id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
crl-16541	Murray, Adam; Ireland, Ashley; Hackathorn, Jana	The Value of Academic Libraries: Library Services as a Predictor of Student Retention	2016	12	.pdf	application/pdf	6263	238	40	Lynch et al. found that, while provosts expect academic libraries to contribute to areas of institutional priority, such as enrollment and retention initiatives, they had little guidance on how to connect library practice to these areas.6 Indeed, the academic library may have played a passive role in such areas, with the result that their contributions are overlooked.7 Student engagement in certain educationally purposeful activities, such as first-year experiences, common intellectual experiences, writing-intensive courses, and service learning, has been noted repeatedly as impacting students’ satisfaction level with an institution, thus impacting departure decisions.8 Yet, a surprisingly high percentage of students are not engaged with their education in meaningful ways.9 Kuh indicated higher education institutions could take immediate steps toward improving engagement and retention by intentionally targeting different student populations with interventions bearing historical evidence of effectiveness.10 Kuh and Gonyea noted that educationally purposeful activities that nurture student engagement often require students to spend a considerable amount of time outside a formal classroom environment and that academic libraries provide an ideal informal academic environment for these types of practices.11 This study’s central question is “how does known library use affect students’ per- sistence?” Academic libraries, seeking to demonstrate their relevance in a performance-funding environment, will find little guidance on how to appropriately gather data or communicate impact to university administrators.4 Librarians working in academic libraries are eager to engage in initiatives supporting university priorities, even those that do not directly involve the library.	cache/crl-16541.pdf	txt/crl-16541.txt