Library Assessment Conference — Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment

The in-person 2020 Library Assessment Conference has been canceled. Instead of an in-person event, conference organizers are holding a series of free virtual sessions between October 29, 2020 and March 17, 2021. All accepted papers will be published as part of the conference proceedings and poster presentations are available on the conference website.

The Library Assessment Conference’s sister conference, LibPMC, will take place virtually 2–4 November 2021.

The Conference brings together practitioners, researchers, educators and students interested in all aspects of performance measurement in library and information services in any context. The conference provides a mix of invited speakers, contributed papers and workshops designed to stimulate discussion, provide ideas for measuring and improving library performance, and develop new concepts and techniques to advance the field.

The 2020 posters are now online. The conference will not hold a virtual poster session this year, but we encourage you to engage with poster authors directly and to stay in touch with the community and conference via the ARL-Assess email group and by using #LAC20 on Twitter.

The full 2020 paper presentation schedule is now online. We look forward to seeing you at the virtual sessions. Recordings of each of the sessions will be shared on this page.

Virtual paper sessions will be held monthly between October 29, 2020 and March 17, 2021. Sessions will be conducted via Zoom webinars and each session will consist of 8–10 presentations on a common theme. Presentations will be 10–15 minutes each, followed by a 5 minute Q&A, for a total of no more than 20 minutes.

Paper proceedings and poster presentations will be made available on the conference website.

The conference will not offer workshops this year, due to the difficulty of running interactive, participatory workshops in an online setting, and with the recognition that it is likely that many potential attendees are already experiencing fatigue from extended online work amidst challenging work situations.

To acknowledge the accepted workshops and the significant work authors put into their proposals, we are highlighting their work and encourage them to offer these programs in other venues.

These awards recognize individuals who have made substantial contributions to effective, sustainable, and practical library assessment as evidenced through presentations, publications, methods, service, advocacy, and other work. Career Awards will resume in 2022.

Travel Awards are offered to students and early-career professionals from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups who have demonstrated a strong interest in assessment and have the potential to contribute to the profession by deploying and developing innovative assessment and evaluation methods and strategies.