sept06b.indd


charting our future 
Pamela Snelson 

Communicating the value of 
academic libraries 
The 2006–07 ACRL President’s focus 

While I was still a candidate for ACRL Presi­
dent, the keynote program at a PALINET 
annual conference sparked my interest in 
the issue, the value of academic libraries. 
At this meeting Michael Gorman, then ALA 
president­elect, and Keith Fiels, ALA execu­
tive director, were part of a panel presenta­
tion. Gorman spoke to the values of libraries 
and librarians, ideas such as stewardship, 
service, and intellectual freedom. As a good 
counterbalance, Fiels discussed the value of 
libraries and remarked that he had found 
little information on the value of academic 
libraries. “Could this be true?,” I asked my­
self. After a bit of research I concurred with 
Fiels—there is a paucity of research on the 
value of academic libraries. Public libraries 
have had success with return on investment 
(ROI) analysis, and school librarians are able 
to measure the contribution of the library to 
student achievement. But academic libraries 
have more difficulty with establishing their 
value. I decided that day, if elected, I would 
make communicating the value of academic 
libraries the focus of my ACRL presidency. 

Support of strategic plan 
Having served on the ACRL Board during the 
creation of ACRL’s current strategic plan— 
“Charting our future”—I knew that the value 
of libraries was a key component. My focus on 
communicating the value of academic libraries 
supports two strategic objectives in the plan’s 
Goal Area of Leadership. These are: 

1. empower members to communicate the 
value of their contributions to learning and 
scholarship, and 

2. increase recognition of the value of 
libraries and librarians by leaders in higher 
education, information technology, funding 
agencies, and campus decision­making. 

As I began to think about what I could do 
to further these objectives I came to the con­
clusion that the first step would be knowledge 
—What is it that is valuable about an academ­
ic library? Any measurement of value would 
be useless unless it measured something 
important to our provosts and presidents. 
School and public libraries have already de­
veloped useful metrics. ROI is meaningful to 
a city business manager or mayor; correlating 
test scores with library metrics can impress a 
school superintendent. But what is it about 
an academic library’s achievement that can 
be used to communicate its value? And what 
is value, anyway? 

Value from other perspectives 
Going to a favored source, the online Oxford 
English Dictionary (OED), I find this defi ni­
tion of value: “The relative status of a thing, 
or the estimate in which it is held, according 
to its real or supposed worth, usefulness, or 
importance.”1 

Is a library valuable just because it is a 
library? Or does our value change in com­
parison to other units on campus? The OED 
also offers this quote from Hobbes’ Leviathan 
to illustrate the definition: “[Let men] rate 

Pamela Snelson is college librarian at Franklin & 
Marshall College and ACRL president, e-mail: pamela. 
snelson@fandm.edu 
© 2006 Pamela Snelson 

C&RL News September 2006  490 

mailto:snelson@fandm.edu


themselves at the highest Value they can; yet 
their true Value is no more than it is esteemed 
by others. ”2 

To be successful librarians need to explore 
the value of the library from the perspective 
of different types of administrators to gain a 
comprehensive understanding of the library’s 
value to the many constituencies on campus. 
These administrators may include presidents, 
chancellors, provosts, vice presidents for 
advancement and finance, and deans respon­
sible for residential life. We need to develop 
a research base to determine what the higher 
education administration values about librar­
ies, and values in ways that affect funding. 
Only then we can measure and assess our 
programs and services to effectively commu­
nicate the value of academic libraries. 

I would like answers to the following 
questions: 

• What do higher education administrators 
value about libraries? 

• What is it about library programs and 
services that could make a compelling argu­
ment for funding? 

• How do librarians translate the value a 
library brings to the higher education enter­
prise into advocacy? 

• How do librarians demonstrate the 
library’s impact on student learning? 

• How do librarians articulate that libraries 
are making a direct contribution to student 
learning? 

As librarians begin to understand what 
value we bring to higher education, we can 
translate our requests for additional funding 
into programs, services, and new partner­
ships that speak to this value. I believe this 
understanding is predicated on conversations 
with those who sit at the highest levels of 
academic administration. It is a bit like doing 
a 360­feedback for libraries to learn where 
we could add value and where we might not 
be aware that we add value. 

My presidential focus, then, is to start the 
conversation about, and add to the research 
base of, the value of academic libraries. To 
accomplish this, three activities will result 
during my presidential year. 

Research with provosts 
Upon my request, ACRL contracted with the 
Library Research Center at the University of 
Illinois at Urbana­Champaign to conduct 
phone interviews with chief academic offi cers 
(CAOs). In an introductory letter, CAOs were 
told ACRL would like to know more about 
what the academic librarians should be com­
municating to them and their colleagues, and 
the types of information needed to help them 
make informed decisions about resource al­
locations for libraries. 

