Danuta A. Nitecki

For library managers, this book explains evaluation and assessment research and identifies the components of proper execution, such as planning, decision making, and accountability. Increasingly, libraries must address questions of accountability, efficiency, effectiveness, and impact—the extent to which a program causes positive changes in the target population. All of these issues are important to library managers and those to whom they directly report. With the heightened interest in customer expectations and increased focus on service quality and customer satisfaction, evaluation and assessment research provides the essential methodology for library managers to obtain meaningful answers. Engaging in Evaluation and Assessment Research introduces evaluation and assessment, clearly distinguishing between the two; explains evaluation and assessment research as a formal inquiry process with individual components; and demonstrates the use of the evidence gathered for planning, decision making, and accountability. This book is not another research methods textbook; it is a resource that will provide real knowledge and strategies to expand the library manager's toolkit for operating in the real world. Beyond exposing the reader to the unique culture of research and to different ways of conducting research, the authors also offer advice on how to get published.

This guidebook shows academic libraries how to use innovative new performance metrics to achieve greater accountability and higher levels of service. Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives: Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes helps academic librarians go well beyond the basic guideposts of inputs and outputs to explore a wide range of metrics for measuring their effectiveness and improving performance. Based on their groundbreaking article, "Outcomes Assessment: Not Synonymous with Inputs and Outputs," Robert Dugan and Peter Hernon, along with coauthor Danuta Nitecki, give libraries the tools they need to see beyond their own walls and interpret both outcome and impact metrics from the perspective of the parent institution, the customer, and the stakeholder, as well as the library itself. Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives makes a convincing argument for targeting the right audience with the right metric. The first three chapters introduce key concepts and the relevant literature, and helps libraries make the crucial distinction between assessment and evaluation. Chapters four through nine examine the four perspectives and their attendant metrics. The final chapters discuss how best to present and interpret the results.

As libraries strive to maintain collections with limited space, many have turned to high-efficiency, off-site shelving facilities. This work addresses virtually all major issues in planning, building, and operating high-density storage. Using the Harvard Depository model, but applying the issues and activities to other models as well, a host of contributors cover such issues as governance and cost, design and construction, preservation, selection, pre-shelving preparation, systems, access and management, services, and transportation. An essential guide to anyone considering or involved in high efficiency shelving, this book is also a valuable reference.