Washington, DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) invites participation in the ClimateQUAL® survey in 2012. The ClimateQUAL®: Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment (OCDA) project centerpiece is an online survey that collects information about staff perceptions concerning (a) the organization’s commitment to the principles of diversity, (b) staff perceptions of organizational policies and procedures, and (c) staff attitudes. The survey addresses issues such as diversity, teamwork, learning, fairness, current managerial practices, and staff attitudes and beliefs.

ARL, in partnership with the University of Maryland Industrial/Organizational Psychology (I/OP) Program, offers this protocol to the library community. We are currently seeking eight to ten additional US, Canadian, and UK institutions to participate in 2012. Please note that participants need to survey at least 50 part-time or full-time employees, possibly including student workers.

Benefits of Participation

ClimateQUAL® provides a useful management tool for effective organizational adaptation that uses deep assessment of a library’s staff to plumb the dimensions of climate and organizational culture important for a healthy organization in a library setting. Feedback from the survey is grounded in a baseline from the libraries that have already participated. Using normative scales and institutional results effectively, significant improvements can be achieved. The most effective techniques for remediation are not top-down, but those that engage the entire staff. The tool is a must-do during the first 100 days for an organization with new leadership as it provides useful baseline information.

To date, 30 institutions have partnered in the development of ClimateQUAL®. This initial research has led to the development of the model of the “healthy organization” and scales that help advance understanding of the relative conditions within the organization.

Participant Responsibilities

Libraries participating as a 2012 partner are asked for the following support:

Submit the participant enrollment fee ($5,000 per participant);
Assign a contact person to work with us throughout the project;
Commit for the contact person to meet at group meetings held in conjunction with ALA Annual conferences;
Commit to repeat the survey periodically to measure the impact of improvement strategies over time; and
Commit to work with the ClimateQUAL®: OCDA community members to share strategies for using evidence based methods as a tool for organizational and service improvement.

For More Information

Detailed information about the ClimateQUAL® protocol and its background can be found at http://www.climatequal.org , including recent articles, FAQs, a 20 minute video by Dr. Paul Hanges describing the theory behind ClimateQUAL®, reports on the UM Libraries’ survey results for 2000 and 2004, and a bibliography of relevant research publications.

Interested participants can meet with ARL staff in June during ALA in New Orleans.

For more information or to express interest in participating in spring 2012, please send an email to climatequal@arl.org .

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 126 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at http://www.arl.org/ .

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