Library Internal Reviews: Creating an Assessment Community

Periodic reviews of university colleges, schools, and support entities help to assist the efforts in describing their value and improving what they do. These reviews typically occur about every seven years, depending on the size of the organization. There is little in the literature about another level of review, one that occurs within a library at the department level between these seven-year reviews. This chapter describes a library internal review process used to evaluate each library department’s value to the library and university community and provides recommendations for improvement decision-making. It consists of a reflective effort by the department under review as its members write a self-study document. This document is used by an external reviewer and an internal review team made up of six library colleagues who conduct the review using the self-study, surveys, interviews, and other data points to determine the efficacy of the department. The entire effort helps to build an assessment culture in the library, one that acknowledges the value of and good that each department does, as well as providing suggestions for improvement.