Assessment%20@%20Cornell

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Assessment _at_ Cornell Xin Li For ARL Assessment
Forum January 11, 2008
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At ALA 2007 Cornell and Assessment
In Anne Kenneys presentation
http//www.arl.org/news/enews/enews_july07.shtml
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Strategies Think Value

• What data do we have?
• Are they still worth mining for current library
  activities?
• What data do we need?
• Whats the value to collect new data?
• Will new data lead to decisions/actions?
• Is the return worth the investment in collecting
  them?
• If we dont have the data, who else has?
• Can we use others data, why and why not?

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Sample Activities
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Strategies Think Measures of Success

• Align Library assessment with University
  priorities
• University strategic planning and campaign
• Renovation
• Embrace competition as motivator for bench
  marking
• ARL new measures initiative
• Best colleges and universities (what do their
  libraries do?)
• Recognize organizational climate as key success
  factor
• Correlation of customer satisfaction with library
  services and the climate of the organization the
  library staff perceive

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Sample Activities
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Strategies Think Collaboration

• Research and Assessment Unit
• Library committees
• Project Groups
• Functional units and staff within
• Offices of the University
• Context-specific peers

Avoid redundancy and maximize use of data and
findings
Align with larger goals and benefit from and
support peers at the same time
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Sample Activities
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2008 In the Works

• Participate in Organizational Climate and
  Diversity Assessment
• Conduct use and user studies to support library
  priorities
• Drop low-value measures and automate annual
  statistics collection
• Re-design Cornell Library Annual Statistics
  Report
• Finish data mart pilot
• Standardize measures to prepare for longitudinal
  study
• Launch GoFigure! Noteworthy for CUL staff
• Consider producing news briefs for University
  administrators, faculty and stakeholders
• LibQual mining
• NCES mining

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Growing Pains

• Staff training and retooling
• Project management
• Risk taking and acceptance of good enough data
• Data management
• Selling the value of assessment
• Political ramifications
• Data discomfort
• Decentralized assessment landscape

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Tools That Helped Us
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Thank you! xin.li_at_cornell.edu