Proving Your Library's Value

Proving Your Library's Value
Author: Alan Fishel
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0838948006

You know the value of your library, but elected officials, donors, community leaders, funders, and other important stakeholders may not. How can you make the library a priority for these groups, who may have preconceived notions about what the library does, as you compete with other important community organizations for funding? In this book from United for Libraries, you’ll learn how to use The E’s of Libraries® (Education, Employment, Entrepreneurship, Engagement, and Empowerment) to quickly demonstrate why your library is essential and worthy of funding, using messaging that is organized, persuasive, and memorable. With the help of worksheets, charts, and prompts, you will learn how to use language designed to win over stakeholders, funders, and partners; craft custom messaging in several formats that is easily accessible and memorable, including elevator speeches, budget presentations, and annual appeals; and create presentations and other materials tailored to any audience based on the sample documents included. This book's innovative framework can be used by any size or type of library, and by any library advocate, including Friends groups, library staff, trustees, and foundations.

Book Traces

Book Traces
Author: Andrew M. Stauffer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-02-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0812252683

In most college and university libraries, materials published before 1800 have been moved into special collections, while the post-1923 books remain in general circulation. But books published between these dates are vulnerable to deaccessioning, as libraries increasingly reconfigure access to public-domain texts via digital repositories such as Google Books. Even libraries with strong commitments to their print collections are clearing out the duplicates, assuming that circulating copies of any given nineteenth-century edition are essentially identical to one another. When you look closely, however, you see that they are not. Many nineteenth-century books were donated by alumni or their families decades ago, and many of them bear traces left behind by the people who first owned and used them. In Book Traces, Andrew M. Stauffer adopts what he calls "guided serendipity" as a tactic in pursuit of two goals: first, to read nineteenth-century poetry through the clues and objects earlier readers left in their books and, second, to defend the value of keeping the physical volumes on the shelves. Finding in such books of poetry the inscriptions, annotations, and insertions made by their original owners, and using them as exemplary case studies, Stauffer shows how the physical, historical book enables a modern reader to encounter poetry through the eyes of someone for whom it was personal.

Academic Library Value

Academic Library Value
Author: Megan Oakleaf
Publisher: ALA Editions
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780838915929

This resource from Megan Oakleaf, who wrote a benchmark ACRL report on library value, will help you apply value and impact concepts to your own library. It includes 52 activities designed as part of professional development workshops and in consultation with libraries.

Storytelling

Storytelling
Author: Janice M. Del Negro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-06-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

This book serves as both a textbook and reference for faculty and students in LIS courses on storytelling and a professional guide for practicing librarians, particularly youth services librarians in public and school libraries. Storytelling: Art and Technique serves professors, students, and practitioners alike as a textbook, reference, and professional guide. It provides practical instruction and concrete examples of how to use the power of story to build literacy and presentation skills, as well as to create community in those same educational spaces. This text illustrates the value of storytelling, covers the history of storytelling in libraries, and offers valuable guidance for bringing stories to contemporary listeners, with detailed instructions on the selection, preparation, and presentation of stories. It also provides guidance around the planning and administration of a storytelling program. Topics include digital storytelling, open mics and slams, and the neuroscience of storytelling. An extensive and helpful section of resources for the storyteller is included in an expanded Part V of this edition.

Measuring Your Library's Value

Measuring Your Library's Value
Author: Donald S. Elliott
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780838909232

With tax-funded organizations under microscopic scrutiny, library directors need to make a strong public case for the value their library provides. Measuring Your Library's Value, designed to serve large to medium-sized public libraries, gives librarians the tools to conduct a defensible and credible Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). Based on research funded by IMLS and PLA, this hands-on reference covers the economic basics with librarian-friendly terms and examples, preparing library leaders to collaborate with economist-consultants. Library directors and trustees will learn how to credibly measure the dollars and cents value your community receives from library services and access proven examples for communicating what different community stakeholders need to hear.

Library Training for Staff and Customers

Library Training for Staff and Customers
Author: Sara R. Beck
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2022-10-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317957202

Enable your library staff to deliver the most effective services possible!This comprehensive book is designed to assist library professionals involved in presenting or planning training for library staff members and customers. Library Training for Staff and Customers covers training issues from many points of view ranging from top management to department managers.Library Training for Staff and Customers contains essential information to help you make the right training decisions when planning for your staff. Library Training for Staff and Customers explores ideas for: effective general reference training training on automated systems training in specialized subjects such as African-American history and biography training for areas such as patents and trademarks training for research on business subjects. Library Training for Staff and Customers answers numerous training questions and is an excellent guide for planning staff development and setting a training budget for your library. Make your library more effective and easier for your patrons to use with the strategies in this book!

The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services

The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services
Author: Joseph R. Matthews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2017-10-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1440855374

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.

Managerial Leadership for Librarians

Managerial Leadership for Librarians
Author: G. Edward Evans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2017-10-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1440841713

Putting library management into the unique context of the not-for-profit world, this work offers you invaluable guidance on how to manage your library effectively. Managing a library presents a significantly different challenge than managing a small business, a corporation, or even a school or charity organization. To be effective managers and excel in their careers, librarians must understand their unique position in the social landscape and leverage that role to become influential leaders. This guide shows librarians how to make the most of their inherent skills and develop new leadership strengths in order to become better library managers, advance their careers, and sustain their libraries—in spite of changing environments and shrinking budgets. The book examines many facets of managerial leadership, defines what managerial leadership is, and describes how to assess and increase leadership skills. The chapters also identify the constraints unique to libraries and explain how you can develop positive relationships with government boards, turn a vision into a practical strategic plan, and exercise fiscal control. You will gain invaluable knowledge about fund raising, developing political skills, advocacy and lobbying, and legal and ethical concerns, specifically in the library environment. The final section of the book is devoted to people skills—understanding yourself and others, developing staff, collaboration, negotiation, meetings and presentations, and creating future success.

The Machiavellian Librarian

The Machiavellian Librarian
Author: Melissa K. Aho
Publisher: Chandos Publishing
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1780634366

Do librarians 'rock the boat'? Do they challenge those around them to win influence and advantage? Why is it that librarians are little found on the 'influence' grid of personality assessment tests? The Machiavellian Librarian offers real life examples of librarians who use their knowledge and skill to project influence, and turn the tide in their, and their library's, favor. Authors offer first hand and clear examples to help librarians learn to use their influence effectively, for the betterment of their library and their career. Opening chapters cover visualizing data, as well as networking and strategic alignment. Following chapters discuss influence without authority-making fierce allies, communicating results in accessible language and user-centered planning. Closing chapters address using accreditation and regulation reporting to better position the library, as well as political positioning and outcome assessment. - Throws the spotlight on librarian's professional and personality traits, many of which are deleterious to the long-term viability of library funding - Shows how best to boost the value proposition of libraries, through enhanced influence - Includes how-to chapters on influencing others in the organization