Gaining and maintaining momentum is key to student completion (essay)

Gaining and maintaining momentum is key to student completion (essay)

This essay describes one method of measuring and improving a key measure of academic institutions - student completion.  By focusing on the milestones, the theory is that students will gain momentum towards their (and the institution's) ultimate goal of graduation.  Now, this idea of having student completion as a measure of quality has its supporters and detractors.  But, let's assume that it should be at least considered as an important component of student success.

As a way to demonstrate the library's value to the institution's goals, library administrators and librarians have been interested in participating in the conversation of improving student continuations and completions.  So, based on this essay, I've wondered how, specifically, librarians and their libraries could be useful in these efforts. Here are some ideas I had on ways librarians could help improve students' abilities to reach the following key milestones:

• Completion of developmental coursework - involvement with the instructors of these courses to ensure that resources are available and instruction is provided to the students.
• Timely declaration of a major - libraries should provide extensive occupational information to help students make the best decision for themselves. Nothing can hurt the chances of completion, let alone timely completion than changing your major.
• Completion of sufficient credit hours in a timely manner - this requires students to take a greater density of courses.  Libraries should focus their attention on efficiency of finding and using information and resources.  This may mean implementing a Discovery service that enables students to find appropriate resources through one interface.  It can be very time-consuming to search databases, review and select the more optimal articles or books, download or checkout the items, and import into a reference citation database (or even worse, manually manage your citations).  Resources should be developed or selected based in no small part on the ability to increase this research efficiency.  

Most interesting reads today

Here are a few of the more interesting things I've read today:

• MLA Shift on Copyright - Modern Language Association changing its agreements with authors to allow the authors to keep the copyright.
• Paying for Performance - McGraw-Hill agreeing with the Western Governors University to base the fees for its textbooks on the outcomes of the students who use them.  This may be a sweetheart deal, because it enables the publisher access to outcomes data (properly anonymized, of course), which it can use to modify the content.  This suggests an interesting shift in the publisher-institution relationship.
• Not Just Degrees - a summary of a report on the growth of college-based certificates and their impact on workers' incomes.  This represents an under-explored function of higher education (not only in the community colleges, but also the 4-year institutions).  What's interesting is that the impact of the certificates were greatest in the male-dominated fields.  With the decline of male enrollments, this may represent an adjustment to the market of higher education.
• What Should a Year of College Cost? - from Confessions of a Community College Dean, this post poses problems with all the potential bases on which the cost of higher education could be based.  
• Intellectual Freedom and the Library as a Workplace - from Library Babel Fish, an attempt to understand how librarians can straddle the faculty/administration divide, proclaiming to support intellectual freedom while toting the admin line.  
• and of course, Ray Bradbury's death - note that he wrote his "only true science fiction" work at the UCLA library's typewriter.

Value of Academic Libraries Summit White Paper

Value of Academic Libraries Summit White Paper

The Connect, Collaborate and Communicate is the report from the VAL's recent summit of "representatives from twenty-two post-secondary institutions, including senior librarians, chief academic administrators, and institutional researchers, for discussions about library impact."  Here's an excerpt from the blog entry that summarizes the key points (emphasis added):

The report – co-authored by Karen Brown, associate professor at Dominican University, and ACRL Senior Strategist for Special Initiatives Kara Malenfant – summarizes broad themes about the dynamic nature of higher education assessment that emerged from the summits. From these themes, the report presents five recommendations for the library profession:

• Increase librarians’ understanding of library value and impact in relation to various dimensions of student learning and success.

• Articulate and promote the importance of assessment competencies necessary for documenting and communicating library impact on student learning and success.

• Create professional development opportunities for librarians to learn how to initiate and design assessment that demonstrates the library’s contributions to advancing institutional mission and strategic goals.

• Expand partnerships for assessment activities with higher education constituent groups and related stakeholders.

• Integrate the use of existing ACRL resources with library value initiatives.

The audio presentation of this report was interesting, as well. Here are a few points that deserve some highlighting:

• Megan relating a response from Charles Blaich to her summary of the VAL guidelines: "Assessment data and reports are not useful unless somebody does something with them..." and that following guidelines is "not enough if you're following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law."
• Megan pointing out what (emphasis added) "we, as librarians need to learn about assessment and research design, more about using data and evidence, and learn more about higher education assessment and accountability in general and the ways in which librarians fit into the larger picture, namely in the national dialogue on the value of higher education."

Megan mentioned the invitational meeting that will occur at the national ACRL conference, the purpose of which is to develop a research agenda on the VAL guidelines.  I'm looking forward to the release of this research agenda, because that could enable me to focus my research interests on issues that not only are relevant to the my library's issues, but also to the national dialogue of value of libraries in higher education (and thus, more opportunities for funding).

