1. 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

2. 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.

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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

7. 2010

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

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

10. 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

11. 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

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

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

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

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

19. +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

20. 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.

21. 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 ( ), 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

22. 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.

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