Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research

Now more than ever, academic libraries are being asked to demonstrate value to their institutional stakeholders, funders, and governance boards. Academic Library Impact builds on ACRL’s 2010 Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report and the results of the subsequent Assessment in Action program. It demonstrates how libraries are now measuring library contributions to student learning and success, and recommends where more research is needed in areas critical to the higher education sector such as accreditation, student retention, and academic achievement.

This report is also available in an open access edition here: http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/whitepapers/academiclib.pdf. 

This action-oriented research agenda includes:

• a report on all project phases and findings;
• a detailed research agenda based on those findings;
• a visualization component that filters relevant literature and creates graphics that can communicate library value to stakeholders, http://experimental.worldcat.org/valresearch;
• a bibliography of the literature analyzed; and
• a full bibliography of the works cited and reviewed, http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/themes/works-cited.pdf.

All components were produced in partnership with OCLC Research and include analyses of library and information science (LIS) and higher education literature, focus group interviews and brainstorming sessions with academic library administrators at different institution types within the United States, and individual interviews with provosts. 

Building on established best practices and recent research, Academic Library Impact clearly identifies priority areas and suggests specific actions for academic librarians and administrators to take in developing programs, collections, and spaces focused on student learning and success. It includes effective practices, calls out exemplary studies, and indicates where more inquiry is needed, with proposed research designs. It identifies the next generation of necessary research to continue to testify to library value. This new report is a significant milestone for ACRL’s Value of Academic Libraries initiative and for the profession.