 Welcome to Realizing Outcomes of Assessment, Decision-Making and Action-Taking, part of the Research and Assessment Cycle Toolkit offered by the Association of Research Libraries and made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. This presentation is part of a module that focuses on reflecting, communicating, and acting on the results of library assessment. It describes possible outcomes of the overall assessment process. We hope the content is useful to library practitioners seeking to conduct library assessment projects. At the close of the presentation, you will find a link to a feedback form. Please let us know what elements were useful to you. To some degree, the process of acting on assessment results to make decisions and take action can follow some predictable paths that library assessment practitioners can anticipate and prepare for. For example, an assessment project that focuses on determining whether a library service, resource, or space is effective in producing an outcome, one of two possible conclusions are likely. Either the assessment demonstrates that the library service, resource, or space was able to produce the anticipated outcome, or the assessment doesn't demonstrate that the library offering produced the anticipated outcome. In either of these two scenarios, again, predictable steps might occur next. If the outcome occurred, librarians might be reasonably confident in deciding to continue the service, resource, or space, and if a strong correlation needs to be demonstrated, additional assessment can be designed to explore that. There also might be a desire to expand on the successful library offering or apply what is learned about that offering to improve other library services, resources, and spaces. If the outcome does not occur, then it would seem, at least based on the results, that the library, service, resource, or space was not effective in producing the outcome. Library assessment practitioners might attempt to explore what rendered the library offering ineffective or might consider ways in which something could be added to or changed about the offering to make it more effective. After consideration and possible changes, another cycle of assessment can be employed to see if anything has changed about the ability of the library, service, resource, or space to produce the desired outcome. This bifurcated process might be common, but it's definitely not the only set of possible decisions and actions that may result from library assessment. At the close of an assessment cycle, any number of other results or consequences might take place, including revising or informing strategic planning, prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring library values are enacted in policies and procedures, setting targets for goals and initiatives, reallocating resources, supporting library workers, generating innovation, and or sunsetting services, resources, or spaces no longer serving a purpose to make way for new offerings. Sometimes an assessment doesn't end in any of these ways, but instead contributes to building support for a decision or action that might not take place in the short term but may develop later on. And while there is sometimes a degree of uncertainty around the close of an individual assessment project, most assessments are part of a larger and ongoing assessment plan that persists through an iterative cycle of assessment. The goal at the resolution of a particular assessment project is to do something, which includes thinking through and consciously deciding not to do something. The intent then is to make a change of some kind, perhaps in improving library services, resources, and spaces, perhaps in deciding with cause, not to act, or perhaps in increasing knowledge, understanding, empathy, or advocacy. The conclusion to avoid is doing nothing, improving nothing, understanding nothing, and communicating nothing. That may seem to be a common sense statement, but the assessment with no results in reality at all is more common than one would wish. Let's take a look at some of the outcomes of assessment described on this list. One way in which assessments can help libraries realize outcomes is through influencing or informing strategic planning priorities, activities, or processes. For example, assessment results may provide checks on the degree to which stated strategic priorities are attained. Results can also reveal that unintended consequences of strategic decisions are occurring, or provide insights into opportunities that may become part of strategic goals in the future. Likewise, an assessment could demonstrate that a strategic plan or activities within the plan can be rebalanced or re-aligned for better effect. Organizational strategy often seeks to align these components of taking action in libraries. The overall intent of strategy is to provide targets, goals, or values that both underpin and drive action, and then assure that there's alignment from what the library hopes to do and achieve through these elements listed here, including the library services, resources, and spaces provided, the knowledge skills, abilities, and dispositions of library workers, the gathering in of users, not-yet-users, stakeholders, partners, and colleagues, methods, strategies, delivery modes, and venues of providing library offerings, policies, procedures, structures, and processes, financial allocations, reward structures, and so on. Assessment results can check alignment throughout the organization towards stated and tacit goals and intentions, indicate where reallocation of effort or resources would benefit the attainment of strategic priorities, or identify new areas where greater intentionality around a specific focus or need could benefit, augment, or inspire change in an overall library strategy. Assessment results can also be used to prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, and cultural competence in libraries. Depending on the assessment project, one result may be the ability to make changes to prioritize and improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and cultural competence in library services, resources, spaces, or the library organization itself. Of course, this is dependent upon the goals, structure, and