helped launch the Digital Leadership Institute, which rapidly matured in 1999 into the Frye Leadership Institute. Named for the former chancellor of Emory—Billy E. Frye—and cohosted by Emory, CLIR, and EDUCAUSE, the mission of the Frye Institute was to "provide continuing education opportunities for individuals who currently hold, or will one day assume, positions that make them responsible for transforming the management of scholarly information in the higher education community."7 The two-week, annual, Emory-based program continued as such through the first decade of the 2000s, until it evolved again and emerged in 2012 as the Leading Change Institute (LCI). As its name indicates, the latter's remit is more narrowly focused on change leadership and is specifically "designed for leaders in higher education, including CIOs, librarians, information technology professionals, and administrators, who are interested in working collaboratively to promote and initiate change on critical issues affecting the academy."8 With that evolution, the institute also moved to Washington, D.C., and reduced its on-site component from two weeks to one. Launched in 1999, the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians is a collaboration between the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This weeklong on-site offering is intended to help "college-level librarians and...

This column provides an overview of the newly updated Proficiencies for Assessment in Academic Libraries (approved June 2023) and outlines the steps and rationale for each phase of the revision process. It is our hope that you will not only apply and share these assessment proficiencies in your own organizations and practice but also consider how you might adapt the strategies for inclusivity and transparency that were used to update the Proficiencies in your own work such as strategic planning, updating or revising programs, or creating new services.

An Investigation of Service Expectations: Developing and Validating an Alternative Scale for Service Quality Assessment in Academic Libraries

The aim of the study is to investigate the conceptions of academic library leaders’ about library leadership, library management, the best attributes for academic library leaders and the ways to develop leadership skills. A qualitative approach was used and data were collected through in-depth interviews from 15 experienced academic library leaders in Pakistan. Phenomenology was used to explore the common conceptions of the participants about library leadership, library management, smart leaders’ attributes and significant ways to develop leadership. Academic library leaders perceived that a library leader is all about being visionary and innovative, being bold, and being a knowledge worker. Majority of the participants differentiated between library leader and library manager however, others had similar conceptions about both roles. The best attributes of academic library leaders conceived by professionals are having a humanistic and charismatic personality, being a team leader, and having building relationship skills or social outreach. Humanist aspect of a leader prevails among participants’ voices and this might be an addition to the existing literature. Continuous professional development, mentorship, and being in a competitive environment are the best ways for library leadership skills development. The study would be helpful for library leaders, university management, library associations and library schools in policy making and offering of professional training and education of library leaders.

The purpose of this chapter is to present a systematic and comprehensive review of the assessment and evaluation efforts of academic libraries in China. Generally, it is believed that theoretical research on academic library assessment and evaluation spurs corresponding practice. Holistic activities related to this include the integration of undergraduate teaching level evaluation and the promulgation of the System of Indicators of Academic Library Evaluation. These activities propel pertinent work in a general way, yet to some extent they lack operability. Specific standards and practice of assessment and evaluation of collections, service quality, and digital libraries, as well as the collection of assessment statistics, indicate that academic library evaluation focuses on the association/consortium, standardization, and the user. Problems in academic library assessment and evaluation in China at this stage include the absence of a standard evaluation system, an unrealistic assessor/evaluator structure, and an inappropriate preponderance of input indicators over output.

The purpose of this chapter is to present a systematic and comprehensive review of the assessment and evaluation efforts of academic libraries in China. Generally, it is believed that theoretical research on academic library assessment and evaluation spurs corresponding practice. Holistic activities related to this include the integration of undergraduate teaching level evaluation and the promulgation of the System of Indicators of Academic Library Evaluation. These activities propel pertinent work in a general way, yet to some extent they lack operability. Specific standards and practice of assessment and evaluation of collections, service quality, and digital libraries, as well as the collection of assessment statistics, indicate that academic library evaluation focuses on the association/consortium, standardization, and the user. Problems in academic library assessment and evaluation in China at this stage include the absence of a standard evaluation system, an unrealistic assessor/evaluator structure, and an inappropriate preponderance of input indicators over output.

Simulation-Based Mastery Learning With Virtual Coaching: Experience in Training Standardized Upper Endoscopy to Novice Endoscopists

Here is a fascinating first-hand perspective of the dramatic changes that have occurred in academic library administration over the past five decades. In Leadership in Academic Libraries, distinguished directors of academic and research libraries pay tribute to W. Porter Kellam, Director Emeritus of the University of Georgia, by presenting an overview of the course of academic and research libraries over the span of his 50 year career. Administrative leaders in academic librarianship including Stuart Forth, Richard Chapin, Frank Grisham, and Ken Toombs offer a frank, perceptive, and witty account of the state of library leadership based upon many decades of accumulated experience and hard-earned knowledge.Leadership in Academic Libraries provides valuable insights on library administration, and in particular, on the job of the library director. Readers interested in the history of academic libraries and library administration will gain new insight on the environment in which these leaders worked and how they dealt with university administration and changes in collection development. Chapters also provide advice on how library directors can keep their jobs, and the value of forming professional friendships. Other topics addressed include developments in academic and research libraries over the past five decades in library administration, library services, library architecture, and interlibrary cooperation. An enjoyable autobiographical essay by Mr. Kellam that recounts his long and distinguished career concludes this remarkable volume.Library science students and professionals who wish to become more knowledgeable about the history of academic libraries will cherish the first-hand experiences of library leaders during the richest and most invigorating time in the history of American libraries. Academic librarians and library students researching the job of library director or the recent history of academic libraries will benefit from the experience and wisdom of these leaders in the areas of administration, library architecture, automation, and library cooperation.

Women are still underrepresented in library leadership. Previous research has focused on academic libraries, with samples of <1000 libraries. This is the first study to analyze >13,000 U.S. libraries while considering differences by state, type, and collection size. Women are underrepresented in leadership by 8.2 percentage points (pp) at academic libraries, 5.5 pp at special libraries, 10.7 pp at school libraries, and 14.7 pp at government libraries. This corresponds to a male being 28.6%–185.5% more likely to be director. At public libraries, women are overrepresented by 2.6 pp, but their director percentage decreases exponentially with collection size.