Assessing impact is increasingly critical to the survival of services: managers now require comprehensive information about effectiveness, especially in relation to users. Outlining a rigorously tested approach to library evaluation and offering practical tools and highly relevant examples, this book enables LIS managers to get to grips with the slippery concept of service impact and to address their own impact questions in their planning. The 2nd edition is fully updated to include international approaches to qualitative library evaluation, new international research, and current debates on the evolving nature of evaluation, as well as reflections on the importance of involving stakeholders and of evaluation to guide advocacy.
Key topics include:
Where do we go from here?
Readership: Practising library and information service managers and policy makers in the field. LIS policy shapers and managers in public, education (schools, further and higher education), health and special libraries and information services working in any country or internationally and people engaged in professional education in the field such as lecturers or students.
Autorentext
David Streatfield has been involved with impact evaluation for more than thirty years. He is Principal of Information Management Associates a consultancy, training and research team focused on evaluating information and library service provision and particularly on assessing the impact of these services. He is the co-author of Evaluating the Impact of your Library published by Facet Publishing in 2006 and, in a new and fully revised edition, in 2013.
Inhalt
Impact and all that: use of some key terms in this bookPART 1: THE CONTEXT1. The demand for evidence
Why is it important to tackle impact?
What does impact mean?
Where our model comes from
PART 2: EVALUATING IMPACT4. Putting the impact into planning
How do you currently measure your success as a service?
Why objectives matter
Some indicators
The 'reach' of the service
Other methods of gathering impact evidence
Evidence or advocacy?
Planning your impact evaluation
PART 3: THE BIGGER PICTURE11. Doing national or international evaluation
Impact evaluation, advocacy and service sustainability