The Library should perform an assessment audit to determine what goals presently exist and what assessment is currently being done. The library may already be doing a lot of assessment of services and learning but simply not reporting it.
When considering appropriate outcomes, the library should take into consideration the opinions of library stakeholders and constituencies. These would be people who have a stake in, are involved in or are served by the library. They may include
Employers may provide feedback to ISU about the skill levels of their new employees. The university administration may demand a certain level of service. Faculty may complain that students are not learning a particular research skill. Take these under consideration when selecting goals and outcomes to assess.
Existing Assessment
However, just because you have been measuring an outcome does not mean you should continue to assess that outcome. Just because you have been collecting data on something does not mean you should continue to collect data. Select outcomes and measures because they are right for your library, not because you have always used those outcomes and measures. Unfortunately, libraries conduct many activities because "We've always done it that way."
Who Decides Outcomes
Dept Chair, library faculty, and dept personnel will collectively decide objectives and goals for unit. Some may be determined by directives from the university administration. Some may be determined by individual department's desire to measure the success of their services.
Because library and information science is a discipline and librarians develop different specialties within that discipline, the decision of outcomes should be a team effort. This is how the teaching departments do it.
Who Decides Measures
Dept Chair and dept personnel will decide and choose measurements and data collection methods for unit.
Responsibility
The head of a library department takes a leadership role in assessment due to his/her position in management or administration. However, this does NOT mean the chairs of the departments should do all of the assessment themselves. Assessment--the use of evidence in decision-making--belongs to the entire library faculty...and perhaps to the library staff as well. It is not possible for one person to do all of the work themselves. The chairs are strongly encouraged to delegate and share responsibility for deciding outcomes, collecting data, and interpreting the data.
"The next step is to identify the assessment of learning goals that is already occurring in your department. Wherever you are gathering information about student learning, even if it is informal, even if it is not written down, even if it is not being used very well, even if no one has called it assessment, include it now, because it is a potential site or building block for assessment. Your goal at the end of this analysis is to construct an analysis..." (p. 55.)
"For each type of data you list, describe how they are used..." (p. 58)
"Now you have information about the assessment being conducted...You are ready to put it all together into a coherent picture." (p. 58)
Walvoord, B. E. (2004). Assessment clear and simple : A practical guide for institutions, departments, and general education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (pp. 55-58)
It is a good idea to look at existing assessment measures after deciding the learning outcomes (goals) so that you do not create outcomes simply to match existing data collection, however inappropriate to what your library wants to know. The audit may draw to your attention things that ARE important but you left out of your plan. But take care not to include nonessential outcomes just to justify unnecessary data collection.
Walvoord specializes in assessment of student learning in academia, not in libraries. But her observations and recommendations are useful to library assessment.
