Monthly Archives: April 2011

Call for Chapter Proposals – Advances in Librarianship, Volume 35

Contexts for Assessment and Outcome Evaluation in Librarianship

Assessment and outcomes evaluation has become increasingly important in librarianship. Although initially used mostly in educational contexts to measure student learning, the strategy has migrated to other contexts such as hiring and employee development, overall organizational and institutional successes, measuring the outcomes of projects and operational changes, and self assessment at the personal level. This growing emphasis is in part is due to increasingly stringent requirements of government agencies and to foundations and funding agencies wanting to ensure that their funds are used effectively to improve services and operations. In addition, the current economic climate and retrenchments in non-profit agencies such as colleges, university and public libraries, have raised the need for assessment and outcomes evaluation to a critical level.

                This volume of Advances in Librarianship will focus not on the how of doing them, but rather on their successes and failures in various contexts in which these tools have been and will be used.  Topics of interest for proposed chapters about assessment and outcomes evaluation can include, but are not limited to, the following:

�         Outcomes evaluation and assessment cases and applications in all settings such as education for librarianship, libraries and other information services analyzing their impact, results and effectiveness;

�         Models or case studies specifically developed or adapted to accommodate digital environments;

�         Studies and research of their usage in various contexts such as library and information science operations;

�         Usage in special and on-going funding requests to governments, foundations and other funding sources;

�         Assessment cases or models used in developing software, searching tools, and other electronic applications such as social media;

�         Self assessment cases used by employers of librarians and library and information faculty members;

�         Use of outcomes evaluation and assessment in hiring and promotion in libraries;

�         Studies of the successes of using outcomes evaluation and assessment in tenure decisions in teaching environments;

�         Assessment from within and without the library, viz. the virtual library and digital services within the physical library;

�         The role of end users in assessment and outcomes evaluation undertakings;

�         Views on how to keep assessment and outcomes evaluation dynamic and relevant in times of rapid change;

�         Best practices in using assessment and outcomes evaluation which are both quantitative and qualitative;

�         Exploration of the relationships between research and assessment;

�         The extent to which rubrics used in measuring outcomes and assessment have been and are being standardized;

�         Community needs assessments as part of, or prequels to, strategic planning for collections, spaces and services in all types of libraries;

�         The impact of assessment on changes in the fields of library and information science.

Please submit chapter proposals by the end of July 2011 to series editor Anne Woodsworth: awoodsworth@emeraldinsight.com .  Beginning with volume 35, W. David Penniman wil become co-editor of the series.

Author guidelines and further information on the Advances in Librarianship series can be found on the website at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/series.htm?id=0065-2830

Questions or comments should be addressed to the Editor and submitted via e-mail to: awoodsworth@emeraldinsight.com Schedule of due dates:

                Proposal outlines:           July 31, 2011

                First drafts:                         December 1, 2011

                Revised drafts:                        March 1, 2012

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