HEIRAlliance Executive Strategies Report #6

WHAT PRESIDENTS NEED TO KNOW
...about Evaluating Institutional Information Resources

July 1995

from the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance of ARL, CAUSE, and Educom

Documents related to this report are available and described at the end of this report.

Institutions of higher education continue to invest heavily in information resources--information, technology, and services. The technology continues to change at a rapid rate, as evidenced by the increasing power of the desktop workstation, the emphasis on distributed computing, the use of classroom technology and video conferencing, the ubiquity of electronic servers for text, numeric, and graphic information, the need of the business community for colleges and universities to produce information-literate graduates, and the evolution of the Internet toward a national and global information infrastructure.

In this environment many opportunities arise--and in fact strong forces are already at work--to change instructional methods, research approaches, and administrative processes. Colleges and universities are increasingly aware of the importance of their investment in information resources and the need to have means to assess their progress in providing them.

Traditional requirements for review, combined with increasing public demands for accountability in higher education, necessitate continued development of good tools for assessment. One of the primary approaches to evaluation in higher education is institutional self-study to review progress in a particular area; another is the regional accreditation process, overseen through agencies which develop accreditation guidelines and standards and administer periodic team visits. An accreditation review is often preceded by the institution's own extensive self-study that uses accreditation guidelines and standards published by its accrediting agency.

While most accrediting agencies offer standards for libraries or information resources that primarily address information in print form, a growing area of concern that needs to be addressed is access to and delivery of information through computing and communications technologies. As the model for accessing and delivering information increasingly becomes one of a networked information environment, electronic information resources especially need to be addressed as an integral part of the institution's self-assessment or accreditation process.

In response to this need, the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (HEIRAlliance) has developed a set of guidelines for evaluating institutional information resources, with an emphasis on electronic resources. The term "information resources" as used in the guidelines encompasses information technologies (computing and voice, video, and data communications), information services, and information itself.

Based in part upon accreditation team experiences, the guidelines include a description of general requirements as well as a detailed set of questions related to several areas that need to be addressed to ensure that information resources support the mission and administration of the institution. What follows is an executive summary of the general requirements proposed in the HEIRAlliance Evaluation Guidelines for Institutional Information Resources. Institutions may compare their environments with the target environment described in the general requirements, and evaluate their progress in these areas, depending on their stated mission and strategic directions.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

Information resources--including computer hardware and software, communications networks, databases, scholarly information in electronic form, access and delivery systems, transaction processing systems, computer applications, computer and information professionals, and other related resources--are of the quality, depth, and currentness necessary to support the institution's articulated mission, strategies, directions, and goals for academic programs and institutional management.

Information in electronic form is made available to the campus community and, where appropriate, to the local, national, and/or international networked community. Such information is selected, delivered, and managed to support the institution's academic and community service mission and administrative requirements; it includes institutional administrative and academic databases and their content, electronic scholarly information, other electronic text and images, communications between colleagues locally and elsewhere, indexing and abstracting services, bulletin boards, and access to commercial and non-commercial online resources.

Academic Program Support

Academic programs are supported by appropriate electronic information resources. These comprise, for example, high- speed communications networks, computing hardware and software, access to external networked resources, electronic scholarly information, library search engines and digital repositories, indexing and text and data services, high- technology classrooms, electronic conferencing facilities, multimedia instructional development labs, administrative databases, and the like. The institutional environment encourages faculty to make appropriate and innovative uses of electronic information resources to improve academic programs and to publish scholarly information, and encourages students to make appropriate and innovative uses of such resources to further their learning. A locus of responsibility for the institution's digital academic information has been identified.

Administrative Support

The institution's operations and management are supported by appropriate information resources. Initiatives that make use of information resources to provide better administrative services and savings are encouraged and supported by senior administrators and information resources organizations. Information resources are viewed as having the potential to improve business processes for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Access

A variety of electronic information resources, both on and off campus, is readily accessible by faculty, staff, and students so that they may accomplish their work independent of their location. Electronic information resources and provision for electronic access to information are allocated among central and distributed suppliers and users within the institution according to understood plans and procedures.