Comparing academic library expenditures to sports subsidies

Last week, I read this post in the Chronicle of Higher Education comparing the ratios of sports subsides to library expenditures at ARL institutions.  Not being terribly familiar with academic micro-economics, I found this paragraph educational (emphasis added):

Sports expenses are funded from earned revenue (tickets, television, sales, gifts and similar revenue generated by the athletic activity itself), and from institutional revenue available for any purpose (student fees and university funds). The institutional revenue is a subsidy for an enterprise that in the best of all possible worlds should earn its own way in much the same fashion as other university nonacademic. 

All but a few universities, however, subsidize athletics from student fees and general university revenue. We should ask how significant that subsidy is within the general framework of the university's academic activities. With some sense of the relationship between subsidy and academics, we can assess when sports consume too much of our academic resources.

The author, John V. Lombardi, attempted to get this sense by comparing the ratios of sports subsidies to library expenditures of the ARL institutions.  These ratios ranged from a low of 0 (those whose athletic programs do not need subsidizing) to a high of 1.52.  From what I could tell, those institutions with high ratios either have (economically) weak sports programs but an institutional desire to promote them (UC Riverside, SUNY Stony Brook) or are placing a higher emphasis on promoting their sports programs over the library (Houston, Ohio).  Almost all institutions with low ratios have very strong sports programs (A&M, Oklahoma, UT) that don't need support, although I'm not very up on the college sports rankings.  I found a ranking of the football teams and a few of these institutions were in the "middlin'" range (Tennesse: 57th; Purdue: 65th; UCLA: 66th), so maybe an argument could be made that some with low ratios place lower emphasis on sports.  But that's a correlation that would need more data.

Lombardi suggests that institutions limit these subsidies to less than one-third of the library expenditures.  This appears to be based merely on a subjective view of the data, but it can be supported objectively.  While the average ratio was 0.44, the median (another valid measure of central tendency) was 0.325, very close to one-third.  Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how the University of North Texas performed in this measure.  Over the last several years, there has been a push to increase the visibility of the university in both the academic and sports arenas.  The institution has been pushing to hire research-oriented faculty and increase grants.  In addition, a new football stadium was built and the university has just committed to joining a more rigorous athletic league.  It was not surprising then that the ratio of library expenditures (for the same year used by Lombardi) to sports subsidy was 0.35, just a tad north of the one-third median.

Now, comparing our ratio with that of our peers is also interesting.  Because Lombardi only examined ARL institutions, this is very limited.  We are matched, however, with University of Alabama.  Kent State, meanwhile, has a very high ratio of 1.33 (in the 90th percentile).  It appears that, in the battle between promoting sports and promoting academics, UNT has chosen the middle road.

Thinking about the value of libraries

This news story caught my attention recently: D.C. to cut 34 school librarians as they are a poor investment.  The news post is a brief summary of the story in the Washington Post and includes this statement from the DC Public Schools Chancellor:

“We have invested in full-time librarians for the last three or four years and we haven't seen the kind of payoff we'd like.”  While noting that she is not disparaging librarians she said, "We have pulled away from programs where we haven't received a return on our investment.” 

The article implies that the ROI would be measured as improved test scores.  Similar cuts in other prominent school districts were also mentioned, including the LA district cutting school nurses.  This last point made me think about the potential value of such services that are more or less indirectly involved in education.

While there have been studies that have demonstrated direct correlations of quality libraries (measured by number of books per student) or quality librarians (measured by direct student-contact activities) and student achievement, the DC Chancellor did not see this association in her district.  Was the association too oblique or indirect? Was the data not available?  Did she even look at any data that was available?  Were the librarians given a decent chance (enough hours, enough resources, enough time with students)?

This requirement of demonstrated value and "return on investment" is quite familiar to libraries of all types and levels.  Unfortunately, librarians have been behind the curve on understanding this and coming up with useful tools of demonstrating their value.  Conversely, administrators and purse-string-holders are also behind the curve of recognizing that value should be demonstrated in more ways than money or test scores.  They are using similar reasons to justify elimination of what had been standard support services such as school nursing, speech therapy, and counseling.

(On a side note, I find it terribly hypocritical that those who uphold the value of classroom teachers and who justify the cutting of such services by stating they need to add more teachers in the classroom are, in fact, merely shifting the responsibility for these services onto the already heavy load that teachers must bear.  Not only must they teach a more rigid curriculum, but they are bearing more responsibility for ensuring children take their medications (oh, that's right - that's there responsibility for the school admin assistants), helping the depressed child deal with the disrupted family, teach a child to cope with stuttering, and teach all the children how to find and evaluate information or find a good book.  Some help they are giving teachers.)

Given that the powers-that-be are not changing their approach, that they have demonstrated their will to eliminate what cannot be demonstrated as valuable, and that this trend is decades old and shows no sign of receding, I believe we must accept and move on.  As the ACRL has been advocating through the Value of Academic Libraries project, librarians need research to quantify the value that we have known all along that libraries provide.   The blog has some good ideas on the kinds of questions that need to be, and could be, answered, including:

• How does use of print and digital collections correlate with course pass/fail rates, grades, or GPA?
• What is the monetary value of providing the resources students use to learn course content and complete assignments over alternative sources?
• Is there an association between grant funding success and access to library resources, particularly those used in the grant application?

