Reframing Project Assessments: Including People as a Priority

With constrained resources, librarians must identify the catalog projects most deserving of staff time. Projects are unique from regular work, arising from internal analysis or brought to technical services within the library organization. Assessment, using data to make positive change, describes a project’s value. While assessment is seen as crucial to library work, recently there has been a movement in librarianship to address bias within some long-used standards, some of which are part of a traditional assessment. This study identifies a set of assessment areas that describe and compare three cataloging projects involving bibliographic records for non-English language resources. It compares cost, quality, public impact, support of library strategic plan, support of division and personnel, support of professional values and ethics, and a free writing section. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of these assessment areas and describes the benefits of shifting the focus away from production as a means of description.