Doing Library Impact Evaluation

This book is an accessible guide to the latest thinking on effective library impact evaluation for anyone who wants to gauge the impact of their services or projects on their service users for library advocacy and service development.

Although library impact evaluation is evolving, most of the literature focuses on the methods used and on the evaluation findings. There is a dearth of case studies focusing on the evaluation problems presented by libraries, how these problems are addressed and what lessons can be learnt in the process. This book fills that gap by presenting a series of case studies through which the authors draw on current impact evaluation thinking to address a variety of evaluation problems.

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. The authors show how they have applied advances in thinking drawn from education and international development evaluation. They also show how progress in programme theory-based evaluation is helping to shape the world of library impact evaluation.

The book offers a wide range of case study settings, covering UK public, health, school and academic libraries and the evaluation programme of a national research funding body, as well as international library development programmes funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).

The approaches to library evaluation explored in the case studies encompass:

• self-evaluation by library managers
• action research conducted by academic library teams
• a large-scale market survey of perceptions of public libraries
• limited and more developed programme evaluations
• application of programme theory-driven approaches to evaluation at national and international levels.

The book will be essential reading for library managers and directors, particularly those working at national, public, academic, health and school libraries. It will also be of interest to any library and information professionals who want to gauge the impact of their services or projects on their service users for library advocacy and service development.