Standards and Best Practices for Florida Academic Libraries

Institutional Effectiveness: Libraries define, develop, and measure outcomes that contribute to institutional effectiveness and apply findings for purposes of continuous improvement.

1.1 The library defines and measures outcomes in the context of institutional mission.

1.2 The library develops outcomes that are aligned with institutional, departmental, and student affairs outcomes.

1.3 The library develops outcomes that are aligned with accreditation guidelines for the institution.

1.4 The library develops and maintains a body of evidence that demonstrates its impact in convincing ways.

1.5 The library articulates how it contributes to student learning, collects evidence, documents successes, shares results, and makes improvements.

1.6 The library contributes to student recruitment, retention, time to degree, and academic success.

1.7 The library communicates with the campus community to highlight its value in the educational mission and in institutional effectiveness.

"The Standards include performance indicators, which are intentionally library-centric. Outcomes, however, should be user-centric, preferably focusing on a specific population and articulating specifically what the user is able to do as an outcome of the performance indicator. "
- ACRL Standards for Libraries in Higher Education

Performance Indicator 1.6 The library contributes to student recruitment, retention, time to degree, and academic success.

Sample Outcomes

• Students who use library services improve their academic performance.
• Students describe the role of the library as influential in terms of their successful academic performance.

Performance Indicator 1.7 The library communicates with the campus community to highlight its value in the educational mission and in institutional effectiveness.

Sample Outcomes

• The campus administration demonstrates library support through appropriate resource allocation.
• The campus administration includes library-related success stories as part of the recruitment efforts.

"Many academic institutions use benchmarks to identify their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to similar institutions. For example, benchmarking can be used to demonstrate whether an institution or its library is funded or staffed at levels comparable to similar institutions in a geographic area, with a similar enrollment, or with other related characteristics."
- ACRL Standards for Libraries in Higher Education

Principle 1: Institutional Effectiveness

• Number of degrees or other formal awards conferred.
• Graduation rates.
• Retention rates. E.g.: fall-to-fall.
• Library expenditures to institution expenditures percentages. E.g.: Total library expenditures as percentage of total institution expenditures.

All ACRL Standards information taken from:

Association of College and Research Libraries. (2018). Standards for libraries in higher education.

       Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/standards/slhe.pdf