Broadening Library Assessment to Understand the "Why"

Traditional assessment in academic research libraries in the United States has been quantitative. Librarians seem to find comfort in numbers—they are exact, precise, and can be automated. Unfortunately, the articulation of the value-added and return on investment of an academic library is not easily captured, and still harder to convey. Since 1961, annual statistics describing collections, circulation, and expenditures have been gathered by the Association of Research Libraries. When asked for some measure of assessment, the ARL statistics are an easy data set for library administrators to pull tables, ratios, and ranked lists to make their case. Unfortunately, those annual numbers can provide very little insight into the true accomplishments and impact of an academic library on its local campus. The ARL statistics focus on that which can be counted, but much of what makes an academic library successful is uncountable. While quantitative measures are certainly useful, meaningful qualitative assessment should be paired with the quantitative data. At the University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, it is qualitative, internally-focused, and frequent assessment methods that have proven to be the most useful and effective