How good is your library? How can you measure the impact you make? Designed for public library service managers, this one-day programme will help staff move beyond performance indicators to see the effectiveness of the library service.
Participants will learn how to get to grips with evaluating service impact, incorporating this effort into the overall service monitoring and evaluation process, and learn how to put the evidence of success across in convincing ways.
By the end of the course participants will have:
- considered the main differences between monitoring efficiency and evaluating impact and their consequences for evidence gathering
- explored the main stages in evaluating service impact
- examined how to incorporate impact evaluation into their ways of working
- focused on issues in presenting impact evidence effectively for different purposes
This programme has been designed for Public Library Service managers who are responsible for evaluating services or considering how to do so.
David Streatfield
David is an experienced LIS trainer who specialises in service impact evaluation. He is an independent Impact Consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries initiative and co-writer of ‘Evaluating the impact of your library’ published by Facet.
Sample programme
- What is impact?
What impact can the library service have?
Impact on what? (How far can you reach?)
Frameworks from recent research
Some issues in evaluating impact
What is really changing?
How do you know?
- How can you tell that you are making a difference? - 1
Finding useful impact indicators
(Group work, feedback and input)
- How can you tell that you are making a difference? - 2
Why are you doing it?
Collecting the evidence
(Group work, feedback and input)
- Building impact into what we do
Where to start?
The planning cycle
Impact evaluation, advocacy and sustainability
- Getting the messages across
Organising the evidence
Bringing the recipients on board