Guerrilla Assessment: A practical approach to Library Impact and Value Building on the concept of guerrilla marketing – low cost, unconventional, big impact Every-day assessment, pragmatic, piggy-backing on the existing, reusing existing building blocks, emphasizing what resonates with audience Will talk about three examples – both successful and not – to start the kind of sharing that I hope will happen in the Q&A segment about local approaches that we can all be inspired by. Zsuzsa Koltay Cornell University Library Director of Assessment and Communication

low cost Take advantage of something that already exists, happens, so you don’t have to start from scratch and do everything yourself. But make sure the research questions are yours, you get your questions answered. It’s OK to scale down expectations though, getting an 80% answer quickly and easily beats (or complements) getting a 100% answer in several years.

unconventional Looking at existing numbers from a different perspective, use what’s given but change the perspective.

big impact Emphasize what sells, what resonates with your audience. Joint role, Assessment and Communication, has taught me to look at assessment as an aspect of communication. Data as evidence for the audience I want to influence. So know what your audience cares about and use that, even if you think they should care about something else, if you think they aren’t up-to-date with assessment trends.

Senior survey sent to every senior – centrally administered through IRP – every other year – 3,161 seniors - 50% or better response rate – consortium-based so benchmarking against 3 groups of universities – also local section with more flexibility but no benchmarking – lobbied successfully to add library impact questions to local questions

low cost: senior survey “To what extent have Cornell library resources and services contributed to… …your ability to evaluate the quality of the information you find? …your ability to conduct research? …your efficiency? …your academic success?  Rating scale: not at all; very little; some; quite a bit; very much First time in 2010 4 questions added for self-reported impact

2010

Results by segments of respondents: female – male Differences aren’t big. Some shadows of disciplinary differences: e.g. Engineering is over 60% male

Again: differences not big Some shadows of disciplinary differences: Engineering is over 38% Asian

Disciplinary differences are quite obvious and consistent across the four questions AAP always tops, then HumEc (before Arts and Sciences) Engineering always lowest, second lowest Hotel

Use of results Shore up Promotion messages – new student handbook example on slide Reports about space and budget issues – HumEc/CALS space and budget review – shored up arguments Successful approach - Looking forward to 2012 results

unconventional: value calculations Switch perspective to put existing figures into new context for bigger effect

Transaction count X value expressed in $$$ In 2009 we tried to calculate the value the library provides Approach used by public libraries – value calculators So how does this work? Let’s look at examples

08/09 Cornell example for the use of physical volumes: $15,135,782 for articles accessed online and through interlibrary services: $61,265,783 for answering questions to build research skills and contribute to Cornell research results: $1,176,615 for in-depth consultations that contribute to Cornell research results: $126,900 for Cornell’s use of preprints from arXiv.org: $740,250 Number of stacks check-outs – how much each worth to the user? - as much as paying for a book on amazon? But you don’t own it. Half as much? - multiply Article downloads – how much would a patron pay for one? - on-demand article charge from vendors? - Half that? Reference transaction – value calculated based on charge-back rate Etc.

for laptops borrowed: $202,165 for library instruction: $xxx for distributing Cornell-created content to the world through eCommons: $12,001,290 for laptops borrowed: $202,165 for library instruction: $xxx ___________________________ Roughly 1:2 cost to value Library instruction? CIT contracted out software training sessions – use that rate? Use TA rate? Obviously actual value figures are easy to debate All in all: incomplete, but 1:2 cost to value ratio Use existing figures and a bit of thinking – actually a quick exercise

so what? Great context or bogus numbers? How do our cost and value to users relate to each other? Very varied reactions – not used, not updated Very varied reactions from best thing since sliced bread to “bogus numbers” Lots of library staff had trouble wrapping their minds around the difference between a dollar figure that represents the sum of value to our individual users vs. what the library pays for a subscription, for example. How can one be so much higher than the other? Realized that this approach is very polarizing, and as such is not a good way to convince skeptics at Cornell, instead, it’s too risky to use with faculty and higher administration. So we scrapped it at Cornell. More successful at some other institutions where they adopted this approach.

big impact: benchmarking So if the value calculations did not serve us well, what did?

The big irony: resources and rankings rule! At least at our institution. Used ARL data for benchmarking, and found some interesting figures.

+1.7% in 5 years +25.8% in 5 years avg annual change cum change 1.090   avg annual change cum change 1.090 1.525 1.049 1.268 1.065 1.360 1.030 1.135 1.063 1.333 1.064 1.361 1.004 1.017 1.075 1.418 1.045 1.227 1.031 1.150 1.034 1.157 1.013 1.048 1.263 1.035 1.181 1.050 1.203 1.029 1.151 1.061 1.336 1.070 1.397 1.057 1.315 1.044 1.235 1.033 1.178 1.002 1.011 1.174 1.099 1.595 1.133 1.606 1.060 1.312 1.265 1.066 1.352 1.043 1.179 1.007 0.997 median 1.249 avg 1.258 +1.7% in 5 years +25.8% in 5 years

Such figures are hard to swallow and certainly impactful Such figures are hard to swallow and certainly impactful. A $15 million library campaign for collections became a CU priority – the goal shared by the library and the 10 colleges and schools – each responsible for raising a share of it.

The Petition We, the (undersigned) faculty of Cornell University, affirm the critical importance of the library system to all aspects of Cornell’s mission. […] We call on the central administration […] to meet the first objective of the Cornell University Library Strategic Plan (2011-2015), to "Return the Library to its position among the top ten academic institutions in the Association of Research Libraries in terms of collection support". Faculty petition – signed by over 500 faculty university-wide, across all disciplines

Signature #554 The two most important ingredients of a great university are an excellent faculty and an excellent library. If need be, cut back on other things (athletic programs, faculty salary pool, ...) to rebuild the funding strength for Cornell's library system Professor X, Neurobiology And Behavior One comment of the numerous Talk about impact, even if it’s traditional measures that created it.

Discussion Is there merit in lightweight approaches? Are they reliable? Do you have examples? What evidence resonates on your campus?