Research survey: impact of academic libraries on student success

James Cheng and Starr Hoffman are seeking participants for a survey related to their ACRL Impact Grant-funded research study: Researchers on Academic Library Impact: Characteristics and Perspectives. "This is a research study; its purpose is to explore the perspective and experience of academic library professionals related to library impact, particularly around their experiences conducting research in this area. If you are an academic library professional and have either conducted, will conduct, or used research on the impact of academic libraries on student success, you meet the criteria for this study.
"By exploring the perspective and experience of academic library professionals related to library impact, we aim to enrich the information provided in ACRL’s 2017 Academic Library Impact (ALI) Report. The individual perspectives sought through interviews for the ALI report primarily consisted of library administrators and provosts, not librarians. However, the perspective and experience of library professionals who perform the research upon which the ALI report relies is an overlooked but valuable area of research.
"This project will survey and interview professional librarians and researchers, particularly those who are directly conducting research on the academic library impact of student success, to understand their perspective and research experiences. This project seeks librarians' perspectives on the six ALI priority areas and selected ALI research questions (e.g. “What factors influence librarian communication with academic library users and potential users?” or, “What factors affect librarian decisions regarding the level of confidentiality or privacy of student data?”). This study will also ask how prepared librarians felt to perform this research and how confident they are in the meaningfulness and rigor of their results, to provide a nuanced context for digesting and using this research. Lastly, this project will give insight into this population by defining their demographics and working habits."
The online survey "should take approximately 15-30 minutes, and you will have the opportunity at the end to indicate whether you would be interested in participating in a follow-up interview at a later date." The survey is at https://unlv.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5mXFI5gZ1ijGmVL
Questions to Starr Hoffman, starr.hoffman@unlv.edu or James Cheng, james.cheng@unlv.edu
Photo by Sheila Webber: Bessemer converter, Kelham Island industrial museum, Sheffield, August 2018