CARLI Receives IMLS Grant for Consortial Collaboration for Academic Library Leadership Success (CCALLS)

CARLI is pleased to announce the award of an Institute for Library and Museum Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st (LB21) Century Librarian Planning Grant in the amount of $143,489: Consortial Collaboration for Academic Library Leadership Success (CCALLS). The goal of CCALLS is the engagement of U.S. library consortia in a two-year participatory planning project for a national continuing education program to develop academic library workers’ assessment skills, taking the success of CARLI Counts, also started with an IMLS LB21 grant, outside the state of Illinois to the national level.

Academic libraries face continuing demands to demonstrate their impact on student learning and success in the contexts of competitive campus budgeting processes, accreditation reports, and program reviews. Library staff today must know how to shape, expand, and even discontinue services and programs using assessments that they design and data they collect. Furthermore, they must be able to support their requests for resources with systematic evidence and not only anecdotes. No academic library today can effectively compete for campus resources without investing in this skill set for their staff.

The two-year CCALLS initiative will be undertaken in two phases, the Community Dialogue and the Design Seminar. The specific program evaluation methods used will include knowledge assessments as well as gathering reactions and suggestions. These assessments will be complementary to descriptive data collected on participation in the Design Seminar, downloads of the White Paper, and attendance at the Webinar. CARLI will serve as the project lead, the University of Illinois Library is the partner organization.

Watch the Announce email list and CARLI News for information as this project gets underway.