Innovative, well-designed school library programs can be critical resources for helping students meet high standards of college and career readiness. In "School Libraries and Student Learning", Rebecca J. Morris shows how school leaders can make the most of their school libraries to support ambitious student learning. She offers…

Libraries devote serious resources to user-education programs and need to measure their effectiveness with hard data. This guide was designed to simplify the evaluation planning process and the making of evaluation instruments. The material was developed from hundreds of survey instruments used by librarians around the country. The handbook…

Discusses the importance of the response time of an online public catalog and its capacity to support multiple users without system degradation; outlines general requirements of an online catalog; explains the difference between menu and command systems; defines response time; and suggests ways of testing an online system accurately. (EM)

A survey of Library of Congress staff following implementation of four optical disk reader stations measured their satisfaction with training, documentation, equipment and printing, and system reliability and usefulness. Staff found no major flaws with the system, and they saw its usefulness primarily as an access tool. (CDD)

This book, written by a number of library professionals, familiarizes the reader with the motives for and purposes of evaluation and the major contexts and models for evaluation and provides explicit examples how evaluation projects have been and can be carried out in a variety of library contexts. The strategies in this book grew from the S:OLE…

This group of documents presents material on collection development and a list of collection intensity indicators from the Research Libraries Group (RLG), as well as examples of collection assessment techniques from seven members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). ARL member documents cover the assessment of art periodical,…

A series of articles explores the role and activities of school librarians, especially focusing on evaluation procedures. The topics discussed include librarians' and evaluators' perceptions of important evaluative criteria and a description of a performance based evaluation model. The last article describes working in an international school…

This manual provides librarians and library managers with a performance appraisal system that measures staff fairly and objectively and links performance to the goals of the library. The following topics are addressed: (1) identifying expectations for quality service or standards of performance; (2) the importance of a library's code of service,…

General education is the core of the undergraduate experience. It provides a lasting foundation for students' future academic, civil, cultural, economic, and social lives. Additionally, as part of most general education curricula, general education as well as first-year experience programs are becoming virtually universal in colleges and…

This step-by-step guide gives librarians the information to develop successful, collaborative ventures with other organizations in an effort to provide comprehensive and integrated services for children and families. Each chapter outlines steps to take in the creation of a family-centered library environment. The topics discussed are: serving…

This annotated bibliography of materials dealing with the evaluation of library reference services is arranged by category including literature success, quality, and accuracy of answers; cost and task analysis; interviews and communication; classification of reference questions; reference collections; staff availability; use and nonuse of…

A pilot study conducted to identify concerns of public services middle managers on costing and use of performance measures found the librarians interviewed had little faith in their usefulness. Implications of these findings are discussed and specific ways to increase the usefulness of such measures for library decision-making are suggested. (CDD)

Seven articles discuss the importance of using evaluation forms and methods tailored to the library, rather than to teachers, for the evaluation of school librarians. Appropriate evaluation criteria are suggested and three evaluation forms are provided, including one intended to be completed by students. (CLB)

In an effort to improve individual progress toward meeting university requirements for promotion and tenure, librarians at Murray State University (Kentucky) recently revised their Faculty Activities Report and Faculty Evaluation forms to meet the following objectives: (1) to develop a Faculty Activities Report form that would be easier to…

Describes the research objectives, rationale, methodology, and findings of a model program developed at the Northwestern University Library, which examined whether online catalogs require instruction and, if so, how that instruction would be best delivered. (CLB)