ABSTRACT
For the last month, I have been drafting the chapter examining the human, physical, fiscal, and academic resources for the University of Arizona’s North Central Accreditation self-study. This is an interesting exercise anytime, but an especially useful one while working on this paper about collection development. One of the major challenges of any accreditation self-study is to demonstrate the institution’s present success in utilizing its resources to achieve learning, research, and service goals. At the same time the study must identify how the institution uses its resources to meet the challenges of the future. It is especially difficult to provide the data to support the new directions when current institutional success is measured primarily in terms of inputs. However, future success will almost surely be measured in terms of outcomes. For example, how much have students learned and do they demonstrate that they are capable of continued learning?
