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  • Putting Assessment into Action: Selected Projects from the First Cohort of the Assessment in Action Grant ed. by Eric Ackermann
  • Sarah Barbrow
Putting Assessment into Action: Selected Projects from the First Cohort of the Assessment in Action Grant, ed. Eric Ackermann. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2015. 216 pages. $52.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-8813-8)

Have you ever been tasked with evaluating a library course, service, program, or space? Do you have the ideas, strategies, or tools to meaningfully represent how your library impacts student learning, faculty productivity, or institutional success? If, like many others, you answered yes to the former and no to the latter, Putting Assessment into Action: Selected Projects from the First Cohort of the Assessment in Action Grant is an important source to consult as you embark on your assessment journey.

The Assessment in Action (AiA) Program, from which Putting Assessment into Action derives, is a three-year endeavor funded in 2012 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as part of the ACRL’s Value of Academic Libraries Initiative. AiA seeks to build the assessment skills of academic librarians so they can demonstrate the value of their libraries on campus. During each year of the program, dozens of librarians from across the United States and Canada engaged together as cohorts to learn assessment strategies and then led local and collaborative library assessment efforts at their own institutions.

Putting Assessment into Action is a compilation of case studies from a variety of institutional contexts—including research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, a medical school, and a Native American tribal college—written by a subset of participants in the first AiA cohort. Organized into three major sections, it provides a broad constellation of evaluation activities, approaches, and—most crucially—caveats and lessons learned about assessment projects. The first section addresses assessment of information literacy and library instruction. Spanning 17 of the book’s 27 chapters, it is by far the most prominent section (and a little repetitive). These case studies are presented in four parts: first-year students (nine chapters), second- to fourth-year students (five chapters), graduate students (two chapters), and information literacy at the institutional scale (one chapter).

The following two sections are broader in scope and raise important points about the challenges of assessment at higher programmatic and service levels. Section two includes seven case studies covering library outreach, services, and spaces. The final three chapters of the last section address longitudinal assessment projects focusing on how the library impacts student retention and success.

Putting Assessment into Action does not explain the intricate nuances of each particular method, nor is it intended to present the results of each assessment project. Rather, the case studies reflect on the process of assessment at each institution, outlining success and failures that might aid readers at their own libraries. Of special interest are the parts of each chapter in which authors consider changes they would make if they were undertaking the same project again or beginning a new one. Finally, at the end of each chapter, brief bibliographies of literature produced by the AiA and the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries program offer more resources to explore.

What might have improved Putting Assessment into Action would be some concluding remarks that summarize the broad and important themes that drive success or failure in library assessment. In many case studies, overly ambitious scoping—that is, taking on too much—required changes in mid-project or resulted in some level of [End Page 848] project failure. Several cases stressed the importance of involving important and diverse stakeholders outside the library, both for the success of assessment projects and in the interest of building relationships. In a number of chapters, authors demonstrated how mixed-methods approaches enabled cross-validation of results or told a more nuanced story of library impact on their communities.

Libraries now more than ever are getting into the assessment game, strongly urged by administrators in the library and across campus to demonstrate their value. Putting Assessment into Action and other writings from the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries program will offer new insights to experienced assessors and a...

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