Christine Madsen
Chief Innovation Officer
Athenaeum21
Sue Baughman
Deputy Executive Director
Association of Research Libraries
Megan Hurst
Chief Experience Officer
Athenaeum21
Libraries play an increasingly comprehensive role in the research lifecycle, yet metrics and measures (both qualitative and quantitative) that illustrate the fundamental role and impact of the library in research still need to be developed. Research libraries need first to define the values by which they want to be measured, rather than trying to manifest those values from the data that they have traditionally collected. To this end, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) underwent a visioning process for its assessment program between February and October 2017. The goal of this project was to develop a forward-looking program that advances the organizational outcomes of the 21st century research library. One result of the visioning process was a clearly elaborated need for research libraries to demonstrate their function in advancing and collaborating in the research enterprise. Rather than trying to define “impact” and “value” independently, the new ARL assessment program will set the context for understanding and communicating the stories of the research library to external stakeholders and provide the tools for members to tell this story locally. At the heart of this work is a framework that aims to draw a map of the landscape of services and functions provided across all research libraries. The comprehensive framework, and proposed new data points, will help research libraries translate their values into measures. The presenters will demonstrate how this collaboratively developed (and evolving) framework paints a map of the research library assessment landscape and how it will be used to understand and measure the role of the library in supporting institutional missions.