The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services

The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services
Author: Joseph R. Matthews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 538
Release: 2017-10-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

This guide provides library directors, managers, and administrators in all types of libraries with complete and up-to-date instructions on how to evaluate library services in order to improve them. It's a fact: today's libraries must evaluate their services in order to find ways to better serve patrons and prove their value to their communities. In this greatly updated and expanded edition of Matthews' seminal text, you'll discover a breadth of tools that can be used to evaluate any library service, including newer tools designed to measure customer and patron outcomes. The book offers practical advice backed by solid research on virtually every aspect of evaluation, including quantitative and qualitative tools, data analysis, and specific recommendations for measuring individual services, such as technical services and reference and interlibrary loan. New chapters give readers effective ways to evaluate critical aspects of their libraries such as automated systems, physical space, staff, performance management frameworks, eBooks, social media, and information literacy. The author explains how broader and more robust adoption of evaluation techniques will help library managers combine traditional internal measurements, such as circulation and reference transactions, with more customer-centric metrics that reflect how well patrons feel they are served and how satisfied they are with the library. By applying this comprehensive strategy, readers will gain the ability to form a truer picture of their library's value to its stakeholders and patrons.

Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning and Evaluation for Public Libraries

Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning and Evaluation for Public Libraries
Author: Melissa Gross
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2016-01-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0838914160

Featuring plentiful examples of how to proceed through each phase of the OBPE model, this book boils down planning and evaluation into an approachable, easy to understand process for public librarians, library managers, and grant writers.

Evaluating the Impact of Your Library

Evaluating the Impact of Your Library
Author: David Streatfield
Publisher: Facet Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2012-12-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1856048128

Assessing impact is increasingly critical to the survival of services: managers now require comprehensive information about effectiveness, especially in relation to users. Outlining a rigorously tested approach to library evaluation and offering practical tools and highly relevant examples, this book enables LIS managers to get to grips with the slippery concept of service impact and to address their own impact questions in their planning. The 2nd edition is fully updated to include international approaches to qualitative library evaluation, new international research, and current debates on the evolving nature of evaluation, as well as reflections on the importance of involving stakeholders and of evaluation to guide advocacy. Key topics include: • The demand for evidence • Getting to grips with impact • The research base of this work • Putting the impact into planning • Getting things clear: objectives • Success criteria and impact indicators: how you know you are making a difference • Making things happen: activities and process indicators • Thinking about evidence • Gathering and interpreting evidence • Taking stock, setting targets and development planning • Doing national or international evaluation • Where do we go from here? Readership: Practising library and information service managers and policy makers in the field. LIS policy shapers and managers in public, education (schools, further and higher education), health and special libraries and information services working in any country or internationally and people engaged in professional education in the field such as lecturers or students.

Doing Library Impact Evaluation

Doing Library Impact Evaluation
Author: David Streatfield
Publisher: Facet Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-03-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781783304141

Doing Library Evaluation complements the authors' earlier Facet Publishing book Evaluating the Impact of Your Library by showing how the impact evaluation model presented there has been applied to meet a variety of real evaluation challenges.

Strategic Planning for Results

Strategic Planning for Results
Author: Sandra Nelson
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0838935737

The PLA Results Series has long served to help public librarians envision, evaluate, and respond to community needs with distinctive programs and services. Building from this proven model, Strategic Planning for Results is the fully revised version of Planning for Results, the foundational book in this groundbreaking series. Sandra Nelson, senior editor of the Results Series, focuses on the essential steps to draft a results-driven, strategic planning process that libraries can complete over the course of four months, regardless of organizational structure or size. Reflecting on the current planning environment for public libraries, Nelson makes the case for strategic rather than long-term planning and includes a wealth of information about understanding and managing the change process to help staff Assess the change-readiness of the library and preparing staff to implement forthcoming changes Simplify data collection and decision-making processes through the use of 14 reproducible workforms Identify service priority options and reach agreement as a group Successfully present and communicate within their library Including the newly revised and adopted Public Library Service Responses, along with case studies, workforms, and tool kits, Strategic Planning for Results offers librarians a wealth of ideas to effectively meet changing community needs.

The Accidental Library Manager

The Accidental Library Manager
Author: Rachel Singer Gordon
Publisher: Information Today, Inc.
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781573872102

"Included are insights from working library managers at different levels and in various types of libraries, addressing a wide range of management issues and situations. Not to be missed: comments from library staff about the qualities they appreciate - and the styles and attitudes they find counterproductive - in their own bosses."--Jacket.

Evaluating Reference Services

Evaluating Reference Services
Author: Jo Bell Whitlatch
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2000-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780838907870

With this handy new guidebook, reference luminary Jo Bell Whitlatch outlines practical methods for evaluating and delivering excellent reference service to the technology-savvy library user of today.

Assessing Service Quality

Assessing Service Quality
Author: Peter Hernon
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0838913105

This extensively revised and updated edition explores even further the ways technology influences both the experiences of library customers and the ways libraries themselves can assess those experiences.