Ongoing and Systematic Academic Program Review

Systematic program review is proposed as a semi-formal means to proactively involve higher education faculty, staff, students and administrators in analyzing and making decisions about the future of their programs. The chapter first examines issues facing higher education, issues that provide a rationale for annual program reviews. The chapter positions program review as a form of participant-oriented program evaluation, and describes features of annual program reviews. A case study illustrates how a program review was conducted. Summary benefits and implementation guidelines are provided for administrators and faculty.

Organizational Learning for Library Enhancements: A Collaborative, Research-Driven Analysis of Academic Department Needs

This article presents a qualitative evaluation methodology of academic departments for library organizational learning and library enhancement planning. This evaluation used campus units’ academic program review reports as a data source and employed collaborative content analysis by library liaisons to extract departmental strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and priorities. We illustrate how a systematic review of internal planning documents facilitates the understanding of programmatic goals, identification of cross-unit synergies, and prioritization of library services. Our evaluation used a mix of technological, methodological, and analytical activities suitable for implementation in other academic library settings.

The University Library and the Problem of Knowledge

The problem of knowledge, on the broadest level, is that the scope, specialization, and cross-disciplinarity of the research enterprise have long surpassed any overarching framework. The key question, on the campus level, is whether the development of research collections by the library is aligned with the university’s strategic aims and overall institutional development. A straightforward (though uncommon) way to make the university/library relationship more effective in this regard is for the library to have a meaningful role in the academic program review process. This essay describes such a role, singling out the particular situation of some 40 predominately undergraduate institutions that have been reclassified as research-level in the Carnegie scheme. As a rule, when a university’s institutional identity or ambition outstrips its library’s capability, collection development is bound to become a campuswide concern.