Purpose & Goals

This paper details the purpose, methods, and results of a 6-year phased assessment of collections and space at the Utah State University (USU) Blanding library, a small academic library serving a diverse Indigenous American population from the Mountain West. Despite its merge with the USU Statewide system, there have been few updates compared to the main campus library in Logan, the Merrill-Cazier Library. Librarians from Logan, recognizing the equity issues at play, conducted comprehensive assessments to address the library's collections use, space utilization, and technology concerns. These assessments involved extensive interviews, focus groups, collections analyses, and space assessments. The findings highlighted the need for a holistic overhaul to better facilitate student success and foster stronger connections to the wider USU Libraries network. The Logan campus library lacks administrative purview over the Blanding Library but shares non-monetary resources, functioning as a familial library. This lack of administrative purview complicated the implementation of changes, raising questions about decision-making, funding, and project management for the Blanding library. These uncertainties slowed the assessment and planning process, requiring thorough assessments to build trust among stakeholders—USU Logan land USU Statewide Campus librarians, Blanding administrators, and Blanding librarians—in each other's professional competence and intentions. This paper will detail: The holistic, phased assessment process that occurred over 6 years, going from no traction to a solid commitment to change. The process included: focused ethnographic interviews, focus groups, a collections analysis, and space assessments. The interplay between space and physical collections analysis (and an eventual weeding) in a small library. The deep stakeholder engagement employed to ensure the assessment process was equitable, sensitive to cultural differences and needs, and built trust.

Design & Methodology

We took a multi-pronged, scaffolded approach to assess needs at the USU Blanding campus library and build stakeholder trust, including: Focus groups with students, faculty, and librarians. Focused ethnographic research via multiple site visits to the USU Blanding campus. Informal space assessments inside the library such as sticky note assessments for gathering student feedback. Multiple relationship-building meetings with USU Blanding’s administrative team and librarians asking what they want, what they need, where their thoughts are at, and how/whether or not they feel their current approach is contributing to student success. Physical collections analysis. All of these assessments resulted in multiple reports of recommendations and potential projects, broken down into smaller process, and “staged” for implementation. For example, we continued the scaffolding idea by breaking down a collection weeding process into more manageable pieces for a small team (e.g., first determine if they want to weed based on reclaiming square footage, reducing the collection by x%, or some other factor). More manageable, staged project processes were less daunting and more feasible for a library of their resource and staff size.

Findings

1. When dealing with an interplay between collections and space changes, particularly in a familial institutional relationship without formal oversight, deep stakeholder engagement was absolutely paramount for success.
2. Proof of need based on data collected via structured, holistic, and well-designed assessments was key to convincing stakeholders to move forward with change.
3. Relationship and trust-building was absolutely paramount when performing assessments. We didn’t want the stakeholders to feel any amount of angst of threat, which is what can happen when any assessment is implemented.
4. Working with, not against; listening, not overstepping; presenting options, not ultimatums; and approaching the process with a high-level goal in mind (to increase student success through spaces and curated collections) helped to ensure our assessment data were used for equitable decision-making.

Action & Impact

Action: Each assessment within this scaffolded process led to the next assessment. For example, stakeholder need evaluations led to ethnographic interviews, which led to physical space assessments, which led to collections assessments. After each assessment, the research team presented their findings and recommendations on moving forward to the Blanding stakeholders – administration, specifically – and simultaneously planned the next assessment phase. Each meeting reevaluated or reconfirmed goals, timelines, available resources to spend, and any new stakeholders that needed to be involved. Currently, the team is flushing out collections weed processes and building more staged project process for the Blanding team. This scaffolded assessment process will soon be applied to other USU statewide campus to determine how the libraries can better integrate with non-residential campuses (without physical libraries) to further student success.

Impact: Our project on its face integrate the library in addressing critically unmet needs at a statewide campuses that serves a large underrepresented population. From a process perspective, our project processes built strong relationships and trust where they were previously incredibly strained due to tensions over the campus merger several year past. Where stakeholders we previously very suspicious of us and our intentions, our assessment processes proved both that the Blanding library could address unmet needs on their campus (insofar as more study space, social interaction opportunities, access to newer resources, etc.) and that only primary goal was to work with them to advance student success.

Practical Implications & Value

Our community often discusses how to utilize assessment in very tangible ways to demonstrate impact and need. But, what about the intangible, humanistic component of assessment? In other words, what impact do our assessments and approach to assessment have on the relationships we must cultivate in order to build trust around our work and analyses? This paper will contribute to discussions about how to approach building trust with assessment processes and an equity mindset in order to increase the overall effectiveness of your efforts.