2024-04-18 12pm AASA-PT Meeting Notes

Assemble

• Notetaker - Anna

• Record Meeting

• Meeting goals

• Develop consensus on a collective comment to submit to regulations.gov

5 min

IPEDS AL elimination proposal

• Elimination proposal

• Supporting document

5 min

• Supporting document notes staff burden as a reason for proposing elimination, but does not elaborate.

• Most comments are in support of keeping the AL portion of the IPEDS survey. A small handful are in support of eliminating it. A large number of comments requesting retaining it note local benchmarking needs.

• Comments due May 3.

• Orbis Cascade Alliance submitted a group comment.

• If we develop a collective comment, who would sign on? OCA statement is signed by deans.

Discussion

• What is the unique impact of AL/IPEDS, and how do you currently use the IPEDS data? Do you know of any other use cases for your campus library / CDL?

  • What is the impact of the AL survey going away / not being managed by IPEDS? Do you feel you can get what you need from other sources?

30-40 min

all

1. Impact of IPEDS and use cases

   1. UCB - IPEDS used for benchmarking, ARL is an alternative but IPEDS allows easy comparison using data that isn’t available in ARL (institutional info, like enrollment, graduation, etc). IPEDS includes more institutions, more comprehensive data. Recent strategic planning project leveraged the IPEDS data (as well as ARL and ACRL, relied on a combination of data sources).

   2. UCLA - IPEDS allows more comparison opportunities; not a burden to collect the data to report it because it’s also being reported to other outlets).

   3. UCM - use IPEDS data to support funding requests (doesn’t use ARL, so IPEDS is the major source of comparator data).

   4. UCSD - IPEDS pulled data from ACRL, removing IPEDS AL section will not save any staff time since it’s being reported elsewhere as well.

   5. CDL - notes that for institutions that don’t participate in ACRL, IPEDS does represent additional staff labor/time, but the stats are baseline. Time savings could be realized through other means (changing timeline, aligning definitions across reporting obligations).

   6. missed speaker - don’t use it locally, but will support the group’s decision

   7. UCI - IPEDS isn’t just a tool for individual institutions, it’s a tool for the whole profession of librarianship.

   8. UCSF - don’t use IPEDS, don’t report to ARL or ACRL (in the past has reported to AAHSL but at the moment UCOP is the main/sole reporting obligation). When doing benchmarking look at other HSLs (collections librarian has other sources; ACTION: Susan will get info on these sources and provide back to the group). Don’t feel there’s a direct impact locally if IPEDS AL goes away.

2. impact of not having IPEDS Academic Libraries survey

   1. increased burden for local benchmarking and comparison to peers (for example, one of the UC comparators does not submit to ARL).

   2. strategic risk of not having library data packaged with the rest of an institution’s data (making libraries invisible to administrators)

   3. do institutional administrators use IPEDS data, like when applying to AAU?

      1. educational opportunity to heighten awareness of IPEDS data.

      2. very hard to track on this, and even if they aren’t accessing it directly there is a high likelihood that the data is being used within the libraries and is trickling up to administrators.

3. implication of IMLS potentially taking over these statistics

   1. library data would be separate from institutional data - strategic risk, messaging is that libraries are not an important part of the institutional / student success

   2. increased administrative burden of separating statistics into multiple agencies (institutions would still be submitting to IPEDS, now would have to submit to yet another place).

4. other notes

   1. this committee has a unique perspective that we can say exactly which campuses report to which outlet, and can show that IPEDS is the only obligation that all of the campuses hold in common.

   2. Blue sky: it would be beneficial for all of the outlets to get together to create a single long survey that asks everything that they all want to know. The inconsistencies between the different surveys is much more burdensome than simply reporting IPEDS (inconsistencies make comparison difficult).

   3. Webinar discussion from 2021 that may be of interest:

d. IPEDS has the stamp of approval of the Federal government, has a level of legitimacy that the other outlets do not.

• Susan will get info on the data sources UCSF is using for peer comparison and provide back to the group

Shared statement

10 min

all

• Who signs?

  • It would be more persuasive for people with higher-level responsibility to make the submission on behalf of the UC Libraries (if possible).

  • Suggestion to take a multi-path approach - ask SILS LG to affirm that AASA-PT can submit a comment; will re-engage CoUL after this group’s discussion to see if there’s interest in submitting a comment from their level (CoUL Steering Committee meets on Monday).

• AASA-PT would like to submit a group comment.

• Chan, Michele, and Sarah will draft a statement, will send to the group to review by midweek next week.

• Chan will reach out to SILS LG to see if they are already planning a statement and let them know that AASA-PT is planning on drafting a statement.

Additional question:

• We are expecting that ARL will change the data they are asking for in the (relatively) near future, which will require updating the prototype.

Wrap up

Review actions and decisions

Parking Lot

Capture important topics for future discussion

• Review draft IPEDS comment (for April 29 meeting)

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