Data & Analytics

ARL gathers and disseminates data and analytics on research library practices, effectiveness, and impact.

Our Research and Analytics program pursues a research agenda for the Association. We collect and analyze data on all aspects of research libraries’ roles in scholarly and scientific production, learning facilitation and learner success, and knowledge access and sustainability.

The program supports an active community for librarians interested in library assessment, evaluation, and improvement. This community shares approaches and solutions to problems through two activities:

ARL maintains an online email community, ARL-Assess, that is open to all who are interested in joining. Sign up for the list on the Google Groups subscription page.
The Library Assessment Conference, co-sponsored by ARL and the University of Washington, is a biennial event that gathers practitioners and researchers. The conference provides a mix of invited speakers, contributed papers and posters, and workshops.

Contact Kevin Borden (kborden@arl.org) with questions.

2021 Changes to Naming Convention for Annual Surveys

ARL will modify the naming convention used to refer to the survey cycle and associated publications. Rather than use a date range for the ARL Statistics and ARL Salary Survey,...
Additional RLIF Training Materials & Poster Sessions

RLIF project team members from the University of Florida and Iowa State University developed workshops based on their projects. The workshops were made possible with funds from the IMLS RLIF...
ARL Annual Salary Survey

This survey gathers data on salaries for more than 14,000 professional positions in ARL member libraries and tracks minority representation in ARL US libraries. The data collected include the average,...
ARL Statistics® Survey

This survey collects data that describe the collections, overall library expenditures, materials expenditures, staffing, and operational and service activities of member libraries. This data series began in 1908 and represents...
ASU Library Tool Helps COVID-19 Researchers Sift, Analyze New Research Results

The Arizona State University (ASU) Library’s Data Science and Analytics unit has developed a tool to accelerate COVID-19 research by helping researchers efficiently browse and understand the vast amount of...
DataBridge Prepares Students for Careers in Data Science

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech is helping students develop skills to succeed in the fast-growing field of data science. DataBridge, an undergraduate research program offered by the libraries, provides...
Framework Background Materials

For more information about the Research Library Impact Framework Pilots, see this document with FAQs, the five research topics, and a brief version of the framework. The full Research Library...
Honouring Indigenous Data Sovereignty in Ceremony and Practice: A Collaborative Pathway at the University of Alberta

Over the past few years, a number of Canadian postsecondary institutions have begun initiating Indigenous data sovereignty initiatives. However, very few have moved beyond the development of a webpage that...
How University of Arizona Libraries Are Building Data Science Skills for Students and Faculty

The Harvard Business Review once described the work of a data scientist as the “sexiest job of the 21st century.” One University of Arizona data scientist looked at 10 universities...
Impacting Digital Scholarship: Flexible Web-Hosting Service Through CreateFSU

CreateFSU, the FSU-branded instance of Reclaim Hosting’s web-hosting service, was launched by Florida State University (FSU) Libraries in 2021 to provide faculty, staff, and students with a platform to showcase...