This is a challenge to librarians and library administration.  But I don't think it is one that is insurmountable.  Nor do I believe the challenge can be ignored or considered contemptuously.  Recall Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Library Science - The Library is a Growing Organism.  I believe that libraries are not doomed, as long as they continue to evolve.  An organism that fails to grow or evolve fails to live.  Personally and professionally, I am excited to accept this challenge and prove the worthiness of the library and librarians (including myself) to the the most skeptical.

When is a library no longer a library?

Here is an existential question - What happens when a library sells books?  Are they still a library or are they a bookseller?   This blog posting advocates having libraries sell ebooks directly to those who don't want to wait to read the latest bestseller.  One commenter noted that, "Then you're no longer a library if you start selling books in volume. Libraries loan books."  That begs the question - when is a library no longer a library?

Certainly, libraries have sold books before, usually used books pulled during weeding projects or donated by patrons and others who were cleaning out their own shelves.  This is legally possible due to the print materials' "first sale doctrine", which does not apply to electronic resources.  Do these sales make the library a bookseller?  Does it no longer make them a library?

What about selling books by a visiting author?  I'm not sure if this still occurs in public libraries, but I recall this many times in our school libraries.  If so, how does that affect the library's role in the community?

I was at first repulsed by the idea of mixing commerce with the library's ideal of providing resources free of charge.  But thinking about it further, I'm not sure it really changes this ideal - the library would continue to lend, but under the restrictions enforced by publishers.  Providing an opportunity to own a book would enable the library user to continue to see the library as a source of information and reading material.

What was it that has kept libraries on the edges of the bookselling business?  Has it been the traditional separation of commerce and government?  That separation is blurring, with private/public partnerships being advocated by the fiscally-conservative politicians and activists.  Has it been the reluctance of librarians to view themselves as commercial?  Business owners are often both revered and reviled in large and small communities.  As public servants, librarians (including myself) like to consider themselves above the level of those who sell.  But don't we need to sell?  OK, usually we sell the need for a free access to books, resources, and public space.  But how is selling ebooks any different from holding a book sale?

If the issue is the separation of commerce from government, then the Friends of the Library model should work as well for e-books as it would for used book sales.  Links in the catalog could direct users not to Amazon (directly or indirectly via Google Books), but instead to the FoL's ecommerce site where the ebook could be purchased.  FoL would continue to donate the money raised to the library.  Is this really inviolate?  Does this really change the identity of the library?  If the library still continues to loan material free of charge, isn't it still a library, even if it sells?  I'm not sure...

Library Data and issues of granularity versus privacy

A new posting on the Library Impact Data Project blog discusses an interesting dilemma that is all to common when analyzing raw data.  How detailed can and should you get when dissecting that data?  In this case, the problem is regarding user groups and the potential for revealing identities.  The author is concerned that presenting data on all possible user groups might inadvertently reveal individuals' identities due to the very small numbers in certain groups.  In this day and age of IRB's and academic privacy concerns, that would be "a BIG data protection no-no."  Then, the issue becomes how to aggregate the groups in a logical and useful manner.  Simply combining two groups (in the author's example, say, Black and Chinese ethnicities) would not necessarily be either logical or useful.  Indeed, the author argues that there should be some commonality among the groups combined.  In the public health setting where I came from, the ethnic groups were based largely outcomes - the groups that had the worse outcomes would be compared with the groups that had the best outcomes.  Other issues to consider, which the author notes later in the posting, is the impact of the results - what could be done to change the outcomes?  While librarians cannot change or effect the change of a person's ethnicity, they could direct programs to these groups that work more effectively.  Qualitative research could be conducted to determine the reasons for differences in the measured factors that led to differences in outcomes.

In this case, the factors were number of E-Z Proxy logins and the number of downloads, and the outcomes were graduation levels (based on grades).  Not sure if they looked, but I could not find any publication that examined these factors such as race and home country against the outcomes.  This would be important to consider for aggregation in addition to similarities of groups.  In this case, the White students used the electronic resources the least of all ethnic groups.  If this group of students had greater rates of higher graduation levels, then perhaps ethnicity is a confounder, changing the relationship between e-resource usage and grades.  Those from other countries in the European Union were using the e-resources the most - did they have a harder time using the resources?  Was there a language barrier?  Cultural differences in the organization of the libraries' resources?

The author does a good job of describing the issues associated with analyzing data - it's not simply comparing the averages of two groups.  You need to consider aspects of the data set (number in each group, number in the entire set, the distributions of the values, the kind of measurement used), the relationship of the variables and groups (are the groups independent, are the variables distinct, are there similarities of the groups), as well as the context (the environment, the language, the culture, the population, etc.).  In other words, you need to know your data well.