Accreditation: it’s a scary time, and it can seem like the institution’s future hangs on whether the library can show its worth. Take a deep breath! This isn’t a “gotcha” moment. It’s an opportunity for you to show all the things the library is already doing that both help individual students and move the school closer to its goals. Remember, too, that the accreditation committee wants you to succeed. Especially if this is a reaccreditation visit, they’re just looking to see that you’re meeting your goals.

Amanda DiFeterici, Senior Manager, Product Strategy at Credo recently described Credo Insights, a new product that Modules subscribers will have access to this month. In the interview, DiFeterici discussed what Insights is, how it can be used to get a clearer picture of a library’s success in information literacy instruction, and how to learn more about the product. Be sure to join her webinar Credo Insights: Usage and Assessment Data Made Easy as part of the InfoLit Learning Community web series on May 24 at 2pm ET.

Credo will soon debut a new product, Credo Insights, which you were instrumental in developing. Can you tell readers what Credo Insights is?
Credo Insights is an analytics platform that gives librarians multifaceted information about usage of their InfoLit Modules subscription. That information includes assessment and usage data. Combining those two types of data, drilling down into different types of assessments, and figuring out who is using the Modules can uncover much, not only about how the product is being used at an institution, but also how students are participating and performing in that institution’s information literacy program.

Over the past few months, we’ve presented a series of webinars as part of our InfoLit Learning Community, covering topics from using Credo Modules in library instruction, to collaborating with faculty, to helping students thrive in a new media environment. (If you missed any, catch the recordings here!) We hope that you’ve been able to bring some of the information our speakers have imparted into your work this semester, or plan to do so in the fall. But the question remains, how will you know if the new information and activities are helping students? That’s where assessment comes in.

Ready to catch up on some professional reading? The following are some information literacy articles that have been published this year and that can help you get up to speed on what’s happening, not only outside your library’s walls, but also outside our borders. Assessment of students’ IL progress is a common thread among the papers, though they each have much more to offer as well. In the “if you only read one paper this year” vein, Eamon Tewell’s “The Practice and Promise of Critical Information Literacy” is a thought-provoking read that brings a more social dimension to IL than has previously been prominent in the literature. Access them all and join in the conversation in our InfoLit Learning Community.