Extended Boundaries

The institution is moving to exploit technology to extend the traditional boundaries of the campus by providing educational and research opportunities and services in the home, at the worksite, or wherever faculty and potential students may be.

Institutionwide Planning

The institution considers among its important information resources such organizations as libraries, academic and administrative computing support groups, telecommunications and networking services, audiovisual and multimedia facilities, printing facilities, and university presses. The institution recognizes the need for ongoing partnerships and joint planning among these groups, as well as management and technical linkages among them, so as to benefit from their synergy and to avoid duplicative effort. A well-developed planning process which is tied to the institutional budgeting process is in place for information resources, involving faculty, senior administrators, librarians, information technology professionals, students, and others as needed.

Advisory and Policy Structure

Appropriate user, provider, and institutional structures (e.g., advisory and policy committees) exist to provide guidance and direction in the development and use of institutional information resources. These structures are supported by the institution and are made up of members who are knowledgeable about the enabling capabilities of electronic information resources. Policies and procedures are in place to promote responsible use of such resources by individuals, by campus organizations, and by the institution.

Staffing

Professional staff with appropriate expertise are available-- both centrally and in divisional, school, or department units close to users--to support faculty, students, administrators, and staff and to maintain services. Such staff have adopted a customer-service orientation in the delivery of information services to the campus. Acquisition of new technologies is timely, and related support services (documentation, development, consultation, training, maintenance) meet the needs of institutional users.

The HEIRAlliance Evaluation Guidelines for Institutional Information Resources have been developed, reviewed, and endorsed by the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom, three key organizations that encourage and provide support for effective planning, management, and use of information resources in higher education. To this end we encourage the widespread use and dissemination of the guidelines.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE GUIDELINES

In 1994, the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance appointed a committee to update the CAUSE/Educom Evaluation Guidelines for Institutional Information Technology Resources (published in 1988). This committee comprised Peter Graham, Associate University Librarian, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Christine Haile, Associate Vice Chancellor, Technology Services, State University of New York Central Administration; and Norma Holland, Associate Director, University Computing Services, Indiana University. Representing respectively ARL, Educom, and CAUSE, this committee made recommendations to the parent organizations which approved these new guidelines in the spring of 1995. (The original document was based on the work of a committee made up of David L. Smallen, Hamilton College; Thomas W. West, The California State University System; James Moss, Naval Academy; and Robert G. Gillespie, now with Robert Gillespie Associates.)

Special thanks are due to several readers, whose comments and perspectives were valuable in ensuring that the document was broadly framed to serve all types and sizes of colleges and universities: David Smallen, Hamilton College; Albert L. LeDuc, Miami-Dade Community College; and Gerald Bernbom, Indiana University.

HEIRALLIANCE EXECUTIVE STRATEGIES SERIES

The Executive Strategies reports are published by the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (HEIRAlliance), a vehicle for cooperative projects between the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom. Reports in this series inform campus leaders about critical and timely issues related to information resources. Focus issues are identified by the executive officers of the three sponsoring associations: Duane Webster, Executive Director, Association of Research Libraries; Jane N. Ryland, President, CAUSE; Robert C. Heterick, Jr., President, Educom.

Print copies of this Executive Strategies Report and the HEIRAlliance Evaluation Guidelines for Institutional Information Resources are available from CAUSE at $5.00 each ([email protected], 303-939-0310).

A related document developed by the HEIRAlliance committee as part of this project provides an example of what the information technology environment might look like at an information-resources-intensive institution. A print copy of this supplementary document is available for $5.00 ([email protected], 303-939-0310

Copyright (C) 1995 by HEIRA. Material from this report may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credit to the HEIRAlliance. This report was edited and prepared on behalf of the HEIRAlliance by CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301-6114; phone 303-449-4430, e- mail: info@ cause.colorado.edu.

ARL, the Association of Research Libraries, is an organization of 119 major research libraries in the U.S. and Canada whose mission is to shape and influence forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. 202-296-2296

CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education, is a nonprofit association whose mission is to enhance the administration and delivery of higher education through the effective management and use of information resources. 303-449-4430

Educom is a non-profit consortium of leading colleges and universities seeking to transform education through the use of information technology. Its programs focus primarily on networking and integrating computing into the curriculum. 202-872-4200