ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


436 /C&RL News ■  June 1998

Letter to the editor

I was intrigued by the article “Are you 
qualified to serve on the accreditation team?” 
by William N. Nelson (C&RL News, April 1998). 
I work for a national accrediting body, the 
Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges 
and Schools (ACICS) in Washington, D.C.

ACICS evaluation teams do not include a 
professionally trained librarian, but our orga­
nization has often discussed including such a 
person. Our traditional visit for an institution 
offering an associate’s degree is two days; and 
for those that award a bachelor or master’s 
degree, the visit is three days, consisting of 
persons from ACICS-accredited institutions, 
as well as regionally accredited institutions. 
The evaluation team composition can vary in 
educational and professional background— 
from directors of financial aid to tenured fac­
ulty members at land-grant institutions.

Although several regional accrediting bod­
ies require a librarian on the evaluation team, 
I noted that the North Central Association of 
Colleges and Schools and Western Associa­
tion of Schools and Colleges’ regulations ei­
ther do not require a librarian on the team or 
will be looking into condensing the size of 
the teams. I assume that shrinking budgets 
and the cost of accreditation will be playing 
a larger role with the size of comprehensive

evaluation teams. However, with the numer­
ous changes in technology, it is difficult for 
our organization to have traditional team 
members be knowledgeable about resources 
necessary for an appropriate learning resource 
center.

Our criteria regarding the library resource 
center allow the institution to provide docu­
mentation to the evaluation team that the re­
source center is a significant part of the edu­
cational offerings. The library resource center’s 
acquisitions not only should emanate from 
faculty members, but its adequacy is deter­
mined by the extent to which the resources 
support all of the courses offered.

As mentioned earlier, ACICS has never 
included a librarian on any evaluation team, 
but we are looking for possible solutions to 
increasing the skills of those team members 
who would have to evaluate the learning re­
source center. The Middle States Association 
of Colleges and Schools has recently pub­
lished some guidelines on the subject, but 
I’m not sure if this is the best avenue for our 
organization. Any thoughts would be appre­
ciated.—Francis S. Giglio, senior accredita­
tion coordinator, Accrediting Council fo r  In ­
dependent Colleges a n d  Schools; e-mail: 
fgiglio@acics.org

mailto:fgiglio@acics.org