deployment of a particular assessment project. If cultural competence and DEI concerns were not present in the study design, the results are likely to have diminished capacity or no capacity at all to make change in these areas. However, if a more refined, intersectional, and multi-dimensional assessment process was used, the results may point the way to making the library offerings under study more equitable or inclusive. It is also possible that some findings might be generalizable to other similar library services, resources, and spaces. One key reminder in this area is that it's essential that assessments not only include representatives of the individuals and communities that are the foci of the project from the start, but also that the participants and communities are included in communication of assessment results, subsequent decision-making that grows from the results, and ongoing dialogue and collaborative action going forward from the close of the assessment process. Another application for assessment results is ensuring that assessment learnings are applied to enhance or revise policies and procedures. Library documentation, policies, and procedures are artifacts that capture how libraries act in written form. Connected to library and institutional missions, legal and organizational requirements, and professional standards, library documentation has two audiences. External-facing documents serve users and partners. Internal documents serve library workers. Because they articulate and to some degree determine the ways in which library services, resources, and spaces are provided to user communities, policy and procedure documents should be reviewed and updated frequently, but oftentimes that is an ideal rather than a reality. Typically this kind of documentation sets the standards of service for libraries, the levels, limits, and priorities of services, library worker roles, and model behaviors or practices. All of these elements should be aligned with overall library philosophies, ethics, and goals. Again, because such documents often form the basis for decision-making, it's essential that they grow and change as the library, its environment, and its users do. Assessment can and should impact library documentation. As assessment uncovers, clarifies, or inspires changes in values, needs, or aspirations, both of libraries and their user communities, these changes should be reflected in official documentation and standard practice in libraries. Assessment can help library workers think through what changes to documentation and standard practices are needed, what processes can be put in place to ensure library workers are prepared for and adhere to resulting changes, and whether and how to plan for exceptions to the following standard practices. In these ways, assessment can help librarians walk their talk, so to speak, by checking in on official documents, making sure they reflect current values, needs, and intended service levels, and providing a mechanism to ensure that policies and procedures are aligned with service, resource, and space intentions and are maintained into the future. Assessment results can also be used to set targets for indicators, articulating goals and intended outcomes for library work. Library services, resources, and spaces are intended to achieve outcomes. Ideally stated in internal or external documentation, the goals of library services, resources, and spaces should be clearly articulated. Oftentimes, library internal documentation includes performance indicators that can be used to discern whether an outcome is being met. Indicators are concrete, measurable, and observable, and are intended to communicate what meeting an outcome looks like, or how we can know when an outcome has been met. Within an indicator, targets are used to quantify an indicator or mark an existing or intended change in an indicator. It can be challenging with new services, resources, or spaces to determine initial indicators or set targets, because indicators and targets are part of organizational documents and processes, sometimes including performance measurement of library offerings. It can be tempting to set targets for some level that seems easily attainable. Alternatively, there may be pressure to set a target for a more ambitious goal. Generally speaking, a good stretch target is a bit more than the status quo level. Determining reasonable targets can rely in part on historical data, in part on staff experience, and in part on user input. Usually, if the overall goal is continuous improvement, setting targets a bit better than your past achievement levels makes sense, though it's important to monitor that over time and reset targets as needed. Clearly, assessment results can be invaluable in engaging what targets are attainable and continuously updating and providing rationales for stretch goals. Assessment results can also be used to allocate or reallocate resources within libraries. Assessment results can reveal new understandings that inspire changes in strategic goals and activities, improvement of DEI efforts, changes to policies and procedures, new staffing models, new service targets, innovation or even sunsetting. Any or all of the changes indicated by assessment results may also require changes in resource allocations. Resources that might need to be reallocated or redistributed might include financial resources, of course, but might also include personnel, time, or effort. In this way, assessment can help align finite resources with what is prioritized and valued in libraries, based on continuously renewed understanding of library services, resources and spaces. Another way in which assessment results can help library assessment practitioners realize outcomes is through supporting library workers. Library workers, individually and as a group, are the most valuable library resource for making an impact for users and communities. Assessment offers an opportunity to reveal, concretely and in demonstrable and shareable ways, the differences library workers make in the lives of individuals. Having said that, reflecting upon whether we're doing things right, doing the right things, and learning more about whether what we think is right actually is right, is inherently