The ACRL Board of Directors has approved a revision of the association’s Standards for Libraries in Higher Education (SLHE). SLHE, adopted in 2004 and previously revised in 2011 and 2018, is designed to guide academic libraries in advancing and sustaining their role as partners in educating students, achieving their institutions’ missions, and positioning libraries as leaders in assessment and continuous improvement on their campuses. The standards are a framework for library planning and assessment, particularly in regard to providing guiding principles, performance indicators, outcomes and metrics for libraries to use in a variety of circumstances as they work with faculty and students in higher education setting, achieving and measuring institutional learning outcomes.
A task force comprised of members of the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries Committee reviewed SLHE as part of the usual five-year review process. The resulting revision of SLHE builds upon the foundation of the 2018 document with an added and intentional focus on the role of academic library personnel. The task force used the term library personnel instead of academic librarian or librarian to encompass the full range of staff who contribute to the academic library mission. Recognizing that library expertise is central to advancing teaching, research, and institutional effectiveness, the revised SLHE explicitly emphasizes expectations in core areas such as information literacy, scholarly communication, collection development, and discovery.
This emphasis affirms library personnel, not just as support personnel, but as educators, collaborators, and strategic partners whose contributions are integral to the academic mission. By embedding library personnel expertise into SLHE, the task force aimed to ensure that this professional knowledge is both recognized by university leadership and valued by accreditation teams as a critical dimension of institutional quality.
The Board approved the revised SLHE at its April 30, 2026, virtual meeting. The revised standards are freely available on the ACRL website.