How Libraries Contribute to Student Learning
Barbara Fister over at Library Babel Fish on InsideHigherEd recently posted about a new report out from the Association of College and Research Libraries summarizing the findings of the second year of a project called Assessment in Action , an ambitious attempt involving over 200 institutions to see how libraries contribute to student learning and how we can measure that contribution. The cumulative findings of these projects are these: Libraries play an important role in helping students survive their first year at college. A number of projects showed that students who received some kind of instruction from librarians in their first year do better in their courses than those who don’t. Students who use libraries tend to stay in college and get better grades than those who don’t. (Of course, these findings tend to be correlation rather than causation. Still, good to know.) Many of the institutions participating found that students benefited when libraries partnered with ot...