risky. Continuous improvement involves candid assessments of whether what we're doing is working and for whom it may not be working, which inevitably leads, from time to time, to the realization that we're doing something that's not quite right or not right at all. This risk-taking can lead some colleagues to be uncomfortable with assessment, though most will acknowledge that discovering a problem and learning how to help rectify it is infinitely better than failing to find and therefore perpetuating problems. Sometimes finding problems or opportunities to make improvements can result in reallocation of library worker effort and attention. In some cases, that might be disconcerting. In other cases, library workers may have long wanted to make changes that assessment points the way to. In any case, when assessment impacts library workers' job roles or responsibilities, those changes should be adequately resourced, supported by professional development, and rewarded. Assessment can also help libraries realize outcomes related to innovation. Assessment can help libraries innovate to better serve their users and communities in a variety of ways. For example, in setting up assessments, oftentimes outcomes and intended impacts are more clearly articulated than they might otherwise be. By being concrete and intentional around stating the outcomes and impacts library services, resources, and spaces are intended to achieve, library assessment practitioners can help colleagues articulate what outcomes they hope to contribute to. Library workers can also be more mindful about the outcomes that the library would like to contribute to but isn't currently, either at all or as much as they would like to. In this process, library workers can think through any ways the library does contribute to these more aspirational outcomes and, even more importantly, what the library could do more of or do better at in order to increase the library contributions to such outcomes. In addition to helping generate ways the library could do something more, better, or tailored, assessment can also generate inspirations about new library service offerings, resource offerings, or space offerings that the library hasn't done before but would both align with the library mission and help users attain the outcomes they seek. If inspiration hits and ideas are generated to help libraries do things better than before, differently from in the past or even in brand new ways, library workers will want to ask some questions about those ideas, including what will doing something new or differently mean that we need to stop doing, and are we, as the library, the right ones to make the changes we've envisioned? Who else might make sense to collaborate with? In the map of likely assessment result paths, this innovation typically occurs in the segment it highlighted here, though inspiration for innovation could strike at any point. It's important to point out that it's actually a quote unquote failed assessment that leads to this particular innovation space. When a library service resource or space doesn't yield a particular or hoped for outcome, a problem solving approach and honest interpretation of assessment results can lead to ideas that can change the ability of a library offering to deliver on a particular outcome, or even an outcome that was not previously anticipated. As we know from Yoda, failure, the greatest teacher is. This is a good concept to keep in mind, especially when an assessment doesn't go as was planned. While initially disappointing, such results can ultimately become fertile fodder for innovation. In other assessment projects, an assessment of a library service resource or space may indeed demonstrate that the intended outcomes were achieved. Hooray, that's exciting. But it's also not the end. One way to extend achievement of outcomes from one successful project to a larger impact is to systematize that success. One can look for lessons learned that can be applied to other projects, but one can also innovate by moving from standalone successes to a more programmatic approach. If an isolated library service resource or space is successful in achieving an outcome or helping users achieve their outcomes, then library assessment practitioners and their colleagues might look for ways to make that isolated offering into a more intentional, scaffolded program that might be expected to similarly generate attained outcomes on perhaps a more targeted audience or on a broader scale or on some other plan for scaling up in logical ways. These clearly stated outcomes and assessment results that provide context and detail on successful factors, innovating from a single service resource or space to a more programmatic set of offerings may make good sense and help move from individual outcomes to long-term impact. Should a move from a single offering to a programmatic approach be the next step resulting from an assessment, a few steps are likely to follow, and library assessment practitioners may do well to prepare for these, at least generally, in their reporting of results. These steps might include a joint needs assessment, identifying gaps and needs for the conceptualized services, resources or spaces that the program may address, joint articulation of programmatic outcomes, mapping to assess the coverage or depth of the offerings envisioned, and anticipation of infrastructure training and communication strategies that would be necessary for the next steps of innovating from an isolated library offering to a broader program. Assessment results can also be useful in understanding the process of discontinuing services, resources and spaces. In some ways, this use of assessment can be considered the flip side of innovation, but in reality, sunsets both require innovative thinking and generate new and inspiring work in libraries. Sunsetting library services, resources and spaces can be difficult to reign. In general, library offerings are created to serve a purpose, and it can be hard to know when that purpose or need has been met, when an environment or users have moved sufficiently on from the initial need, when others outside the library might be better positioned to take on the work, or when room must be made for services, resources and spaces