Academic Libraries and Student Recruitment

Steven Bell points to and comments on this article here on the ACRLBlog.
The article titled “The Impact of Facilities on Recruitment and Retention of Students” appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of Facilities Management.
It has got loads of great data, comments, analysis and charts which show that the physical library ranks very high in potential students decision making process in selecting the IHE.
More importantly, poorly maintained or inadequate libraries ranked high enough on the reasons for potential students to reject a college or university. Hey, it works both ways!
This might be an article to print out and leave lying around for decisionmakers to trip over… or maybe just send it to them with a cover note — Time for a new Learning Commons, a new building, an Information Commons, Paint job, rugs, wireless, PC’s, …? What’s on your wish list?
Stephen