Focus on Assessment - Sep 28, 2009

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) comprises the 123 largest research libraries in
North America. As a member of this association, the University Libraries is asked to collect
ARL statistics each academic year. The data that we collect and report are used in a variety of
ways, both internally and externally.

Primarily, the University Libraries uses this data, and the data reported by the other ARL
libraries, for comparison purposes. We can benchmark with our peer institutions and see where
we stand in terms of our collections budget, our preservation budget, the number of reference
questions we answer, our collections usage, our faculty and staff salaries, and the level of support
that our University has for its library, to name some examples. We can answer questions like, "Is
our collections budget increasing or decreasing at the same rate as our peers?" "Are the trends
related to the number of reference questions or collections usage at Penn State mirrored at other
ARL institutions?" "Are our faculty and staff salaries competitive?" "Is there a growth in the
number of different types of positions?" We get an idea of who our peers are and how we
compare to them in many different areas.

We can also compare our current statistics to those we reported in the past to obtain trend data;
for example, we can see how our collections budget has changed over time. In addition, we can
see when we first starting reporting data on items like ebooks and databases to get a sense of how
our collection has changed over time and when new types of jobs were created.

Other ARL libraries use this data for comparison purposes as well. ARL also creates a ranking of
the libraries, which is published annually in "The Chronicle of Higher Education."
The other Deans and I know that you spend a lot of time each year gathering ARL statistics. This
data has been collected by ARL since 1961, and your assistance with this data collection is
helping to create a history of the University Libraries.

To see the ARL statistics from previous years for the University Libraries and our peer
institutions, please see http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/arl/index.html.

Do you have any assessment activities you would like to see spotlighted in this column? Contact
ul-assessment-council@lists.psu.edu.