{"id":2402,"date":"2016-04-16T21:52:49","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T21:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hsli.org\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2016-04-16T21:52:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T21:52:49","slug":"ala-releases-2016-the-state-of-americas-libraries-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/ala-releases-2016-the-state-of-americas-libraries-report\/","title":{"rendered":"ALA releases 2016 &#8220;The State of America&#8217;s Libraries Report&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The American Library Association has released its annual &#8220;The State of America&#8217;s Libraries Report&#8221; in a special issue of\u00a0<em>American Libraries<\/em>\u00a0magazine. The report covers the latest issues and trends affecting libraries of all types&#8211;academic, school, and public. Some of the major challenges, affecting the profession as a whole, that the report identifies include community engagement, intellectual freedom, and online privacy. The report also reviews professional demographics for each type of library.<\/p>\n<p>For academic libraries, the report notes the main challenge as being able to demonstrate the library&#8217;s value to the broader institution it serves, especially in helping students succeed academically. ACRL&#8217;s &#8220;Assessment in Action&#8221; program has helped gather an increasing amount of evidence showing conclusively that libraries have a significant impact, particularly in five areas.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>strengthening the information-literacy standards for first-year students&#8211;this is especially important, as many new students lack experience finding research articles or evaluating the quality of information<\/li>\n<li>solidifying the link between student academic success and using the library&#8211;this has been acknowledged by the majority of top academic administrators; they consider the resources and services libraries provide as having a greater impact than do classroom and online courses, scholarly research, and analyses of institutional data<\/li>\n<li>ensuring that library instruction has a significant impact on retaining students&#8211;not only freshmen, but also seniors, have acknowledged that the library plays a significant role in enhancing their ability to find, analyze, and use information<\/li>\n<li>documenting that libraries make a substantial contribution to campus-wide academic support services for students, as libraries have placed a high priority on the &#8220;learning commons&#8221; concept of providing collaborative spaces for students to exchange ideas and experiment with multimedia technology<\/li>\n<li>improving the student learning experience by providing research consultation-faculty have given libraries high marks for giving one-on-one consultations, in addition to classroom instruction sessions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The report also includes some facts and figures on current demographics and finances for academic libraries.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>in 2015, academic libraries supplied nearly 27% of jobs for new LIS graduates; the average beginning salary was approximately $42,000<\/li>\n<li>in 2014, doctorate-granting and research institutions had the largest staff size, with around 50 employees; associate-granting schools had the smallest, with an average of just over five staff members<\/li>\n<li>conversely, salaries and wages made up the largest percentage of the budget at associate-granting colleges; they took up the lowest percentage at doctorate-granting and research institutions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To see the full report, go\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/news\/sites\/ala.org.news\/files\/content\/state-of-americas-libraries-2016-final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. The section covering academic libraries is on pages 7-8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American Library Association has released its annual &#8220;The State of America&#8217;s Libraries Report&#8221; in a special issue of\u00a0American Libraries\u00a0magazine. The report covers the latest issues and trends affecting libraries of all types&#8211;academic, school, and public. Some of the major challenges, affecting the profession as a whole, that the report identifies include community engagement, intellectual&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-library-association","category-studies-on-library-trends"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsli.org\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}