Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Evaluating Library Services

Attended a session presented by Beverly Choltco-Devlin of the Mid-York Library System this morning about evaluating library services, using the Evaluation Decision-Making System (EDMS) portal. While the resources located in the EDMS site are largely self-explanatory, I found a lot of food-for-thought in the presentation. But then I have analysis, planning, and evaluation on the brain these days.

Evaluation: PRE thought, not after thought
Libraries are required to do a lot of evaluation for grants, state reporting, etc. but often it seems that "evaluation" is something tacked onto the program report just to satisfy some kind of requirement and that it is a burden that has little bearing on or merit toward library work. Mostly because state requirements are irrelevant to library work? Because the recommended evaluation methods (we're looking at you, Outcomes Based Evaluation) are not always appropriate? Because the needs assessment part of the equation is almost always overlooked? Because results (other than bodies in a chair, or numbers on a chart) are also undefined? Because it's more fun and is doing "real work" to jump into the project right away?

It's frustrating. Skipping the dull, difficult planning work just seems to result in frantic scrambling later on, when the report needs to be writen or decisions made.


Two basic subjects of evaluation - finite projects and ongoing services
Most library evaluation focuses on specific projects - a grant, a program, etc. Which is of course great and necessary. But we should also be looking at evaluating ongoing services - like customer support or collection development - and internal processes - such as how we make major decisions or organize departments.

I think the internal evaluation - how we do what we do is almost entirely missing. Maybe we should be looking not just at what we do for our public, but also for ourselves. Why don't libraries look at how they do things in addition to what they do?

Two basic purposes of evaluation - management and promotion
This was one of those so obvious it was blinding points - we need evaluation for two distinct purposes, which require different types of information and different uses of information.