Standards and Best Practices for Florida Academic Libraries

Collections: Libraries provide access to collections sufficient in quality, depth, diversity, format, and currency to support the research and teaching missions of the institution.

5.1 The library provides access to collections aligned with areas of research, curricular foci, or institutional strengths.

5.2 The library provides collections that incorporate resources in a variety of formats, accessible virtually and physically.

5.3 The library builds and ensures access to unique materials, including digital collections.

5.4 The library has the infrastructure to collect, organize, provide access to, disseminate, and preserve collections needed by users.

5.5 The library educates users on issues related to economic and sustainable models of scholarly communication.

5.6 The library ensures long-term access to the scholarly and cultural record.

"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 5.1 The library provides access to collections aligned with areas of research, curricular foci, or institutional strengths.

Sample Outcomes

• Faculty use resources to support their educational and research needs.
• Faculty, students, and community users are satisfied with the collections provided by libraries for their educational, business, and research needs.
• Students discover the appropriate library resources needed for their coursework.
• Faculty locate data sets needed for their research.

Performance Indicator 5.5 The library educates users on issues related to economic and sustainable models of scholarly communication.

Sample Outcome

• Faculty choose to deposit their scholarly work in the institutional repository.

"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

• Total library materials expenditures per student. E.g.: Per full-time undergraduate student. Per full-time graduate student.
• Total library materials expenditures per faculty. E.g.: Per full-time faculty. Per part-time faculty.
• Number of titles (physical + electronic). E.g.: Per full-time student. Per full-time faculty.
• Total library materials expenditures percentages. E.g.: Monograph expenditures as percentage of total library materials expenditures.
• Materials expenditures to total library expenditures percentages. E.g.: Total library materials expenditures as percentage of total library expenditures.
• Collections use per student. E.g.: Per undergraduate student. Per graduate student.
• Interlibrary loan. E.g.: Net lender versus net borrower.
• Unique items through WorldCat Local.

All ACRL 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