Learning Outcomes

Participants will be able to...

• Articulate a more fulsome understanding of the concept of measurement and the notion of the object of measurement.
• Explore the affordances of conceptualizing assessment as reducing uncertainty.
• Counter assertions that x, y, or z thing in libraries cannot be measured.

Relevance to the assessment community

Many aspects of library quality are intangible. Library assessment practitioners often encounter the objection that intangibles cannot be measured and thus cannot be assessed. This chapter gives a strategy for approaching the measurement of intangibles.