Standards and Best Practices for Florida Academic Libraries

Personnel: Libraries provide sufficient number and quality of personnel to ensure excellence and to function successfully in an environment of continuous change.

8.1 Library personnel are sufficient in quantity to meet the diverse teaching and research needs of faculty and students.

8.2 Library personnel have education and experience sufficient to their positions and the needs of the organization.

8.3 Library personnel demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional development, maintaining and enhancing knowledge and skills for themselves and their coworkers.

8.4 Library personnel contribute to the knowledge base of the profession.

8.5 Library personnel are professionally competent, diverse, and empowered.

8.6 Library personnel keep current with library technology, applications, and infrastructure and participate in ongoing training.

8.7 Library personnel engage with library student employees to provide mentoring and work that enhances the students’ overall academic experience.

8.8 Library personnel continuously examine and transform roles to meet the needs of the evolving organization.

"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 8.1 Library personnel are sufficient in quantity to meet the diverse teaching and research needs of faculty and students.

Sample Outcome

• Faculty and students consider library personnel sufficient in quantity to meet their research and instruction needs.

Performance Indicator 8.2 Library personnel have education and experience sufficient to their positions and the needs of the organization.

Sample Outcome

• Faculty and students consider library personnel sufficient in quality to meet their research and instruction needs.

Performance Indicator 8.7 Library personnel engage with library student employees to provide mentoring and work that enhances the students’ overall academic experience.

Sample Outcome

• Student employees list library personnel as academic and employment references.

Performance Indicator 8.8 Library personnel continuously examine and transform roles to meet the needs of the evolving organization.

Sample Outcome

• Personnel roles align with new library services.

"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 8: Personnel

• Salary and wages expenditures. E.g.: Per full-time student. Per undergraduate student. Per faculty. Of professional staff per enrolled student.
• Enrolled students per full-time equivalent (FTE) staff. E.g.: Full-time undergraduates per FTE staff. Full-time graduate students per FTE staff.
• Staffing percentages. E.g.: Percentage of professional staff out of total staff. Percentage of support staff out of total staff.
• Salaries. E.g.: Professional staff salaries. Support staff salaries. Total staff salaries.
• Salaries as percentage of total library expenditures.
• Professional development funding. E.g.: Per professional staff member.
• Staff turnover rate.

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