By: Steve Borrelli
Focus on Assessment: Fall 2019 Update
The Assessment Department had a busy summer and is busy preparing a number of studies to conduct this fall and spring. Now that the term is well underway, we wanted to give an update about what we’ve been up to and let you know about a few upcoming events and new/updated products you might find useful.
Welcome Leigh Tinik, analysis and planning consultant
In July, Leigh Tinik joined the Assessment Department as a new analysis and planning consultant. Leigh spent over 10 years as a research associate and manager of the Research and Analysis Unit with the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. She was brought on to add support for collection assessment and assistance with library and institutional data. She’s new to libraries but has a strong background working in complex data and reporting environments. In addition to supporting collection assessment projects, Leigh will be leading external reporting efforts. For those who contribute statistics for Data Gathering Weeks or external reporting efforts, Leigh is your new contact.
Fall Data Gathering Week
Data Gathering Week for fall 2019 is scheduled to begin Monday, October 21, and will run through Sunday, October 27. Please direct questions to Leigh Tinik, law222@psu.edu.
LAMC Speaker: Maurini Straub, director of library assessment, University of Rochester
University of Rochester Director of Library Assessment Maurini Straub will be speaking to the Library Assessment and Metrics Council (LAMC) at our next meeting scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, at 11:00 a.m., via zoom. Straub will be discussing her approach to assessment and the assessment program she’s developed. Please consider joining us on 11/5 at https://psu.zoom.us/j/543101396
Historical ARL Statistics and Benchmarking Dataset Updated
The Assessment Department maintains a publicly available benchmarking dataset and visualizations of Penn State Libraries’ and BTAA institutions’ statistics derived from the Association of Research Libraries Annual Statistics Survey. The statistics have been updated with the most recent data available, 2018.
Peer Group developed to assist with benchmarking
This summer, at the request of Associate Dean for Technology and Digital Strategies Karen Estlund, Lana Munip led on the development of a peer group to assist with future benchmarking efforts. Estlund recognized that benchmarking efforts often focus on other BTAA institutions, and that larger institutions like those of the BTAA are often slow implementing organizational change. While most peer groups are created at the institutional level, our new peer group was developed using available library data (e.g., ARL, ACRL, and IPEDS), in addition to university data. The resulting peer group is based on institutions with similar characteristics but which outperform the University Libraries based on key performance and organizational indicators and is informed by Standards for Libraries in Higher Education. The report is available in the Assessment Archive.
Ithaka Graduate Survey, spring 2019 Brown bag report outs, and visualizations
This spring, we conducted the Ithaka Survey of Graduate and Professional Students. The results have been visualized in Tableau and are available on the Libraries’ intranet. Two brown bag meetings are scheduled to discuss the results. Both are scheduled to be hosted in the Dean’s Conference Room and over zoom (see associated links). The first, scheduled for Thursday, October 10, from noon to 1:00 p.m., will provide an overview of participation, key findings and a brief review of the STEM module results (Zoom Link). The second, scheduled for Friday, October 18, from noon to 1:00 p.m., will provide highlights from the Role of the Libraries and Library Space modules (Zoom Link).
If you have any questions about any of the information in this post, are interested in support or just want to discuss an assessment project, reach out to Steve Borrelli (smb96@psu.edu).