| The study surveys participants' perceptions of the effectiveness of librarians' performance appraisals in academic libraries. Five hundred thirty-six non-evaluators and evaluators of librarians' performances from 46 academic libraries throughout the United States returned useable questionnaires. To assess the perceived effectiveness of librarians' performance appraisals, the study analyzed appraisal procedures, library administrators' and librarians' perceptions of their appraisal process, and specific organizational and personal characteristics. Overall, librarians' performance appraisals are perceived to be neither effective nor ineffective. Specifically, it is perceived that librarians tend to participate in setting library goals and objectives and personal performance goals. Yet, survey participants do not feel strongly that librarians understand the library's goals and objectives. Respondents do not perceive strongly that they have input into the performance standards upon which librarians' appraisals are based. Survey participants feel that they have input into the content of their position descriptions, but they do not feel strongly that position descriptions are very accurate. In addition, respondents feel that they clearly understand what their supervisors expect. Further, respondents do not strongly perceive that effective performance appraisals are a high priority for library management. In addition, survey participants do not overwhelmingly perceive that performance appraisals are accurate or provide a factual assessment of librarians' performance. Performance appraisals are not perceived to be either an effective or ineffective tool for improving and correcting librarians' performance. Less than a majority of the respondents perceive that performance appraisals are very important to compensation decisions. Respondents feel that librarians' performance appraisals are used for multiple purposes, and the emphasis tends to be on the evaluative functions of performance appraisals. Moreover, survey participants are not particularly satisfied with the frequency of the performance feedback. In addition, the evaluation technique perceived to be used most frequently to evaluate librarians' may be inappropriate for the perceived purposes of the librarians' appraisals. Further, respondents feel they are not trained to understand or complete the librarians' performance appraisal process. Finally, several organizational characteristics, including evaluators and non-evaluators, positions within library services divisions, tenure, unionization, and evaluation type, moderate responses. |
