Purpose & Goals

Modern library assessment programmes can be a tricky endeavour. Annual reports, strategic plans, evidence-based frameworks; these are all products that—in our experience—offer a mixed return on investment when we have little control over the context in which they will be used. What numbers should be selected? Do they tell a good story? Will anyone read them? Will they be misinterpreted? This paper presentation will use a case study of library assessment at a mid-sized Canadian institution—namely, our journey in creating an annual report template—to position annual reporting as a flexible interface for meaningful engagement rather than a transactional measure of outcomes.

Design & Methodology

This paper will draw on our experiences to examine how traditional assessment methods have not always met our reporting needs and situate this story within contemporary issues in higher education strategic planning literature (notably Cooper, 2022; Borgman & Brand, 2022; Madsen & Hurst, 2018). We will offer dual perspectives from both a Library Dean facing decisions about what to report, and an Academic Librarian faced with operationalizing those decisions. This discussion will be centred around the latest iteration of our reporting strategy—a project titled The Library Engagement Data Initiative (LEDI)—which translates the library’s day-to-day operations (no matter how big or small) into an interface for discussing campus impact. Key to our approach will be the conversations, fears, crises, and humbling moments that facilitated the creation of LEDI, and how our conversations about it matter more than the project itself.

Conclusions

The purpose of having data on hand is not to compel others; it’s to help us define what we’re doing. Universities have problems to solve, and the library solves a lot of them—visibly and invisibly. Libraries facilitate numerous interactions between faculty, students, staff and researchers each day, the absence of which would have major impacts on the business of universities. While the LEDI project lays a groundwork for demonstrating the breadth of this impact, it is only one piece, and a first step—an experiment in using the entire canvas to paint the picture. Annual reporting can and should be more than sharing numbers, but the ambiguity inherent in many of our stories makes this a challenge. Rather than fight or ignore this friction, we use it as an interface that lets us have the conversations we need to meet the moment.

Implications & Value

Discourse about the data is what leads to action, not the data itself. We believe assessment is a conversation and depends greatly on introspection, criticism and questioning. In sharing our journey, we hope to encourage others to name their feelings of discomfort or dissatisfaction with data generating activities and give this friction a voice. As a node for reaction, criticism and conversation between administrators and librarians, our approach has opened doors to building more impactful, kinetic and meaningful ways to tell our campus story.