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Libraries increasingly need to justify their budgets to governing boards, administration, legislatures, and accrediting agencies. How librarians with faculty status are evaluated is typically different than how librarians without faculty status are evaluated and the evaluation process differs at each institution. To demonstrate the value of their scholarly work including (presentations, publications, service, funding, and work accomplished), librarians perhaps consider designing an electronic portfolio and share it with these external groups who control library budgets. In this column, we will share with you our readers a brief literature review, how and why we built our electronic academic portfolio in Notion, and finally a summary of our experiences using Notion for our electronic academic portfolio as our academic portfolio in Notion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using personally identifiable information (PII) (patron data) to make informed decisions in academic libraries through learning analytics programs has increasingly become more commonplace. In this column, we discuss how libraries around the world have used PII to make informed decisions about hours (gate count), electronic resources (collection usage and authentication), and research assistance (virtual reference). In addition, we discuss the use of learning analytics in library environments including the benefits and concerns associated with its use. Finally, we discuss how we have used PII at our institution's library and the data metrics we plan utilize at some point in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial, we discuss the benefits and challenges of working with library data that contains non-Personally Identifiable Information. Despite not containing identifiable information, non-PII data can still be analyzed and used to inform decision making. We are presently using several non-PII data points to inform decision-making in our library: Gate Count, Book Checkouts, Customer Searches, Search Terms Reports, Article and Abstract Downloads, Customer Service Interactions, and One Question Surveys. While non-PII data can inform decision-making in libraries, we have found this type of data to be limited in the ways we outline in this editorial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, after a failed search for the Executive Director of the American Library Association (ALA), ALA members put forth a ballot initiative to determine whether the educational requirements for the position should be modified, in part, to expand the potential applicant pool. With this research, the authors examined if current ARL administrators hold an MLS/MLIS and whether current ARL administrators felt it was necessary for library administrators to hold an MLS/MLIS. Additionally, the researchers examined ARL administrators'perspectives regarding whether it was necessary for them to earn additional degrees to achieve their highest library administrative position, and whether they felt their degrees prepared them to be successful in the position that they currently hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]