Purpose & Goals

This poster seeks to answer two primary questions related to the newly approved ACRL Proficiencies for Assessment in Academic Libraries (https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/assessment_proficiencies): (1) What levels of importance do library assessment practitioners place on each of the individual assessment proficiencies?, and (2) Where do library assessment practitioners think these proficiencies should be learned or acquired? Using a survey, we intend to answer the above questions in order to determine how these proficiencies impact the jobs of practicing librarians on a day-to-day basis, as well as how various assessment learning opportunities have impacted their careers.

Design & Methodology

We have conducted a literature review of the ACRL Assessment Proficiencies for Academic Libraries as they were updated in 2023. Additionally, we are working with the authors of the updated proficiencies to create and disseminate a survey in order to answer our research questions: (1) What levels of importance do library assessment practitioners place on each of the individual assessment proficiencies?, and (2) Where do library assessment practitioners think these proficiencies should be learned or acquired? At present, we are working to secure IRB approval of our survey.

Findings

We anticipate that our survey data will be able to tell us: how practicing librarians rank the importance or urgency of individual assessment proficiencies, as well as how and/or where they believe these proficiencies should be learned.

Practical Implications & Value

We hope that attendees will walk away from our poster with increased familiarity of the updated ACRL Assessment Proficiencies for Academic Libraries and direction as to how current librarians would prefer to acquire these skills. Viewers will gain an understanding of what assessment skills are considered most important to working librarians, and should be prioritized in ongoing assessment proficiency education. Assessment librarians, directors of library and information science programs, members of professional library organizations, pre-service librarians and more can use this poster to inform them about ongoing assessment education needs.