An interesting dispatch from a UK Librarian (Lauren of Walk You Home) about showing the value of Public Libraries to the hack/slash budget crowd.
She puts together a decent list, and then goes on to add:
This isn’t airy-fairy-bunkum or crazy-lefty-ideology (sorry, Mayor Davies) – this is about the fundamentals of society. Libraries are cultural, educational and civic hubs. They always have been, and they always should be. Information and information needs are changing, but information’s not going away, and nor are people! What isn’t clear, though, is how we can prove this to the bean-counters of the world (because sadly, they’re not going away either).
An awful lot of qualitative data has been pouring into the Voices for the Library inbox for several months now. We’ve been presenting it in different ways – stories, guest blog posts, a Mashup challenge, a Wordle about “what libraries mean to you“…
We’ve even had some offers of support from academic departments keen to do something with all the information we’ve been gathering. Hopefully there’ll be time at some point soon to take them up on the offer![full post]
Academic collaborations along these line are already taking place in the US, and some have produced results. Studies like these have to be helpful. Though it would imply there was an actual reasonable rational discussion taking place on the matter. And, I’m not sure that real information is making it through the ideological clatter.
Still, a new set of portable metrics would be useful. I wonder why someone hasn’t sat down and put together a kit that public libraries can use to generate the sort of economic “straight talking” statistics and dollar amounts that carry water in policy/budget discussions.
There is momentum in that direction. Lauren’s going to what looks like a pretty interesting event on the subject.
…in a couple of weeks I will be taking part in a workshop entitled Measuring the Value of Public Libraries: The fallacy of footfall and issues as measures of the value of public libraries. I’m really looking forward to it, and I hope that it will be a step away from the simplistic and inaccurate measurement of footfall (the number of people who walk through the doors, and occasionally the people who click on the council’s ‘library’ website) and issue statistics (book/cd/dvd lending), and towards more effective systems of measurement.
I’m jealous and would love to know what kinds of metrics they get into.
Thanks for this! I’m really looking forward to working on putting some kind of toolkit together, which we’re aiming to be one of the outcomes of the workshop. Will most definitely be sharing the wealth if/when we get it together.
Lauren
Just fyi, Jim Morgenstern developed a very valuable manual for public libraries to identify and convey their contributions to their communities. The Library’s Contribution to Your Community http://www.sols.org/publications/lctyc/index.htm is in its Second Edition – published March 2007, and was prepared by dmA Planning and Management Services for the Southern Ontario Library Service. They have trained many, many public libraries all over North America in this method.
This manual will assist you to demonstrate your library’s value to your community in terms meaningful to your key funders. Working from key community issues, the manual guides you through the development of your Contribution Strategy from selecting relevant library outcomes from among six contributions and twenty benefits, through collecting and interpreting your data and constructing your argument. The result is a cogent description of your library’s contributions specifically linked to issues of high importance in your community, and creating a persuasive case for support.
Hi Rebecca,
How does Morgenstern’s model deal with economic impact, like jobs made/acquired, income improvement, and tax revenue etc.?
With the sort of numbers that law makers like to throw around when trying to cut community programs, I think libraries need to tie their worth to broader economic factors in quantitative ways, as well as qualitative/values-driven aspects.
Hi Lauren. I look forward to what you come up with.