ACRL Standards into Practice: Workshop Report
In November the Council of Chief Librarians sponsored workshops developed by ACRL on Planning, Assessing, and Communicating Library Impact: Putting the Standards for Libraries in Higher Education into Action. The participants were challenged to learn how to use the Standards to communicate their library’s impact through presentation, discussion, and group activities. ACRL also offers this class online.
Our presenter was Rhonda Huisman, Assistant Librarian at the University Library, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. Rhonda is the education librarian at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. She has worked as a K-12 educator, a community college librarian and grant director, and as an adjunct faculty member. Rhonda’s areas of research, publications, and presentations include the role of the high school librarian and curriculum in transitioning students to higher education, and library as place in urban settings, as well as assessment and evaluation of information literacy programs and instructional approaches. Rhonda attended one of our community colleges, Copper Mountain College, when she lived in San Bernardino County.
Everyone agreed that outcomes assessment is harder to quantify than evidence indicators. Librarians must know the institution’s vision and goals in order to be able to write their own standards/outcomes. She recommended the ACRL metrics tool, the NCES survey and o our own Chancellor’s Annual Data Survey, as ways to benchmark your college in comparison to other colleges of similar demographics.
Rhonda mentioned some sites that she uses:
- Trails: Tool for Real Time Assessment – a knowledge assessment for information literacy skills for students. (http://www.trails-9.org/about2.php) She often uses the 9th grade level as an initial assessment and the 12th grade level as a final assessment.
- Project Sails Access: an information literacy assessment tool. (https://www.projectsails.org/)
- Megan Oakleaf’s Shared Standard’s Chart
(http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/zar/2011_Oakleaf_handout_1.pdf ) - She also mentioned the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) which has some information on current assessment (http://learningoutcomeassessment.org/)
The slides and handouts from the presentation are available on the Council of Chief Librarians’ website.