Quo Vadis?

And What are We Going To Do About It?

Anne Barnhart
What Administrators Talk About
 Numbers!
◦ RPG
◦ ROI
◦ “Cost Containment”
◦ Price of Textbooks
◦ Obama’s 2020 Challenge
 Anticipated impact on GDP
RPG
 Retention, Progression and Graduation
 Average 6 year graduation rate at public 4-

year institutions = 56%

 Goal: to reduce time-to-degree in order to

increase output
 “Faculty and advisors are interceding…”
 How can LACS Librarians work to help

improve RPG?
ROI
 Return On Investment
 “ROI of student support services”
 Libraries = student support services
 What is the ROI of Subject Specialists?
“Cost Containment”
 “Consolidation of operations and activities”
 Consider how many fewer positions there are

for SALALMistas today

 “Higher education needs $30 billion in

additional funds just to maintain current

substandard funding levels”
Online Education
 UCF generates $17 for every $1 spent on
online education
 How can we better support online education?
Information Technology Fluence
 “Are our students prepared?”
◦ SAT scores for math and verbal
◦ why not IT literacy scores?
 Lament: “We have no IT fluency standards!”
◦ How can we better market what we’re already
doing?
Language barrier
 How many of you can speak Admin?
SWOT
INTERNAL EXTERNAL
 Strengths  Opportunities
 Weaknesses  Threats
Strengths
 What advantages do we have?
 What do we do better than anyone else?
 What unique or lower-cost resources do we

have access to?

 What do people in our university see as our

strengths?
 What factors lead to our success?
Weaknesses
 What could we improve?
 What should we avoid?
 What are people in our university likely to see

as weaknesses?
 What factors cause us to fail?
Opportunities
 What are the good opportunities facing us?
 What are the interesting trends we are aware

of?
 OJO:

◦ Be as specific as possible with these

◦ Try looking at strengths to ask if these open up any
opportunities
◦ Look at weaknesses to see how eliminating these
could create opportunites
Threats
 What obstacles do we face?
 Who is our competition and what are they

doing that should worry us?

 Are the required specifications for our job ro

services changing?
 Is changing technology threatening our

position? If so, be specific as to what and

how.
 Could any of our weaknesses seriously

threaten us? If so, what and how?

Using SWOT
 S-O Strategies: pursue opportunities that fit
well with strengths
 W-O Strategies: overcome weaknesses to

pursue opportunities
 S-T Strategies: identify ways to use our

strengths to reduce our vulnerability to

external threats
 W-T Strategies: establish a defensive plan

(not recommended – too passive)

Looking Forward
 Continue Quo Vadis at SALALM for as long as
needed
 SALALM marketing campaign for members to

use at individual libraries and campuses to

promote our value