that meet new needs. Of course, assessment can help us know these things, or alternatively, know when those things haven't actually come to pass. An assessment may reveal that a library offering is no longer meeting its intended purpose, or it could reveal that it is indeed meeting those needs, perhaps in unknown ways, or for users that were not initially fully understood, or perhaps it is even meeting new needs that were not part of the original intent and are newly evolving. If a library service, resource or space has outlived its purpose, then assessment may demonstrate that a planned abandonment is in order. While sunsetting a library offering can be hard in a variety of ways, ultimately it can be necessary for a healthy organization committed to evolving to meet changing needs. Finite resources means that choices must be made, and priorities and needs shift over time and as library workers learn new things, gain cultural competence, embrace shifting technology, and a host of other internal and external shifts that require continuous change. Having said that, assessment can reveal what parts of a library service, resource or space can be decreased or ceased, which parts might need to be retooled or redesigned, or which parts need to continue, perhaps as specialized services for particular user groups or in collaboration with partners outside the library. Done well, assessment can be used to include library workers that offer a library service, resource or space and give them a role as well as agency in the process, illuminate the roles and interconnections of the offering under scrutiny, provide indications of what elements of the offering might need to be continued or redeployed in other ways, and offer information that can be applied to achieving similar goals through alternative avenues. Should a planned abandonment be the next step resulting from an assessment, a number of questions should be asked and answered, and library assessment practitioners may do well to prepare for these, at least generally, in their reporting of results. Among these questions are, what data exists about the use of the library service, resources, or space? Did we learn about why the offering is not actually or perceived as successful now? What would be missing if the library ceased the offering? What would the library gain? And what was learned about what it would take to improve the service sufficiently to delay or cancel a sunset? Of course, these are only some of what might occur as a result of an assessment or based on assessment results. Sometimes these concrete outcomes don't occur at all, or at least they don't occur immediately upon conclusion of an assessment project. So, what else might occur? Generally, the goal of assessment is to make decisions or take actions to change or improve practices, policies, or outcomes of library services, resources, or spaces with the intent of offering better experiences to users and an easier path for attainment of their goals. Sometimes that goal of assessment is achieved in straightforward ways. Other times, other things happen, which are productive outgrowths of assessment, but are also, at least in the short term, less clear cut. For example, assessment may lead to new understandings or ways of thinking about users, practices, policies, the assessment process itself, etc. Assessment may not lead immediately to action, but to the consideration of action that may come later. That's still a win. Some change happens slowly and requires cumulative information to make happen. Assessment may, and often does, result in affective outcomes. Participants in the assessment, library colleagues, and library assessment practitioners may all grow in their positive feelings towards assessment, the evidence it uncovers, or actions proposed based on the results of assessment. Assessment often generates improved connections with others, reduces uncertainty, and increases feelings of agency and empowerment. Sometimes assessment reveals that action is not desirable or appropriate, and in such situations, it's particularly important to communicate that the action resulting from assessment is an active decision not to act. And finally, nearly all the time, assessment ends an improved understanding of assessment itself, what it can do or not do, what went well or should be done differently in the next iteration, what assessment capacity exists, and where it needs to grow. All of these outcomes are normal and usually beneficial outcomes of assessment. Speaking of assessment capacity, the multiplicity of possible conclusions to a particular assessment project or process reveals that a number of skills might be required of or useful to library assessment practitioners. Among those skills are influencing with or without positional authority, monitoring organizational culture, understanding the motivations of decision makers, employing logical and persuasive reasoning, deploying strategies for calling for action or making an ask, using evidence, and embracing emotional intelligence, patience, and persistence. In this presentation, we've described a variety of ways to realize outcomes resulting from assessment and considered the ways a given assessment project might quote unquote end. In reality, assessment is or should be always ongoing. Assessment is cyclical. Viewed either at a project level or a macro level, assessment is, at its core, a reflective process focused on ongoing communication with users, colleagues, and stakeholders designed to generate continuous improvement. Ongoing and continuous. In a healthy organization, assessment continues to follow a predictable, though not always smooth, process through the assessment cycle. By following the assessment cycle, reflection and continuous improvement are ubiquitous during the processes of gathering, documenting, communicating, and designing or redesigning library services, resources, and spaces, bringing the library ever closer to helping users succeed in meeting their needs and achieving their goals. Thank you for viewing this presentation on reflecting, communicating, and acting on the results of library assessment projects. Please use the link provided to complete a feedback form on the usefulness of this information for your purposes.