Abstract: More or Less?: Telling the Library's Story Through the Academic Program Review

◆ John Barnett, University of South Carolina Upstate

Academic libraries regularly provide information to support the accreditation, certification, and periodic review of degree programs. The library portion of the academic program review has traditionally focused on detailing the number of titles and volumes of books in the collection, the age of the collection, and the amount of money the library spends to support the degree program. Employing a "more instead of less" approach, our library uses both narrative and data about collections, services, and initiatives to share the library's story.

This poster will explore some of the practical reasons why we changed our focus (e.g., less money to spend on materials, unavailable statistics) as well as conceptual ones (e.g., to provide more qualitative information on library services). The poster will share the variety of information we provide and discuss how effective this “oversharing” is in conveying the complex work that libraries do to support the university curriculum.

From this poster, participants will gain insights on the variety of information that they can provide to reviewers and administrators to convey library support for degree programs. Participants will better understand standards from different accrediting bodies and consider how the library can gather and share information to address these standards. Participants will learn how to craft a template to help standardize and expedite preparation of program reviews.