ACRL, IPEDS, and National Surveys

New and Improved! This guide has undergone a complete redesign and revision for the 2024-2025 reporting cycle.

Last update: December 3, 2024

This LibGuide provides invormation and tutorials to support PALNI libraries that are reporting for the annual IPEDS, ACRL, ATS/ATLA and other national statistics surveys. This guide only includes those measures on the surveys which can be fulfilled by WMS Reports and tools for expenditures, collections, and circulation.

All PALNI libraries run OCLC WMS with Report Designer, allowing for creation and use of custom reports developed for this guide.

The Analytics Admin Team requests that all PALNI libraries participate in the ACRL survey. Libraries need not submit a complete survey, but may respond with a partial survey for the required IPEDS data points. Including your IPEDS data in the ACRL survey allows the Admin Team and PALNI staff to do internal analysis and benchmarking to support PALNI data-driven decision-making and assist member libraries with comparison analysis. 

Important Notes

• Use the LibGuides tabs for report instructions
• Most reports and templates will require customizations to account for local library practices
• Not every data point can be answered with WMS reports and some reports will only provide a portion of the data needed
• Additional work in Excel/spreadsheet software may be needed for calculations and analysis
• Refer to OCLC documentation for detailed information on how to use and generate reports. Instructions and screenshots are for guidance only.
• We strongly recommend completing ACRL first and then using that data to complete IPEDS

Roles & Permissions

Staff users creating and scheduling reports should have either the Analytics Report Author or Analytics Report Author Admin role.

Need More Assistance?

We are happy to work with PALNI library directors and staff via individualized consultations to help with gathering data, reporting data, retrospectively providing past data or corrections, and using survey data for analysis and benchmarking.

Beginning in 2023, the ATS survey has been redesigned to align with IPEDS. Use IPEDS instructions for the appropriate data points.

Beginning with the 2024 reporting cycle, PDF/print guides are discontinued, and the recommendations and instructions are fully hosted on this LibGuide. The 2023 document is retained here for user reference, if desired.