Twenty­six interviews have been conduct­
ed. The CAOs in the study are from universi­
ties, colleges, and community colleges, and the 
range of institutions represents good diversity 
in size and location. The interview responses 
were notably consistent. To briefl y summarize: 
quality, centrality, and demand are key. 

“The fi ndings suggest that librarians need 
to attend to the classic formula of measur­
ing quality, centrality and demand—quality 
of services and collections as measured by 
outside authorities and responses of users; 
centrality of the library to the mission of the 
college or university as it evolves in a digital 
age; and demand for its services by faculty 
and students.”3 

One practical piece of advice—Librarians 
need to be more aggressive in asking for 
resources. Librarians often assume we won’t 
get what we need. It is a fatal strategy to let 
this assumption guide our decisions about 
asking for funding. Additional information 
from this research will be forthcoming. 

Program at the ALA Annual 
Conference in Washington, D.C. 
My President’s Program Planning Committee4 

worked with the Library Research Center on 
the CAO study. They are planning a program 
for the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in 
Washington, D.C., geared toward effective 
communication practices and learning how 
the library is valued by CAOs. A panel will 
feature three CAOs, plus a moderator. The 
panelists will hear brief, detailed scenarios 
involving academic libraries and respond by 
indicating what they would want and need 

September 2006  491 C&RL News 



to hear from their librarians about the situa­
tion. There will be time for general audience 
discussion and a brief overview of the CAO 
research study. 

“From the Inside” column in C&RL News 
You probably know at least one academic 
librarian who changed fields and is now 
working in another area of higher education. 
I think we can learn a great deal from higher 
education administrators who know libraries. 
To this end I am editing a series of columns 
for C&RL News written by higher education 
administrators from all types of offi ces, who 
are former academic librarians. I will ask 
them to share their insights on how librarians 
can tell our story in terms our academic ad­
ministrators will understand, and how ACRL 
members can communicate their value. 

Questions I am asking include: From 
your “outsider’s” point of view, what is the 
value of an academic library? How do you 
see academic library/librarians contributing 
to the success of your students and faculty? 
Can you talk about how librarians can best 

express their need for resources for the 
library? Which arguments are particularly 
effective? 

I am very encouraged by the quality of the 
work to date and the response from ACRL 
members when I’ve discussed my presi­
dential focus. If we can turn the answers to 
my questions about value into concise, yet 
powerful messages for our advocacy efforts, 
librarians will have the power to communi­
cate the value of libraries, and we will be 
recognized for our contributions to learning 
and scholarship. 

Notes 
1. Oxford English Dictionary, dictionary. 

oed.com/. 
2. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651. 

Ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, 
1960): 57. 

3. Leigh Estabrook, Interim Report, 2006. 
4. Committee members include John Budd, 

Mary Carr, John Collins, Sally Kalin, Michael 
LaCroix (co­chair), Loretta Parham, Celia Rabi­
nowitz, and Lisa Stillwell (co­chair). 

(“ACRL in New Orleans,” cont. from page 484) 

Each speaker drew upon his or her exten­
sive use of local historic resources to study the 
ethnic groups that make up the fabric of New 
Orleans. The program extended principally 
to European immigration and to those ethnic 
groups from Europe and Africa that have 
joined with immigrants from the Caribbean, 
Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the 
world in helping to form the unique society 
of New Orleans and surrounding areas. 

Magill focused on the British infl uence, 
one of the West European infl uences one 
does not so often associate with French New 
Orleans. The English and Scottish were very 
much a part of the city’s fi nancial community 
during its golden days. Meneray focused 
upon the settlement patterns, interethnic 
diversity, and the impact of the Civil War 
upon the immigrant population. Irish, Sicil­
ian, and Jewish immigration formed part of 
this history. 

Clark described her research on the 
period from 1700 to 1810, using archival 
resources to reconstruct the experience of 
the largest group of immigrants during this 
period: people of African descent, including 
Creole African Americans and free people 
of color. Although published scholarship on 
these early New Orleanians is still relatively 
sparse, the archival sources bearing witness 
to their arrival and lives are especially rich 
and were left relatively unscathed by Katrina. 
Details that emerge from these records about 
family, religion, and economic networks 
suggest new ways to “see” the iconic archi­
tecture of the French Quarter. 

For more information and bibliography 
on ethnic groups in New Orleans, see the 
program Web site at www.lib.byu.edu 
/estu/wess/2006program.html.—Barbara 
Walden, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 
bwalden@library.wisc.edu 

C&RL News September 2006  492 

mailto:bwalden@library.wisc.edu
http:www.lib.byu.edu